Choral Music

“I have an affinity with Arctic places. Mediterranean passion has been documented very well, it has been fashionable for centuries. But the Artic brand of passion is different. Not more or less passion, but it lies differently. It’s a lot deeper. So it’s more a sort of submarine passion and it won’t burst out easily to the open.” Bjork, 2003 interview on “Inside Bjork.”

One of the ways in which northern passion is channeled and expressed, I believe, is in choral music. While Line comes to terms with politics and life in Chicago and Marty attends lectures at Oxford University in England, Paul goes on choir tour. Though I was never in a touring choir myself, my brother and sister (and nephews!) have been. In at least one case, the easy camaraderie of choir tour had a lasting influence in the form of a spouse!

The great American Lutheran church schools across the Midwest were blessed with extraordinary choir directors. Weston Noble at Luther College led the music department for 57 years and was guest director for over 800 music festivals on four continents. F. Melius Christiansen, Norwegian-born but trained in Leipzig, Germany, led the St. Olaf College choir for 30 years, a pioneer in the art of a cappella, or unaccompanied, choral music. His son Olaf led the St. Olaf choir after him, and his son Paul J. Christiansen led the Concordia College choir. The Christiansen choral tradition was spread throughout American Lutheranism, partly through hundreds of choral compositions and arrangements.

Here is the Augustana College choir singing a Paul J. Christiansen arrangement of one of my favorite hymns:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIBNWZmb6y8

Choral music developed out of the mass, of course. In the Anglican tradition, choral masses are sung regularly. Marty, in Oxford, England, is blessed to be able to hear Evensong sung by wonderful boys’ choirs at Magdalen, Christ Church or St. John’s almost any evening of the week. Several of the ancient colleges which make up Oxford University were founded with a provision for a choral foundation and school, with scholarships for the boys who attend.

It has been said that the Lutheran chorale hymn tune was the basis of much of the work of J. S. Bach, born 140 years after Luther. His music cannot be overrated for its intellectual and artistic depth. Among countless choral works, cantatas, concertos and masses, he set music to Luther’s famous hymn based on the 46^th Psalm, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” His “All Breathing Life Sing and Praise Ye the Lord,” a complex fugue moving from one voice to another, was frequently presented by Lutheran college choirs.

When I sang in choirs, one of our directors worked with us on the extraordinary Benjamin Britten compositions which began coming out after World War II. Britten was a leading 20^th century composer from England. I particularly was fascinated with the odd Rejoice in the Lamb, in which Britten took words from the 18^th century poet Christopher Smart, written while in an insane asylum. Set to electrifying music, the strange accents and rhythms of the words point out that cats and mice and other creatures all praise the Lord in their own forms. Here is one of many versions on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY4L72dSLDU

Even for those who were not formally music students, these rich musical traditions underlay our northern sensibility. I frequently find my characters breaking into songs both sacred and secular with which they channel their young passions!