Choral contest yields some fine examples of 'Waging Peace'

By Janos Gereben
From The Register-Guard

PRAISEWORTHY as it may be to express one's preference for peace over war, what does it accomplish? Sorry, not much.

Enter Robert Kyr, a University of Oregon music professor, with an idea: an international campaign to create choral music celebrating the cause of peace. The result: 25,000 hits on www.iwagepeace.com, 700 entries from 30 countries and 42 states, and - most importantly - some impressive new works.

At an Oregon Bach Festival concert Monday night, in Beall Hall at the UO School of Music, there was a jaw-dropper among the "Waging Peace" finalist works presented by Portland's Oregon Repertory Singers, directed by the splendid Gil Seeley.

The composer: Klaudia Pasternak, a 23-year-old Polish composer, who could not make her way from Warsaw to the festival in time to hear her work performed. Her "Sancte Angele Dei" is a solid, masterful work, from an assured voice of maturity far exceeding Pasternak's age. It's emotionally involving and affecting, without the soppy-sloppy, overly sentimental nature of some other entries. Her bold harmonic progressions impress, especially because they are clearly not for show, but form integral part of the music.

Not everything works in the piece - there are some quirky passages that fall flat - but here's a 23-year-old who knows how to write for a chorus, whose prayer to "Holy angels of God" forms a lasting work of art.

Another blow for peace-and-music came from Elizabeth Alexander, of New York state, with her "Praise Wet Snow Falling Early," a setting of a poem by Denise Levertov. A section of the poem gives a good indication of the mood of the music: "Praise god or the gods, the unknown/That which imagined us, which stays our hand,/our murderous hand, and gives us still,/in the shadow of death, our daily life, and dream still of goodwill, of peace on earth."

Opening almost as an art song, this work took full advantage of the Portland chorus' wonderful pianissimo, merging with Elizabeth Harcombe's exquisite piano accompaniment. Within a surprisingly short span of time, Alexander's work develops fully, touching on a range of emotions.

If Veljo Tormis' "God Protect Us from War" had been written for the current project, it would easily have walked away with the top prize, but this great contribution to choral literature is almost 20 years old. The Estonian composer wrote it to a passage from the "Kalevala," the Finnish national epic: "Protect us, fair God, from the feud-foal's hoofs, from the cloven feet of the war horse, from the cutting iron, from the blunt point of the sword ..."

At the concert, Tormis pointed out that the work was written at the time of the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan, when Estonian conscripts were being sent to the front, many of them never to return.

The music is quiet, a bit spooky, very simple, at times prayer-like, but eventually reaching a great climax, aided by a single instrument, a gong. The men of the Portland Repertory Singers performed admirably.

Also on the program: Oakland composer Ann Millikan's "Song of Remembrance" (a virtual solo number, performed by LeAnne DenBeste) and Venezuelan Alberto Grau's "Sing, Choirs of the World."

Kyr was represented by two works. "A Vision of Peace," a simple piece influenced by Zoltán Kodály, was performed by the Portland ensemble's student honors choir, with Mia Hall Savage conducting. Kyr's "O Jerusalem" consists of a powerful concluding original composition of the same name and four preceding sections taken from Islamic, Jewish and Christian traditional literature, plus Hildegard von Bingen's "O Jerusalem."

Janos Gereben is arts editor of Post Newspapers and a reviewer and music news columnist for San Francisco Classical Voice (www.sfcv.org). He can be reached at janos451@earthlink.net.