Page 48 - CJFeb24

A SUMMING UP Choral Composition Through Nine Decades

written light music for specific situations.) From the had other names: suite, group, sequence, set, or even
1980s on, there are fewer choral works because I was cantatas of a certain kind. Without going into subtle
chiefly occupied with opera. differences or the countless ways the individual pieces
are related (same author, same subject matter, dramatic
continuity, etc.), let me tell you how much the choral
On Conducting cycle has meant to me.

I have not spoken about my experience as a conduc- Someone once claimed that, aside from my earliest
tor because I essentially gave that up when I switched pieces, I have been acting like a librettist nearly every
from university teaching to freelance composing, con- time I write for chorus. That is, combining poems to
ducting only as needed and for specific situations. The make a larger form, usually dramatic or narrative, of-
decision to make that change came when I was living ten also relating the separate pieces musically. Guilty as
in Vienna. I was offered a job conducting and teaching charged.
at Harvard; that was what is often called “a defining One of the earliest and most important of these
moment.” But it didn’t take me long to decline it for cycles was Songs of Wisdom (1958-59). This unaccom-
three reasons: panied work is a search for understanding, with a solo
First, the best choral conductors have been singers recitative from Ecclesiastes preceding each motet, based
or have known the voice so well that they could get the on Old Testament illustrations of what the “Preacher”
sounds from their chorus that were exactly what were had proclaimed. Experienced conductors know the
needed. I never took voice lessons, and though I was a benefits of the cycle. One is that it gives singers and au-
pretty good conductor, I knew that it was foolish for me diences something more substantial than does a concert
to take a job for which I really would not be able to ex- of three-minute pieces. Another advantage is that the
cel. The singers deserved better. Second: I have a lousy individual pieces can be learned and performed sepa-
memory; I have to use the score in conducting even my rately before the entire work is ready—or later, at any
own music. Why choose for my life’s work something subsequent concert. The Stanford Memorial Church
that would be more difficult for me than it is for many? Choir followed that pattern before and after giving the
Third, and probably the most important: I was having premiere of Songs of Wisdom. One critic saw something
more and more success as a composer; that was my else in this format. He wrote that it “resembles nothing
greatest love. so much as opera.” This man seemed to know twenty
years before I did that I was to become an opera com-
poser.
Choral Cycles But I still had much to learn before writing my first
You won’t find the term “Choral Cycle” in a mu- opera (Tartuffe, premiered in 1980), and I learned much
sic dictionary (at least, not in those that senior citizens of it by writing choral works with soloists and orchestra.
possess). “Song Cycle” is included, but because I have Most composers study music from early childhood. Al-
written so many choral cycles, I have been accused of though I had written stacks of wretched songs by ear, I
inventing the term. I wrote an article, “The Choral took my first course in Harmony when I was in my twen-
Cycle,” for the April 1970 Choral Journal, in which I ties. Because my life had been changed by singing in a
praised the flexibility in program building that the cycle chorus for the first time—thank you, Harold Schmidt,
offers and its other advantages. I added a selected list then choral director at Stanford—it was primarily cho-
of cycles from various composers and periods. 1 ral music that I wrote at first. It taught me a valuable les-
My definition of a choral cycle was this: “A group of son: that each part must have interesting music, or the
individual choral pieces unified in some way, intended singers will not enjoy performing the piece. The same is
to be performed together but also capable of being true for instrumental music. This principle is the basis
programmed separately.” Because the term “cycle” of good counterpoint in any genre. (Not that all good
was new to choral music, most of the pieces on my list music must be contrapuntal!)

46 CHORAL JOURNAL February 2024 Volume 64 Number 6