The Cecilia Chorus of New York, Led by Music Director Mark Shapiro, Presents Bernstein and Bach on December 7 at Carnegie Hall

The Cecilia Chorus of New York celebrates the season with music by Leonard Bernstein and J.S. Bach. A famous advocate for world peace, Bernstein crafted a musical plea for unity in divided times with his by turns rousing and serene Chichester Psalms. His Mass (with additional lyrics by Tony Award-winner Stephen Schwartz) pulls classical, rock, and pop idioms into exhilarating musical synthesis. Rounding out the evening is Bach’s only Christmas cantata to use four trumpets, in its’ first-ever Carnegie Hall performance.

Though Chichester Psalms premiered in 1965, almost 60 years ago, its music and message remain bracingly timely and fresh. Bernstein fashioned the three-movement Old Testament libretto from the Psalms of King David, choosing a sonorous orchestration of brass, strings, percussion and, in resonant homage to King David, harps.

The music of Chichester Psalms gives prominence to the numerologically significant number 7, through salient melodic, motivic and harmonic use of the interval of a seventh as well as a rousing 7/4 meter in the first movement. The second movement tensely juxtaposes Psalms 23 (“The Lord is my shepherd”) and 2 (“Why do the nations rage”), with the composer giving the chilling instruction that sopranos and altos are to sing the pastoral text as though “blissfully unaware of the threat” of the rageful one. After a thorny, contemplative introduction, the third movement luxuriates in the caress of a lapping 10/4 meter. The cantata’s ennobling finale harks back to J.S. Bach, with a luminously harmonized chorale recapitulating its opening fanfare, hushed and in longer note values (augmentation).

Commissioned by Jackie Kennedy in 1966 to inaugurate the John F. Kennedy Center for the Arts, Bernstein’s Mass was instantly controversial, with then-President Richard Nixon declining to attend lest he incur embarrassment for appearing at the wrong place at the wrong time. Some critics and clerics decried the work’s fusion of elements from classical, gospel, jazz, musical theater, blues, folk and rock – alert listeners will note the electric guitar and drum kit – as impertinent; and condemned its libretto, which integrated English and Latin liturgy, Hebrew prayer, and words by Stephen Schwartz as well as Bernstein himself, as blasphemous. Others immediately recognized the work’s inventiveness, vastness of scope, and theatricality, as well as the profound and universal humanity of its evocation of a crisis of faith. 

Dating from about 1715, cantata no. 63 is J.S. Bach’s first cantata for the Christmas holiday, resplendently scored for four (four!) trumpets, three oboes, strings and continuo. In the opening chorus, listen for the rays of sunshine in the choral melismas on the word “Strahl”.  Later, in the finale, listen for the sky’s ominous darkening as Satan makes a menacing appearance. Then the sun comes out again.

Founded in 1906, The Cecilia Chorus of New York, winner of the ASCAP/Chorus America Alice Parker Award, has evolved into one of the finest avocational performing arts organizations in New York City. The 150-voice chorus has been described as “reliably venturesome” (The New Yorker, 2017) and “admirable,” (New York Times, 2017). Recent highlights have included commissions from The Brothers Balliett, Jonathan Breit, Tom Cipullo, and Raphael Fusco; collaborations with five-time Obie Award-winning actor Kathleen Chalfant, two-time Tony Award-winning actor Stephen Spinella, and opera singers Julia Bullock and Ryan Speedo Green; the New York premieres in Carnegie Hall of the Mass in D and The Prison by Dame Ethel Smyth; the World Premiere of Fifty Trillion Molecular Geniuses by The Brothers Balliett; the US Premiere of Messe Romane by Thierry Escaich; the Carnegie Hall Premiere of The Ballad of the Brown King: A Christmas Cantata by Margaret Bonds with text by Langston Hughes; and the Carnegie Hall Premiere of Neither Separated, Nor Undone by Derrick Skye. And in December 2023, Cecilia performed Daron Hagen’s Everyone, Everywhere – a Cecilia commission and world premiere – which celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Cecilia partnered with United Nations commissioners to bring this historical work to life. Much more at http://ceciliachorusny.org/.

Mark Shapiro was appointed the seventh Music Director of The Cecilia Chorus of New York in 2011. Conductor Emeritus of The Prince Edward Island Symphony, Principal Conductor of Marshall Opera in New York, and Artistic Director of Cantori New York, he is one of a handful of artistic leaders in North America to have won a prestigious ASCAP Programming Award six times, achieving the unique distinction of winning such an award with three different ensembles. The New York Times has characterized his conducting as "insightful" and acknowledged its “virtuosity and assurance” and “uncommon polish.” The Star-Ledger calls his artistic leadership “erudite and far-reaching.” Bio at https://ceciliachorusny.org/about/#music-director.

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