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satisfaction of the participants. Dean Hussey
was elated: “We were all thrilled with them. I
was specially excited that they came into being
at all as a statement of praise that is ecumenical.”
The British press was somewhat uncharacter-
istically gracious in its reviews. As an example,
The Times
of London praised the mixture of
concert and popular styles in the “three excit-
ing, imaginative movements.” Unbenownst to
the performers or audience, there was a secret
explanation for the popular element: five themes
were composed for musical theater works, four
from
The Skin of Our Teeth
and one that had
been cut from
West Side Story
. The first move-
ment incorporates the “Chorale: Save the World
Today” (Psalm 108) and “Here Comes the Sun”
(Psalm 100), both from
The Skin of Our Teeth
.
Two more rescued themes appeared in the sec-
ond movement: “Spring Will Come Again” from
The Skin of Our Teeth
(Psalm 23) and the
West
Side Story
cut “Mix” (Psalm 2). The setting of
Psalm 131 in the final movement recirculates the
“War Duet” from
The Skin of Our Teeth
.
Over the course of 19 months, Bernstein had de-
veloped a warm friendship with and admiration
for Walter Hussey. The composer sent an auto-
graphed copy of the full score to his Anglican
colleague for inclusion in the Chichester Cathe-
dral archives and dedicated the published score
to both Hussey and Chuck Solomon, who was
responsible for initiating the project. The rela-
tionship between commissioner and composer,
as recorded in their letters, has since formed
the basis of the play
Walter & Lenny
, devised
and performed by Peter McEnery for the 50th
anniversary of the
Chichester Psalms
. This one-
man show opened on November 11, 2015, at the
Minerva Theatre in Chichester, followed by a
production at the 50th Bedford Park Festival in
London in June 2016. This year, the Chichester
Cathedral will present
Walter & Lenny
on Sep-
tember 5–8 in honor of the centennial of Bern-
stein’s birth.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, op. 125
Scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two
bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings,
chorus, and solo vocal quartet
Few works of art elevate, inspire, and mystify
with the same indescribable power that Beetho-
ven’s Symphony No. 9 possesses. The music dra-
mas of Richard Wagner and the symphonies of
Gustav Mahler, to name a few, owe their very ex-
istence to this work. Gustav Klimt’s wonderfully
sensual, art nouveau
Beethoven Frieze
embodies
a personal reflection on the Ninth Symphony.
Musical analyses of this complex score (such as
Heinrich Schenker’s tome) have filled volumes.
The depth of meaning in Beethoven’s inspired
setting of Friedrich von Schiller’s “Ode to Joy”
has not been exhausted. It probably never will be.
Even before moving to Vienna permanent-
ly in 1793, Beethoven announced his desire to
compose music for the “Ode to Joy.” The idea
of including this text in a symphony, though,
struck with jarring force 30 years later. Anton
Schindler, Beethoven’s secretary and biogra-
pher, remembered the magical moment: “One
day, when I entered his room, he called out to
me, ‘I have it! I have it,’ holding out his sketch-
book, where I read these words, ‘Let us sing the
immortal Schiller’s song,
Freude
.’ ” At that mo-
ment, the master solved the aesthetic impasse
presented by the final movement. Borrowing a
notion (and actual melodic phrases) from his
Choral Fantasy, op. 80, for piano, orchestra, and
chorus, Beethoven made the unprecedented de-
cision to incorporate chorus and vocal soloists
into his symphony. However, Schiller’s drinking
song text required patient selection and rewrit-
ing to extol universal peace and brotherhood.
Although the Symphony No. 9 originated as a
work for the Philharmonic Society of London,
its premiere took place May 7, 1824, in Vienna
on a monumental program with the Overture
to
Consecration of the House
, op. 124, and three
movements from the
Missa solemnis
, op. 123. To-
tally deaf, the composer stood beside conductor
Ignaz Umlauf, beating time and turning pages.
Beethoven negotiated with several publishers
for rights to the Symphony No. 9, which he fi-
nally offered to the Mainz firm B. Schott and
Sons. The printed score, complete with metro-
nome markings and lavish title page, was dedi-
cated to Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia.
Structurally, the Symphony No. 9 remains within
accepted boundaries of early Romantic instru-
mental practice: sonata-form first movement,
scherzo–trio–scherzo, slow variations, and fast
sonata-rondo. However, Beethoven saturates his
movements with a bounteous stream of melod-
ic motives, rhythmic energy, daring harmonic
progressions, and developmental expansion
that stretch standard forms to the point of de-
struction and irrelevance. His colossal expres-
sion dominates every aspect of the music and
in the final movement demands both a larger
of his own music in early July, and he planned
to include the first performance of
Chichester
Psalms
. “I realize this would deprive you of the
world premiere by a couple of weeks,” he wrote
to Hussey, “do you have any serious objections?”
Bernstein received a reply on May 19, not from
the dean, who was recovering from illness, but
from the precentor, D.R. Hitchinson, who wrote
candidly, “I do feel strongly, however, that the
dean would be most unhappy and disappoint-
ed if the
Chichester Psalms
were not to have the
world premiere in Chichester.”
The pace of correspondence accelerated as the
Southern Cathedrals Festival approached. On
June 11, Hussey invited Bernstein to conduct
the festival performance. Eighteen days later,
Hussey gave his approval to the New York Phil-
harmonic performance and proposed that the
entire Bernstein family make the trip, offering
to house them at the deanery since all the local
hotels were booked for race week at the Good-
wood Racecourse. In the end, Lenny and Felicia
stayed in the deanery, and Jamie and Alexander
(Nina remained behind in the US) boarded with
a local family who had children their ages.
Meanwhile, Bernstein conducted the premiere
of
Chichester Psalms
on July 15 and 16 with the
New York Philharmonic and Camerata Singers,
an interpretation immediately recorded for Co-
lumbia Records. The Bernstein family departed
New York City for London on July 27, arriving in
Chichester the following day. A couple days of
family sightseeing followed, and then the only
rehearsal on the day of the July 31 performance,
which Bernstein assured Hussey was the “real
premiere” because it involved a choir of men
and boys, as originally intended. The composer
later summarized the performance for his per-
sonal assistant, Helen Coates: “The
Psalms
went
off well, in spite of a shockingly small amount
of rehearsal. The choirs were a delight! They
had everything down pat, but the orchestra was
swimming in an open sea. They simply didn’t
know it.”
None of this dampened the enthusiasm and
Ludwig van Beethoven by Joseph Karl Stieler (1820)
Leonard Bernstein
JULY 9 – JULY 15, 2018 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE
111