Chorale 2023 has drawn to a close. Our librarian, Amy Mantrone, has reshelved our Christmas music; rosters and seating charts have been revised for our next prep period, reflecting the addition of new members and the requirements of our new repertoire. The singers are taking a well-deserved break until January 3, when we reconvene.
Chorale sings a lot of newer music by living or recently deceased composers. We feel it is important that these composers be heard in conscientious, polished public performances and given the opportunity to become better known. Our recent Christmas concerts featured new, little-known music from Hungary, Iceland, England, and a composer right here in Hyde Park. Singers and listeners alike enjoyed and were enriched by music they had never before experienced.
Our Winter repertoire, in contrast, will focus on a small number of pieces by acknowledged masters: motets by Mendelssohn and Brahms and a Mass by their twentieth-century colleague Frank Martin. This Romantic music, most of it for double chorus, is difficult in predictable ways, satisfyingly rich, based on procedures and idioms with which we are all familiar. Chorale’s singers will initially be pleased to work in such familiar territory— only to discover that these composers, who wrote primarily for highly skilled instrumentalists, expect singers to be every bit as fluent musically as symphonic players. We are in for quite a ride! But buoyed up throughout by the classic, unimpeachable beauty of these works.
Our spring concerts will explore music composed in the Americas, featuring choral pieces from Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, and First Nations Canada, as well as works from the early British settlers, the African American tradition, and established contemporary composers residing in the United States.
All of this is made possible by you, our listeners and supporters. At every step of the way, from renting rehearsal and concert venues, purchasing scores, and paying staff and licensing fees to printing posters and programs and advertising on the radio, we depend on your belief in what we do, on your generosity, and on your understanding that we are all enriched by one another. In these difficult, acrimonious times, when we live surrounded by so much strife and counterfeit emotion, music cuts through to what really matters, expresses our deepest longings, and saves us from ourselves.
Happiest of holidays to all of you, from all of us!