Twenty-plus years with the Cantata Singers

I remember my first rehearsal with the Cantata Singers very, very well, especially my overwhelming fear beforehand. I was coming to that rehearsal without any of the training that one would assume a conductor of choruses should have, and I was terrified that I would wave my arms around in the air, they would sing something, I would have nothing to say, and we’d all be relieved when ten o’clock mercifully came. I knew the group a little, having played in the Cantata Singers orchestra under music directors Philip Kelsey, John Ferris and John Harbison. But conducting the group was going to be a different matter. While I always found horn playing rather nerve-racking, having the sopranos behind me was a lot more comforting than having them in front of me.

As unprepared to face this group as I may have thought I was, however, nothing at all could have prepared me for the effect that twenty years with the Cantata Singers would have on my view of music and music-making. Those years have been transforming. When I think about my belief that choral music, especially serious choral music, and even more, serious sacred choral music is confrontational, I realize that I believe this because I experienced that confrontation first-hand.

At first the experience was mainly a challenge to my musical thought. Texted music suggested and required a kind of inflection only hinted at in instrumental music, a way of performing that was preached in a rather unspecific way by all violin, clarinet and horn teachers when they would implore, “Sing!” But I’m not sure many of those teachers were pleading with us to do much more than just sustain the musical line. Not until I experienced the energizing tensions between language and musical sounds, between the concrete and the metaphoric, did I begin to see a freer, responsive way for all music to travel.

But the much deeper challenge to me came from the hearts of Schütz, Bach, Haydn, Schoenberg and dozens of other composers, living and dead, who understood that music was a gift to us from Heaven, deep and mysterious, given to us to engage our full selves–minds, hearts, bodies and souls. Those composers who reached toward God with their musical voices did so not simply to praise but to search, question, challenge and change–frankly, often to preach. Even the thoughtful efforts of composers who happened not to be focused on an ultimate source still tapped into these same essential qualities. The late Reverend A.L. Kershaw, rector at Emmanuel Church for many years and a great believer in the power of music, often said that he believed that God despised bad art. And by bad he did not mean ugly, unpleasant, difficult or complex. By bad he meant weak, thoughtless statements in the clothing of art that ask neither the most of their creator nor the most of their audience.

Over the years, having the opportunity to be surrounded by the most probing efforts of the most searching composers, translated and transmitted through the minds, bodies and hearts of wonderful, thoughtful musicians, singers and instrumentalists alike, I came to believe not only that music is a marvelous gift, but also that it is one that we have an obligation to employ in the most mindful ways, ways that reflects the full richness of the beautiful and the terrible, the beguiling and the confounding, the joyous and the furious, and all in ways that demand much of us. Music is not here to please or to make us feel good. Nor is it here to soothe or to respond to our specific needs. The fact that it is often beautiful or comforting or heart-lifting speaks to music’s breadth, but not to its purpose. Its power lies not in giving answers, but in asking questions. And in order to ask searching questions so that we might have a chance of answering them for ourselves, the music must be of a high order. When we ensure that it is, we can begin to repay this gift.

Sometime during the last twenty years, I and numbers of people associated with the Cantata Singers–musicians, trustees, even audience members–began talking about the power of music to change people’s lives. In fact, it has slowly become a near-mantra for the organization. There has never been a sense that we are in any way unique, for this fact is available to all musical organizations and is seen by many. But it has become, for us, a guide. A beloved member of this family said to me not long ago, “Well, we are not really a religious organization.” Without a second thought, I shot back, “What, are you kidding?” Of course, I had to admit that he was right. But, in a deeper way, my friend the thoughtful agnostic would probably admit that he is wrong, for he cannot explain why opening his mouth, engaging his vocal chords in high or low, loud or soft sounds with some words attached to a bunch of strange dots and dashes on the page, in consort with others doing kind of related things, all the while others scrape, blow through, or hit a variety of noise makers, should have such a profound effect on us all. Nobody can explain this bizarre phenomenon. The answer has to lie on some level way beyond the concrete, in some ethereal world in which all of us, regardless of belief about such things, find community. On this plane, music enters and rearranges us.

This is what I’ve learned and continue to learn. I’ve learned it from the composers, the singers, the instrumentalists, the staff and governors of this organization, and its open, inquiring audience. I learn it again and again, at every concert, and at every rehearsal–where, as it has turned out, I’ve never been relieved that ten o’clock has arrived.

–David Hoose