Word: sanctus
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Divine Hair-Mass in F, by Gait MacDermot (RCA, $5.98). Lackluster settings of the Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei, Kyrie, Gloria, even the Lord's Prayer, combed into hits from MacDermot's Hair, just as they were in the original presentation last year at Manhattan's Cathedral of St. John the Divine...
...work takes its form from the Catholic Mass, the Kyrie eleison, the Gloria, the Credo, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei. As more or less ironic counterpoint, a populist band of sinners and dancers variously sing, intone or howl doubts and questions in a mélange of musical styles and pop-lyric words by Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz, the 23-year-old creator of Godspell, the musical version of the Gospel according to St. Matthew. The dramatic climax of the work is the disruption of the Mass. It also involves the spiritual shattering of a young man who begins...
...with a bit too much fortissimo for my taste. But the piece hung together remarkably well under his direction, reaching its peaks in the Credo and the Agnus Dei. There were a few minor flaws, of course; the Kyrie went a bit too fast, the strings weakened during the Sanctus, and the horns were out of shape for the Gloria. The bass did not project as well as it could have, but this was the only real trouble with the performance...
...devotional feeling, but was plunged into obliquy by mispronunciation in the Kyrie (Keer-eiyeh) and the sinusoidal vibrato of the soprano and alto soloists in the Gloria. The choir plodded through the long Credo with sacerdotal vindictiveness but decided to clear up its wooly tone for the exquisite Sanctus. It was on the whole a bloodless performance of an intensely religious work...
...Lord Nelson Mass. Haydn is easy to sing, and conductor Elliot Forbes took advantage of the situation to reveal a dynamic power and expressiveness that no one who heard the first half of the concert would have guessed the singers possessed. Particularly striking were the crescendo-decrescendos in the Sanctus, the contrasts in the Benedictus "Osanna in Excelsis," and especially the pianissimo "Dona Nobis Pacem" in which the singers produced one of those beautiful, sensuous sounds that are pleasurable in themselves, independent of melodic or harmonic movement...