Voices of Connection: 11/1 Lili Boulanger: Psaume 24
WELCOME GUEST CURATOR NEIL FARRELL
Neil Farrell is a tenor now based in Allentown, PA after a 25-year career in NYC. For 20 years he sang with the renowned Early Music group, Pomerium. He is a founding member of both the New York Virtuoso Singers and Voices of Ascension, and a frequent soloist with both groups as well as numerous ensembles around NYC and beyond. He is now in his sixth season with The Princeton Singers, led by Lehigh University's Steven Sametz.
As a composer and arranger, he has had works performed by Cerdorrian, Charis, The Dessoff Choirs, The Princeton Singers, Western Wind, Equal Voices, Voices of Ascension, the Choir of St Ignatius Loyola, and many others. His most recent arrangements, mostly written for broadcast on Zoom Worship services during COVID lockdown, can be seen on YouTube.
As a 20+ year vet (and charter member) of Voices of Ascension, now emeritus, I feel incredibly honored to be choosing a selection for "Voices of Connection." My choice today is Lili Boulanger's "Psaume 24," for choir, tenor solo, organ, harp, and tympani. Picking this is a little like including Cassius Clay's defeat of Sonny Liston to capture the heavyweight title "Muhummad Ali's Greatest Fights." Shortly thereafter, he took the name he's now known by. This performance comes from a live "Service of Music" on 11/4/1990 at Ascension, one of those concerts whose popularity sparked VoA's creation. The incomparable Mark Kruczek, still going strong (miss you something terrible, Mark!) plays the organ, and sadly on my cassette the harpist and tympanist are unidentified.*
Half of my lifetime ago, I hadn't yet encountered any "classical music" written by women, which seems unusual with my having grown up with four sisters in a very estrogen-dominated household. Not only did Mme. Boulanger introduce me to the idea that women DID in fact compose (I'd never doubted that they could), but she became one of my absolute favorite choral composers of any gender almost instantaneously. Her bracing organ introduction literally causes one to embody the best remembered verse of Psalm 24, "Lift up your heads!" as thick, reed-laden chords (trumpets and trombones in the full score, here rendered by the organ) jab at one for a few seconds before a tympani roll sends the message that she really means business. The men of the choir come in briskly,and a cappella with verse 1 echoing the theme the reeds played in the intro.
Less than a minute goes by before she shifts gears; the organ smooths things out and the harmonies become less distinct, the textures more diaphanous. Then enters a solo voice. A high tenor, floating above the passaggio. Here the story gets a little more personal - for me. This was the first time Dennis asked me to sing a solo in an Ascension concert, and fortunately is was not the last. Again, as with the honor as guest curator for VoC, I was - and remain - humbled in the company of all the great singers who've sung as soloists at Ascension, and tremendously grateful to Dennis, who invariably picked solos for me that suited my voice beautifully.
After the tenors and basses reply to the tenor soloist with chant-like lines and the organ with similarly smoky harmonies, Mme. Boulanger returns to the more vigorous strains of the opening section, bringing in the full choir singing in French those words Mr. Handel made so familiar in English a couple of centuries earlier. This leads to a frenzied build as the tempo races to completion, pausing only for the briefest of attention-getting full breaks before the final fortississimo chord.
The mind boggles to think of the masterworks Mme. Boulanger would have produced had she not died tragically at age 24. Might she have become better known than her highly esteemed sister Nadia? Maybe when I die I'll get to see what she's been writing since 1918, when she both wrote "Psaume 24," and departed this mortal coil.
– Neil Farrell, founding member of Voices of Ascension