Thank God That's Over

Die Frau and I sing in the Saint Joseph Community Chorus.

"But Herr Vogler, you and die Frau live in KC. Why do you drive an hour every week for this chorus? Surely there must be one closer," you ask. True. We first started dating as members of this chorus so we have kind of a sentimental connection to it. Additionally it's directed by the choir director from our undergraduate college for whom we both have a great deal of respect.

A week ago Sunday (10/29) we had a concert. It was one of those pull out all the stops concerts where we had an organ (the concert was in a church with a really nice organ; actually it was the church at which I was paid to sing for 4 of my 6 undergraduate years) and an orchestra. Luckily there were no dancers.

Now a little background. Early this summer an anonymous donor gave a large sum of money to the chorus to present this concert. So somewhere along the line someone heard a new cantata by Mark Hayes and said, "HEY! I'VE GOT A GREAT IDEA! LET'S PERFORM THIS!". But wait, there's more. They also decided that we should do more-or-less an entire concert dedicated to his...uh...music. And "HEY! WE CAN HAVE HIM COME UP HERE AND PLAY PIANO, TOO!!! THAT'LL BE GREAT!!!"

For those of you that don't know who Mark Hayes is, consider yourselves lucky. His music is supposed to be liturgical but is in reality awful schlock that tries to be spiritually deep where really it's just trite and pedantic (and annoying to those of us that feel it's merely superficial and pandering). We performed several of his anthems and a new cantata, a Te Deum (or tedium if you prefer). Basically it was enough to make my head feel like a tomato in a microwave. To make matters worse, all I heard during the Te Deum was warmed-over John Rutter and even a snippet of "Think of Me" from Phantom of the Opera. There's nothing spiritual about it. It is merely self-serving and says, "Listen to how pretty I am". There's no glorification of the Creator of the Universe anywhere in this music, just glorification in the creator of the music. All things being equal I'd rather have performed some Rutter.

Anyway, I feel very strongly about the programming and there just doesn't seem to be enough new or interesting music being presented. For example, we also performed Randall Thompson's Frostiana set for chorus with piano, orchestra or band this past weekend. It's a nice series of Robert Frost settings (a couple of them are completely uninteresting, but others are good), but I've performed with this group six out of the last eight years and this was the third time(!) we'd performed it (though only the first time with orchestra).

Anyway, for more than just artistic reasons die Frau and I feel as though our time with this group has run its course. We just don't have the time or the resources (not only are we expending fuel, we have to pay dues, too!) to devote to it anymore. In a way it's sad, but we all have to move on sometime and this seems to be the time. So after Carmina Burana in the spring that'll be it.