War, it seems, is always with us. With its season-opening concert, The Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh hopes to give audiences ways to process this ancient expression of humankind’s inhumanity.
“In Time of War” includes three works from different historical eras, to be performed Sunday, Oct. 11, by the 144-member choir at East Liberty Presbyterian Church.
“It’s three different composers’ take on how do we grapple with the reality of conflict and how do we hope for peace in the midst of it?” said Cameron Gunsbury-Massey, who joined the Mendelssohn as its new executive director early this year.
Paul Vladuchick
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Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh
Daniel Singer is music director of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh.
The concert’s centerpiece is “Mass in Time of War,” which Franz Joseph Haydn composed in 1796, as Napoleon’s armies were advancing on his native Austria.
It’s a 40-minute work for the full choir, soloists and piano, plus timpani and trumpet that summon a martial atmosphere.
“We hear in this piece anxiety, concern, pleading for peace, and we start to see this breakdown in the sort of perfect classical enlightened society,” Singer said.
The concert also includes Florence Price’s “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight.” The 24-minute oratorio incorporating Vachel Lindsay’s eponymous 1914 poem depicts Lincoln’s ghost pondering the never-ending tragedy of warfare.
“His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings,” reads one verse. “Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep? / Too many peasants fight, they know not why, / Too many homesteads in black terror weep.”
Price’s composition dates from the early 1950s, but it was not published during her lifetime and came to light only when the score was found among her papers in 2009. This will be its Pittsburgh premiere.
Singer said the Haydn and Price works function in tandem.
“The two pieces together really help paint an image of what war does to people, to the civilians, to society, and how it creates instability,” he said. “It allows us to think on how we can work together to bring peace in the world.”
Cameron Gunsbury-Massey is executive director of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh.
The program will open with contemporary Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s “Da pacem Domine,” a brief 2004 work that ruminates on terrorism.
The 118-year-old Mendelssohn Choir consists of a 20-member core of professional singers and more than 100 volunteers.
It is known for its frequent pairings with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in concerts such as Mahler’s Resurrection this past March. In December, the choir will perform both Beethoven’s Mass and Handel’s Messiah with the PSO.
But the Mendelssohn also programs its own standalone season. Upcoming events include February’s CrosSING Bridges participatory singing workshop on gospel music and May’s concert featuring composer Eric Whitacre’s “The Sacred Veil.”