BERNSTEIN: Chichester Psalms / On the Waterfront

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Read more: Who was Leonard Bernstein? Exploring the man behind the ‘Maestro’, Bradley Cooper’s new musical biopic a b Fishbein, Joshua Henry (2014). "Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms / An Analysis and Companion Piece". escholarship.org . Retrieved October 15, 2018. The offer of the Chichester commission came during Bernstein’s sabbatical year from the New York Philharmonic, just as he was in the throes of disappointment over the miscarriage of a project on which he had been working, a Broadway musical show based on Thornton Wilder’s play The Skin of Our Teeth. “The wounds are still smarting,” he wrote to fellow American composer David Diamond in the beginning of 1965. “I am suddenly a composer without a project.” He thus welcomed the opportunity the Chichester commission provided, and he proceeded to compose the work in New York in the spring of that year. The result appears not only to have leaned melodically and rhythmically on its composer’s Broadway proclivities, but, as Dr. Hussey had assured him would be welcome, on actual moments of his earlier stage music. As Bernstein’s biographer Humphrey Burton and others familiar with Bernstein’s theatrical music have observed, the second movement contains, in the lower voices, an adaptation of a passage from the Prologue to West Side Story, which is heard now to the words of Psalm 2 ( lama rag’shu goyim ul’umim yeh’gu rik?). And material derived from his recently shelved drafts and sketches for the aborted Skin of Our Teeth project was recycled and accommodated to Psalm verses in all three movements. Moreover, Burton demonstrated that Bernstein’s choice of specific Psalms and verses was informed by their potential adaptability to the rhythm and cadence of lyrics that had already been written for that musical show by the celebrated team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Each of the three movements contains the full text of one Psalm and an extract from another, but the relationship between the two texts, both in their meaning and in their musical treatment, is different each time. The work opens with an exhortation to praise the Lord: the mood is triumphal and authoritative, like a proclamation. This is the trigger for the main part of the movement, an ebulliently dancing (and in places jazzy) scherzo-like setting of Psalm 100, where the array of percussion is much to the fore in “making a joyful noise.”

The finale comes in from the third movement without interruption. The principal motifs from the introduction return here to unify the work and create a sense of returning to the beginning, but here the motifs are sung pianississimo and greatly extended in length. Particularly luminous harmonies eventually give way to a unison note on the last syllable of the text—another example of word painting, since the final Hebrew word, Yaḥad, means "together" or, more precisely, "as one". This same note is that on which the choir then sings the Amen, while one muted trumpet plays the opening motif one last time and the orchestra, too, ends on a unison G, with a tiny hint of a Picardy third. Have a look at the text here, as handwritten by Bernstein, courtesy of the Library of Congress, Music Division: Chichester Psalms, p1. (Credit: Library of Congress, Music Division) Chichester Psalms, p2. (Credit: Library of Congress, Music Division) Chichester Psalms, p3. (Credit: Library of Congress, Music Division) Chichester Psalms, p4 (Credit: Library of Congress, Music Division) The introduction (presented in the score as part of movement one) begins gathering energy. Word painting is used in that the dissonant sevenths present in every chord sound like clanging bells, indicating that we are being told to awaken in a deep and profound way. In the first measure, Bernstein also introduces a leitmotif in the soprano and alto parts consisting of a descending perfect fourth, ascending minor seventh, and descending perfect fifth. The motif is also found with the seventh inverted as a descending major second. It conjures up images of tuning the harp and psaltery (especially the use of perfect fourths and fifths). This leitmotif is found elsewhere in the work, including the end of the first movement ("Ki tov Adonai," m. 109–116), the third movement prelude, and in the soprano part of the final a cappella section of movement three ("Hineh mah tov," m.60), with a haunting reintroduction of the material in the harp on unison G's during the "Amen" of m. 64. How nice, that the great maestro Bernstein chose a young Daniel Oren as the [boy soprano] soloist of Chichester Psalms, one of his masterpieces among his own compositions. As soon as Maestro Bernstein heard Oren singing only two notes, he said: “It’s him I was looking for.” On June 23, 1973, Leonard Bernstein conducted his Chichester Psalms at the Vatican, in celebration of the 10-year anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s ascension to the papacy.This event was preceded by a history of English curiosity about Jews and Judaism dating to the Puritan era of the Commonwealth and Protectorate in the 17th century, with some antecedents in much earlier ecclesiastical scholarship—although motivations were neither always completely benign nor unalloyed. More recently—despite alternating and ambivalent attitudes toward Jews that could range from outright anti-Semitism to, in some assessments, a curiously English brand of philosemitism—ancient and medieval Judaic history in particular appears to have ignited episodes of interest among some 19th-century English intellectual, literary, artistic, and even religious circles. Much of that interest could be viewed in relation to less than benevolent agendas. Still, on at least some levels, it could also transcend geopolitical or evangelical considerations. A one-of-a-kind musician, Bernstein’s creativity spanned musical theatre, film scores, large-scale symphonies and operettas. Here are 10 of his all-time best... In 1965, the Dean of Chichester Cathedral, the Very Reverend Dr. Walter Hussey, commissioned Bernstein to compose a work based on the Psalms for that summer’s Southern Cathedrals Festival. Dr. Hussey, who has been called “the last great patron of art in the Church of England,” was well known as a visionary and enlightened champion of the arts in general. First in his capacity as Vicar of St. Matthew’s Church, in Northampton, and then as the Dean of Chichester, he also commissioned works for the Church by such serious composers, painters, sculptors, and poets as Benjamin Britten, William Walton, Marc Chagall, W. H. Auden, Graham Sutherland, and Henry Moore. As he later recalled, the seed for Dr. Hussey’s approach to Bernstein had been planted in his imagination the previous year by the Cathedral’s organist and choirmaster, John Birch, who had recommended inviting a composer to write a choral piece for the Festival in a “slightly popular” yet still manifestly artistic style. That almost immediately prompted Dr. Hussey to think of the composer of West Side Story, whom he had met only briefly in New York in the early 1960s; John Birch concurred. Bernstein composed Chichester Psalms in 1965 during a conducting sabbatical from the New York Philharmonic. In a poem quoted by The New York Times that year, Bernstein described the process of composing the work, commissioned in 1963 by Walter Hussey, dean of the Chichester Cathedral, for a choral festival:

The first performance in London took place on 10 June 1966 in the Duke's Hall of the Royal Academy of Music. Conducted by Roy Wales and performed by the London Academic Orchestra and London Student Chorale, it was paired with Britten's Cantata academica. It was published in 1965 by Boosey & Hawkes. [1] Chichester Psalms is tuneful, tonal and contemporary, featuring modal melodies and unusual meters. Through its use of motivic repetition, there is the sense of a hallowed rite. From the time of its sold-out world premiere at Philharmonic Hall on July 15, 1965 conducted by the composer himself, it was apparent that Bernstein had created a magically unique blend of Biblical Hebrew verse and Christian choral tradition; a musical depiction of the composer’s hope for brotherhood and peace. Why do nations assemble, and peoples plot vain things; kings of the earth take their stand, and regents intrigue together against the Lord and against His anointed? In 1965, Leonard Bernstein took a sabbatical from his post as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic. Freed from the time-consuming obligations of conducting and studying scores, he could now turn his attention to composition. His objective during this conducting hiatus was to compose a Broadway musical based on Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, in collaboration with director/choreographer Jerome Robbins, with book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Bernstein outlined his concept in a poem he submitted to the New York Times on October 24, 1965: The Psalms, and the first movement in particular, are noted for the difficulty they pose for the performers. For example, the opening is difficult for the tenors, owing to the unusually wide vocal range, rhythmic complexity, and the consistent presence of strange and difficult-to-maintain parallel 7ths between the tenor and bass parts. The interval of a seventh figures prominently throughout the piece because of its numerological importance in the Judeo-Christian tradition; the first movement is written in the unusual 7

The music mostly has simple harmonies, apart from a couple of more dissonant passages at the very start of the piece and at the beginning of the last movement. This is how Bernstein described Chichester Psalms in the New York Times: The Psalms are a simple and modest affair, Boosey & Hawkes Composers, Classical Music and Jazz Repertoire". www.boosey.com . Retrieved April 24, 2019. with a tranquil melody, sung by the boy treble (or countertenor), and repeated by the soprano voices in the chorus. This is abruptly interrupted by the orchestra and the low, rumbling sounds (again word painting) of the men's voices singing Psalm 2 (also notably featured in Handel's Messiah). This is gradually overpowered by the soprano voices (with the direction—at measure 102 in the vocal score only—"blissfully unaware of threat") with David serenely reaffirming the second portion of Psalm 23. However, the last measures of the movement contain notes which recall the interrupting section, symbolizing mankind's unending struggle with conflict and faith. Bernstein made his own selection from the psalms, and decided to retain the original Hebrew for an ecumenical message, focused on the "brotherhood of Man". [5] Introduction [ edit ]