The Fredösphere

Scott Spiegelberg, who is the spawn of Satan, thinks Morten Lauridsen's O Magnum Mysterium is fabulous music.  Sorry, Scott, but I'm the choral music authority around here.  O Magnum Mysterium ain't fabulous music until I say it's fabulous music.

[Beat.]

O Magnum Mysterium is fabulous music.

O Magnum Mysterium is fabulous music, and it's a favorite programming choice of middle-to-high level choirs all over, but many performances are a little less than completely satisfying.  It's interesting that Scott encountered the piece in an arrangement for winds.  Wind instruments, especially woodwinds (and very especially pipe organs) can maintain their volume all the way to the bottoms of their ranges.  Thus, when O Magnum arrives at its climax, the deep sustained Ds in the low bass can ring out and anchor the whole ensemble properly.  (Or so I assume was the case in the performance he mentioned.)  With choirs, the only groups that can pull off  solid low Ds are those -- usually professional groups -- that can recruit lots of true bass IIs, those guys whose larynxes jut out from their throats like the prow of the Titanic.  (Oh, they are sooooo arrogant, those bases with their bulging larynxes and their deep voices.  We hates them!  Hates them all!)  In an community chorus setting, that climax sounds weak and top-heavy -- etiolated, exsanguinated, and enervated.

I'm tempted to think Lauridsen wrote this piece at the keyboard and let its sound influence him too much, but naw, he's to smart for that.  Probably what happened is that he knew he'd get a great performance of this work from the Los Angeles Master Chorale, even with the low Ds, and that satisfied him.

Before I finish, I would also like to point out that it aint' quittin' time until I say its quittin' time.

[Beat.]

Quittin' time!