The Amadeus Choir (Photo courtesy of Amadeus Choir)
The Amadeus Choir of Greater Toronto will end their 2024/25 season with a concert on May 4 that brings together Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem. The two works are considered among the 20th century’s choral masterpieces.
The May 4 concert takes place in the atmospheric Metropolitan United Church, conducted by Kathleen Allan. The soloists include:
- Alex Hetherington, Mezzo-Soprano
- Jesse Blumberg, Baritone
- Ryan Talebi, Boy Soprano
- Amahl Arulanandam, Cello
- Jonathan Oldengarm, Organ
- Zane Mallett, Harp
- Yang Chen, Percussion
Leonard Bernstein: Chichester Psalms
Reverend Walter Hussey, Dean of the Cathedral of Chichester in Sussex, England, wrote to Leonard Bernstein in December 1963. He requested a piece for the Cathedral’s music festival, set for August 1965. The festival performance would bring together the cathedral choruses of Chichester, Winchester and Salisbury.
“Many of us would be very delighted if there was a hint of West Side Story about the music,” Hussey hinted in his letter, mentioning that perhaps Psalm 2 would be suitable.
Bernstein took on the challenge, but used what he called “selective verses from Psalms” rather than focusing on Psalm 2. It would be the first work he composed after the Third Symphony, Kaddish, which he completed in 1963 in memory of President Kennedy.
In the Chichester Psalms, Bernstein combined elements of traditional Church music with Judaic liturgy, and his score specifically calls for the vocal parts to be sung in Hebrew. In fact, he uses the rhythms of the Hebrew language to guide the melody, along with the jazzy elements common to many of his works.
The piece is largely tonal, in contrast with many pieces he was writing during that period.
Bernstein commented on it during a 1977 press conference, “I spent almost the whole year writing 12-tone music and even more experimental stuff. I was happy that all these new sounds were coming out: but after about six months of work I threw it all away. It just wasn’t my music; it wasn’t honest. The end result was the Chichester Psalms which is the most accessible, B-flat majorish tonal piece I’ve ever written.”
Maurice Duruflé: Requiem, Op. 9
A noted organist and teacher at the Paris Conservatoire during his lifetime, as a composer, Maurice Duruflé left a catalogue of only 11 published works on his death. As a result of nearly crippling self-critique and self-doubt, his output was painfully slow.
“I work slowly, and I throw a lot away,” he wrote.
His Requiem, Op. 9, is a setting of the Latin Requiem for a solo baritone, mezzo-soprano, mixed choir, and organ. He began the work in 1941, when the Vichy government, which collaborated with the occupying German forces, offered sizable commissions to select French composers. Duruflé accepted with the intention of composing a symphonic poem.
But, as usual, his progress came at a snail’s pace.
Along the way, he abandoned the idea of a symphonic poem, and instead wanted to write a Requiem Mass. He was still working away on the project when the Vichy regime collapsed in 1944, and still working on it for another three years until it was finally completed in 1947.
The Requiem’s music is based in or plainchant, a monophonic type of chant used in the Church. The most commonly known version is Gregorian chant. Duruflé had attended a choir school between the ages of 10 and 16, and was influenced by the modal harmonies and plainsong tradition throughout his career.
To the venerable musical mode, he expands the melodic elements, and adds impressionistic harmonies. In his own program notes, he wrote,
“This Requiem is entirely composed on the Gregorian themes of the Mass for the Dead. Sometimes the musical text was completely respected, the orchestral part intervening only to support or comment on it; sometimes I was simply inspired by it or left it completely. In general, I have sought above all to enter into the characteristic style of the Gregorian themes.”
Plainsong is also notable for its unmeasured rhythms. “The strong beats had to lose their dominant character in order to take on the same intensity as the weak beats in such a way that the rhythmic Gregorian accent or the tonic Latin accent could be placed freely on any beat of our modern tempo.”
He continues,
“This Requiem is not an ethereal work which sings of detachment from earthly worries. It reflects, in the immutable form of the Christian prayer, the agony of man faced with the mystery of his ultimate end. It is often dramatic, or filled with resignation, or hope or terror, just as the words of the Scripture themselves, which are used in the liturgy. It tends to translate human feelings before they’re terrifying, unexplainable, or consoling destiny.
“The organ has only an incidental role. It intervenes, not to accompany the choir, but only to underline certain accents or to make one momentarily forget the all too human sonorities of the orchestra. It represents the idea of peace, of Faith, and of Hope.”
- Find more details, and tickets, for the May 4 concert [HERE].
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