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IN REVIEW: KC Chorale finds spiritual center of complex new Clausen Mass

The Kansas City Chorale is in a remarkably good place these days, both institutionally and artistically. This week the multiple-Grammy-winning chorus of local professionals opened its 2010-2011 season with a concert of music by René Clausen, which I attended on October 19 at Asbury Methodist Church. I marveled at the uniformity and beauty of sonority — especially considering that six of the 24 members are new this year. If the consistency of individual voices was pushed to the edge by Clausen’s new eight-part Mass for Double Chorus, a Chorale commission that was receiving its world premiere here, the naturalness of blend and sureness of direction by conductor Charles Bruffy made this a quite satisfying program. (Friends who had heard the same concert two days earlier commented that Redemptorist Church’s more resonant acoustics made for a superior blend.)

René is a composer who formed a musical voice early on and continues to speak eloquently and consistently — sometimes tooconsistently — in that voice. Among his strengths is fine sensitivity to text-setting, with “word-painting” that is subtle and thought-provoking and never hits you over the head. His harmonic style is eclectic but mostly consists of dense added chords that give the impression of clusters but actually have traditional harmonic motivations and tend to move toward tonic. Though at times the ear grows weary of these jazzy added seconds and sevenths, the harmonies almost always lead back “home” in organic and often creative ways.

The Mass was the culmination of a program that had no fewer than eight other pieces by the California-born composer, which together with the Mass will form the substance of the Chorale’s next CD. In Pace featured a boisterous but never shrill proclamation of “Glory be to the Father!” Though the initial attack of O Vos Omnes was a tad rough on Tuesday, Pamela Williamson’s soulful solo was effective — with the choir singing in aleatoric fragments — as was the see-saw effect on “dulce.” The break-out phrases of Bach’s “O Sacred Head” in the midst of all this did indeed fit the subject of the text, though the contrast of its harmonic ethos with Clausen’s reminded me of the “quotation” fad in music of the 1970s and early ’80s.

The Magnificat featured another sweet solo by Pamela, as well as a subtle but dramatic shift to major mode on the words “lifted up the lowly.” O Magnum Mysterium swept swiftly upward on the word “magnum” (“great”), then modulated almost startlingly for the word “mysterium,” sung in hushed tones. In Prayer, set to words of Mother Teresa, the gentle peak was reached on the word “shine.” I was less taken by the dual William Blake setting, The Tyger / The Lamb, and found the little three-note “little lamb” figuration just too repetitive. But I Carry Heart with Me was a tenderly expressive, if a bit cloying, setting of e.e. cummings’ poem. The program concluded with Clausen’s runaway “hit” in choral circles, the durable Set Me As a Seal.

In the Mass, Clausen has intentionally toned down his cluster-chord pizzazz, and he handles his complex materials with skill. The Kyrie is a single, tender movement that embeds the Christe Eleison into its central section. The Gloria is stentorian and jubilant, with subtle touches like an odd male-voice ascent on “miserere.” The Credo is a discursive series of segments that at times felt rambling, but such is often the nature of music set to this wordy text. The music paused on low, sustained chords at the “He was made man” passage — a quiet musical reflection of the Catholic manner of bowing one’s head at these words in the liturgy.  The Sanctus was reverential yet texturally and conceptually quite dense, and the Agnus Dei was more contemplative than imploring. All in all a fine effort for a first Mass, I thought, and one that I look forward to hearing again on the Chorale’s upcoming recording of it.

Paul Horsley, Performing Arts Editor 

Paul studied piano and musicology at WSU and Cornell University. He also earned a degree in journalism, because writing about the arts in order to inspire others to partake in them was always his first love. After earning a PhD from Cornell, he became Program Annotator for the Philadelphia Orchestra, where he learned firsthand the challenges that non profits face. He moved to KC to join the then-thriving Arts Desk at The Kansas City Star, but in 2008 he happily accepted a post at The Independent. Paul contributes to national publications, including Dance Magazine, Symphony, Musical America, and The New York Times, and has conducted scholarly research in Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic (the latter on a Fulbright Fellowship). He also taught musicology at Cornell, LSU and Park University.

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