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December 8, 2007
An Evening of Music
As an infidel, I don't miss much by not going to church. But one thing that I do miss is coral music. So last night Shirley and I got a coral music fix at the annual Holiday Concert by the Claremont Concert Choir and the Chamber Choir under the direction of Charles Kamm. The program was a magnificent mixture of styles, periods, and languages with both religious and secular themes. There was even an audience participation segment; not necessarily the highlight of the evening but I do love to hear Shirley sing. The Claremont Concert Choir and the Chamber Choir, a subset of the Claremont Concert Choir, are composed of students with a few faculty members and a few alumni and alumnae from Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer and Scripps Colleges.
The program opened with Bernstein's Chichester Psalms in three movements all in Hebrew. Kima Christian sang the required boy soprano part. After all, he is both a boy and a soprano. His voice is great if a little soft for my failing hearing.
While I enjoyed Chichester Psalms, I think my favorite was John Rutter's Il est né dinin enfant. It's hard to sit still while a very good choir sings this piece. So now, you know that there were songs in Hebrew and French. There were also songs in Latin, German, and English. I guess that Surge Illuminare by Francisco Corteccia was the oldest number on the program. Corteccia lived from 1502 to 1571. Bernstein's Chichester Psalms was, I think, the most recently composed.
When well performed, there is a magical quality to coral music. It often mesmerizes. It amplifies emotions. While these are great virtues in art, they can also be great vises, particularly in the case of religious coral music. The combination of great music and religious lyrics provides a powerful propaganda tool in the hands of those who would perpetuate the myths that form the cognitive content of those lyrics. For this reason, it was great to see a few secular pieces integrated into the program. The Chamber Choir sang Kamm's own very humorous and charming arrangement of The Twelve Days of Christmas and Arthur Warrell's arrangement of A Merry Christmas was great. I always think of A Merry Christmas as exemplifying one Halloween theme, thick or treat, transplanted to Christmas. And while no one brought out any figgy pudding, the applause was long and heartfelt.
We both enjoyed the evening of wonderful coral music unpolluted by prays, sermons, "offerings," and creeds, even if there was a certain liturgical ordering to the program. I hope our conductor's committee enjoyed it as well, for at the end of the program were these abnormally interesting words,
Charles W. Kamm conducts this recital in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts at Yale University.
I wound have awarded him his degree based on last night's performance alone.
Posted by Duane Smith at December 8, 2007 10:21 AM | Read more on Odds and Ends |
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