By Joel Marshall ’24
On April 22nd, I had the privilege of directing the Thomas More College Choir’s annual Easter concert at Ste. Marie’s Church in Manchester, NH. An incredible amount of time and effort on the part of our singers culminated in an evening of classic sacred music interspersed with Scripture and poetry readings all in keeping with the Easter season.
As a space, Ste. Marie’s is visually stunning, and the acoustics are extremely well-suited to the sacred music we were performing. When you add this setting to the stream-of-consciousness format we use for our concerts (inspired by lessons and carols), it allows us as performers—along with the audience—to enjoy an immersive experience in keeping with the liturgical season. The program included polyphony by the three great Renaissance masters, Tallis, Byrd, and Palestrina, as well as pieces by other composers. Poems such as “As Kingfishers Catch Fire” by Gerard Manley Hopkins and “Death Be Not Proud” by John Donne were also featured. For me, the concert allowed for an experience of the Easter season as an ever-present reality.
Over the last year, the choir has reached a new standard of performance inspired by the style of the great collegiate choirs. Each vocal part now has its own distinctive sound, leading to the group as a whole possessing a greater sense of nuance and character. Every semester, our younger singers come to a more mature understanding of what is involved in the production of liturgical music. With public performances, vocalists come to understand that the collective effort necessary to achieve a certain level of performance is also necessary to make the overall production a reality.
Each year, I see the choir grow and improve in leaps and bounds—sometimes with a speed that surprises both me and the members themselves. There have been many times that newer singers hear the more advanced produce a difficult line of music in the style we strive to achieve, expressing doubts that they will ever be able to reach that level, only to find themselves producing the same sound a couple of months later.
While all our concerts so far have consisted of an hour of musical pieces interspersed with readings, the tone of the Easter concerts is very different from those of Advent, though in a complimentary way. I see every Easter concert as the spiritual successor to that year’s Advent concert. Another way of looking at it is that the Advent concert is a question, while the Easter concert is an answer. Some of the first words sung in our fall performance are, “Tell us, art thou he that should come to reign over thy people Israel?” The Advent texts are all about uncertainty and hope together—a kind of hesitant longing regarding something or someone who is coming, but who is not known and is certainly not understood.
Easter, on the other hand, shows us the drama of God reigning from the cross, both in fulfillment and total contradiction of our expectations. It is fitting that the concert is held just before the semester ends and spring leads us into summer. Many of the readings were selected to be evocative of the shift from the winter of Lent to the spring of Easter. The music was also chosen to convey the journey of Passiontide. We begin with the plainchant setting of “The Royal Banners Forward Go” (Vexilla regis), which is for Passion Sunday, with Tallis’s “If ye Love Me” standing for Maundy Thursday, Byrd’s “Ave verum” for Good Friday, and Palestrina’s “Sicut cervus” and “Sitivit anima” for Holy Saturday. One of the last movements is an Easter piece I composed called “Christus resurrexit.” The shorter pieces and readings serve as transitions between these more dramatic moments, which offers a greater sense of unity.
Overall, I was extremely pleased not only with the choir’s performance, but by the attitude and sense of continuity they were able to create both within and between this year’s two concerts. While I am looking forward to growing the choir toward a level at which we can provide more frequent performances, I am especially enthusiastic about our preparation for the Advent concert this fall.
You can listen to the recording of the 2023 Easter concert here.
For further reading:
“In the Bleak Midwinter”:The Thomas More College Choir Opens to the Public
