The next song, 'Little Smary', is a bedtime story that the composer, as a child, often heard from his mother, Jennie Bernstein. The music alternates between the bright, cheerful tone of the mother telling a tale of 'lost and found' and the deep emotions of the listening child. The music for the beginning of the second movement is taken from sketches from Bernstein's unfinished The Skin of Our Teeth. The men's theme was adapted from material cut from West Side Story.

Commissioned by the Very Rev. Walter Hussey, Dean of Chichester Cathedral, Sussex, for its 1965 Festival, and dedicated, with gratitude, to Cyril Solomon” On the 45th anniversary of this historic concert, we’re delving into the music — and memories of Chichester Psalms. When it came time to sing it in front of the Maestro in rehearsal for the first time, I was petrified and could barely squeak out my part. He was very encouraging, even for the short time I sang. At a break, I was bold enough to ask to speak with him about the solo. He was kindness and patience itself, giving me a mini-coaching on each note of my little snippet. This whole experience was just icing on the cake of the already mountaintop experience of singing under his baton for this amazing concert. Pope Paul VI: After Hearing Chichester Psalms at the Vatican, 1973The finale comes in from the third movement without interruption. The principal motifs from the introduction return here to unify the work and create a sense of returning to the beginning, but here the motifs are sung pianississimo and greatly extended in length. Particularly luminous harmonies eventually give way to a unison note on the last syllable of the text—another example of word painting, since the final Hebrew word, Yaḥad, means "together" or, more precisely, "as one". This same note is that on which the choir then sings the Amen, while one muted trumpet plays the opening motif one last time and the orchestra, too, ends on a unison G, with a tiny hint of a Picardy third. In the score, Bernstein notes that the soprano and alto parts were written "with boys' voices in mind," and that it is "possible but not preferable" to use women's voices instead. However, he states that the male alto solo "must not be sung by a woman," but either by a boy or a countertenor. [6] This was to reinforce the liturgical meaning of the passage sung, perhaps to suggest that Psalm 23, a "Psalm of David" from the Hebrew Bible, was to be heard as if sung by the boy David himself. [7] Chichester Psalms juxtaposes vocal part writing most commonly associated with Church music (including homophony and imitation), with the Judaic liturgical tradition.

The first performance in London took place on 10 June 1966 in the Duke's Hall of the Royal Academy of Music. Conducted by Roy Wales and performed by the London Academic Orchestra and London Student Chorale, it was paired with Britten's Cantata academica. It was published in 1965 by Boosey & Hawkes. [1] Have a look at the text here, as handwritten by Bernstein, courtesy of the Library of Congress, Music Division: Chichester Psalms, p1. (Credit: Library of Congress, Music Division) Chichester Psalms, p2. (Credit: Library of Congress, Music Division) Chichester Psalms, p3. (Credit: Library of Congress, Music Division) Chichester Psalms, p4 (Credit: Library of Congress, Music Division) Bernstein specifically called for the text to be sung in Hebrew (there is not even an English translation in the score), using the melodic and rhythmic contours of the Hebrew language to dictate mood and melodic character.The work was commissioned for the 1965 Southern Cathedrals Festival at Chichester Cathedral by the cathedral's Dean, Walter Hussey. [2] However, the world premiere took place in the Philharmonic Hall, New York, on 15 July 1965 with the composer conducting, followed by the performance at Chichester on July 31, 1965, conducted by the cathedral's Organist and Master of the Choristers, John Birch. [3] [2] The orchestra consists of 3 trumpets in B ♭, 3 trombones, timpani, a five-person percussion section, 2 harps, and strings. [1] [7] A reduction written by the composer pared down the orchestral performance forces to organ, one harp, and percussion. The final movement—which is also the longest—begins with a passionate and elegiac introduction for the strings. This leads into a warm, assuaging setting of Psalm 131, to a long and intensely memorable melody in 10/4 time, which is first cousin to the love-songs of Bernstein’s stage shows. Finally the chorus, unaccompanied, intones a verse from Psalm 133 as a vision of peace before the closing Amen.

A gentle and lyrical setting of Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my shepherd”) opens the second movement, featuring a boy soloist (eventually joined by soprano voices) with harp accompaniment, a musical evocation of King David, the shepherd-psalmist. Chichester Psalms was commissioned for the 1965 annual choral festival at Chichester Cathedral, Sussex, UK. The world premiere took place on 15 July, 1965, at the Philharmonic Hall, New York, with the composer conducting. He subsequently attended the first performance of the original version for all-male choir on 31 July, 1965, at Chichester. a b c "Bernstein, Leonard / Chichester Psalms (1965)". Boosey & Hawkes. 1965 . Retrieved October 15, 2018.Theological as well as ceremonial and patrimonial aspects of Jewish antiquity seem to have had a special appeal at various periods. A few vestiges of that fascination can still be detected in the coronation ceremony of the English monarch—who, of course, is also the supreme head of the Church of England. A fair number of Christian English scholars, especially since the 18th century, have produced academic works concerning Judaic texts. And romanticized visual depictions of the Second Temple and other scenes of ancient Jerusalem were fashionable during the Victorian era—for example, among Pre-Raphaelite expressions. The orchestra were looking for a piece to help them celebrate their centennial, and Bernstein accepted. The composer had a long-term sentimental connection to the city, having grown up and attended university there, made his directorial debut at the Tanglewood Music Center, and conducted more then 130 concerts with the orchestra itself. Although it may seem now that Bernstein’s celebrity and international visibility in the twin worlds of theatrical and concert music made him a natural candidate for so important a commission, this invitation may also be viewed as adventurous, if not courageous, for its time. In retrospect, however—on another plane—it might not have been so far-fetched (even if unprecedented) for the Dean to commission a transparently and avowedly Jewish composer—whose most recent work had been based not only on Judaic liturgy in its original language but on a personalized Jewish theological interpretation with Hassidic foundations—to write for an Anglican cathedral setting. Nor should the very positive response there to its Judaic parameters have been completely unexpected.

The offer of the Chichester commission came during Bernstein’s sabbatical year from the New York Philharmonic, just as he was in the throes of disappointment over the miscarriage of a project on which he had been working, a Broadway musical show based on Thornton Wilder’s play The Skin of Our Teeth. “The wounds are still smarting,” he wrote to fellow American composer David Diamond in the beginning of 1965. “I am suddenly a composer without a project.” He thus welcomed the opportunity the Chichester commission provided, and he proceeded to compose the work in New York in the spring of that year. The result appears not only to have leaned melodically and rhythmically on its composer’s Broadway proclivities, but, as Dr. Hussey had assured him would be welcome, on actual moments of his earlier stage music. As Bernstein’s biographer Humphrey Burton and others familiar with Bernstein’s theatrical music have observed, the second movement contains, in the lower voices, an adaptation of a passage from the Prologue to West Side Story, which is heard now to the words of Psalm 2 ( lama rag’shu goyim ul’umim yeh’gu rik?). And material derived from his recently shelved drafts and sketches for the aborted Skin of Our Teeth project was recycled and accommodated to Psalm verses in all three movements. Moreover, Burton demonstrated that Bernstein’s choice of specific Psalms and verses was informed by their potential adaptability to the rhythm and cadence of lyrics that had already been written for that musical show by the celebrated team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Boosey & Hawkes Composers, Classical Music and Jazz Repertoire". www.boosey.com . Retrieved April 24, 2019. Then comes 'Greeting', first written in 1955 after Bernstein's son Alexander was born and revised in 1988. 'Every time a child is born, for the space of that brief instant the world is pure.' This simple, calm, reflective song is a complete contrast to what follows. On 24 November 2018, as the finale of the Bernstein in Chichester celebrations to mark the centenary of Bernstein's birth, the choirs of Chichester Cathedral, Winchester Cathedral and Salisbury Cathedral again joined forces to sing Chichester Psalms in Chichester Cathedral. They were accompanied by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop, a former pupil of Bernstein. [4] The treble solo was sung by the Chichester Head Chorister, Jago Brazier. Alexander Bernstein, Bernstein's son, was in the audience, as he had been in 1965. [4] Text and music [ edit ] In 1965, the Dean of Chichester Cathedral, the Very Reverend Dr. Walter Hussey, commissioned Bernstein to compose a work based on the Psalms for that summer’s Southern Cathedrals Festival. Dr. Hussey, who has been called “the last great patron of art in the Church of England,” was well known as a visionary and enlightened champion of the arts in general. First in his capacity as Vicar of St. Matthew’s Church, in Northampton, and then as the Dean of Chichester, he also commissioned works for the Church by such serious composers, painters, sculptors, and poets as Benjamin Britten, William Walton, Marc Chagall, W. H. Auden, Graham Sutherland, and Henry Moore. As he later recalled, the seed for Dr. Hussey’s approach to Bernstein had been planted in his imagination the previous year by the Cathedral’s organist and choirmaster, John Birch, who had recommended inviting a composer to write a choral piece for the Festival in a “slightly popular” yet still manifestly artistic style. That almost immediately prompted Dr. Hussey to think of the composer of West Side Story, whom he had met only briefly in New York in the early 1960s; John Birch concurred.Susan Lewis: Why The Unusual Chichester Psalms is Quintessential Leonard Bernstein wrti.org May 25, 2018 Moreover, the sprouting ecumenical spirit of the mid-1960s was beginning to find its reflection in some Anglican Church circles, and the prospect of Psalm settings by the composer of the Kaddish Symphony probably seemed timely as well as perfectly appropriate to its more liberal elements. (Similar strains of receptivity to ecumenical considerations and Judaic roots could also be found—then, or shortly thereafter—in some progressive congregations within the American Episcopal Church, the American branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. At New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine, for example, the seat of the American Episcopate, regular worship services—even on Christmas eve—have included the pronouncement in its original biblical Hebrew of the Judaic monotheistic credo, sh’ma yisra’el...) Almost immediately following its publication, Chichester Psalms also became one of the most obvious works to which choruses turn whenever they seek to include a substantial piece of contemporary “Jewish”—viz., Judaically related—music on concert programs. With two film adaptations and many successful stage runs, West Side Story is Bernstein’s best-known work by far. A collaboration with lyricist Stephen Sondheim and director-choreographer Jerome Robbins, it’s considered by many to be one of the greatest musicals of all time. The second movement begins with the boy soloist, accompanied by harp, serenely setting forth the opening lines of Psalm 23. As the Psalm is taken up by female voices, however, Bernstein has the male section of the chorus sing verses from Psalm 2 (“Why do nations assemble, and peoples plot ...”—a text familiar to British audiences through Handel’s Messiah) to much more angular and agitated music, in which the noise of the percussion takes on a sinister meaning. This contrasted music of peace and war proceeds in uneasy counterpoint throughout the rest of the second movement.