NEW YORK — “Sins and Grace” was the title of the MasterVoices program March 23 at Alice Tully Hall that paired the heavenly aura of Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem with a newly commissioned choral song cycle inclined to the Other Place: Seven: A Cycle of Sins, with contributions by seven composers drawn from the realms of jazz, opera, Broadway, and experimental music. It proved a thoughtful and entertaining evening of spiritual contemplation, via a mix of Belle Époque refinement and up-to-the-minute song craft.
Founded by Robert Shaw in 1941 as the Collegiate Chorale, the volunteer ensemble has a history of adventurous programming, including New York or American premieres of works as diverse as Strauss’ Friedenstag, Dvorak’s Dimitri, and Puccini’s Turandot with the Berio ending. Long noted for racial diversity, the choir since its early days has promoted musical diversity as well, commissioning new works and presenting semi-staged, often-neglected operas. The group was renamed MasterVoices in 2015, when Ted Sperling became artistic director and conductor.
Under Sperling, their repertoire has incorporated more musical theater, with healthy doses of Sondheim, Gershwin, and Gilbert and Sullivan, as well as newer theatrical works by Ricky Ian Gordon and Adam Guettel. The 130 members are loyal, with nearly 20 percent having sung with the group for 20 years or more, and they have collaborated for years with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, which played for this concert.
The Fauré Requiem is less well known than Mozart’s and Verdi’s services for the dead, but it has become a favorite of choral groups. Originally composed for all-male choir, organ, and boy soprano soloist and first performed in 1888, the Requiem underwent several revisions, including the addition of the “Libera me” with baritone soloist, composed in 1877. Its final version with full orchestra was performed with a mixed chorus of 250 at Paris’ 1900 Universal Exposition. The version performed by MasterVoices represents an intermediate stage, with the unusual orchestration of one violin against six violas, four cellos, bass, two horns, two bassoons, harp, timpani, and organ.
Fauré’s choral writing is mostly unison, even chant-like, underlined with complex and shifting harmonies that foreshadow modernism. The mood is gentle: It’s a lullaby for the departed, in contrast to the fire and brimstone of the Verdi Requiem. Only the “Libera me” for baritone solo with chorus suggests the vehemence of Verdi’s masterpiece, which Fauré likely heard at its Paris premiere in 1874.
The performance was a bit rough around the edges. In Tully Hall’s bass-friendly acoustic, the booming instrumental sound often overwhelmed the chorus. The choral timbre was softened by the Americanized pronunciation of the Latin text; the brighter placement of the closed vowels used by French singers for Latin texts could have balanced the thick sonorities of the orchestra. The honey-voiced baritone Justin Austin sounded less assured than soprano Mikaela Bennett, whose “Pie Jesu” in both timbre and delivery reminded me uncannily of a performance in Paris 50 years ago. If this account didn’t quite transport one to Paris’ Madeleine church, it was a treat to bathe in the rarely heard music of this very special piece.
After hearty applause for the Fauré, the two soloists positioned music stands and mikes, setting the stage for the change of pace to come.
Seven: A Cycle of Sins grew from Sperling’s need for a companion piece to the 35-minute Requiem. He commissioned seven composers to write songs about the seven deadly sins. This concept recalled the recent premiere at the New York Philharmonic of orchestrations by 18 composers of Rzewski’s piano variations of The People United Will Never Be Defeated!
Sperling chose artists from the worlds of musical theater, opera, and less conventional forms. Each piece was required to utilize chorus, organ, and the same unusual instrumentation as the Fauré. The results were fascinating and often quite entertaining. The music was on the whole less memorable than the texts, which treated the array of sins in an intriguing variety of approaches.
In Will Aronson (Maybe Happy Ending) and Dolan Morgan’s “Everything in the World” (Gluttony), this first sin was a breathless dialog between the multitude of things and experiences offered by modern life, as personified by the large chorus, and the People, longing for contentment and yet wanting more (the two soloists). Gluttony, disguised as plenty, is less about wanting everything than being overwhelmed by too many choices leading to the modern demon, FOMO — Fear Of Missing Out. As the People yearn for equilibrium and satisfaction with their lot, Everything has the last word: “Knock knock. Let us in. We need you. Don’t leave us here. We will consume you.”
Vanity was depicted more soberly in “The Preacher” by opera composer Gregory Spears (Fellow Travelers). Over a dissonant organ background, Justin Austin solemnly, with confidence and swagger, intoned texts from Ecclesiastes about the impermanence of earthly endeavors and attachments.
The next two songs were the highlights of the cycle. Jason Robert Brown’s “Envy” was a lazy, atonal waltz, opening with a meandering and off-kilter violin solo. After the choir reflected on the desire to be closer to Jesus, Bennett languidly whined the following:
“Some people study and train for all their lives,
Since they were ten,
But they don’t go to Juilliard –
They auditioned for Juilliard,
But ended up at another highly esteemed institution,
(but it wasn’t Juilliard)
It must be nice to sing the solo.”
Her bluesy, pitch-perfect inflections were hilariously on target. After an instrumental interlude that quoted a section of the Fauré almost verbatim (imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?), the chorus’ return to its low-key bitter yearning underlined the mediocrity of envy.
Modern-day disruptive singer-songwriter Ted Hearne had a witty, pithy take on “Greed, or Nine Results in This Book for Justice.” His text came from a Google search for the word “justice” in the book Stress Test by former Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner. After each short quotation from the book, chanted by a chamber chorus, the main chorus interrupted, loudly intoning, “NO PREVIEW AVAILABLE. BUY THIS BOOK.” Hearne’s program notes didn’t mention the piece at all, reproducing instead a pair of similarly truncated Google results about the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement. We got the point.
Master jazz composer William C. Banfield and librettist Michael R. Jackson’s (A Strange Loop) “Sloth” was a blues-inflected conversation between a Conscientious Objector, struggling to retain his humanity, and Empress Sloth, representing the impersonal forces of technology that people adopt without effort or intention. After the deft clarity of the last two pieces, the text seemed overly earnest, but the mood of the score certainly was lazy enough.
Comic relief returned with “Lust” by Michael Abels (Omar, with Rhiannon Giddens), a short song without words, as dueling choruses expressed themselves, against a timpani ostinato, in a crescendo of sighs and moans without a climax.
The evening ended with Heather Christian’s sober and complex exploration of our addiction to “Wrath.” A frustrated soloist, an Inferno Chorus, a Psalm 69 Chorus, and the large chorus, divided, incorporated stomps, clapping, and shouts into angular and fiery delivery of texts from Dante, Thomas Aquinas, and the Old Testament. In a time when anger is the only rational response to a painful and unjust world, the conflict between expressing and repressing it is its own torment.
Understandably for such a stylistically mixed banquet, Seven didn’t really hang together, but it provided a seasonal opportunity to contemplate the classic seven deadly sins in a modern context, as well as some unexpected pleasures.
