Beth Nielsen Chapman

Beth Nielsen Chapman (born September 14, 1958, in Harlingen, Texas, United States) is an American singer-songwriter, mostly known for her numerous hits recorded by country and pop music performers.

Early life and history

Beth Nielsen Chapman was born on September 14, 1958, in Harlingen, Texas as the middle child of five to a Catholic family, an American Air Force Major father and a nurse mother. While Chapman was growing up, her family moved several times and settled in Alabama in 1969. While living in Germany at age 11, Chapman started playing guitar after her mother hid a Framus guitar as a Father's Day gift in her room. She also learned to play the piano at the same time she started playing guitar. As a child and teenager, she listened to a variety of music including Hoagy Carmichael, Tony Bennett, James Taylor and Carole King.

In 1976, Chapman played with a rock and pop group called "Harmony" in Montgomery, Alabama, effectively replacing Tommy Shaw who had just left to join Styx. She played acoustic guitar and piano as well as providing vocals for the group in a locally-popular bowling alley bar called Kegler's Kove and has returned to play in the area on an infrequent basis ever since.

Beth Nielsen Chapman (album)

Beth Nielsen Chapman is the second album by singer-songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman.

Track listing

All tracks composed by Beth Nielsen Chapman; except where indicated

References

Ave verum corpus

"Ave verum corpus" is a short Eucharistic hymn that has been set to music by various composers. It dates from the 14th century and has been attributed to Pope Innocent VI.

During the Middle Ages it was sung at the elevation of the host during the consecration. It was also used frequently during Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.

The poem is a meditation on the Catholic belief in Jesus's Real Presence in the sacrament of the Eucharist, and ties it to the Catholic conception of the redemptive meaning of suffering in the life of all believers.

Text

Musical settings

Musical settings include Mozart's motet Ave verum corpus (K. 618), as well as settings by William Byrd and Sir Edward Elgar. Not all composers set the whole text. For example, Mozart's setting finishes with "in mortis examine", Elgar's with "fili Mariae". There is a version by Franz Liszt [Searle 44], and also ones by Camille Saint-Saëns, Orlande de Lassus, Imant Raminsh,Alexandre Guilmant, Colin Mawby,Malcolm Archer and Jack Gibbons. Liszt also composed a fantasy on Mozart's work, preceded by a version of Allegri's celebrated Miserere, under the title À la Chapelle Sixtine [Searle 461 – two versions]. Versions of this fantasy for orchestra [Searle 360] and piano four-hands [Searle 633] follow closely the second version for piano. The is also a version for organ [Searle 658] with the title Evocation à la Chapelle Sixtine. The text is even used in an opera, Francis Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites (there is also "Ave verum corpus", a separate work by Poulenc dated 1952). Mozart's version, with instruments only, was adapted by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky as one of the sections of his Mozartiana, a tribute to Mozart. The Vienna Boys' Choir (Wiener Sängerknaben) made some notable recordings of Mozart's "Ave verum corpus" in the 20th century. From the 21st century there is a setting by the Swedish composer Fredrik Sixten and two versions by Philip Lawson.

Ave verum corpus (Mozart)

Ave verum corpus (Hail, true body) is a motet in D major (K. 618), composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It is a setting of the 14th century Eucharistic hymn in Latin "Ave verum corpus" in 1791. Mozart wrote it for Anton Stoll, a friend of Mozart and Joseph Haydn. Stoll was the musical coordinator in the parish of Baden bei Wien, near Vienna. This setting of the Ave verum corpus text was composed to celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi; the autograph is dated 17 June 1791. It is only forty-six bars long and is scored for SATB choir, string instruments, and organ. Mozart's manuscript contains minimal directions, with only a single sotto voce at the beginning.

Mozart composed the motet while in the middle of writing his opera Die Zauberflöte, and while visiting his wife Constanze, who was pregnant with their sixth child and staying in a spa near Baden. It was fewer than six months before Mozart's death. The motet foreshadows "aspects of the Requiem such as declamatory gesture, textures, and integration of forward- and backward-looking stylistic elements."