Choral Music
I have been writing choral music since I was a teenager. My first attempts were pretty pathetic, but then again I had had no formal training in writing them at this time. I just loved choirs and singing in them. When I was at UCLA and getting that training I started writing more and ran into a piece by Randall Thompson while singing in the Rodger Wagner Chorale. It had only one word as lyric, Alleluia.
It was instant love. I was also familiar with the group the Hi-los and their use of 4 chords, but Thompson with his flowing 6ths and counterpoint raised it to Art. I wrote several choral pieces during this time. “More Than Conquerors” is still one of my favorite compositions, but the rock world called and I soon put that writing aside. I still wrote choral pieces over the years, mainly for my choir, and some of them were published. Sometime before I retired after 28 years at Brentwood Presbyterian Church, I wrote a piece on a poem by Mechthild of Magdeburg, a 13th century mystic. I was so moved by her words, the emotion she stirred in my soul and the fact that she had written these poems as a woman, a nun, in this male dominated environment where women were treated as nonentities blew me away. What courage she must have possessed. I used the 4th chords and flowing lines of my youth to paint pictures of how the words affected me. I decided to use the term “Choral Poem” to describe them. Not in the traditional since of a poem set to music, but rather as a “Tone Poem” or Symphonic Poem” in the manner of Franz Liszt. In other words a through composed choral piece that follows the feelings and emotions the words evoke. I wound up writing 4 of them so I decided to publish it as one 12 minute work which I call “Quadrilogy.” They are very dear to my heart for all of the reasons I stated above. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did writing them.