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I sent the new version of "Inherit the Kingdom" to certain people, including the music director at the Washington Cathedral, who had done the first version many times. To my astonishment he refused to use the revision, and then actually went ahead and recorded the piece in its original form. I didn't write another anthem on a biblical text until 1988 when I wrote "Psalm 92: The Lord is King" (to some people that's Psalm 93). It's quite a substantial piece, about nine minutes long. It was commissioned by the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on the two hundredth anniversary of the New York diocese, and was sung by the combined choirs of the city, a chorus of nearly one thousand, including many children. It was a challenge because I had to think about a large mass of voices and a reverberation time of nine seconds This work has a sort of minimalist ending—an ad libitum repetition of two contrapuntal lines to the words "until the end of time...for all eternity." The first performance was too slow because I notated it wrong, and so I had to rewrite it. The sound is quite impressive when it deals with "Greater than the roar of mighty waters." I have written several anthems to texts by the seventeenth century divines, poets upon whom all English-speaking choral writers depend. Three of my earliest settings, that got me rolling in the community of church musicians, were of texts by John Donne—"Hear Us, O Hear Us, Lord" (which uses portions of two different poems), "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners" (one of the Holy Sonnets, it was commissioned by the American Guild of Organists), and "Ascension," written for the dedication of the Gloria in Excelsis Tower of the National Cathedral; this was performed outdoors at the foot of the tower. It has a large instrumental ensemble accompaniment of winds and brass, and makes quite a racket. There is also a smaller version for brass and organ. Recently I set George Herbert's "The Call" for Christ Church Cathedral in Lexington, Kentucky. My most substantial choral work derived from the poetry of the English divines is "A Hymn of the Nativity," a thirty minute cantata for chorus and orchestra, with soprano and baritone solos, first performed at the National Cathedral on New Year's Eve, 1960. The text is one of Richard Crashaw's most famous and beautiful works. I wrote furiously, got about three quarters of the way through, and then hit a brick wall. I had finished the one dark moment in the piece, and could not go on. What got me through was listening to Handel's "Messiah," an inexhaustibly generous work. Then I wrote the section, happily not too Handelian in style; it was extracted and published separately (with organ accompaniment) as "The Offering." Naturally it is often performed at the Offertory. The entire cantata was immediately published, and received an important hearing at a major national convocation of choral directors. Unfortunately someone rather unprepared replaced the conductor at the last minute; this one overlooked an empty measure at the climax and allowed the work to collapse into confusion. A composer's nightmare. Later on, the publisher went belly-up, and all its music was thrown into a warehouse, and then turned into mulch. If you come across a copy of the original edition you will see that a wag of an engraver changed the composition date from 1960 to 1900. That rather peeved me. I have come to feel that the piece would be improved with the addition of an interlude in the final fugue, briefly bringing back the solo voices. I have the Crashaw text for such a revision, and I'm only waiting for the opportunity to arise. |
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