Mason Bates / Ralph Vaughan Williams: Children of Adam / Dona nobis pacem
Reference Recordings

This hour-long presentation of choral works by Mason Bates (b. 1977) and Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) works to both composers' advantage, the former benefiting from the relative familiarity of the Vaughan Williams work and the latter invigorated by its pairing with the later creation; the listener benefits, too, of course, in getting the best of both worlds. On this release, the Richmond Symphony performs under conductor Steven Smith; also participating are the 150-voice Richmond Symphony Chorus directed by Erin R. Freeman and, as soloists, soprano Michelle Areyzaga and bass-baritone Kevin Deas. Recorded live at the Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center, Richmond Virginia and with so many sonic elements in play, the recording is a veritable feast for the ears.

An unusual character, Bates is not only an established composer for stage (his The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs won a Grammy Award for “Best Opera Recording”) and screen (2015's The Sea of Trees), but also a DJ who features in his DJ Masonic sets classical music and electronica. Children of Adam, however, is anything but club material. Written in 2017, the work is a celebration of creation that includes poetry by Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg, biblical passages, and Native American texts. Structurally, parts from Whitman's "Children of Adam" appear in the opening and closing sections, with the five in between presenting different perspectives on creation.

Whitman's well-known celebration of the body and sensuality is evidenced at the outset in the chorus's declaration “From my own voice resonant, singing the phallus”; Bates's robust music teems with energy, the fanfare acting as an exuberant prelude. “Psalms 144 & 128” follows, its softer dynamics amplifying the orchestra's colourful timbres (prominently featured is the harp, which assumes the role of the “ten-stringed lyre” mentioned in the text) alongside the hushed chorus, whose words about fertility liken sons in their youth to “well-nurtured plants” and children to “olive shoots around your table.” The high energy of the opening briefly reinstates itself with a brief “I Sing the Body Electric” episode, before the work's central part arrives, a setting of “Tolepe Menenak” (Turtle Island) from the Mataponi Indians of Virginia. Bates evokes both the mystery of the locale in the quiet shimmer of the orchestral writing and conveys quiet grandeur in the singing, the text in this part short compared to most of the others.

Contrasting dramatically in tone from “Tolepe Menenak,” the fifth section is based on two poems by Sandburg, who focuses on creation of an industrial kind in “Prayers of Steel” and “Smoke and Steel.” Even absent those titles, one would still glean from the music the character of the poems' contents in the machine-like rhythms and percussive accents. We return to biblical text for part six in an episode that sees the material shift from darker sonorities associated with the world's creation to a mood of ascendant triumph as life forms emerge. Fittingly, Whitman returns again, with “To the Garden, the World” bringing a life-affirming quality to the closing section.

Though he was something of a late bloomer (his first composition was written when he was thirty), Vaughan Williams ultimately composed nine symphonies, five operas, concertos, and other works. Much like Bates, the so-called “Grand Old Man of English Music” used a variety of sources for the text of Dona Nobis Pacem, which he wrote in 1936 for the centenary of the Huddersfield Choral Society: three poems by Whitman, Latin text from the Roman Catholic Mass, words by biblical prophets, and a speech given by John Bright to the House of Commons during the Crimean War.

At the six-part work's engrossing beginning, Areyzaga's lustrous soprano graces “Agnus Dei,” which merges the soloist and the chorus to stirring effect. Not surprisingly, “Beat! Beat! Drums!” announces a dramatic change in tone, Whitman's “Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow! / Through the windows—through the doors—burst like a ruthless force” mirrored in the aggressiveness of the vocal and instrumental presentation. The intensity subsides, however, for “Reconciliation,” with this time Deas's bass-baritone and the chorus bringing moving resonance to the poet's mournful expressions (“For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead / I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin—I draw near / Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin”). Whitman's invoked again for “Dirge for Two Veterans,” wherein the chorus relays an observer's solemn account of a “sad procession” bringing a dead son and father to their freshly dug double grave. Deas and Areyzaga return for the anguished “The Angel of Death” with Bright's words “The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land” mirroring the music's tone, after which “O man greatly beloved,” its text drawn from multiple biblical sections, concludes the work with a message of peace and goodwill, the orchestra and the singers replicating the spirit of the text.

As mentioned, the two works make a satisfying pair despite their compositional differences and the more than eighty years separating their creation. In spite of that, they're remarkably complementary, due in no small part to the unanimity of vocal and instrumental forces involved; that the writings of Walt Whitman are common to both acts as a powerful connecting thread, too, as does the fact that both composers integrated a variety of textual sources into the respective works.

October 2019