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For this summer’s Finger Lakes Choral Festival, Eric Townell wanted to salute America’s semiquincentennial. So, he started to research American choral music that was written for our bicentennial in 1976.
The conductor wasn’t terribly impressed with what he found, noting that very few American bicentennial commissions—even by highly regarded composers—have survived.
But Townell eventually struck a gold mine, musically speaking: a major choral work, with a serious text and stirring music, by a famous American composer with a strong local connection. And it was a work that had never been performed in Rochester.
The composer is Howard Hanson, and the work is his “New Land, New Covenant,” which Townell will lead with the Finger Lakes Choral Festival this Sunday at the Hochstein Performance Hall.
Hanson (1896-1981) spent almost 60 years of his long, productive life in Rochester; some Rochesterians may remember him as director as the Eastman School of Music from 1924—he was hired by George Eastman when he was 27 years old—to 1964.
Hanson was also one of the most popular American composers in the 1930s and 1940s. His opera “Merry Mount” received 50 curtain calls at its Met premiere in 1934; a decade later he won a Pulitzer Prize for his Fourth Symphony. He received many other awards, honorary doctorates, and high-profile commissions from the Boston, New York, Cleveland, and Philadelphia orchestras.
In the 1950s and 1960s, his music became less fashionable and less popular (with critics, at least). Hanson was a sophisticated musician, but his philosophy of music was simple; he believed that “music is a manifestation of the emotions.” His own music remained defiantly “old-fashioned”—conservative, tonal, and melodic—whether it was written in the 1920s or the 1970s.
“New Land, New Covenant” was a bicentennial commission by three American Presbyterian churches, and is a prime example of Hanson’s skill at writing for chorus and orchestra. His brief “Song of Democracy” and “Cherubic Hymn” are quite well-known to choral singers, but this is his only oratorio (a long work for chorus, soloists, and orchestra, often on a religious theme, like Handel’s “Messiah” or Haydn’s “Creation”).
The text of “New Land, New Covenant” was compiled for Hanson by Howard Clark Kee, a theologian and academic. It’s an extensive anthology of writings from three centuries, including such authors as John Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Colony; the fire-and-brimstone Puritan minister Jonathan Edwards; and John Newton, author of “Amazing Grace.”
Kee weaves these quotations together with passages from the Bible and the Declaration of Independence to make explicit parallels among God’s creation of a Promised Land, the Pilgrims’ exodus to the New World in the 17th century, and the creation of the United States in the 18th century.
“New Land, New Covenant” had a successful premiere in Philadelphia in 1976 and a number of performances that summer and fall. One reviewer called it “a thoughtful reminder … of what the 200th birthday of our country really means.”
Then the piece disappeared. Townell says he had never heard of it until he saw the title in a catalogue from Carl Fischer, Hanson’s music publisher.
“Hanson was almost 80 when this work was written and premiered, and it sounds like a valedictory piece to me,” says Townell. “It’s far less stodgy than a lot of patriotic music written for our 200th anniversary. There’s nothing perfunctory about it.
“But considering that Hanson lived in Rochester to the end of his life,” he adds, “it’s odd that it’s never been performed here.”
Hanson’s musical style is conservative but distinctive, featuring colorful orchestration and imaginative use of dissonance. Townell also hears brief references in the music to composers that Hanson admired, like Ravel and Mahler.
“The chorus also sings many old New England hymn tunes, but interestingly, none of the favorite hymns we know today,” Townell says. “But the spirit is there.”
“New Land, New Covenant” may be brand-new to the musicians, but it has presented no difficulties to them.
“Hanson took a very pragmatic approach to his work, and it’s beautifully ready to play,” says Townell. “The choral writing uses a lot of unisons and octaves, and the chorus singers found it very readily accessible. And our orchestra played through the whole thing on sight at our first rehearsal.”
“It grows on you,” says Honey Meconi of Hanson’s score. A professor of music at the University of Rochester and Eastman, Meconi is also singing in the chorus and wrote a program essay about “New Land, New Covenant.”
“It’s a powerful, moving, and substantial work,” she says. “It’s over an hour long, but the shifting textures of the chorus, the solo singers, and the children’s chorus are continually engaging.”
Those forces will fill the Hochstein Performance Hall’s stage. Along with the mixed chorus, Hanson calls for a narrator, soprano and baritone soloists, and a children’s chorus, plus a sizable orchestra. Sunday’s narrator will be Stephanie Paredes of the Rochester Latino Theatre Co., and soloists will be baritone Max Foreman and soprano X-Zaya Ivy.
The 1976 performances of “New Land, New Covenant” were all free to the public, so Hanson might have approved of the community-forward aspect of this concert. Admission on Sunday is also free, but audience members are encouraged to make donations to benefit Action for a Better Community.
Finger Lakes Choral Festival presents the local premiere of Howard Hanson’s “New Land, New Covenant” on Sunday, July 26, at 4 p.m., Hochstein Performance Hall, 50 N. Plymouth Avenue. Admission is free, but donations of non-perishable food, clothing (new), or personal care items (new, in wrapper) for Action for a Better Community are welcome.
David Raymond is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer.
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