Not many choirs have the talent and guts to undertake complex and rarely performed works like composer John Rutter’s Mass for the Children. But now in its seventh season, the Cantilena Chamber Choir has risen to become the Berkshire’s leading a cappella group. Its normal forces of the region’s top voices will be supplemented by an orchestra and a second chorus, the Trinity Church children’s choir.
It is an event worth noting on your calendar, since the music is magnificent, powerful and, yes, even stirring and emotional. After all few can sing about children without getting a little bit misty eyed. (Shown in our lead photo are some of the members of the combined choirs.)
The Cantilena Chamber Choir is under the direction of Andrea Goodman, and the Trinity Church children’s choir is led by Anita Stuart. The concert will feature baritone Jack Brown and soprano Karen Swann. The performance will be held on Sunday, May 22, at 3 p.m.at Trinity Church, 88 Walker Street, Lenox. All tickets are $20 and children are admitted free. Tickets may be purchased at the door or in advance by email from satbchoir@yahoo.com. Reservations: 413-637-2440. Trinity Church is located at 88 Walker Street in Lenox. Those interested in more information can visit www.cantilenachoir.org.
Andrea Goodman directs the Cantilena Chamber Choir.
Now in its seventh season, the Cantilena Chamber Choir is the Berkshire region’s leading a cappella group. It is comprised of singers who possess vocal training, good sight-reading skills and considerable choral experience. For the past three seasons it was heard on a special WMHT Christmas Eve radio broadcast of Lessons and Carols recorded at Trinity Church, Lenox. The Choir has collaborated with the New England Baroque Soloists, Aston Magna and The Empire Brass. This summer it appeared with Shakespeare & Company’s Tina Packer the Hancock Shaker Village 50th Anniversary gala in a program of Shaker songs. Past season highlights include a concert of works by Shostakovich, an all-Berkshire composer concert, programs for children, and special benefits for the Lenox Library and the Berkshire Immigrant Center. Most recently the Choir appeared in a special presentation produced by WGBY TV in Springfield called “Together in Song” a celebration of choral singing in Western New England.
The Cantilena Chamber Choir is under the artistic direction of Andrea Goodman who is also the Director of the Northern Berkshire Chorale in Williamstown and the Saratoga Choral Festival, an annual summer concert series for chorus and orchestra in Saratoga Springs, New York.
Mass of the Children was written in response to an invitation to compose a new work for a concert given in Carnegie Hall during the American Choral Directors Association’s national convention in New York in February 2003. Rutter’s larger-scale choral works have been relatively few – the Gloria, the Requiem and the Magnificat are the most often performed – but each one has a distinct character.
The Mass of the Children represents something new in the composer’s work insofar as it was conceived with an integral role for a children’s choir alongside an adult mixed choir, two soloists, and orchestra. The role of the children’s choir is to add a further dimension to the traditional Latin Mass sung by the adult choir, sometimes commenting, sometimes amplifying the meaning and mood.
The Mass itself (a Missa Brevis, that is to say a Mass without a Credo section) is mainly sung by the adult choir or the soloists. The children sometimes sing the Latin – for example at the Christe eleison, the opening of the Gloria and at the Benedictus – but elsewhere they and the two soloists sing specially chosen English texts which in some way reflect upon or illuminate the Latin. The work opens with two verses from Bishop Thomas Ken’s morning hymn for the Scholars of Winchester College, and it closes with the children singing his evening hymn with Tallis’ timeless melody, as the adults intone the traditional Dona nobis pacem, a prayer for peace. This creates a framework (from waking to sleeping) within which other texts and moods appear in kaleidoscopic succession, like events in a day or landmarks in a life. – Louise Luegner, reprinted with permission. © Collegium Records
