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Interview with Coro Allegro Artistic Director David Hodgkins

On Sunday, November 20, 2011, at 3:00 pm, Coro Allegro, Boston’s only mixed chorus for members and friends of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities, will present its Fall 2011 concert. This opening concert of Coro's 2011-2012 season links the late Renaissance with contemporary works in two major strands of the Western musical tradition. The first half, sung in Latin, opens with Palestrina’s delicately luminous setting of the medieval text O Magnum Mysterium. Written centuries later, Morten Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna, inspired partly by Palestrina, moves the most secular of hearts with its sweeping vision of the sacred. The second half, sung in Hebrew, pairs settings of psalms by two Jewish composers: Salamon Rossi, a contemporary of Monteverdi, and Leonard Bernstein, whose stirring and joyous Chichester Psalms closes the program.

Coro Allegro tenor Tom Regan recently asked Artistic Director David Hodgkins to talk about Coro Allegro's exciting November 20 program.

David, can you describe your process in putting together the program for Coro Allegro’s Fall concert?

David Hodgkins: For some time now, audience and chorus members have been asking me to program Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna, for chorus and organ. I decided to do so for this concert, and that work became the foundation of our November 20 program. I then thought of pairing the Lauridsen with a chamber version of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, for chorus, organ, percussion and harp. The Lauridsen and the Bernstein are contrasting works, New Testament versus Old Testament.

I then added the four Rossi songs we are performing, three of which are included on Coro Allegro’s first CD. Rossi, a contemporary of Monteverdi in the 16th-century court of Mantua, Italy, isn’t performed very often, and you don’t find many Renaissance settings of psalms in Hebrew, as Rossi did back in 1610. By including Rossi, our program then had settings of psalms in earlier and contemporary (Bernstein) settings. And both the Bernstein and the Lauridsen -- Lauridsen more so -- hint at older models of music grounded in chant. You would never call the Lauridsen a Renaissance piece, but there’s a school of more contemporary works based on Renaissance models, using chant, and you can really hear that in the Lux Aeterna. Then I decided to add Palestrina’s O Magnum Mysterium. As we compare and contrast the old and new psalm settings in the Rossi and the Bernstein, I think there is also an apt comparison to be made regarding the old and new with the Palestrina versus the Lauridsen. The Palestrina text concerns the birth of Christ, Christ being the eternal light. And since Lux Aeterna translates to “eternal light” from the Latin, the contrast between old and new takes place textually and stylistically within this concert.

In programming the November 20 concert, I think I had the 9/11 10-year anniversary in the back of my mind, as all the works contain messages of peace in the face of adversity. The way that the texts of the psalms read in the Rossi, there is an arch akin to the four calls of the Shofar: The first, Psalm 100, is celebratory, (Tekiah: whole); the second, Psalm 12, deals with human falsehood and deceit (Shevarim: broken); Psalm 137, the third psalm, deals with the horrors of warring nations (Teruah: shattered); while the last, Psalm 128, brings about reconciliation among the nations (Tekiah Gedolah: whole). The Chichester arches in the same way with a joyous first movement, while in the second movement, which states “Love thine enemy” in the very innocent-sounding women’s parts, the lurking, sinister enemy creeps up from the tenor and bass parts. The ending brings about a soothing message of peace.

Can you talk about some of the other musical elements in these works?

DH: The Palestrina is an interesting piece. It’s a six-part work, with two soprano lines, two alto lines, tenor and bass, but when you hear the music, it sounds like a double-choir piece. Rarely do all six voices sing together, except to create a special effect. Most often, it’s smaller groups or combinations of voices, and it sounds like an antiphonal (or call and response) sort of piece. The work comes together in the “alleluia” at the end. The text about the “chorus of angels” (“et choros Angelorum…”) in the Palestrina represents one of the few places where all six voice parts are heard at the same time creating a large swell of sound representing the angels. It’s quite a wonderful effect when the voice parts come together in this way. The Palestrina is in two sections, and I love the opening of the second section, a soprano line and alto line (“What have you seen Shepherds, speak”). It’s very minimal, almost child-like, with simple writing, but beautiful in an inquisitive way. Then you hear “dicite, dicite” (“tell us, tell us”) antiphonally from various subsets of singers, as if various voices from a surrounding crowd are anxiously inquiring about the exciting news. The details and colors in the Palestrina are just so magnificent. 

In contrast to the double-chorus antiphonal effect in the Palestrina, the Lauridsen has sections that are fully homophonic, with some occasional polyphony. There’s a moment in the first movement of the Lauridsen (“Introitus”) where all the voices come together in a big, rich chord that has a similar effect to the “et choros Angelorum” in the Palestrina. All of a sudden there’s a very lean, chant-like sound, where the chorus sings of eternal light. This has some of that same bringing together of all the voices to create a spectacular, luminous effect.

Would you describe the Salamon Rossi psalm settings?

DH: The Rossi, composed around 1610, is homophonic, and more block-like. It’s similar to early Monteverdi, as it’s tied to a harmonized bass line or continuo. The Rossi is a cappella and comes from a period of transition in choral composition between straight polyphony and that sort of very spare solo bass line supporting a single melody. It’s beautiful. The chord progressions tend to be similar in the four Rossi pieces, but they all have their distinctive flavors. The first one, Mizmor L’Toda (Psalm 100), is for five-part chorus, but has three treble parts, and a high, brilliant sound, and is more celebratory. Then there is Lamnatstseah ‘al Hashsh’minit Mizmo (Psalm 12), a three-part women’s piece where one of the women’s parts descends very low. The third, Al Naharot Bavel (Psalm 137), sung by the Coro Allegro men, deals with the lamentation by the waters of Babylon. It’s similar to Tallis’ The Lamentations of Jeremiah in some ways. And the last, Shir Hamma’alot, is in five parts, but with three male parts and two parts doubled women’s voices, so it’s a much more rounded, warm, rich kind of sound, just beautiful. The declamation of the text in Hebrew of the psalms is really the point here; the phrases and shapes all fit the needs of the texts.

And we close the program with Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms. What is distinctive about this work?

DH: The Chichester Psalms work is interesting because it is almost pop/classical music. In the opening there’s a slow, rousing introduction that goes into a dance-like 7/4 time, 1-2, 1-2, 1-2-3. The beat is infectious, and drives you all the way through to a dramatic ending of the first section. The second movement includes the boy soprano soloist (the use of a boy soprano is mandated in Bernstein’s score), and the section is quite beautiful, with a simple tune. Then, as I referred to earlier, we get the agitation of the men coming in with the warring “Why do the nations rage?” theme. There’s a threat lurking there, but the women during that portion of the movement don’t realize the threat is out there. The boy soprano in that movement represents the purity and innocence of the people of Israel.

The thing that often gets overlooked about the Chichester Psalms is the opening of the third movement, which is a vivid -- almost tortured -- instrumental reworking of the first movement’s opening material depicting -- what? Perhaps an attack on the women by the men at the conclusion of the second movement is depicted, maybe there’s a battle, maybe it’s humankind wrestling with God. In any event, once that is done, and the dust from the conflict slowly settles, the third movement eases into a beautiful, gently undulating finale that almost sounds like something from South Pacific. There, the danger is to not let it become schmaltzy and saccharine. The piece also has a nice contrast of sounds by using a solo quartet in the first and last movements, which points up the richness of the entire chorus. And, as with other works on the program, the Chichester ends with a call for peace.

The mood in this program is subdued at times, but the program also contains breathtaking moments in all four works that we are performing, especially in the Bernstein.

Our organist is Susan DeSelms, who did such a fantastic job in last May’s The Son of Man performances with Coro Allegro and United Parish in Brookline. Susan has played the Lauridsen before and has a real connection with that work. Martha Moor is the harpist, and Jonathan Hess and Matthew Raskopf are the percussionists for the Bernstein.

Is there anything else you’d like to add, David?

DH: In addition to our November 20 concert, which we’re very excited to be presenting, in the next few months our audience should look for Coro Allegro’s latest CD with Robert Stern’s Shofar and Ronald Perera’s Why I Wake Early, which features poems by Mary Oliver.