Born on August 25, 1918, in Lawrence, Massachusetts; Died on October 14,1990, in New York, NY.
Chichester Psalms
Psalm 108:2; Psalm 100
Psalm 23; Psalm 2:1-4
Psalm 131; Psalm 133:1
Composed: 1965
Estimated length: 20 minutes
Slatkin wanted the opening program to feature the Nashville Symphony Chorus, an ensemble he regards as one of the institution’s particular strengths. Nashville is among the relatively small number of American orchestras to maintain its own chorus, he notes, “and they sing very, very well.” That led him to Chichester Psalms, which he considers “one of maybe the four or five great American choral works.”
Leonard Bernstein composed the piece in 1965, during a sabbatical from his position as music director of the New York Philharmonic. He had hoped to use the time to return to Broadway with a musical based on Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, but the project collapsed. The abandoned show nevertheless left him with musical ideas that would find new life when Walter Hussey, dean of Chichester Cathedral in southern England, commissioned a work for the cathedral’s summer festival.
Hussey encouraged Bernstein to write in the vivid, accessible language for which he was best known and even suggested including “a hint of West Side Story.” Bernstein responded with three movements drawn from six Hebrew Psalms, combining the rhythmic excitement of the theater with music of prayer, conflict, and reconciliation.
Bernstein received the commission during a period when he was reconsidering his own musical language. During his sabbatical, he had tried to write in the austere, highly systematized style known as serialism. Many influential composers of the time regarded that approach as the only respectable form of modern music. He eventually discarded the results. “It just wasn’t my music; it wasn’t honest,” he later explained. Chichester Psalms became one of his clearest affirmations of melody and direct communication with an audience.
The first movement begins with a commanding call to awaken before the chorus launches into the words “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.” Bernstein fills the music with dancing rhythms and an energy that belongs as much to Broadway as to the cathedral. The movement is brief and exuberant.
The second movement turns inward. A solo voice sings the familiar words of Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” Bernstein imagined the part for a boy’s voice or a high adult male voice, whose clear, unguarded sound would embody innocence and faith.
The chorus’s violent interruption—“Why do the nations rage?”—shatters the serenity of the soloist’s Psalm 23. Private faith is confronted by the noise and aggression of the world. Bernstein draws part of this turbulent music from material originally intended for The Skin of Our Teeth, while the soloist’s gentle melody continues beneath the uproar and eventually returns. The third movement begins in uncertainty before the chorus enters quietly. The instrumental sound gradually falls away, leaving the singers to ask for humility, unity, and peace. The closing words come from Psalm 133: “Behold how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.” Bernstein ends on a sustained note of hope as the chorus fades into stillness.
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
Listen for the contrast between the work’s public and private voices: the chorus’s jubilant opening, followed by the intimacy of Psalm 23 and the threatening chorus that presses against it. Near the end of the work, after ideas from the opening return, the orchestra gradually falls silent, leaving the chorus to settle into slow, hymn-like chords.
Scored for boy soprano or countertenor, choir, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, 5 percussion, 2 harps, and strings.
− Thomas May is the Nashville Symphony's program annotator.
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