Libby Gardner Series
Sunday, November 15, 2026
3:00PM
Libby Gardner Concert Hall
1375 Presidents' Circle
Salt Lake City, Utah 84112
Music by Caroline Shaw, Gartenlaub, Buxtehude, and de la Guerre
Program
NOVA welcomes Sound of Ages chamber choir to sing Caroline Shaw’s delightful …to the hands along with its companion piece Ad Manus by baroque composer Dieterich Buxtehude from 1680. Star violinist duo Alex and Aubrey Woods perform Jacquet de la Guerre’s Trio Sonatas for Two Violins and Jason Hardink will perform the quirky solo harpsichord work Parcours by Odette Gartenlaub.
Trio Sonata No. 1 in G minor, EJG. 8 (1695): Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1729)
Alex and Aubrey Woods, violins
Louis-Philippe Robillard, cello
Jason Hardink, harpsichord
Parcours for amplified harpsichord (1975): Odette Gartenlaub (1922-2014)
Jason Hardink, harpsichord
Trio Sonata No. 3 in D Major, EJG. 10 (1695): de la Guerre
Aubrey and Alex Woods, violins
Louis-Philippe Robillard, cello
Jason Hardink, harpsichord
INTERMISSION
Membra Jesu Nostri, III. Ad manus, BUXWV75 (1680): Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707)
Sound of Ages, choir
Kameron Kavanaugh, conductor
Alex and Aubrey Woods, violins
Louis-Philippe Robillard, cello
Sam Handley, electric guitar
…to the hands (2016): Caroline Shaw (b. 1982)
I. Prelude (attacca)
II. in medio/in the midst
III. Her beacon-hand beckons
IV. ever ever ever
V. Litany of the Displaced
VI. i will hold you
Sound of Ages, choir
Kameron Kavanaugh, conductor
Alex and Aubrey Woods, violins
Whittney Sjogren, viola
Louis-Philippe Robillard, cello
Jens Tenbroek, double bass
Performers
Sound of Ages Chamber Choir
Sam Handley, electric guitar
Jason Hardink, harpsichord
Kameron Kavanaugh, conductor
Louis-Philippe Robillard, cello
Whittney Sjogren, viola
Jens Tenbroek, bass
Alex Woods, violin
Aubrey Woods, violin
Program Notes
Baroque composer Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre was born into a family of professional musicians in 1665. Her father was a church organist in Paris and, like his own father, a master harpsichord maker. With such robust artistic DNA coursing through her, Élisabeth was bound to be special, but she exceeded even the most hopeful expectations with a performance for the court at Versailles at the age of five. If the stories from that concert are true, King Louis XIV recognized her talent right away and his patronage would go on to shape her entire career. In her teens, Jacquet de la Guerre became a musician in the household of Louis’ momentarily favorite mistress, Madame de Montespan. There the young composer witnessed first-hand the subtle dangers of royal intrigue (look up L’Affaire des poisons to see what was swirling around her) and learned to focus her energy and allegiance toward the King. Much of the music Jacquet de la Guerre wrote has not survived, but renewed interest in her story is leading to occasional discoveries and an increase in performances of the works we do have access to. She composed four Trio Sonatas in 1695, and they each highlight the skill for which she is best remembered – the elegant synthesis of Italian forms and French tastes.
Odette Gartenlaub did it all. She was a composer, a performer and an educator who made her mark on all three disciplines with minimum fuss and maximum effectiveness. Her pioneering teaching methods are still referenced in French music education and her legacy as a piano soloist of international renown runs counter to what we know about her private nature as a person. Gartenlaub entered the Paris Conservatory at a very young age – winning competitions left and right – but was forced to abandon her studies during the Nazi occupation and the banning of Jewish students. Undaunted, she continued her studies in secret and eventually went on to win the Prix de Rome in 1948. Gartenlaub returned to Paris three years later and went back to the Conservatory as a Professor in 1959, where she remained for 30 years. Throughout her long career, she composed for orchestra, voice, various chamber music ensembles and solo instruments, often with an emphasis on non-traditional instrumental features. One such work was Parcours for solo harpsichord (often performed with amplification). The piece was written in 1975 and, as might be expected from music minted in that part of the 20th century, it subverts the expectations of listeners who typically associate the instrument with baroque, well-mannered niceties.
When Dieterich Buxtehude composed the seven Passion cantatas that make up the Membra Jesu Nostri (The Limbs of Jesus) cycle in 1680, he was in the prime of his career. The confidence with which his music leads the listener through this strange mystical/anatomical journey is stunning and quite vivid. Structurally, the medieval hymn Salve mundi salutare acts as a unifying anchor as each six-part cantata invokes a different aspect of Christ’s wounded body, starting at the bottom and working upward (To the Feet, To the Knees, To the Hands, To the Sides, To the Breast, To the Heart, To the Face). Cantata III (Ad manus – “To the Hands”) directly confronts, as it must, the nails and the cross and the graphic pain Jesus was forced to endure.
American composer Caroline Shaw premiered her fascinating and thought-provoking response to Buxtehude in 2016. She wrote the following note about the piece:
“How does one respond to an image of another person’s pain? And how does one respond to the music of another artist who is trying to ask that same question? These are the two queries that anchored my approach to [the Philadelphia-based choir] The Crossing’s incredible Seven Responses project. To the Hands begins and ends with strains of Buxtehude’s own Ad manus, with small harmonic and melodic references woven occasionally throughout. The divisions of the piece into six parts reflect the partitioning of Membra Jesu Nostri, and I continued the tradition of blending old text with new.
The first movement acts as a prelude and turns the opening tune of Ad manus into a wordless plainchant melody. The second movement fragments Buxtehude’s setting of the central question, “quid sunt plagae istae in medio manuum tuarum,” or “what are these wounds in the midst of your hands.” It settles finally on an inversion of the question, so that we reflect, “What are these wounds in the midst of our hands?” We notice what may have been done to us, but we also question what we have done and what our role has been in these wounds we see before us.
The text that follows in the third movement is a riff on Emma Lazarus’ sonnet The New Colossus, famous for its engraving at the base of the Statue of Liberty. The poem’s lines “Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” and its reference to the statue’s “beacon-hand” present a very different image of a hand — one that is open, beckoning, and strong. No wounds are to be found there — only comfort for those caught in a dangerous and complex environment. While the third movement operates in broad strokes from a distance, the fourth zooms in on the map so far that we see the intimate scene of an old woman in her home, maybe setting the table for dinner alone. Who is she, where has she been, whose lives has she left? This simple image melts into a meditation on the words in caverna from the Song of Solomon, found in Buxtehude’s fourth section, Ad latus.
In the fifth movement the harmony is passed around from one string instrument to another, overlapping only briefly, while numerical figures are spoken by the choir. These are global figures of internally displaced persons, by country, sourced from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) data reported in May 2015 (accessed on 20/03/2016 at www.internal-displacement.org). Sometimes data is the cruelest and most honest poetry.
The sixth and final movement unfolds the words in caverna into the tumbling and comforting promise of “ever ever” — “ever ever will I hold you, ever ever will I enfold you”. They could be the words of Christ, or of a parent or friend or lover, or even of a nation.”
-Jeff Counts © 2026
