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The Salt Lake Mormon Tabernacle Choir
The Tabernacle Choir, 325
voices strong, is one of the world’s best known, best loved musical organizations. Through radio, television, recordings, motion pictures and concert tours, uncounted millions around the globe are familiar with the
Choir’s special fervor and devotion. It has performed in 25 countries on four continents.
The Choir has been referred to as America’s Choir (Ronald Reagan), a national treasure (George Bush), and the world’s greatest choir
(Eugene Ormandy).
The Tabernacle Choir’s ranks include businessmen, homemakers, educators, government employees and a broad spectrum of other professions
and occupations. Although the Choir is technically not a professional ensemble, its individual members’ credentials are impressive. Most have an extensive singing and choral background. It is a talented,
dedicated, loyal and congenial group of singers with but one common goal: to share their joy and happiness by singing praises to a loving Father in Heaven and lifting the spirits of others through stirring performances of good
music.
The NightPro Symphony Orchestra, joining the Tabernacle Choir and
Soloists in this performance of George Friedric Handel’s masterpiece, draws its talent mainly from Salt Lake City and its environs. This carefully selected ensemble includes a string group of outstanding reliability and
a complement of woodwind, brass and percussion containing many virtuoso performers. In the large choruses, they total nearly ninety musicians.
Ebenezer Prout
He worked, from
an early age until his death, for about sixteen hours everyday, and apart from a brief spell as a schoolmaster, dedicated his entire life to music. Practically self-taught as an organist and pianist, he learned as he went
along, collecting scores (the shilling Messiah was first among them), teaching, playing the organ at a congregational church in east London, composing, editing and writing music criticism. He learned French, German, Italian, Norwegian, was a good chess player and knew most of the bible by heart. He conducted singing classes and choirs, helped his younger students by writing words to the fugues of Bach, and found time to marry and raise a family. His son was christened Louis Beethoven Prout. Professor Prout was also a very wise man, believing in the saving virtues of an industrious life. He held many distinguished positions including professorships at the Royal College, the Royal Academy, and the Guildhall School of Music. His reputation grew, his publications increased in number, and senior posts were offered to him. He never sought them.
The professor’s mind moved with the times, for he even came to like Wagner. His first love was Handel, and almost his last major
task was the editing of Messiah which was published and performed in 1902. Prout conducted an orchestra of 65 and a special London choir numbering about 300, which was played in front of the orchestra as in Handel’s day. A pianist accompanied some of the recitatives. The press found this performance “on the whole praiseworthy.” It set a pattern for large-scale Messiah concerts in which the chorus was solidly backed by strings, woodwind, brass and timpani, all welded together by the massive tones of the organ.
Would Prout have approved? Partially, perhaps, because he was a good enough scholar to assess with care the errors that had crept into
previous editions, notably those of Walsh in London and of the German composer Johann Adam Hiller, whose text Mozart took over. A genealogical chart of Messiah editions would require a very large sheet of paper – and the result would not always be too clear.
One problem that Prout had to face was the acute lack of harpsichordists capable of fleshing out the shorthand of Handel’s figured
basses. In the Bach Choir’s London season of 1897, their conductor, Sir Charles Stanford, had taken a step in the right direction by using organ continuo for the choruses and harpsichord continuo for the arias.
Since this could not achieve universal recognition and approval because of the shortage of instruments and personnel, Prout decided to replace the harpsichord by a piano in a few recitatives, and by a group of woodwind
(sometimes brass) in the arias.
Private criticism of this work raised the matter of singers being overpowered by instruments. Accompaniments for the solos were
texturally thick, and the audience’s attention was drawn away from the soloist to a chirping flute or a chortling bassoon. But now that the harpsichord has kitted its way into musical lives, the natural thing to do is
to return to it. Prout’s life spanned an age that moved inexorably from a time when early music was mainly for antiquarian societies to a time when the movement began in earnest with an epoch-making concert in what is
now the Wigmore Hall. In 1905 when Thomas Beecham was at the beginning of his career, Prout was almost at the end. It was Beecham who, using Prout’s orchestration, promoted its excellence and thoroughness by
performing it year after year in London and the provinces, especially in the midlands and the north where the choirs were so magnificent. But the south was not forgotten, as is shown by a Messiah in Bristol just before Christmas 1928, when the choir numbered some 400 voices and Beecham conducted the entire work from memory. In this way the old traditions joined with the new, and it was conductors like Beecham, Malcolm Sargent and Henry Wood, who in England continued to make use of Prout’s remarkable score.
Charles Jennens, the Librettist
Books of words, whether for
oratorio or opera, often make painful reading if they are read at all. Comparatively few rise above the usual level, and there are not many really good librettists. But in Charles Jennens, a literary and musical man
of leisure, Handel found a staunch ally and a fearless critic. Over the course of a long life he caused copies to be made of most of Handel’s important scores, and this large and important collection later passed to the
Earl of Aylesford and was dispersed in 1918. Much of it found its was to the Royal Library (British Library) or the Manchester Central Library. Jennens enjoyed arranging domestic performances off Handel, amassing not only
the scores but sets of parts suitable for a medium-sized ensemble.
Handel put sufficient trust in Jennens’s musical knowledge to let him make emendations to the score of Saul, and he esteemed him highly
enough as a friend to leave him a sizeable bequest in his will. The universal appeal of Messiah reflects essential facets of religious thought common to both men. They were seculars with a considerable private regard for the sacred; they were men of the world with a certain vision of heaven which they knew how to communicate to the masses. Just as Handel’s harmonies were basically simple but potentially sublime, so Jennens’s ability to select and refine brought great power to his literary thrust, and it was this thrust that made Messiah what it is.
Consider for a moment the aria “But who may abide the day of His coming, and who shall stand when He appeareth? For He is like a
refiner’s fire.” This verse from Malachi, twelfth and last of the books by the Minor Prophets, continues with the words “and like fullers’ soap”. We have already heard about soap operas, but if Jennens had not stopped
when he did we might even have had a soap oratorio, for the effect both then and now would run the risk of bathos. Malachi emphasized thoroughness: not just ordinary fire, but the burning intensity of that used to purify
metal; and not just ordinary toilet soap, but the rough soap used at the laundry. St. Matthew reechoes the same prophecy: “He will thoroughly purge his floor . . . and will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
The selection made by Jennens is more pointed and powerful.
Their treatment of it combines respect with devotion, and the fact that Handel set the complete libretto in the unbelievably short space
of 23 days, subsequently putting it on one side, shows that for once he was not thinking consciously of a commercial possibility but unknowingly of a spiritual certainty. As Julian Livingstone Herbage has written: “It
was not, like the usual Passion music, a theatrical narrative of the martyrdom and ascension of Christ. . . . The text generally avoids narrative detail, and even its most dramatic moments are never theatrical. The
loftiness of its outlook has something of the classical architecture and noble beauty of Greek art, but its simple and direct expression provides a softening element of humanity which conveys a divine revelation in both
universal and personal terms.”
John Mosely
1933-1995
Producer and Chief Recording Engineer
This incredible recording is, sadly, John Mosely’s final and greatest achievement in a lifetime career as a recording engineer and producer. John lost his life in an October 1995 plane crash.
John Mosely never lost the vision of making a landmark recording of Handel’s Messiah, using authentic 18th century performance techniques while employing cutting edge digital recording technology. His unwavering dedication to that goal is the single greatest factor in bringing about this recording.
Coming from a musical family, John Mosely built a solid and brilliant reputation on his ability to integrate every musical and technical
demand. Beginning with the introduction of the stereophonic sound system, his work in England and America brought him wide recognition as recording engineer, inventor of sound and recording systems and as author of
technical papers.
Among his many awards is that of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
Sir David Willcocks
Sir David Willcocks, a father-figure of choral
music, faithfully followed the sounding steps that led him to world fame via the cathedrals of Salisbury and Worcester, and the chapel of Henry VI’s foundation at King’s College in Cambridge. As organist, choir
director, lecturer, adjudicator, editor and administrator he has given of his best at all times and in all places. Two appointment, above others, may be said to have crowned his reputation: the conductorship of the Bach
Choir (London) since 1960, and the ten years spent as Director of the Royal College of Music. He is familiar to music-lovers through concerts, radio, television and records, and through his many compositions and editions
of church music and carols’ honorary doctorates in music and letters have been granted him in England, America and Canada. He has sung in, played for, or conducted Handel’s Messiah for almost seventy years.
Dr. Jerold Ottley
Dr. Jerold Ottley, since 1975 director of the Salt
Lake Mormon Tabernacle Choir, is largely responsible for choice of repertory and training, as well as planning the musical aspect of its broadcasts and tours. He has given support to the Messiah project through his
preparatory work with the choir.
Lorna Anderson
Lorna Anderson, born in Glasgow and trained at the
Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, cultivates a wide repertoire of opera, oratorio and song and is making her mark throughout Europe and the Far East. Best known of all are her unforgettable interpretations of
Purcell, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Brahms, and her widely-acclaimed performances of Schubert, Stravinsky and Britten. At home in many styles, she brings to Messiah a profound understanding and beauty of expression.
Paul Esswood
Paul Esswood began his musical career at the Royal
College of Music and Westminster Abbey, and is now a professor and honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music. A past master of Renaissance and Baroque music, he has made notable and immense contributions to the modern
repertory, for both Penderecki and Philip Glass have written operas to frame the unique tone-color of his voice. One of many high points in his career was the Zurich cycle of Monteverdi operas.
Igor Kipnis
Igor Kipnis plays an important role in harpsichord
consciousness as far as the musical public is concerned, for his concerts, recordings and media appearances are equaled only by his many and notable contributions to education and publishing. He has received six
“Grammy” nominations for his records, and an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters (Illinois Wesleyan University) for his scholarly achievements.
John Longhurst
John Longhurst is one of the three official
organists to the Salt Lake Mormon Tabernacle Choir. He also plans and participates in the Tabernacle’s daily recital programs. John Longhurst received his doctorate from Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New
York. His skill as an organist has been of inestimable and essential value during the preparatory work of Messiah.
Neil Mackie
Neil Mackie, a native of Aberdeen and a graduate of the
Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and the Royal College of Music, deploys an instinctive mastery of classical roles in works by Purcell, Bach, Handel, Mozart and Haydn, besides bring insight and inspiration to
Stravinsky, Tippett, Britten (notably the Serenade), and Peter Maxwell Davies, who has written him into four operas. His many records bear constant witness to the breadth and humanity of his musical outlook.
Stephen Roberts
Stephen Roberts studied at the Royal College of
Music where he decided to embrace the career of an operatic, oratorio and concert soloist. An outstanding interpreter of early music, his tastes also range widely over masterpieces such as Bach’s Passions, Gluck’s
Armide, Mahler’s Eight Symphony, Beethoven’s Ninth, Vaughan William’s Sea Symphony and Elgar’s The Apostles. His outstanding vocal powers have also been heard in works by Orff, Tippett, Delius, Stravinsky and
Penderecki.
Denis Stevens
Denis Stevens, consultant musicologist, has held two
Distinguished Professorships in America and divides his time between teaching, research and performance. Editor of the first volume of Musica Britannica in 1951, he has since then continued to produce recordings and
editions which have thrown light on problems of performance practice, notably in the areas of Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music. He has been awarded Commander of the British Empire by the Queen.
History of the Salt Lake Tabernacle
In 1847, at the time of the arrival of the first Mormon Pioneers in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, Brigham Young organized a choir to sing in their improvised “tabernacle”-with
adobe blocks and poles supporting a roof of leaves and branches-on what is now known as Temple Square. In 1863, only 16 years after their first meeting in the Bowery, the Pioneers started to build a new auditorium, which
developed into one of the finest and most unusual buildings on the globe. Completed in 1867, the unique oval dome shaped building, known as the Salt Lake Tabernacle, became the home of the so called Mormon Tabernacle
choir. The roof is fashioned after bridge construction, supported by wooden arches which span the width of the building. Steel was not available in this area. The timbers are latticed and pinned together with
large wooden pegs and rawhide thongs. The roof rests like an enormous inverted bowl on 44 columns of cut sandstone. The acoustic qualities of this structure are exceptional for a building of this size, so that a pin
dropped at one end can be clearly heard 170 feet away. Inside, the columns and benches are made of white pine. The columns are finished to resemble marble and the benches are finished to resemble oak. The Tabernacle
seats approximately 6,000 people, is 250 feet long, 150 feet wide, and its roof rises 80 feet.
Great
artists of the world have performed here and leading lecturers have spoken, including outstanding clergymen of many faiths and nearly every president of the United States since the turn of the century.
Also, the organ is a
national treasure. Behind the construction of the original organ is a history of artistic craftsmanship and perseverance in the face of great obstacles. Joseph Ridges, an organ builder from Australia, fashioned
pipes from tall, straight-grained pine which was hauled 300 miles to Salt Lake City by ox-drawn wagons. In the beginning, the organ was powered by hand-pumped bellows, later by water power, and today by electricity. Now
comprising 11,623 pipes, the organ has 206 ranks of voices and the console has five manuals. Recitals are held daily, and every Sunday morning the Salt Lake Tabernacle is transformed into a recording studio for the weekly
live-broadcast “Music and the Spoken Word”. It was an honor to be able to use the facilities of this historic auditorium for the recording of Handel’s Messiah. |
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