The Fredösphere

Now they're saying Homer was a Homerette.  I suppose she was the one who fried up all those donuts, too.

Another chapter in the continuing story of consumers' need to be saved from overwhelming choice.  Via ArtsJournal, it's the Denver Post describing dailyCD.com.  If I sound sarcastic, let me assure you I appreciate the service these people do, even if I prefer to go the collaborative filtering route.  What I don't care for is the suggestion (not being made, let me hasten to add, by anyone mentioned in the Denver Post article) that, deep down, people dislike too much choice; that choice is somehow bad for people.  This is an opinion that would warm the heart of Stalin himself.

It's part of a more general attitude that distrusts giving power, wealth, or even simple ease and convenience, to the people generally.  It was better when the only entertainment was bowling, because then everyone bowled together!  Central heating is bad; it was better when the family gathered around the hearth at night, because they were forced to talk to one another!

I recall one friend who speculated he would prefer pre-modern life on some tropical island.  Whether the survival rate such a life would sustain would make even his very existence likely was something he had not thought through very carefully.

There is no question that power (even in the form of choice and personal freedom) will corrupt many.  The atomization of our culture sure makes my job of recruiting church choir members a lot harder.  But we are called to develop the character to rise above such temptations to self-indulgence.  If your eye offends you, by all means, cut it out.  But if you are worried merely that your eye might offend you some time in the future, keep your knife sharpened, but sheathed.

Darn.  I went on a bit of a rant there, didn't I.

Blessed are they who have nothing to blog and cannot be induced to blog it. Therefore, today I'll send you over to Lynn.

At the Sequenza21 composer's forum, Roger Bourland asks the question, will choral music always be tonal?  I think the question warrants the long discussion it received, but forced to answer with one word, I would answer "yes."

If I was given a super-powerful source of energy that was practically unlimited, I sure know what I would do with it!  I'd use it to enhance my ability to fly around Canada hectoring its citizens on their need to stop wasting energy and eating unapproved foods!  (Found via Cosh.)

Eagle-eyed Alan, ambassador from the choral-crazed, wintry northern plains, spotted Paradigm Vocal Ensemble from the far-off, sun-baked, weather-cliché-saturated land of Texas.  They're generous with their sound files, and their live rendition of Pilgrim's Hymn rises above the usual performance disappointments.  (It's a strangely difficult piece to pull off.)

But now ... fans demand I answer the question posted a week ago:  what piece of music most deserves the label "timeless," in the sense of "freed from the idioms of its time"?  I wished a few more of you had given your guesses, but I was quite pleased that Robert Gable pinned the tail on the bullseye:  his answer, and mine, is Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber.  (Sorry to anyone thrown off track by the post's title, which appeared to be a hint in the direction of Messiaen.  Maaaaybe someone would argue the Quartet for the End of Time is timeless, but I wouldn't.)

Robert earns bonus points for nominating the piece while admitting he's not quite the fan that so many of the rest of us are.  Robert, your Fredösphere-autographed set of the complete works of Johann Joseph Fux recorded on handy eight-track tapes is being shipped directly to your home as I write.

Shipped C.O.D., that is.

There's this idea that the people who make it to the top of whichever greasy pole they've chosen (art, business, politics) do so with the help of a ruthless streak.  Or, the top dogs always turn out to be of the junkyard variety.

There's plenty of anecdotal evidence of that.  And yet ... I've had an experience lately that makes me wonder.  I'm making a bit of effort to promote some of my music, and effort that involves sending emails cold to a bunch of people.  Now, I really don't expect much from these people, almost none of whom I've ever met.  On the other hand, I'm not exactly asking much either.  I understand that most will take next to no time looking at my music.  On the other hand, replying with a mere acknowledgment of the email would take a few seconds at most.  So my experience of receiving few replies, even of the "thanks, got your email" variety surprises me.

Anyway, I have noticed a rough correlation between the courtesy of a reply and the status of the recipient.  I.e., cream rises to the top.  Frankly, I'm surprised ... and not surprised.  It's very gratifying to know that, in at least some cases, classy conduct is rewarded. 

What to make of this anecdotal evidence that conflicts with the popular opinion (also based on anecdotal evidence)?  Perhaps the heat that comes with a high-status position is a fire that either refines, or disfigures.

Feel free to use the comments section to draw attention to a prominent musician who has been decent to you or someone you know.

Thanks to Gravity Lens, I found out about the podcast at starshipsofa.com.  Their subject is the history of sci-fi.  They discuss anythink about science fiction and they say fan email is loovey, but I think the effort is promising nonetheless.

"Vonage rebate scam."  Why have those words been floating in and out of my mental focus lately?  Vonage rebate scam.  Hmmm.

I'm deep into planning for the upcoming church choir season, so naturally I'm in a foul mood generally.  Planning is always a struggle of the lone-martyr-against-a-vast-array-of-evil-forces type (with which I am so intimately familiar), but to intensify the moody foulness, I foolishly broke with a usual practice of mine:  I failed to ignore some promotional CDs sent to me by a couple of choral music publishers.  Now, we're not talking about your Oxford University Presses here, but these publishers are hardly fly by night operations either -- these are established, well-known names in the choral music world.

So I started listening, and the old, familiar revulsion set in.  These selections demonstrate an astonishing -- one is tempted to say, impressive -- dedication to blandness.  A kind of superlative, uncompromising, take-no-prisoners commitment to blandness.  Now, these publishers cannot be offering this kind of music out of some perversity.  I can only assume they are serving customer demand.  How much of this demand is for conventional music, and how much is for easy music, I cannot say.  I hope it is for the latter, because there is always hope that composers will find a way to write easy music that is nevertheless interesting.  Not that writing good, easy music is easy; merely that it is possible.

In any event, I hearby announce my manifesto:  church music is too important to be left to the generals!  More to the point, church music is too important to be left to the church musicians!

My love for choral singing through the years has kept me from understanding why everyone does not want to do it.  Reading the following, however, has corrected my ignorance.

"Of course, this sort of music's not intended for an audience, you see," Welch said as he handed the copies round.  "The fun's all in the singing.  Everybody's got a real tune to sing -- a real tune," he repeated violently.  "You could say, really, that polyphony got to its highest point, its peak, at that period, and has been on the decline ever since.  You've only got to look at the part-writing in things like, well, Onward, Christian Soldiers, the hymn, which is a typical ... a typical ..."

"We're all waiting, Ned, Mrs. Welch said from the piano.  She played a slow arpeggio, sustaining it with the pedal.  "All right, everybody?"

A soporific droning filled the air round Dixon as the singers hummed their notes to one another.  Mrs. Welch rejoined them on the low platform that had been built at one end of the music-room, taking up her stand by Margaret, the other soprano.  A small bullied-looking woman with unabundant brown hair was the only contralto.  Next to Dixon was Cecil Goldsmith, a colleague of his in the College History Department, whose tenor voice held enough savage power, especially above middle C, to obliterate whatever noises Dixon might feel himself impelled to make.  Behind him and to one side were three basses, one a local composer, another an amateur violinist occasionally summoned at need by the city orchestra, the third Evan Johns.

Dixon ran his eye along the lines of black dots, which seemed to go up and down a good deal, and was able to assure himself that everyone was going to have to sing all the time.  He'd had a bad setback twenty minutes ago in some Brahms rubbish which began with ten seconds or so for unsupported tenor -- more accurately, for unsupported Goldsmith, who'd twice dried up in face of a tricky interval and left him opening and shutting his mouth in silence.  He now cautiously reproduced the note Goldsmith was humming and found the effect pleasing rather than the reverse.  Why hadn't they had the decency to ask him if he'd like to join in, instead of driving him up on to this platform arrangement and forcing sheets of paper into his hand?

The madrigal began at the bidding of Welch's arthritic forefinger.  Dixon kept his head down, moved his mouth as little as possible consistent with being unmistakably seen to move it, and looked through the words the others were singing.[...]

"Yet by, and by, they'll arl, deny, arnd say 'twas hart in jasst," Goldsmith sang tremulously and very loudly.  It was the last phrase; Dixon kept his mouth open while Welch's finger remained aloft, then shut it with a little flick of the head he'd seen singers use as the finger swept sideways.  All seemed pleased with the performance and anxious for another of the same sort.  "Yes, well, this one's what they called a ballet.  Of course, they didn't mean what we mean by the similar...  Rather a well-known one, this.  It's called Now is the Month of Maying.  Now if you'll all just..."

A bursting snuffle of laughter came from Dixon's left rear.  He glanced round to see Johns's pallor rent by a grin.  The large short-lashed eyes were fixed on him.  "What's the joke?" he asked.  If Johns were laughing at Welch, Dixon was prepared to come in on Welch's side.

"You'll see," Johns said.  He went on looking at Dixon.  "You'll see," he added, grinning.

In less than a minute Dixon did see, and clearly.  Instead of the customary four parts, this piece employed five.  The third and fourth lines of music from the top had Tenor I and Tenor II written against them; moreover, there was some infantile fa-la-la-la stuff on the second page with numerous gaps in the individual parts.  Even Welch's ear might be expected to record the complete absence of one of the parts in such circumstances.  It was much too late now for Dixon to explain that he hadn't really meant it when he'd said, half an hour before, that he could read music "after a fashion"; much to late to transfer allegiance to the basses.  Nothing short of an epileptic fit could get him out of this.

-from Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis

I'm enjoying Frank Pesci's blog, and finding a strong affinity with his posts, once I've mentally edited out the occasional F-words.  Here's a cri du coeur that transcends the silliness that artistic manifestos are prone to:

I will refrain from hitting the bullet points of my still relatively new, narcissistic zealtory. Nor will I evangelize. But suffice to say that there are many battles to be waged on this VERY broad front, as there are as many fragmented semantics as there are people involved with the planning and execution of liturgical music in American Christendom. What I will talk about (briefly) are my standards for writing this type of music: It must not be secular.
Honestly conceived for a sacred purpose; sustainable through the established traditions of liturgical music, using a modern voice without consciously dipping into the trappings of musical secularism; functionally viable in terms of having an honest understanding of the likely abilities of performers I write for, and for the congregations who will allow it to enhance their worship, as that is it's ultimate purpose. These are my standards when writing this kind of music - when I'm confronted with the complete self-aggrandizing idiocy that getting published...

I also urge you to take a test of pitch memory Frank found from UCSF.  Be warned, however, that the test is tough; it gives you only three seconds to identify the pitch.  I guess they are looking for ultra-reliable pitch memory.

I found it telling that the preliminary questionnaire includes a question about synaesthesia.  Have I mentioned that synaesthetes are subhuman freaks?  People with a moderately reliable sense of absolute pitch are, on the other hand, quite well balanced.  (By coincidence, that is the category to which I belong.)

Everyone is talking about the Queen of the Night aria as performed by a boy soprano in lederhosen.  See it on YouTube, or if you have the bandwidth, in a larger version on Google Video.  Then read about "perfect pitch for genius piano boy" (and please remember that geniuses are made, not born).  Then, segue effortlessly over to this article Victor found which reveals the dark underworld of Ewok holocaust deniers.

Colby Cosh found before I did the new research into the Dead Sea Scrolls.  It makes me almost regret canceling my subscription to Biblical Archaeology Review, which I have still not forgiven for a certain controversial issue.

What is the ultimate timeless piece of music?

Typically, we use the word timeless to describe an art work's ability to transcend its idioms, which are rooted in it's time and place, and appeal to people from the broadest possible backgrounds.  By this definition, compositions are timeless if...

Still they are carolled and said --
On wings they are carried --
After the singer is dead
And the maker buried.

I'm thinking of a more comprehensive definition.  How about a piece of music which idioms are unplaceable, which do not seem to belong to any time -- or maybe, to all times?  How about a piece of music that draws from the Renaissance, the Baroque, the Classical, the Romantic, and the Modern, somehow all at once?  How about a song that's a little bit country, and a little bit rock 'n' roll? 

Maybe the answer lies is some piece of music that anticipates a style by many years -- for example, hints of minimalism that you sometimes hear from 19th century composers.  Or maybe we must look outside our tradition, to solve this problem by escaping the western ideal of artistic or stylistic progress?

Naturally, I'm posting the question because I already have a nominee.  (I'm listening to it right now.)  Implicitly, it is also on my short list for Greatest Music Ever Written By a Human Being, but never mind that right now.  I'll wait to reveal what it is until others mention their nominees.  Please, let's have a comment frenzy on the question.  Frankly, I'll be disappointed if anyone suggests the piece I have in mind -- it will indicate the question is too obvious.

UPDATE:  Read the comments, then see this post for the answer.

Cary Boyce at the Sequenza21 Forum has started a discussion about composers mounting political soapboxes, in reaction to James MacMillan's campaign against anti-Catholicism in Scotland.  Macmillan's description of being interviewed over the phone by a newspaper does seem genuinely creepy; he says he overheard an unidentified voice whisper to his interviewer, "ask him if he's in Opus Dei."  Yow.  The ignorance of that question is astounding; I expect MacMillan to join Opus Dei around the time Dan Brown does.

I'm busy this week with a vocal recording project (there are piano tuners to call and page turners to recruit), so posting will be light.  I promise at the end to post a full report, perhaps with photos.  For now I'll simply link to my bass, Paul Max Tipton.  His blog is in the doldrums right now, but he assures me he plans to resume posting.  Paul recently graduated from the University of Michigan, and you can hear his voice in a solo sextet near the end of that William Bolcom CD that won all those Grammys.

Considering the number of times I have seen the movie version of The Fountainhead, it's odd how few of Ayn Rand's books I have read -- Anthem is the only one, really.  So I find myself at this late date plowing into Atlas Shrugged.

Rand picks the act of literally getting trains to run on time as the symbol for the pursuit of excellence.  Her heroes and heroines are smart perfectionists who work like dogs to get the job done.  Those who fail, do so because of cowardice and laziness.  They prefer to hide their failure through consensus decision-making.  There really is a fraternity of incompetence, a League of Extraordinary Mediocrities; failure loves company.  Rand hates that attitude and exaggerates it so we cannot fail to get the point.  Note how the loser is completely comfortable with impotence and decline; the one disaster that must be avoided is taking blame:

    "The Rio Norte Line is a pile of junk from one end to the other," she said.  "It's much worse than I thought.  But we're going to save it."
    "Of course," said James Taggart.
    "Some of the rail can be salvaged.  Not much and not for long.  We'll start laying new rail in the mountain sections, Colorado first.  We'll get the new rail in two months."
    "Oh, did Orren Boyle say he'll--"
    "I've ordered the rail from Readen Steel."
    [...]"But the Board hasn't authorized it.  I haven't authorized it.  You haven't consulted me."
    She reached over, picked up the receiver of a telephone on his desk and handed it to him.
    "Call Rearden and cancel it," she said.
    James Taggart moved back in his chair.  "I haven't said that," he answered angrily.  "I haven't said that at all."
    "Then it stands?"
    "I haven't said that, either."
    She turned.  "Eddie, have them draw up the contract with Rearden Steel.  Jim will sign it."  She took a crumpled piece of notepaper from her pocket and tossed it to Eddie.  "There's the figures and terms."
    Taggart said, "But the Board hasn't--"
    "The Board hasn't anything to do with it.  They authorized you to buy the rail thirteen months ago.  Where you buy it is up to you."
    "I don't think it's proper to make such a decision without giving the Board a chance to express an opinion.  And I don't see why I should be made to take the responsibility."
    "I am taking it."

It's refreshing to see those mealy-mouthed shirkers held up to scorn.  It's also uncomfortable because there have been times when we have met the mealy-mouthed shirker, and he is ... us.  How about you?  Is your record unblemished?  Be honest.

The arrogance that everyone notices in Rand's writing is present here, of course; indeed, it shouts from every paragraph.  What do we think of a person who devotes so much time to despising weaklings?  And why does she never confront the unpleasant truth that some people fail simply because they, through no fault of their own, were born stupid?  Or how about the even more unpleasant truth that even very smart people are dumb at certain times or in certain areas of life?  Or that not all weakness is weakness of character?

Suppose you are the newly-appointed manager of a factory that makes widget extension handles.  You are shocked to discover that the failure rate for these handles is 25 per million.  Because of your brilliance and hard work -- in short, your awesome competence -- you beat that failure rate down to 1 per million.  Quite an accomplishment!  And yet, there's still that fly in the ointment, that one per million that fails.  What should we think about a failure rate of 1 per million?  What if a failure rate of 0 per million is not humanly possible?  Will that satisfy the customer who gets stuck with the widget extension handle that breaks off in his hand when he grabs it in an urgent situation?  Or will he have the right to rage at the "incompetence" of the factory manager ultimately responsible?

I would like to know if Rand ever addresses that question.  The typical scenario in a Rand novel is to contrast the weaklings and cowards who hate and fear excellence with those super-human geniuses who bravely take responsibility, aspire to greatness, and never, ever screw up.  In the real world, one of the jobs responsible people assume is that of fixing (as best they can) the screw-ups they cause in spite of their best efforts to avoid them.  You never, ever see a Rand hero in that position.  (Do you?  Somebody tell me if I'm wrong.)  It is that unreality that, more than anything else, bugs me about Rand's fiction.

Rand's lack of proportion is astounding.  She looked to one group -- the visionaries, the inspired inventors, the captains of industry, the superlative artists, those who are geniuses and know it -- and her message to them is:  You are too humble.  You need to assert yourselves more.  Riiiiiiight.

Michael Blowhard found this list of stock characters.  You'll definitely want to spend the five minutes it takes to read it.  This is a wonderful window into pop culture -- and, dare I say it, human nature.  Also, it is the first ever place I've noticed that uses the dreadful, remarkable word "henchperson."

The always engaging Design Observer website has noticed The New Republic has equipped a highly trained and intrepid anthropologist with pith helmet, an elephant gun and an oversized butterfly net for the purpose of studying the primative artifacts of -- and perhaps, with a lot of luck, capturing a live specimen from -- the most remote, exotic, and downright incomprehensible of all human (I use that word "human" advisedly) cultures on the planet:  American Conservatives.  Memo to Alan:  yes, AuH2O is mentioned prominently.

My buddy John gave me links to two unusual art websites:  car window dust art (it's the Michaelangelo of "Wash Me") and Star Trek motivational posters.  Fine art, indeed -- although I would say the dust art's full potential remains untapped, judging by the examples shown.

Finally, by way of Colby Cosh, it's Arno Breker, the Leni Riefenstahl of marble and bronze.  "The monumental is my sickness."

I was dismayed to read, in Making Music Modern:  New York in the 1920s, by Carol Oja, that in the original score to Ballet Mécanique, George Antheil pioneered the use of what I would call gratuitous rests.  That is, he indicated a stretch of silence in his piece with 64 consecutive eight-note rests in one 64/8 measure. 

I am dismayed precisely because this anticipates a similar use of rests -- as I now know, a not-so-pioneering use of rests -- by Der Drübermensch in his not-so-groundbreaking Drew's First Piece, which I revealed to the world with trembling joy last November.  However, my comments about the brutal difficulty of his score still stand, and I remain convinced that I and others were correct when we proclaimed the youngster "the most uncompromising artistic visionary in the history of the world."

First, on the topic of mechanized music, am I the last person to notice how much Philip Glass there is in the title music to the movie North By Northwest?  (And that the whole sequence is brilliantly designed.  Watch it again, today, if you don't remember it.)  This is a score from 1959, but it has everything that Glass was trying to do in his Koyaanisqatsi score -- more, really, since the music is less rigorously minimalist, and therefore more humanized.  On the other hand, Koyaanisqatsi was a triumph of the merging music and images into a coherent whole lasting 87 minutes, while the titles for North by Northwest last less than five.

Anyway, here's today's quote.  The story of the premiere of George Antheil's Ballet Mécanique is not as famous as that of Le Sacre, but it ought to be.

"The first few minutes of the Ballet went off smoothly, and the audience listened to it carefully," recalled Donald Friede, its promoter and producer.  "And then came the moment for the wind machine to be turned on -- and all hell, in a minor way, broke loose."  The propeller had mistakenly been aimed at the eleventh row, and when it gained full speed the effect was "disastrous.  People clutched their programs, and women held onto their hats with both hands.  Someone in the direct line of the wind tied a handkerchief to his cane and waved it wildly in the air in a sign of surrender."  The final roar of the siren provoked even more disruption.  "The mechanical-effects man," who had not had an opportunity to test the siren borrowed at the last minute from a fire department in New Jersey, "turned the crank wildly, while the audience, unable to contain itself any longer, burst once more into uncontrolled laughter.  But there was no sound from the siren."  After nearly a minute, the wail finally began.  By then, piece was almost over.  As Eugene Goossens, conductor of the performance, took his bows, the siren finally "reached its full force."  It succeeded in "drowning out the applause of the audience, covering the sound of the people picking up their coast and hats and leaving the auditorium."

Making Music Modern:  New York in the 1920s by Carol J. Oja

I am reading my way through Making Music Modern:  New York in the 1920s by Carol J. Oja and enjoying it.  It's got lot's of interesting stuff I never knew.  For example, did you know about the truncated composing career of Leo Ornstein?  He was a performing sensation in the nineteen-teens and wrote wildly experimental ("futurist") music.  He soon grew tired of the spotlight and retreated to a teaching role, but for a while the young American immigrant was being compared to Stravinsky and Schoenberg, with the assumption that he would eventually eclipse them both. (His stage presence was also compared to the hypnotic revivalist Billy Sunday.)

So, here's my plan:  I'll satisfy my blogging responsibilities for the entire upcoming year by quoting one paragraph from the book until I've quoted every one.  Brilliant, don't you think?  And completely illegal, when you look at the big picture, but who ever looks at the big picture?  If readers focus on each individual post, they will see only a short excerpt, and that's fair use, right?  Yes ... yes ... I'm liking this plan more and more.  So evil, and yet, so good.

For good old fashioned futuristic fun, we turn today to Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers.  Scrutinizing these sci-fi matinee features from the 50s is like stealing candy from fish in a barrel, and I can't think of a better reason to proceed.

For most of the movie you see the aliens only dressed in their suits of armor.  When one is unmasked, it turns out to have the typical slanty-eyed, plucked-chicken alien look.  Missing the chance to build some anticipation before the unmasking is only one of many dramatic opportunities the script missed.  These aliens' technology is greatly advanced beyond ours in most ways -- they have real-time language translation, exotic energy sources, armor made from "solidified electricity," and of course interstellar travel -- but judging from this image, it seems they have not yet invented elbows.

The special effects are dreadful only by modern standards.  It looks like extra effort went into them.  The one effect that still impresses, partly because it is used in an understated way, is the screen (or window)  in the interior of the flying saucer.  In fact, every detail of that room has a minimalist beauty that makes you think for a moment you are watching a Kubrick film.  The screen shows the view outside the saucer.  This view is frequently clouds floating past, as shown in this image.  I'd like to know how they made it work.

Why do we love to watch our Capitol get blown up?  Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers does not fail to feed this shameful lust.  The stop-action scenes of saucers crashing into buildings fools no one today.  For one thing, one expects to see a tremendous amount of dust.  For another, the speed of the impact is all wrong.  Nevertheless, you sense a lot of effort went into making these scenes.

Few clichés are left unturned.  Saucers sound suspiciously like Zube Tubes.  The aliens are, weirdly, both more wise and more sinister than us.  The U.S. army is given the command to, basically, "shoot anything you don't understand."  The main character is insanely indispensable, acting as theoretical physicist, engineer, machinist, Q & A tester, military strategist, and platoon leader.  (He's almost as competent as Tom Swift!)  His pretty bride follows him around the battlefield like a good-luck charm.  As the last cliché I will mention, we get an Orson Wells sound-alike (Paul Frees) as the voice of the head alien.

I'm putting my Thursday's post in early because I'll be attending a choral music symposium at Concordia U. of Ann Arbor.  So here are a few links from Things Magazine.

"Miller drank that Kool-Aid."  Philanthropist J. Irwin Miller thought modernist architecture would save us all, and made the town of Columbus, Indiana his proof-of-concept that proved nothing.  Kinda admirable, kinda sad, kinda annoying -- like modernist architecture usually turns out to be.  I'm sure it's a nice place to visit....

"This planet is not responding and will be terminated. Would you like to send this information to God?"  It's the pointer kite.

"Click on the chart below to figure out who likes whom, who can't stand each other, and who's not sure."  My high school sure could have used one of these, but instead, it's the Middle East that gets a Buddy List.

Years ago I was with my high school choir, attending a singing competition.  I was new to the group, hanging out with some of the veterans, and we walked into the sanctuary of the church where the event was being held.  Immediately we sensed the acoustic environment was very live.  Someone quickly got the group singing.  The choice of music was obvious:  Randall Thompson's Alleluia.

Here's a rendition by St. Bede's Choir of California. Here's an arrangement for men's choir at an insanely quick pace, from the World Choral Symposium in Minnesota.

Over at the ChoralTalk forum, someone making a programming decision started a thread with this question:

I haven't performed Randall Thompson's Alleluia since college days in the FSU University Singers all the way back in 1976. But as I search the literature, my mind keeps coming back to that piece of music. One might argue whether its right for a Christmas program but I figure if it worked for Shaw (A Robert Shaw Christmas: Angels On High), then it's good enough for me.

At the same time, it seems like this number is the qunitessential "every choir" piece. Is there any group or singer that hasn't done it, whether they could really pull it off or not? I have absolutely no doubts about this groups ability to really shine on it. But the last thing I want singers or audience to do is look at the program and go "Oh, that again?" We haven't done it since our group founding in 2003 but I know that many of our singers have done it in other venues and I've no doubt that many in the audience will have heard it before.

So what's your opinion of Alleluia? Is it an essential piece of choral repertoire worthy of its many performances? Or has it become a cliche to the point where it's time we gave it a rest?

The consensus reply was:  a piece this good deserves to be performed to death.  Then Charles Peery listed three caveats that resonated with me (scroll down a bit from the previous link -- indeed, you should take time to read the whole thread):

1) Having done this piece many times over a 35 year church choir/high school choral career and worked on it conscientiously each time (given the differing capabilities of volunteer and volunteer+paid singer choirs), I have rarely been satisfied with how it sounded on "the day of." This can be interpreted differently, I realize.

2) I've heard choirs who "sound great" do this piece and completely ignore the dynamics and diacriticals written by the composer. Even the tempo, it seems that in many performances people either want to put their stamp on it or have decided that what he wrote isn't feasible.  The piece has phrasing and breathing challenges; one very fine conductor solved this by having his (also very fine) singers perform this piece STARTING at quarter note = 120 and taking off from there in the stringendo. The good news was they never broke the phrase lines (which I refer to as the barking dog syndrome, whereby the singers pop out the last syllable as they prepare to breathe, resulting in -IA -IA -IA sounds all up and down the chorus (either Newfoundlands for the basses or Chihuahuas for the sopranos, take your pick.) The bad news is that I feel the tempo marking "Lento" was important to the composer, or he would have said something else.. or nothing.

3) It's a cappella, and there's something about the way it sits on the voice that presents intonation challenges to almost every section.  Again, this could be great.. what a feeling of accomplishment to solve them if you have adequate rehearsal time.

He then proceeds to describe the historical context of the work's composition that makes you realize the piece is worth the effort to do it well.

The futurists scorned tradition.  In painting, they threatened to destroy the museums of Italy, and in music, they challenged fundamental assumptions, claiming that noise had compositional validity.  "Life in ancient times was silent," asserted Luigi Russolo in "The Art of Noises" from 1913.  "In the nineteenth century, with the invention of machines, Noise was born.  Today Noise is triumphant, and reigns supreme over the senses of men."  Russolo went on to call for a "MUSIC OF NOISE," imploring composers to "break out of this narrow circle of pure musical sounds, and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds."

Carol J. Oja, writing in Making Music Modern

The whole house and garden are one vast obscenity. It bears a sickening resemblance to the description one human writer made of Heaven: "the regions where there is only life and therefore all that is not music is silence."

Music and silence--how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell... no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise--Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile--Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end.

The Demon Screwtape, as quoted by C. S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters