Word: choraling
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Contemporary choral music owes a large debt to Randall Thompson. Throughout this century successive composers, each with a slightly more fiendish glint in his eye, have produced choral music that was less and less vocal, melodic, even singable; Thompson has maintained a style of choral writing distinctly congenial to the human voice. For there is more to his music than the lush harmonic changes and expressive dynamics; Thompson is fun to sing...
...understanding of the voice is uncanny, and he learned it, as I am sure he would be the first to admit, at the knee of that greatest of English choral composers, Handel. Somehow, Thompson manages to achieve his end with tessituras that are comfortable and settings that not only express the text, but project it to the audience. I don't quite know how he does it, and neither do his imitators: no matter how much their progressions sound like his, Thompson's understanding of the voice cannot be matched. The Glee Club is often foiled...
...four parts lies exposed. If one voice sticks out, or one section wanders off pitch by that much, even the Great Tin Ear couldn't miss it. It was a joy to hear Thompson conducting his own music, for he does it well. The Glee Club an Choral Society are to be commended on their blend, tone, and expression, and on their endurance as well (they stood throughout the entire concert...
...program began with the Alleluia, probably the best known motet produced in this century. It's sung almost too much, but Friday night, when the Glee Club and Choral Society started it, I thought I could listen to it a hundred times more. Let us hope hat in his retirement, Randall Thompson will write more music that sings and sounds as well as that little piece...
Thompson will conduct a program of his own music, including "The Peaceable Kingdom," commissioned in 1949 for the Glee Club and Choral Society, and the world premiere of the orchestrated "Frostiana...