The Fredösphere

Years ago I was with my high school choir, attending a singing competition.  I was new to the group, hanging out with some of the veterans, and we walked into the sanctuary of the church where the event was being held.  Immediately we sensed the acoustic environment was very live.  Someone quickly got the group singing.  The choice of music was obvious:  Randall Thompson's Alleluia.

Here's a rendition by St. Bede's Choir of California. Here's an arrangement for men's choir at an insanely quick pace, from the World Choral Symposium in Minnesota.

Over at the ChoralTalk forum, someone making a programming decision started a thread with this question:

I haven't performed Randall Thompson's Alleluia since college days in the FSU University Singers all the way back in 1976. But as I search the literature, my mind keeps coming back to that piece of music. One might argue whether its right for a Christmas program but I figure if it worked for Shaw (A Robert Shaw Christmas: Angels On High), then it's good enough for me.

At the same time, it seems like this number is the qunitessential "every choir" piece. Is there any group or singer that hasn't done it, whether they could really pull it off or not? I have absolutely no doubts about this groups ability to really shine on it. But the last thing I want singers or audience to do is look at the program and go "Oh, that again?" We haven't done it since our group founding in 2003 but I know that many of our singers have done it in other venues and I've no doubt that many in the audience will have heard it before.

So what's your opinion of Alleluia? Is it an essential piece of choral repertoire worthy of its many performances? Or has it become a cliche to the point where it's time we gave it a rest?

The consensus reply was:  a piece this good deserves to be performed to death.  Then Charles Peery listed three caveats that resonated with me (scroll down a bit from the previous link -- indeed, you should take time to read the whole thread):

1) Having done this piece many times over a 35 year church choir/high school choral career and worked on it conscientiously each time (given the differing capabilities of volunteer and volunteer+paid singer choirs), I have rarely been satisfied with how it sounded on "the day of." This can be interpreted differently, I realize.

2) I've heard choirs who "sound great" do this piece and completely ignore the dynamics and diacriticals written by the composer. Even the tempo, it seems that in many performances people either want to put their stamp on it or have decided that what he wrote isn't feasible.  The piece has phrasing and breathing challenges; one very fine conductor solved this by having his (also very fine) singers perform this piece STARTING at quarter note = 120 and taking off from there in the stringendo. The good news was they never broke the phrase lines (which I refer to as the barking dog syndrome, whereby the singers pop out the last syllable as they prepare to breathe, resulting in -IA -IA -IA sounds all up and down the chorus (either Newfoundlands for the basses or Chihuahuas for the sopranos, take your pick.) The bad news is that I feel the tempo marking "Lento" was important to the composer, or he would have said something else.. or nothing.

3) It's a cappella, and there's something about the way it sits on the voice that presents intonation challenges to almost every section.  Again, this could be great.. what a feeling of accomplishment to solve them if you have adequate rehearsal time.

He then proceeds to describe the historical context of the work's composition that makes you realize the piece is worth the effort to do it well.