Saint Louis Reflections 
The Saint Louis Chamber Chorus/Philip Barnes
rec. 2023, Third Baptist Church, St Louis, USA
Texts included
Regent REGCD578 [77]

The Saint Louis Chamber Chorus (SLCC) was founded in 1956 by a British conductor, Ronald Arnatt. Their fourth Director, Philip Barnes, another Briton, took up his post in 1989. Regent Records has built up quite a relationship with the choir over several years. By my count, this is the eighth album by the choir that Regent have released; I’ve heard all but one of them, going all the way back to 2008. With the exception of an (excellent) disc of music by Sir Granville Bantock, all the other programmes demonstrate in spades the commitment of the SLCC and Philip Barnes to contemporary a cappella choral music from both sides of the Atlantic. The choir has been assiduous in commissioning new pieces and making premiere recordings; all the pieces on this disc were commissioned for the SLCC.

Beginning in 1998, the SLCC has worked closely with a succession of six Composers in Residence. Three of them are represented on this disc: the first (1998-2006), Sasha Johnson Manning; the fourth (2018-18), Melissa Dunphy; and the most recent (since 2022), Kerensa Briggs. Presumably, the involvement of these six composers, all of whom wrote pieces for the choir during their respective tenures, required funding; so will the many commissions from other composers and the various recording projects. That speaks not only to the generosity of individuals and foundations but also to the extent that the work of the SLCC is valued. 

Philip Barnes has written the notes accompanying this CD. One very small flaw is that the dates of composition aren’t always given but I infer that most of them are quite recent. I’m not certain when Dobrinka Tabakova wrote her Missa brevis. I liked it very much. It’s a succinct work, which takes just over 10 minutes to perform. Interestingly, the shortest movement is the Gloria, which is the one which sets the longest text (there is no Credo). I like the constant flow that Tabakova achieves in setting the Gloria; it’s a fluid piece of writing. The Kyrie, too, impresses; here the music proceeds through sequences of block chords which seem to move ever higher. In the Sanctus and Benedictus, when the ‘Hosanna’ is reached, Tabakova really tests the sopranos with some very high-lying notes; the Saint Louis sopranos are undaunted. This is a most attractive setting of the Mass in which not a note is wasted, you feel.

In The Music of Light Steven Stucky sets his own selection of lines by the Sufi mystic, Kabit (1440-1518), as translated by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). The words are very beautiful and Stucky’s music is harmonically intriguing. Philip Barnes relates that, poignantly, Stucky died just a few days after finishing the piece. Exaltabo by the British composer Magnus Williamson is a Latin setting of Psalm 30 (not 130, as per the booklet). Theres a chant-like character to the music at times. I’m afraid the piece, which is nearly 8 minutes long didn’t quite hold my attention.

We do indeed encounter Psalm 130 in Kerensa Briggs’ Height in Depth suite. In this sequence of three pieces Briggs frames a setting of the poem ‘Height in Depth’ by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) with settings of Psalms 130 and 121. I’ve heard quite a number of pieces by Ms Briggs in recent years and I’ve been consistently impressed, especially by her lovely Requiem (2022), the premiere recording of which I reviewed just last year. These three pieces impressed me too. The setting of Psalm 130 is heartfelt while the music for Psalm 121 is expansive and beautiful. Incidentally, the latter is not the same, equally lovely, setting of this psalm that is included on the aforementioned CD of the Requiem. The Rossetti piece which comes in between is also most interesting. Kerensa Briggs has a genuine affinity for writing a cappella choral music; I hope that the SLCC will record some of the other music she writes for them during her term as their Composer in Residence.

We hear from one of her predecessors in that role a little later in the programme. Christmas Bells by Sasha Johnson Manning is a very ingenious idea. She combines two very contrasting Christmas poems: one is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s melancholy poem which begins ‘I heard the bells on Christmas Day’; the other is the much jollier ‘Ding-dong! merrily on high’ by G R Woodward (which Johnson Manning sets to her own melody rather than the so-familiar tune by Charles Wood). The result is a fascinating and skilful mélange of Christmas reflections set to music which is most attractive. The piece is for unaccompanied double choir; what I can’t work out – I haven’t seen a score – is whether each choir is allotted one of the poems; that would seem logical. Christmas Bells is preceded by another Christmas piece, this time sung in Finnish. I think the composer Charles Collins is American – we are told he was a member of the SLCC in the 1990s – but he had spent some time in Finland and had become fluent in the language. This enabled him to set Joulupuu on rakennettu by a nineteenth-century Finnish poet in the original language. There’s an innocent freshness to the music, which is most appealing. 

In O viridissima virga Ivan Moody takes a monody by Hildegard of Bingen which he arranges and harmonises. In so doing he very much puts his own stamp on the melody while being very respectful of it. I’ve heard and admired a lot of the orchestral music of David Matthews so I was intrigued at the prospect of Aequam memento. This is a rather novel work in that the piece sets a secular Latin text in the shape of one of the Odes by the Roman classical poet, Horace. The music contains the most adventurous harmonic language on the disc – though I hasten to say that it is an accessible piece. The setting is far from straightforward but the SLCC give an assured account of it. I have to confess that so far, the piece hasn’t drawn me in, though I respect the craftsmanship.

We’re back with Psalm 130 for Carl Rütti’s Aus tiefer Not. Here, the Swiss composer has used the psalm in the metrical German version by Martin Luther. In this setting for eight-part choir, Rütti makes use of the traditional chorale melody but, cunningly, he only alludes to it for much of the time. It’s only when he reaches the fifth and final stanza of Luther’s words that we hear the chorale melody in full. This is a very imaginative and skilful piece of choral writing. As befits the text, the music is serious in tone; Philip Barnes describes it as “a grand work”; I agree. 

Hitherto, all the music on the disc has been for unaccompanied choir. The final two pieces have accompaniment. I would describe both pieces – in a complimentary way – as pragmatic, for reasons I’ll explain. Judith Bingham was invited to write the piece which became I lift up mine eyes unto the hills by a consortium of Saint Louis choirs, of which SLCC was one, in honour of Sarah Bryan Miller, the classical music critic of the St. Louis Post-Dispatchnewspaper when it was announced in 2010 that Ms Miller was afflicted by terminal cancer. Bingham put her other work aside and responded with a piece which, in Philip Barnes’ words, is “a song of hope and faith that provides comfort against the challenges we all face in our diverse ways”. I infer that the commissioning choirs may have been of varying degrees of accomplishment; Bingham wrote music which, as Barnes says, “can be performed in a number of different ways without ever sacrificing the essence of her music”. That seems to me to be a very practical approach. SLCC here perform the piece in “its most layered permutation”, which involves double choir, piano and organ. In truth, the keyboard parts seem pretty straightforward. The piece is positive in tone; I enjoyed it.

Pragmatism also marks out Melissa Dunphy’s approach in We are the music makers. As we read in the booklet, this piece was requested from Dunphy as Covid restrictions were staring to ease and choirs, including SLCC, were beginning to feel their way back to normality. As anyone involved in choral singing – or any kind of music making – will recall, one never knew when the restrictions might be applied again; nor was there any certainty as to the readiness of individuals to take part in group activities. So, Ms Dunphy was asked for a four-part setting with piano accompaniment. She took for her text the first three stanzas of Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s poem which Elgar set in full in The Music Makers. Dunphy’s setting of the words is nowhere near as complex as Elar’s, but that’s not the point. The piece was specifically designed to get people back singing together again. As such, we can see it as an expression of post-Covid resolution that music can and must go on.

Once again, Philip Barnes and the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus have provided a stimulating and rewarding programme of recent choral music. We can only applaud their determination to continue to give composers the stimulus to write interesting new choral compositions through the series of commissions they offer. Having commissioned the music, the SLCC then perform it with great accomplishment, as is the case on this disc. I enjoyed and admired in equal measure what I heard here.

The performances have been well recorded and Philp Barnes’ notes give a good introduction to the music.

John Quinn

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Contents  
Dobrinka Tabakova (b 1980) – Missa brevis
Steven Stucky (1949-2016) – The Music of Light (2016)
Magnus Williamson (b 1967) – Exaltabo (2010)
Kerensa Briggs (b 1991) – Height in Depth suite
Charles Collins (b 1962) – Joulupuu on rakennettu
Sasha Johnson Manning (b 1963) – Christmas Bells (2008)
Ivan Moody (1964-2024) – O viridissima virga
David Matthews (b 1943) – Aequam memento (2004)
Carl Rütti (b 1949) – Aus tiefer Not (2006)
Judith Bingham (b 1952) – I lift up mine eyes unto the hills
Melissa Dunphy (b 1980) – We are the music makers (2021)