Dressed in their tuxedos and white gowns, the BUTI Chorus joined the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra at Ozawa Hall on Monday night to perform Charles Ives’ “A Symphony: New England Holidays,” as part of Tanglewood’s Festival of Contemporary Music. This particular piece, which is composed of four movements, has an interesting history. Ives has described it as both a symphony and also as a set of pieces. He said that there is “no special musical connection among these four movements” and that they “have been copied and bound separately, and may be played separately.” In Mondaynight’s performance, they were played together to illustrate what Ives described as “common events in the lives of common people.” Our chorus worked very hard for the past 3 weeks and was successful in bringing Ives’ symphony to life.
BUTI Chorus – TMC Orchestra Joint Concert
The symphony opens with the rich and resonant sound of the chorus singing hymn-like tunes. Their tone carried throughout Ozawa Hall and out onto the lawn where audience members sat on their blankets and lawn chairs. We then hear a narrator who introduces the first movement of the piece, “Washington’s Birthday.” The music in this movement alternates between dense rhythmic/ harmonic complexity and relatively straightforward passages, including snippets of familiar folk tunes. The chorus does not rejoin the orchestra until the final movement, “Thanksgiving and Forefathers’ Day,” the longest and most monumental of the movements. At the climax of the movement, the chorus sings the Thanksgiving hymn “Jesus Shall Reign.” Ives has the chorus singing in octaves one beat later than the downbeat, until the last line of text (“With prayer and praise they worshipped Thee”) where they split off into harmonies. Then the chorus is gone, the orchestra fades, and the piece concludes with upper strings, bells, and timpani.