Performances of two large sacred works here in the past two weeks aroused considerable interest and received considerable attention and this seems exactly right in these times of uncertainty and anxiety. At the national tragedy of President John Kennedy’s assassination, the outpouring of grief was accompanied by marathon broadcasts of sacred music. Words, commentary, were inadequate and unhelpful. The music was consolatory. To observe the anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy last month, many turned to music, most impressively through the so-called "Rolling Requiem" during which performances of the Mozart Requiem were given in succession across the country.

Without doubt, with both Osvaldo Golijov’s La Pasión según San Marcos on October 20 and the four performances of Britten’s War Requiem, listeners and performers had in mind the threat of war today and the very real conflicts that are happening. Of course both pieces were scheduled as much as a year ago or more, and probably before 9/11/01. There they were, however, addressing the central ethical issues on our minds and speaking to our emotions as if their presence had been deliberately planned. At the same time, the two works could not have been more different. The Britten specifically addresses the horrors of war while the Golijov is a setting of the Passion that speaks to the historical sacrifice on humankind’s behalf. Beyond that, the contrasts are great.

La Pasión, given its Bay Area premiere at Stanford over a week ago, draws on the relatively recent tradition of putting music in vernacular styles into sacred service. The War Requiem, using the traditional Latin Requiem text in alternation with Wilfred Owen’s poetry from early in the 20th century, is a formal concert setting for orchestra, vocal soloists and chorus in a context and tradition that goes back at least as far as Berlioz. The contrast in impact and musical import of the two works is considerable and revealing.

For his La Pasión, Golijov assimilated Latin American musical styles and indigenous vocal techniques into a musical language that, in the performance of the visiting Schola Cantorum de Caracas, sounded wholly authentic. The feeling was genuine and immediate, with the sense of performers singing from the cores of their beings, a people’s living the drama of the Passion. It sounds truly like music from the people of that culture — earthy, direct, urgent. Yet, this was not the staging of a ritual re-enactment as might happen in a South American cathedral square, but like an idealized version of that. It was after all, a designed work putting the emotional urgency of such an event into an artistic framework.

The changing assignments of the role of Jesus — to a male soloist, a female, to the choir — served expressive purposes. It was most telling when, as Jesus, the soprano sang, unaccompanied, the lines for the Eucharist, "This is my body" and "This is my blood," and then later the mezzo-soprano sang as Jesus on the Mount of Olives, still later his aria of agony in Gethsemane, and finally, the Death, "Elohi, Lama Shabajtaní" and the Jewish prayer for the dead, the Kaddish (in Aramaic). That ending rounded off Golijov’s interpretation of the Passion in the spirit of conciliation

As described in Bruce Lamott’s review in last week’s issue,"The Powerfully Theatrical Pasión", Golijov’s conception incorporates Latin American instruments, heavy on exotic percussion, dancing in styles from the Latin culture by two men, a restrained choreography for the chorus with contained movement and changing of positions. Much further than that, it demanded from the chorus for much of the time, a kind of singing imbedded in the indigenous practice, singing as you might hear it in the streets, in the markets, often harsh, driven, tough, at times requiring deliberate distortion of the Spanish sounds, the vowels twisted in the mouth for expressive and dramatic effect.

These performance requirements, designed into the score and conception, would seem to make it unlikely that productions would be mounted by other than Latin American casts. This gives the work a finite reach and life, although there’s no telling what can be achieved by sufficiently motivated conductor/directors of North American or European choruses and orchestras. A direct ancestor of Golijov’s La Pasión that curiously enough, seems not to have been mentioned in this connection is Ariel Ramirez’ Misa Criolla (1964), which had a certain after-life abroad after its initial huge success. I seem to recall performances in the United States by American choruses in the first decade of the work’s life. Perhaps it has been revived here in recent years, but I suspect that it is on the shelf in this country, as may happen to La Pasión.

Ramirez was an Argentinian, though Golijov was also a Jew and that gave him and his work a unique perspective and feeling. For his "Creole Mass," Ramirez set the mass text in Castilian for two vocal soloists, mixed chorus, organ and indigenous five-string guitar, flute and panpipes and regional percussion, using Argentinian musical forms, Latin American rhythms (Argentine, Bolivia, Peru). Memory of it recalls the high energy and rhythms of dances from the various regions. A CD (Philips 420 955-2) includes the Misa Criolla and Ramirez’ Navidad Nuestra.

Vernacular musical styles have long been used in settings of great sacred texts. The authority comes from Bach, of course, through his dramatic settings of the gospel accounts, the St. John and St. Matthew Passions. Bach famously drew on the chorales for the congregation/audience to sing along, as participants, making prayerful commentary during the course of the Passions. While not "vernacular" in today’s sense of the word as "popular style" or "folk" music, the chorales in the culture of Bach’s society were so commonly known as to be second nature. In our times, the St Matthew Passion has been taken into the world of theater, into a vernacular genre, as when it was successfully staged by San Francisco’s Spring Opera, in 1973 and 1976. Gerald Friedman’s production was a clear demonstration of the work’s inherently dramatic nature.

As for composers deliberately drawing on popular styles in large sacred works, that didn’t begin happening until the twentieth century. In his oratorio "A Child of Our Time," composed between 1939 and 1941 as a response to Nazism and protest against oppression, Michael Tippett wove spirituals through the piece as "chorales" of our time, a touch of the musical vernacular.

Leonard Bernstein’s Mass (1971) with texts by Stephen Schwartz inserted alongside the Latin, incorporated vernacular (popular) styles to a fare-thee-well, styles that Bernstein had fully assimilated. And Schwartz’ texts opened the door, as in "Lauda, lauda, laude, Lauda di da di day . . . All of my days." Following that came the Responsory:Alleluia by six solo voices ("Precise and swinging" in an up tempo syncopation) "Du-bing, du-bang, du-bong, (repeated), Du-bi-ding, dong,ding, dong, ding dong," to a sort of stretto or compressed fugue in swing style.

At another point, after the male "street chorus" sings "Confiteor," a "rock singer," backed by a rock band on stage answers, "If I could I’d confess, Good and loud, nice and slow, Get this load off my chest . . ." He is followed by a blues singer backed by a blues combo. Alternating with Schwartz’ words, the text of the mass movements are sung and played in Bernstein’s musical style, of course. Mass, the work that opened the Kennedy Center on September 8, 1971, Bernstein had the grace to call it a "Theater piece," and it’s as vernacular as Bernstein could make it. Interestingly, like Misa Criolla, Mass hasn’t been heard of since, as far as I know, not even with all the interest in performing Bernstein’s other music. It is possible that individual numbers from the work have surfaced somewhere.

Some time in the late sixties, vernacular music and instruments were embraced into church services and from then on it’s been "Katie, bar the door." In the formal arena of the concert stage, there are without doubt, a large number of sacred works written in vernacular style (including jazz, gospel, and rock). The glorious jazz pianist Dave Brubeck has his to Hope! a Celebration (Telarc CD 80430). Perhaps one of our specialty collecting readers will send a whole catalog of like works. Some of these perhaps, may make emotional impact, as strong as but different from that of Golijov’s La Pasión or Ramirez’ Misa Criolla. The question remains, "what happens to them the morning after?" And, does that matter so much?

Britten’s War Requiem on the other hand, has lasted and remains in the repertory without, I might say, making the emotional impact one would hope for, given the message and spirit that informs the work. This appreciation was reenforced again by experiencing the work in one of the four performances Kurt Masur has just produced with the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus, soloists, SF Girls Chorus and Pacific Boychoir. Kip Cranna’s review appears in this issue. I found several very moving moments in the performance but was left unmoved by the whole. That response, I believe, was due not to the performance but to the music itself which does not realize the gripping and poignant content of the text and the challenge of the concept. The music does not get really underneath the text and realize it in another dimension.

In my view, the issue turns on Britten’s style and certainly has nothing to do with absence of anything vernacular in his score. Britten’s musical ideas fail to rise to the level of inspiration and generate the development of a stirring or compelling musical continuum. He falls back on emblematic figures, familiar from Billy Budd, such as the fanfares in the trumpets (after Mahler), echoed in the flutes, associated with martial activity but hardly at this point, evoking its horror. Music that just makes an association with a dramatic or poetic idea does not come close to a musical expression of it. It merely serves referentially.

For the Dies Irae blast-off, there is an acknowledgment, too close, of Verdi. The drama is there, to be sure, brought out in the reverberant outburst of chorus and orchestra, but, in the predictable harmonic and symmetrical rhythmic manner Britten employed — it’s been done. That there is beautifully wrought and sonorous choral writing in the work and eloquence in the vocal solos was evident throughout Sunday’s performance. There are prayerful, hushed moments, and fine evocative touches but there isn’t a cumulative, sustained strength that the powerful message demands. At only a few points does his harmonic idiom find the intensity and tension cried out for in the text.

Britten’s concept and intentions, the momentous importance of the message have carried the piece on in the repertory. The fact that his style is immediate, confident, readily available to performer and listener has extended its life, though it is that very immediacy that is behind its want of sustaining power. The Mahler analogy is relevant. It took about fifty years before the expressive strength of his music was recognized and prevailed. There are great sacred works of our time that give profound expression in music and are spiritually moving. We need them and wait for a leadership that can recognize and realize these qualities in that music. In these times, we need such leadership in music just as we need it in our governance.

(Robert P. Commanday, the senior editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.)

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