Latin Listening: What really caused (causes?) me to love choral music.

Dear Internet, 

Years and years and years ago, the community orchestra I play for (on-again, off-again; what a relationship I've had with this ensemble) performed Francis Poulenc's Gloria.  

I do not recall loving this piece at first.  (I don't recall hating it, either.)  As is my usual wont, the more we played it, the more I loved certain passages of it.  Music is frequently like that for me (and probably other people, too): it grows on me the more time I invest in it by practicing and playing and listening to it.  I can usually find redeeming qualities in all kinds of music.  Not always, but even pieces I really don't enjoy frequently have a passage in it that resonates with me, and I can appreciate it if not actually grow to love it.  But for the most part, there are so many pieces with a few notes, a measure or two, that are just so beautiful, I could listen to those few bars over and over and over and over.  

Well, Gloria was like that for me.  First of all, I was inclined to listen to it more closely than not because my mother's name is Gloria, and she loves that her name comes up so frequently in choral and other church music.  But then there were a couple of moments that I just loved when we played them together as an orchestra.  And then the soprano and chorus joined our rehearsals.  I can't say much for the chorus or my impressions of it at that time (it was just a community chorus, after all, and it was a long time ago), but I do remember the soprano who sang the work had a voice like hot butter when she sang: I can't think of any other way to describe how painfully beautiful her voice was with this piece.  

The third (Domine Deus) and fifth (Domine Deus, Agnus Dei) movements are so hauntingly moving, and there's this little quiet, heart-wrenching section in the middle to the end of the sixth movement (Qui sedem ad dexteram patris) that makes me realize why I still play music after all of these years: it's just that good.  Those who know me well know that I'm not the most sensitive person ever to walk the planet, but music is my emotional kryptonite - I frequently get shivers and even tear up when the music is that good, and these sections totally haunt me.  

So, with my ever-growing fondness for Poulenc's work, I did what anyone else would do at that time: I bought a CD of it.  I really *did* want to listen to those few incredible notes over and over and over and over...so that's what happened.  I purchased a copy of a 1989 recording of Kathleen Battle singing with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  It was amazing - so much better than our little community orchestra and chorus.  The tempi, the dynamics, everything.  The more I listened to the CD - and trust me: I listened to it a lot - the more ingrained in my memory and the less I now remember about how our amateur group actually performed it.  

I listened to the entire CD so many times, I could have sung a lot of those Latin words in my sleep.  And with Gloria came Poulenc's Stabat Mater.  And at first, I didn't like it as much, probably because I wasn't as invested in it as I was in Gloria.  But over several years of listening, I eventually realized I chose to hit repeat more often on Stabat Mater than Gloria.  In the eighth movement, Fac ut ardeat, there is one extremely short section that just kills me.  It's only five or so notes and lasts no longer than ten seconds.  Couple the music with the words (English translation: "Make my heart be on fire in loving Christ, my God, so that I may please Him also"), and I'm in love with it, easily.  And then the last movement, the twelfth: the grandeur and stateliness of Quando corpus ("When my body dies, grant that the glory of paradise be given to my soul. Amen!") just puts a huge smile on my face.  

In light of all of this, I'd had to choose this recording as my favorite of all choral works.  I don't choose favorites lightly - I always have some qualifier.  For example, best book ever?  No: how about best WWII novel about spies in Bulgaria?  I can maybe choose that "favorite."  Same thing here:  choosing a favorite from within the recording?  Not so easy.  Stabat Mater is my favorite choral work in terms of musical composition (a couple of concepts I just can't quite theologically agree with, so my faith plays a role in this decision, too: who knew "favorites" could be such a complicated thing with so many factors to consider?)  Gloria is my favorite choral work in terms of lyrics.  (Although, like I said - I really have a hard time with the idea of favorites, and then there is still so much music yet to discover...)

So.  A few years ago, I must have misplaced or lent out my copy of it to some appreciative person.  Who knows at this point?  Every once in a while, I would go through my CD collection at home or in my car or the few I'd left at my parents' house, or ask my friends about it in hopes of finding it.  No luck.  But even without the actual hard copy recording, I could still hear entire movements in my head.  I don't know Latin, but phrases would go through my mind along with certain notes, and it made me happy.  Finally, that was not enough.  This week, I decided it was time and money well spent to buy a copy of the recording again.  (And how nice that the mp3 version costs less than the CD.)  I haven't stopped listening to it in the last few days, and don't plan to do so any time soon.  

Since that introduction to Poulenc's Gloria all those years ago, I've played a lot of other choral music with many different groups.  And through it all - from chamber ensembles to full orchestras, from senior citizen warblers to more youthful voices, from acoustical nightmare churches to intimate venues, from paid gigs to volunteer organizations - I keep coming back to the composer and piece(s) (see? even two paragraphs later, I can't choose my "favorite") that made me love choral music.

Here, the sixth movement from Stabat Matter:

xoxo, 

Minny LinnEy