Washington: Choral Capital of the World

End-of-the-year holiday season is paradise time for choral music lovers in Washington D.C. There is hardly a concert hall, church or school that does not offer a Christmas concert, musical, oratorio or some other choral performance. It’s hard to decide whether to attend a Messiah sing-along, or a concert of favorite carols, and even harder to decide which group to chose - the Washington Chorus, Washington Bach Consort, Washington Men’s Camerata,  Heritage Signature Chorale, Zemer Chai, Gay Men’s Chorus, Capitol Hill Chorale, or......

From the endless list of local choirs, my longtime favorite choice was the Choral Arts Society of Washington under the leadership of Norman Scribner.  For close to half a century, he was the heart and soul of that massive chorus that gave about 8 concerts a year, regularly marking Martin Luther King's Day, Easter and Christmas. Despite the regularity, and many of the same popular numbers, Scribner managed to offer a completely new performance for each of those occasions year after year, after year. 

My favorite were Christmas concerts, which always included a sing-along of carols, but the focal point was always a selection of holiday pieces from a foreign country.  Scribner organized these concerts in collaboration with embassies - and there is no shortage of those in the U.S. capital.  He told me in an interview that the diplomats usually organized a fund-raising party to help cover the expense of the visiting artists.

One of the most memorable for me was the concert featuring Spanish music, which I covered for a VOA radio feature all those many years ago.  It included a Spanish guitar player and castanete artists Carmen de Vicente.  She produced pure magic on castanetes and I can hardly remember anything else but her performance from that evening.  Later she told  me that her instrument is much more versatile than people think and that she can play Bach and Mozart on castanetes.  Unfortunately, no recording that I am aware of was made that evening and so with time the event turned into one of these indelible ethereal memories, all the more precious because they cannot be reincarnated.  But here is another example of de Vicente's artistry:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAeeljMlf1I

The Choral Art Society's other memorable concert was the 2011 Holiday Treasures from Russia made in collaboration with the Russian Embassy.  No fund-raising was necessary as the Russian government wanted to impress the Washington public and paid for a grand performance. In addition to the soloists, the Washington Choral Art Society was joined by 80 members of the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra led by Dmitry Liss.  They performed the Dance of the Tumblers  from the ballet Snegurochka and the walz from the opera Eugene Onegin.  Soprano Iirna Shiskova sang Bach and Gerchaninov's lullaby as well as Schubert's Ave Maria. On the last evening , the Ural orchestra also played the complete Scherezade, an additional 45 minutes to the program. Russian contributions might have outranked those of France, Germany, Belgium, Finland, Singapore and Alaska, but for me, no soloist in Scribner's Christmas concerts ever outranked Carmen de Vicente.  

At about the same time as the Holiday Treasures concert, Russian tycoon Vladimir Potanin donated $5 million to the Kennedy Center to draw Washington's attention to the Russian art beyond The Nutcracker and the nesting dolls. 

So the art benefited from politicking.  Regardless, Maestro Scribner was proud of his internationally flavored concerts.  The sing-along selections  always included Silent Night because the song is known internationally and he wanted at least one strophe sung in the language of the country that was featured in the program.  Russia, of course sent an expert to transliterate its Cyrillic text into the Latin alphabet and help the audience with pronunciation. "It had not always gone that smoothly, Scribner told me.  At the Czech-themed concert several years before, Ambassador Petr Kolar undertook the role of the linguist.  "He entertained the audience with a pretended stage fright, saying he had never taught Czech to such a large classroom.  Then he took the microphone to sing Silent Night in Czech and could not find the right pitch," Scribner recalled.

"After his performance he turned to me and asked if I had any objections to his singing. The audience burst into laughter and clapping and so the worst number of the evening had the most applause.  The Washington Post wrote that with Kolar in the program we did not need Santa Clause, fake snow or Rockettes."

That conversation, my second one with Scribner, took place four years ago.  The maestro retired the following year and died unexpectedly in March of this year.  I attended only one concert conducted by his successor Scott Tucker and - a solid rendition of Bach's Mass in B.  But I realized that for me the Choral Arts Society had become a different group - still good, still strong, but like the same body with a different soul.

In 1963, the National Symphony Orchestra asked Scribner to assemble a choir to sing Handel's Messiah - for Christmas of course. "Usually they would invite three or four big church choirs to sing. I suggested to audition each singer individually because church choirs can have good and bad singers and we needed the best," Scribner told me in the interview. "Of some 500 people that auditioned, we chose 120. That Messiah was so successful that we decided to keep the group together and perform regularly," he said.

Norman Scribner

The chorus founded 50 years ago by Scribner, grew from 120 to 180-190 members. "Each year some people leave and new ones come, infusing fresh blood into he group,"  he said. Under Scribner, the all-volunteer Society came to give its regular concerts in the United States and in addition performed overseas. It sang in venues such as St. Paul's Cathedral in London and Notre Dame in Paris, often with the world's top orchestras.  The 1993 concert in Moscow's Red Square attracted 100.000 people, including President Boris Yeltsin. In 2011 alone, the group sang in Austria, France and Japan. It was directed by celebrity conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Lorin Maazel, Leonard Slatkin, Antal Dorati, Leonard Bernsten and Christoph Eschenbach. It commissioned new works such as Seven songs for Planet Earth by Finland's Olli Kortekangas. Its recordings include Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky, Rachmaninov's Vespers and Mahler's 8th Symphony, and a Grammy award for its 1996 recording of John Corigliano's Of Rage and Remembrance.

The maestro told me all this was possible thanks to the professional-caliber volunteer singers who spend hours of their free time rehearsing, traveling and performing.  He said Washington has a huge pool of excellent singers, many of them well educated single people who come to work in the nation's capital and want to do something meaningful in their spare time.  

"There have been weddings and divorces among members of our chorale," said Scribner.  "But most importantly, " he said, "a lot of these people that come here simply like to sing and have good musical education."  And so there are many choral groups. Some perform regularly, others meet from time to time.  Some are connected to a school or an institution, others are formed spontaneously by people of similar interests. Then there are military chorales.

"Washington has more choral groups than any other American city and probably more than any city in the world.  In the musical circles we call it the choral capital of the United States," said Scribner.

Choral Arts Society in Moscow's Red Square

Is there a lot of rivalry? "Not at all," said Scribner. "Each choir has its own unique sound and each sings a different repertoire. We all get along well and we often sing together." Hmmm... pity our politicians don't sing!

Despite the acclaim, Scribner was always accessible, always a gentleman. When he talked about a particularly successful concert, like the one in Moscow, his eyes would lit with excitement and even a little wonder, as if he could not quite believe his chorale was so successful. He never put on airs, never acted like a celebrity.  I imagine that his neighbors could freely come knocking on his door to borrow a cup of sugar.

The institution he established in 1965 is still flourishing.  It still commissions new works.  It still celebrates MLK. It still travels and it still hosts foreign artists.  This year the Society toured five cities in China.  Its Christmas concert featured guests from Singapore.  But I did not attend.  I know if I did that in my mind I would be seeing the maestro walking on the stage with a happy smile and my attention would drift to the concerts of years gone by - to Carmen de Vicente, and to the Silent Night in Russian. I would be missing the warm and fuzzy feeling specific to Scribner and it would not be fair to the chorus and its current leader.

Besides, it's time to hear other unique choral sounds this city has to offer during the holiday season.

Antigone and the Law of Gods

The ancient Greek drama Antigone has just finished its short run at the Kennedy Center after shows in  Luxembourg, London, Ann Arbor, New York and elsewhere. The performance featuring Oscar-winning French actress Juliette Binoche in the title role, staged by Dutch director Ivo van Hove, and newly translated by Canadian poet Anne Carson, is a modern take on the 2500- year-old play by Sophocles. As every great classic, it resonates with any new generation because even though technology moves forward, human nature does not.

Juliette Binoche as Antigone 

Antigone is doomed to die a slow death, still young and virginal, because she dared to disobey civil law. Her king and uncle Creon has decreed that one of her two brothers who have killed each other in a civil war is to be left unburied as food for vultures and dogs, while the other is to be interred with honors due any great patriot.  (For details, please re-read the drama or check Wikipedia.)

Defying the king's order, Antigone performs the last rites for the unfortunate Polyneices (who in my opinion was only fighting for his rights), and when Creon calls her on the carpet, she argues that the king's orders do not have "the power to override those unwritten and immutable laws decreed by the gods." And, therefore, she continues: "How could I be afraid to disobey laws decreed by any man when I know that I’d have to answer to the gods below if I had disobeyed the laws written by the gods, after I died?"

Well, the girl raises an important question, one that is as relevant today as it was around 440 BC, when the drama was written, except that today perhaps we would talk about one God above and none below.  People oppose or support things claiming God wants this or that, and leaders from ancient Greeks to the medieval Crusaders to George W. Bush have claimed to act in the name of God.

Sometime in the early 1990s, I attended a Christmas service at a Serbian church in London. The priest sermonized that the newly-born Jesus stood behind the Serbs in their just fight against the enemy - Bosnian Muslims, Kosovo's Albanians, Croats ?  Years before that, I heard a Croatian priest in Yugoslavia preaching that God supported the Croats' struggle for independence. God's will has been invoked by fanatics such as Japan's Shoko Asakara, Uganda's Credonia Mwerinde and California Marshall Applewhite - just the three of them causing hundreds of deaths.  Today, we are witnessing beheadings, bombings, shootings and various other atrocities committed in the name of God.

King Creon, the mythical leader of the ancient Thebes, acted on his own conscience when he issued his offensive decrees, arguing that he must insist on discipline to run an orderly state.

"There’s no worse evil than anarchy.
Anarchy destroys nations, my son.
Anarchy destroys homes.
Anarchy turns the spears of allies into fleeing cowards.
Those men left standing, the survivors, have been saved by discipline", he said.

Van Hove's Antigone: Haemon Trying to Reason With Father 

Creon's son Haemon warned him in return that "Gods give man his most important possession, his brain," and therefore, he said, Thebans can see that their king is acting against the laws of a civilized society. That did not sway Creon. Only when the city's elders determined that his decrees must be revoked because they are contradicting divine laws and that "the punishments of the gods have swift feet and do whatever evil they wish," he hastened to undo his brutal deeds. Alas, too late!

Like Creon, a secular leader today can be questioned and warned to mend his ways. But whoever would dare question God? And so those who want to lead people into committing death, destruction and other despicable deeds, resort to claiming "God's will" to seal the potentially disobedient lips.  Threats of death and eternal life in hell can be added for good measure.

We need a Haemon today to remind us that God gave us brain for a purpose. Personally, I am convinced that God does not mind being questioned. For example, I have never believed that He ordered Abraham to kill his son Isaac as a proof that the devout man loves God more than his own son. No wise man would ever ask such a thing of a parent and the Almighty is surely wiser than the wisest of men.

If I happen to meet God after my death (hardly likely because I am too much of a sinner) and if He confirms that the story revered by the Christians, Jews and Muslims alike is true, I will ask: "How could you? I trusted you!"

Christmas Music Made in USA

By this time of the year almost everyone has had their fill of "Jingle Bells," "Silent Nights" and "All Ye Faithfuls" that follow you through stores, offices, restaurants and malls. If you are not careful to turn off your radio and TV, you are not spared in your own home or vehicle either. The so-called "holiday season" seems to start earlier every year - these days almost as soon as you pack away your beach clothing, and the longer it lasts, the more annoying these harping tunes become. That is not to say that America does not have great Christmas music. It does, only most of it is a well kept secret.

Consider this historic account about an early 1800's New England school: on a Christmas morning, the headmaster asked the students what day it was and none of them knew.

New England's Puritan religious leaders did not approve of celebrating Christmas and in part of the 17th century it was even a crime to do so.

"When we think of the hilarity that Christmas produces in America in the 21st century, it is quite humorous to compare it to the way it was NOT celebrated in the 18th century and in the earliest days of the country," said Robert Saladini, former head of the historical music 
section at the Library of Congress.

Even when the ban on Christmas was repealed in the late 17th century, the Puritans frowned upon Christmas carols which were far more exuberant than hymns due to their origins in folk dances and pagan festivities. In the 16th-century Scotland, carols were associated with witchcraft, and in 17th-century England, officials tried to outlaw carol-singing. So when the Puritans settled in the New World, said Saladini, caroling was not considered suitable to their austere life style.

But that is not to say that composers avoided writing hymns about the Nativity, said Saladini. It inspired them just like any other portion of the New Testament. But these hymns weren't created to celebrate Christmas, he said. Christmas songs written at the time often bore the name of the place where they originated. One of the earliest American Christmas songs is Boston by William Billings, first published in a 1778 collection titled The Singing Master's Assistant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i20vpDNPw9I
It's funny, Saladini said, because Boston was a place where Christmas was not observed.

Like his father, Billings was a tanner, but he also taught singing and wrote music to his own poems.

While Puritan Americans went on with business as usual on Christmas day, most of their neighbors did not. Singing, dancing , shaking and crying in a trance was an essential part of religious ceremonies of the Shakers - a Christian sect that spread through parts of New York and Ohio during the 18th century. The Shakers became famous for their music, and many of their songs are now used by other groups. One of the best known is The Midnight Cry which calls for repentance in preparation for Christ's return to the Earth. It was first recorded in the 1844 collection of shape-noted music called The Sacred Harp. Saladini said Christmas was widely celebrated in the American South, where many settlers belonged to the Anglican, Lutheran and Catholic churches.

"As a matter of fact, there was this great tradition in the South, from Maryland on down in which once the Yule log was brought into the house, Christmas began and all work could cease. So there are even stories of the slaves and the servants taking the Yule log into a local stream and soaking it before they'd bring it into the house to ensure that it would burn for a 
long time and that they would have a great old Christmas and there would be dancing and 
feasting and parties and merrymaking," said Saladini.

African-American slaves created some of the most beautiful and lasting Christmas songs and spirituals. The best-known is Go Tell It on the Mountain, dating back to at least 1865.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq5aEwtvdRI

African-American history scholar and singer Bernice Johnson Reagon said slaves identified with Mary, the mother of Jesus, who was forced to travel and have her child in a stable with no better place to lay him in than a manger. "So the son of God comes to the world with nothing. There is a way in which this story affirms that we all come here naked," said Reagon. She searched for old and forgotten spirituals in small rural communities in the South and sang some of them with her a capella group Sweet Honey in the Rock.

A parallel music tradition developed among poor whites in the South. Saladini said their music bears influences of African-American spirituals as well as music by Billings and renaissance music from Europe. They reflect the Christmas atmosphere in impoverished small towns and rural areas: no Santa Clause, no tinsel and trees, no gifts and no Christmas stockings. These southern families celebrated Christmas in a variety of ways: from quiet prayers to shouting, eating and dancing, and even the shooting of muskets.

Many mountain people and small farmers sang about their Savior and his parents Joseph and Mary as they would gossip about their next-door neighbors. Joseph and Mary, also known as the Cherry Tree Carol, is a brilliant example. 

“Then Mary spoke to Joseph,
So meek and so mild,
"Joseph, gather me some cherries,
For I am with Child."

Then Joseph flew in anger,
In anger flew he,
"Let the father of the baby 
Gather cherries for thee.” 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGDLhGPaELY

In some 18th- and 19th-century American communities, people held all-night watch services on Christmas Eve, filling the time with songs and sermons. The songs would describe episodes in Christ's life. Simplicity was key in these folk songs and somber music pieces were often followed by humorous ones.

In many parts of America Christmas was celebrated for 12 days, until January 6th. Neighbors would visit each other's homes and have rollicking house parties with musicians playing at the door.  The tradition is known as "breaking up Christmas" and there is a traditional tune also called Breaking up Christmas. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fGg2gUgkT0

Songs accompanied by guitar, fiddle or banjo and an occasional dulcimer, covered every aspect of the holiday season.

In some carols, Jesus was born on January 6th, the use of the older Gregorian calendar testifying to their ancient roots in Europe.

Then Joseph took Mary
All on his left knee,
"Oh tell me, little Baby,
When thy birthday will be."

"The sixth of January
My birthday will be,
The stars in the elements
Will tremble with glee.”

American folk singer John Jacob Niles, who died in 1980, was among the first to revive old folk ballads. In 1912, he published a collection of folk tunes titled Songs of the Hill Folk, mainly from the Appalachian Mountains. Among them is one of the earliest American tunes I Wonder As I Wonder, one of the very few that have entered the standard cannon of U.S. Christmas music.

It was not until the mid-19th century that Christmas in the United States began to be celebrated on a grand scale as it is today. Saladini said that with the start of the American Civil War in 1861, the disapproval that some religious groups felt toward celebrating Christmas softened. After the war in 1865, a large influx of European immigrants brought along their own Christmas traditions, such as decorating an evergreen tree, gift-giving, and Santa Clause. Caroling became increasingly popular. Music associated with the holiday especially English, German and French, was added to songbooks during this period, said Saladini.

"Most of our sacred music Christmas traditions are based on English and (other) European models even to this day. Performances of Handel's Messiah, or at least portions of it, are sung by nearly every choral society as well as church choirs in the United States. In addition to regular church services, the service of lessons and carols, which is modeled on and made popular by the famous lessons-and-carols service broadcast from King's College in Cambridge, England, are very popular."

American composers continued to produce music for the holiday during the 19th century, but more and more of them abandoned the indigenous folk sound. Composer Lowell Mason from Boston, who directed the Handel and Haydn Society there from 1827 to 1832, spent his long career trying to replace the vital American folk-hymn tradition with what he considered a more sophisticated music style. He wrote music for one of America's most popular carols, Joy To the World, loosely based on a theme from Handel's oratorio Messiah. The lyrics are by Isaac Watts, an early-18th century English writer of hymns and spiritual songs. Saladini said a great number of today's popular American carols were written during the 19th century, among them O, Little Town of Bethlehem, It Came Upon the Midnight Clear and Away In a Manger.

Just as some imported carols became more popular in the Unite States than in their country of origin, some American carols fared better across the Atlantic. We Three Kings, an 1850s carol by Episcopalian clergyman John Henry Hopkins from Pennsylvania, is one of our most successful exports to Europe.

It was not until the beginning of the 20th century that American composers regained their confidence and began abandoning their European models. Charles Ives was among the first. Richard Wayne, a native of Illinois and a longtime organist at the Washington National Cathedral, wrote several Christmas compositions. His long choral piece Welcome, All Wonders, and Nativity for solo flute and mixed chorus, are occasionally performed at more serious Christmas concerts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aStVb_OoaKo

If American composers learned from their European colleagues during the 19th century, the situation may have reversed during the 20-th century. With the development of film and recording industry, American jazz, pop, rock and other styles have reached audiences and influenced contemporary music worldwide and composers such as Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, Elliot Carter and others have become admired and imitated outside the United States. In 1999, John Adams, known for his opera Nixon in China, wrote a major work based on the Nativity, titled El Nino, for the 2000 premiere in France.

CD Cover Illustration For El Nino by John Adams 

His opera-oratorio is a Nativity story told from a woman's point of view. It expresses the misery and pain of labor, the uncertainty and doubt of pregnancy and the mixture of supreme happiness and inexplicable emptiness that sometimes follows delivery. In addition to the biblical text, Adams uses other sources, including British medieval mystery plays and some anonymous English texts. One third of the El Nino text is in Spanish, based mainly on the work of female poets from Mexico.

https://www.youtube.com/watchv=byfDs7UgHqw

You are hardly likely to hear these tunes on your next Christmas shopping trip, but you don't have to look for them in the Library of Congress either.  The Seegers family of folklorists have collected and recorded many of these old jewels and there are recordings by Paul Hillier's group His Majestie's Clerkes.  You may also run into some older ones that have disappeared from mass market store shelves.