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This past Sunday evening's performances, by Director Timothy McDonald's chorus and orchestra, Musica Sacra, at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church on 52^nd and Troost in Kansas City, could have been subtitled,  "Five Pieces in Search of Cohesion," and that generality is unfair only with respect to Palestrina's a capella Missa Brevis - the first and best performance of the evening - followed by two non-vocal works (Mozart's Sonatas in F and B-flat Major), continuing vocally, with orchestra, on Mendelssohn's Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten, and concluding with Vivaldi's Credo. Vocal music has an uncanny kinship with real estate (stay with me during the non-sequitur!). The three critical elements of real estate you already know: location, location, location. Similarly, the three critical elements of vocal music are: diction, diction, diction. Regrettably, after the Palestrina, which had minor pitch and diction problems, the Mozart, Mendelssohn and Vivaldi fell short in every department - diction (especially), tuning, intonation, timing and balance.

Now, I don't have perfect pitch, and only halfway decent relative pitch, but when it comes to intonation I swear I am sensitive down to the microtone and it very nearly drives me crazy. I put that out there as a baseline so I can convey just how minute were the problems with Palestrina's Missa Brevis. While I'm at it I should probably mention that I'm rather psychotic about diction, too. Overall, the piece was magical and made me remember all over again how much I love Palestrina. Indeed, the farther back in time I go, musically, the more fascinated I am by that very fact:  you go back in time. It's amazing. Stand in front of the Mona Lisa. ...I didn't see DaVinci paint it. The same principal applies for Michelangelo's David. Close your eyes in front of either one and, photographic memory-savants aside, there is nothing - the experiences are suspended.

Not so with music. Granted, I am by no means objective on this matter, but to me, music is that rare art form that allows you to experience the artist as directly and personally as humanly possible given the separation of decades and centuries. As I listened to the Palestrina - with my eyes closed - I could as easily have been sitting in a church in the 16^th century as in a modern one in the 21^st century. It could have been Dr. McDonald conducting; it could have been Palestrina himself. I was in the room; Palestrina was in the room. Time travel. Vocal music is perhaps the purest of musical media. The original instrument. Nothing to hide behind. And no margins for error.

While all seven sections of the Missa Brevis had some pitch problems, only the Kyrie and Benedictus jumped out as being noticeably "off". Most noticeable were the diction shortcomings in the Credo, where Credo in unum deum (phonetically, CRAY-doh in OOH-noom DAY-oom) became "CRAY-doe in OOH-noo DAY-ooh", and wherever Amen occurred it sounded closer to "Ah-meh". However, these minor indiscretions were more than offset by an otherwise beautiful interpretation and performance. The way the early Renaissance strains lingered in the church's ether was transcendental.

Interjected between the first and third vocal works were the two Mozart sonatas, which exposed some serious tuning and intonation problems in the violins and violas, awkwardly counterbalanced by solid and in-tune efforts by the cellos and bass. The more I listened, though, it became evident that these were more intonation issues than tuning -  I did notice that the first violinist tuned prior to the Missa Brevis and that likely could have been enough to explain why the violins and violas were a tad sharp. But combine tuning problems with poor intonation and the problems compound. Both pieces were messy, but the 2^nd (B-Flat Major) left most of the serious infractions behind in the F-Major.

Next came Mendelssohn's Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten, where intonation was a problem isolated predominantly to the first stanza, but diction was pervasively mushy. There was one miscue in the third stanza which in an otherwise perfect performance would certainly have been, if not barely noticeable, forgivable, but in this case it only compounded the trauma. The most frustrating problem occurred in the third stanza which featured the solo soprano (Debra Hohly). Here again it took me a while to pinpoint the problem, at first thinking that she was too vocally thin and unable to project above the orchestra, but I came to realize that it was simpler than that:  the orchestra was too loud. Better soloist placement - which probably would have been a good idea anyway (location-location-location!) - might have helped to overcome that challenge. Had she stepped forward of the chorus and a few steps either to the left or right of the conductor, she may have fared better against the orchestra. Still, such things should not become a contest and it falls squarely on the conductor to control that.

The program closed with Vivaldi's Credo and it is here that the diction train came completely off the tracks (warning:  here comes another non-sequitur). Steve Martin, in his hilarious collection of short stories, Pure Drivel, has one entitled "Times Roman Font Announces Shortage Of Periods". My chapter for the evening's final piece would be entitled, "Vivaldi's Credo Announces a Shortage of M's." In addition to a reprise of Palestrina's "CRAY-doh in OOH-noo DAY-ooh", Vivaldi's Credo called and raised with Dominoo Jesoo Christoo; Filioo Dei unigenitoo; Et ex Patre natoo; Deoo veroo de Deo vero; Genitoo, non factoo, consubstantialoo Patri; and on and on. Similarly sloppy were words ending in "s" when followed by the word "est", where Et incarnatus est became Et incarnatu sest; et sepultus est became et sepultu sest; and venturus est became venturu sest.

Sadly, you may have noticed by now, but for the life-saving Palestrina I haven't really mentioned much about the music. The reason is simple:  pervasive problems with diction, tuning, intonation, timing and balance took a collective toll, and the music - quite literally - got lost in translation. However, it was encouraging to see a sizeable turnout (about 150), especially since the Palestrina was so exquisite and exposed listeners to a master rarely heard in most classical programs, where all too often one gets the impression that the entire history of music started in 1685 with the birth of J.S. Bach.

Overall, though, it was a disappointing evening.

 REVIEW:
Music Sacra Chorus & Orchestra
Works by Palestrina, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Vivaldi
October 18, 2009
St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church
52^nd & Troost, Kansas City, MO
http://www.rockhurst.edu/services/musicasacra/index.asp

By Christopher Guerin

Traditional and New Classical music, and Theatre Contributor (Past writer)
Christopher Guerin holds degrees in Music Education, Music Business, and Music Theory & Composition, the latter from the University of Massachusetts (Lowell) College of Music where he co-founded the college's Composers' Guild, and, in 1985, won the Artin Arslanian Composition Award. During college, he also obtained some musical theatre experience as a member of pit orchestras for Threepenny Opera and My Fair Lady. Since 1989, Christopher has been in the very non-artistic corporate sector, where his creative energies have been put to more mundane endeavors 

Christopher credits his musical motivations to his late father, who was concertmaster of the Springfield (MA) Community (pre-cursor to the city's current Symphony) Orchestra and performed popular music on radio in the 1930s. Christopher began his classical training in 1972 at age 10, began teaching at 16 (continuing to take private students throughout college), and traveled extensively with a youth orchestra - including to New Zealand in 1980. After college, and until 1989, Christopher focused on the business end of music as a successful sales manager for one of New England's largest music chains.

Over the past 20 years, Christopher's expertise has focused on medicine as a life risk underwriting officer for a large Midwest insurance group. His past duties included responsibility for risk underwriting in Pacific Rim markets where he traveled extensively to Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Thailand and Burma. Time permitting, he has continued to compose intermittently throughout this period. Christopher is married to Paula, a fellow musician he met during college, and together they have "composed" their magnum opera in three very creative children - an architecture student (go K-State!), an aspiring classical pianist, and a budding writer/journalist. He and his wife relocated from Massachusetts to the Kansas City area in 1997.