Singing Into the Light

How to program something novel for the holidays is a challenge almost every choral conductor faces at year's end. Fortunately, there always seems to be an endless supply of untapped or little-heard repertory from which to draw and innumerable ways to combine music from a diverse cross section of centuries or cultures into a satisfying whole.

To distinguish themselves from the holiday choral concerts that annually glut the winter season, the choral group that calls itself Sacred & Profane opted for something rather bold. Its choice was a more open-ended, ecumenical concert celebrating "light traditions" across religious divides. In one program performed this past weekend, heard on Saturday at St. Francis Lutheran Church in San Francisco, it combined medieval plainchant, Renaissance motets, 20th-century compositions high and low, and folk music from Sweden and Bosnia. Its program was also arranged according to several holidays, not all of them celebrated in December. Along with music for Hanukkah and Christmas came music for the Epiphany, Candlemas or Imbolc, and August's Feast of Transfiguration, as well as secular music intended to evoke the program's theme of light. While Swedish holiday music occupied the spotlight, the audience also was treated to music in German, Latin, Russian, English, Hebrew, and even the Sephardic language Ladino. The diversity of such a concert is to be applauded as it stretches a choir's abilities to accommodate the demands of varied repertory. At the same time, a program like this will invariably expose a choir's strengths and weaknesses, which makes for an illuminating lesson in what works best for a specific group of singers. After processing into the church with the Christmas introit Lux fulgebit hodie, Sacred & Profane was put quickly to the test with Michael Praetorius' Lutheran hymn Der Morgenstern ist aufgedrungen and Palestrina's Dies sanctificatus. The more straightforward Praetorius posed few technical difficulties, but the choir failed to provide the energetic delivery required by the text, which is an impassioned call for Christians to wake up and prepare for Christ's birth: "Wacht auf zu dieser Freudenzeit!" If the Praetorius was intended as a warm-up for the Palestrina, the choir did not yet seem up to the task, nor did the conductor, Rebecca Seeman, lead them with confidence. This is another celebratory text that should be brightly energetic. The tempo dragged, however, and the entrances lacked the sharp clarity that would have lifted this piece off the ground.

Finding Firmer Ground

It was not until Francis Poulenc's Videntes stellam that the choir finally gained firm footing. If they lacked luster in Palestrina's counterpoint, Poulenc's adventurous harmonic progressions — laid out in homophonic sections of contrasting dynamics — seemed assured territory for the singers. This set the course for the rest of the evening. A return to the 16th century with works by Josquin and Tallis was plagued by the same problems that had beset the choir earlier, while Hildegard von Bingen's O choruscans lux stellarum lacked the directed, forward thrust so essential to perform her sinuous melodic lines. It was the 20th-century works, however, that consistently showed off the choir's talents. The variety among these works alone provided sufficient proof of its members' ability to effectively handle a wide range of repertory. Two highlights from the first half of the concert included Morten Lauridsen's rightfully well-known O nata lux and Svete tihiy from Aleksandr Grechaninov, whose texture was made brilliantly vivid by resonant sopranos and a strong, particularly deep bass line. Most assured of all was a series of Swedish holiday songs following the intermission. Popular in character or tone, many of them were also imaginative compositions. The strophic Jul, jul, strålande jul conjured the peace of heavenly light in a series of caesuras across the eponymous line, as the harmonies rocked back and forth and subsequent phrases glided over melodic arches. The robust Staffansvisa for all-male choir was reminiscent of the polyphonic choral traditions of Slovenia and Georgia, while Karin Rehnqvist's adaptation of När natten skänker frid for all-female choir transformed the numerous sonorant endings of the poetic lines into sustained, hummed accompaniment. The result was a surprisingly moving evocation of the near and far distances that formed the poem's central theme. For Det är en ros utsprungen, a Swedish-texted Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming, four soloists from the choir sang the hymn, with the support of unusual harmonic transformations from the rest of the choir humming behind them.

Selection of Hanukkah Songs

The program concluded with three songs for Hanukkah. Salamone Rossi, an early 17th-century composer in Mantua, wrote several polyphonic settings of Hebrew psalms, hymns, and songs for his 1622 publication Hashirim asher lishlomo. While it was a treat to hear a work from this collection in concert, the decision to divide the choir into a quartet in alternation with the rest of the group made the work seem like a disjointed overlay of two quite dissimilar pieces. It would have been more convincing to hear this work sung in its entirety by the quartet, or perhaps an octet. Herbert Fromm's fugal setting of Mi y'mallel worked better, while Joshua Jacobson's arrangement of Ocho kandelikas was an inevitable crowd-pleaser and a fitting end to the program. Diction could be improved and the program notes edited (Rossi is a 17th-century composer, and it is hard to imagine anything by Josquin as being representative of a pagan holiday). Nonetheless, the inventive program is a sign of the tremendous creativity at the heart of Sacred & Profane. It was great to watch how attentively the singers responded to Seeman's direction. And even though the extraordinarily wide range of material was destined to include the occasional shortfall, it is always a pleasure to hear a group take real risks and be open to wherever these may take them.