Chorale’s happy task is to live up to the standard set by our partners-- what an inspiring challenge!

Take the time to find what you love, and work on that; don’t waste energy on pieces to which you are not committed. You will lose interest; and your choir, and your audience, will sense your lack of engagement.

Philosopher and poet Georg Friedrich Daumer (1800-1875) was Brahms’ favorite poet; the composer set about twenty of Daumer’s poems, in addition to the thirty-two contained in the two sets of waltzes.

Chronic sleep deprivation is a serious thing.

The single most important difference between singers and instrumentalists is, that singers express through words. The sounds of words, and the meanings of words. The meanings of individual words, and the ideas expressed by many words strung together.

What's in a name? "Chorale Goes Rogue"

Our working title for Chorale’s upcoming concert has been, from the beginning, “Chorale Goes Rogue.” The theme preceded both the repertoire and the venue; one of our board members half-seriously suggested that we surprise our audience by singing some secular music, and the title was born.

It has been an endless thrill, an ever-intensifying emotional journey, to work on Bruckner's Mass in E minor these past three months; and no amount of deconstruction, nor reading and consideration of critical commentary, has undermined that initial infatuation.

At the same time that the “serious” music world in Germany was being revolutionized, radicalized, and torn apart by the New German School, the Roman Catholic Church was experiencing its own musical cataclysm, called the Cecilian movement.

Over and over I read about the Wagner wing versus the Brahms wing; the labels, though general and over-simple, really do stick.

Johannes Brahms is one of the major figures in Western music, and his compositions, and ideas, must figure prominently in any discussion of Bruckner.

Chorale's March 16 concert, though focused largely on Bruckner’s E minor Mass, will also include some a cappella motets by composers whose ideas, goals, and aesthetics were far different from his.

We are fascinated with biography, factual and fanciful.

“In the history of European art, Bruckner is one of those very rare geniuses endowed with the power of giving expression to the supernatural and of rendering the divine present in our human world.”

Prior to this winter, Chorale has known Bruckner only through a handful of short, a cappella motets, which are fairly conservative and accessible; now, however, we are grappling with one of his major works, Mass No. 2 in E minor, meeting the simpleton god head-on.

"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized."

As is usual with Chorale, we experience a sudden surge of understanding and competence as we near the concert-- all those weeks seem suddenly to be paying off, and we feel comfortable with, even exhilarated by, the repertoire, and each other.