The Fredösphere

Here's a run-down of the pieces Jerry Blackstone conducted in the University of Michigan Chamber Choir concert from last night.

Mark Buckles, Morning Song:  an excellent student work.  I hear echoes of Eric Whitacre, who has one of the most attractive and useful composer websites I've ever seen.

Evan Chambers, Deploration:  an expression of mourning, with each note falling heavily and lingering in lethargy.  The lines of the organ accompaniment act as supplemental vocal parts, adding only an extra range in the bass, but avoiding much in the way of contrasting timbre.

William Albright, Chichester Mass.  This beautiful work sounds better with a full choir, which is what the U-M "Chamber" Choir really is, than with an otherwise excellent double sextet I heard perform it last year.  Among singers you sometimes find a certain snobbish disdain of big choirs (call it the Mormon Tabernacle effect) but the fact is, big choirs and chamber vocal groups are two different types of ensembles, and each has its strengths.  That big choirs are often the less disciplined doesn't mean there is something fundamentally wrong with them.

Franz Schubert, Mirjam's Siegesgesang:  a cantata for soprano, choir and piano.  Regarding the soloist, Heather Yanke:  what a horn!  She was enjoying herself almost too much; but if you are going to be extreme, that's the extreme to be.  It gladdens me to report that the Schubert was fiber-filled.

Jerry is good at finding these neglected pieces by big name composers.  One example is a cantata by Mendelssohn, Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, which will not be performed in most churches because it recounts a scene where Druids outwit Christians.  I saw Jerry conduct that piece a few years ago with my friends Glenn and Jeff.  Afterwards, this was their reaction:

Glenn:  "The bad guys won!"
Jeff:  "They won the battle."

Dominick Argento, The Revelation of Saint John the Divine:  A bizarre, uncanny work that captures the spirit (or at least, one of the spirits) of the Revelation.  The piece was written in 1968 -- a nasty low point in the annals of music composition -- but Argento the neo-romantic did an above average job of resisting the pressure to make it gratuitously weird, although the choice of text helped him by giving license for a phantasmagorical* vibe.  Did I hear a few gestures lifted from Stravinsky's Les Noces?  The ensemble is similar, with piano, harp, celeste, marimba and other percussion, but with a brass septet thrown in, all accompanying a tenor soloist and male choir.  I think it was cruel decision of Argento to call for the tenor soloist (here, new U-M professor John Charles Pierce) to out-shout six brass playing dense counterpoint.

*So, is it phantasmagorial, or phantasmagorical?  My Webster's New World Dictionary (paperback) doesn't say, so I submit the question to Google The All-Wise:  628 for the former, 16,200 for the latter.  Truth is a democracy!