Catalog

This recording of the choral music of Margaret Meier features A SOCSA Quilt, which details the journey, through words and music, of survivors of childhood sexual abuse from the distressing memories of post-traumatic shock through healing and recovery. Margaret Meier received her Bachelor's degree from Eastman and her Ph.D. in composition from UCLA. She has taught at a number of universities and is currently on the faculty at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California. This CD represents the core of her musical passion: music that expresses life experience and that celebrates connection to the love and care of God.

Andrew Earle Simpson's A Crown of Stars is a wedding oratorio celebrating the universality of human love and was commissioned by the Cantate Chamber Singers while Simpson was the ensemble's Composer-in-Residence. This is the world premiere recording. Mr. Simpson's music follows four principal threads of interest: humanistic music; music for silent films; theatrical music; and folk music. He has created a prodigious array of works for the concert and operatic stage, which have been performed throughout the U.S., Europe and South America. Russian composer Alfred Schnittke's (1934-1998) Requiem evokes vivid images, perhaps because it began as a stage work. It is based on music from a piano quintet that Schnittke dedicated to his mother just after her death.

About Absolute Joy Anthony Newman writes: Absolute Joy was written over a period of ten months in 1996-97, using texts of the Jewish Bible, the New Testament, and the Book of Enoch. Conceived in three parts, the dramatic structure comprises angelic accounts in the Torah, texts dealing with the fallen angels, and messengers of the Most High in the Christian Bible. It also includes quotations from the English poets John Milton, William Shakespeare, and William Blake. The work was premiered at the Presbyterian Church, Mount Kisco, New York, as part of Mary Jane Newman's Candlelight Concert Series, on April 26, 1998 - with the same forces as appear on this recording. I have felt the presence of the Divine at crucial times in my life, in human form and in more undefinable phenomena, what some might term angelic. I wanted to honor these great beings of light and power with Absolute Joy . I am also humbly dedicating this work to the memory of an angel of compassion, Mother Teresa of Calcutta." For three decades, Anthony Newman has been in the public eye as one of the country's leading keyboard players, and as a prodigiously active composer, conductor and recording artist. Mary Jane Newman's many talents as conductor, harpsichord and Organ soloist are widely recognized in the U.S. and Europe. She made her New York debut in 1986 in Lincoln Center's prestigious Great Performers series at Alice Tully Hall.

2008 will mark the 150th anniversary of the internationally renowned Harvard Glee Club, the oldest college chorus in America. Originally founded by students to sing college songs and glees, it was in 1912, under the dynamic leadership of Dr. Archibald T. Davison, that the Club developed a repertoire of distinction and gained its reputation. Under the direction of Jameson Marvin since 1978, the Harvard Glee Club has only enhanced its reputation, continuing to draw upon six centuries of repertoire, including secular and sacred material. They have demonstrated a particular expertise for American choral music, and this retrospective, covering more than 20 years of performances, serves as a perfect example of why the Harvard Glee Club has been lauded throughout its history.

The twentieth-century American composers chosen for this program of choral music represent diverse styles and span almost 100 years; what they have in common is a sure sense for vocal writing, a preference for nontraditional but tonal harmony, and a delight in good poetry. The Composers: Halsey Stevens has taught at the University of California since 1948. He is an expert on Bartok and has composed a wealth of vocal and instrumental music. Charles Ives, New England's quirky, original insurance man-composer, began composing when he was 12 and held a job as church organist when he was only 14. Samuel Barber's gift for melody and the unabashed romanticism of some of his best-known works have made him one of the most popular mid-twentieth-century composers. Alan Hovhaness is an American composer of Armenian and Scottish descent. A prolific writer in a variety of forms, he is known for mystical works with an Eastern or Oriental flavor. Randall Thompson taught at the University of California at Berkley, Princeton, and Harvard, and was director of the Curtis Institute of Music. Ronald Perera studied with Leon Kirchner, Randall Thompson, and Mario Davidovsky. He has won awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and ASCAP and teaches at Smith College. Matthew Harris, born in 1956, studied at Juilliard, Harvard, and New England Conservatory with Elliott Carter, Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt, and Donald Martino. The recipient of many prizes and commissions, he is represented on record by Opus One. Irving Fine - teacher, conductor, respected and widely programmed composer of chamber, orchestral, and choral music - was educated at Harvard and later taught there and at Brandeis University. A contemporary of Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland, he died prematurely in 1962.

This collection of music for solo voice and chorus includes compositions by American composers Aaron Copland, John Duke, Jackson Hill, Richard Hundley, William Duckworth, Rudolph Palmer and Lee Hoiby. Several of the works were written expressly for D'Anna Fortunato (the mezzo-soprano soloist) and the Rooke Chapel Choir. Since her debut in 1971 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Fortunato has appeared as soloist with the New York Philharmonic, the orchestras of Cleveland and Louisville, and the Detroit, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, and Minnesota symphonies. Ms. Fortunato has been featured in leading operatic roles with the New York City, Glimmerglass, Kentucky and Connecticut operas, as well as the Opera Company of Boston, Monadnock Festival, and Rochester Opera Theater. Andrew Porter of The New Yorker called her a "Handelian of crisp accomplishment," and Leighton Kerner of The Village Voice proclaimed her a "mezzo-soprano of profound musicality and technical aplomb." She has recorded on the Harmonia Mundi, Nonesuch, MusicMasters and Vox labels. Her album of songs by Amy Beach was voted "Best Record of the Year" by the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and New York Magazine. The Rooke Chapel Choir of Bucknell University, under the direction of William Payn, has gained international recognition for its creative interpretations of some of the most significant twentieth-century American sacred repertory.

Here is Albany Records' tribute to Randall Thompson in his centennial year. There can never be too many recordings of this wonderful composer's music. His relatively small collection of works is dominated by a cappella choral music, most of it composed to English texts, all of it characterized by splendid craftsmanship and painstaking workmanship, with vocal lines gratefully shaped and rewarding to sing. Not surprisingly, his music is oftentimes classified as neo-classic in its inspiration, a personalized blend of 16th and 17th century contrapuntal techniques with a conservative yet recognizably 20th century harmonic base. His stated goal throughout his career was to create music of sensibility and good taste, which both musicians and audiences would appreciate. He favored simple melodies and harmonies over abstract modernist styles, which he felt to be antithetical to the natural use of the human voice. "Writing for voices has a purifying and refining effect on any composer's work," said Thompson in describing his approach to music. "Choral music makes terrifyingly simple demands. Good texts for choral music must be based on universality of appeal... After choosing a text, then sing it a thousand ways to yourself until you latch on to a tune. Let the tune and the words develop the form, (and when the composition is complete) sing every part yourself. If you can't sing it yourself, there is something wrong."

The custom of teaching Bible stories by means of sacred drama is an old and venerable one. Angels follows this tradition. Working with librettist John Vorrasi, William Ferris has created a striking portrait of the Archangels Michael, Uriel, Gabriel and Raphael. During the summer of 1988 William Ferris was commissioned by Keynote Arts Associates of New York to write a short work for a chorus and orchestra of young performers. The only condition stipulated was that the orchestra be "Classical" in its layout and size so that the text could be clearly articulated and readily understood and enjoyed by listeners. "I was irresistibly drawn to the delightful Modern Music text by the 18th century American William Billings" writes composer Ferris. "The words are a composer's dream. The energy, color and rhythmic vitality of the text as well as the endless opportunities it provided for word-painting with vocal, harmonic and orchestral effects made it a sheer joy to set to music. The form of my composition is easy to grasp and follows text in all of its leaps, bounds and commands!" Ferris is the first American composer to teach at the Vatican. His Holiness Pope John Paul II conferred a Papal knighthood upon him in 1989 and Radio Vatican broadcast a concert of his music worldwide. In 1971 he founded the William Ferris Chorale, an ensemble dedicated to celebrating music of the 20th century. For seven years he was organist of Chicago's Holy Name Cathedral. During Fulton J. Sheen's episcopacy as Bishop of Rochester, New York, Ferris was organist and choirmaster at Sacred Heart Cathedral. Sir William Walton said: "What a splendid chorus the Chorale is. How lustily they sang. It is really first class!"

David Ashley White's secular and sacred compositions are widely performed and published and he has received numerous commissions. Recordings of his music appear on the Gothic and Zephyr labels. In addition to the extensive publication of White's choral and instrumental music, his hymns are included in a number of hymnals, including those of the Episcopal, Methodist, and United Church of Christ. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, David White serves as director of the University of Houston Moores School of Music. The core of the music on this recording duplicates the repertoire from a concert honoring the composer at the University of Houston and focuses on his secular music, although some of the works employ sacred texts. The music represents a wide range of White's output offering amid the diversity unifying elements of lyricism and expressiveness.

This performance was recorded live on January 22, 1995, at the Cathedral Church of Saint Paul, Tremont Street, Boston, Massachusetts. How does a performance like this happen? Genuinely dedicated people research the literature. They find music they feel worthwhile. They convince others of its worth and then rehearse and prepare it to the best of their resources. This is the only composition they work on. They perform it, make a tape and send it to Albany Records. We are impressed by the dedicated effort that has gone into the project, the musical integrity of the forces involved, and of the commitment of the musicians to the music. All this comes through in the performance. We then make the decision to bring it to you. The Beach Mass has only one other performance in the catalog and this Stow performance presents a very different approach to the music. The Grand Mass comes from Amy Beach's most productive period, the same period that produced the Gaelic Symphony and the wonderful Piano Concerto. Its premiere was in Boston on February 7, 1892. It was given by the Handel and Haydn Society and was the first time it had ever performed anything by a woman. In 1896, the Boston Symphony gave the premiere of her symphony. The Grand Mass is a large, romantic work, sure to appeal to a large audience. The forces on this disc do a great job of conveying the stature and magnitude of the music.

Composer Larry Bell has been awarded the Rome Prize, fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, and the Charles Ives Award. His music has been widely performed in the United Sates and abroad by internationally known orchestras and ensembles. Bell received his DMA from The Juilliard School, working in composition with Vincent Persichetti and Roger Sessions. He is chair of music theory at the New England Conservatory of Music Division of Preparatory and Continuing Education. This disc of Bell's song cycles begins with The Immortal Beloved based on the three letters Beethoven wrote to Antonie Brentano in July 1812. According to the composer, "The music was conceived from the point of view of the recipient of the letters.... Four Sacred Songs were designed as studies for a larger commissioned orchestral work entitled Sacred Symphonies. Each song is a setting of a familiar hymn tune text." Songs of Time and Eternity are based on a grouping of poems by Emily Dickinson on this theme. William Blake's late 18th-century Songs of Innocence and Experience "...is a famous example of an adult's perspective of the child. The child in these poems is rebellious, joyful, persistently playful, Christ-like, and always natural..." The work is written for children's chorus and orchestra.

This live recording of the Atlanta Music Festival 2016 comprises a unique combination of music, literature, and history, addressing the African American journey from slavery to an as yet unachieved dream of a "more perfect union." Beginning with Atlanta school children singing Lift Every Voice and Sing, the CD proceeds with music and spoken dialogue extolling "liberty and justice for all" through the words of Barack Obama, James Dickey, Robert Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Langston Hughes. Of special note are the performances of the beloved Jessye Norman singing songs by Duke Ellington and spirituals. The Atlanta Music Festival has its origins in the Atlanta Colored Music Festival, begun in 1910, four years after the Atlanta race riots, by Rev. Henry Hugh Proctor to promote racial reconciliation through the arts.

Composer Bradley Ellingboe says that the central premise of StarSong is that the atoms that make up our bodies — and the stars themselves — are immeasurably old. They existed before the combined into the unique form that makes us humans, and all these atoms and molecules and electrons vibrate, just like sound and light. The work is in 12 movements that include an overture and 11 texts set to music. Ellingboe has had a wide-ranging career in the world of singing, including composing, as a soloist, a conductor, scholar, and teacher. He served as the Composer-in-Residence for Albany Pro Music for the 2020-2023 seasons. Albany Pro Musica is the preeminent choral ensemble in New York’s Capital Region, and is know for its exceptional technical competency, artistry, and relevant programming. Conductor José Daniel Flores-Caraballo is the widely acclaimed conductor of Albany Pro Musica. A trained organist and celebrated choral and orchestral conductor, he served as Dean of Academic Affairs at the Conservatory of Music in San Juan. The stunning art on the cover was done by Carlos Flores.

Influenced by music he heard in the synagogue as a young child, composer Burton Beerman had never infused any of this influence into his compositions until he met Philip Markowicz, a living Holocaust survivor and Torah scholar. The fruit of this association is Tikvah, a chamber oratorio that sets Markowicz's life and philosophy as well as his Torah insights to music. Tikvah is the Hebrew word for hope and hope was key to Mr. Markowicz's survival. Performed by his granddaughter, Cantor Andrea Markowicz with the Red Clay Saxophone Quartet and the Uzee Brown Society of Choraliers, with Philip Markowicz as narrator, Tikvah is a powerful, emotional and timely work, touching on the big issues of life, love, death, survival, meaning, existence, faith, morality, happiness, and tragedy.

Amy Beach was a member first of Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Boston and later of St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church in New York. Early in the century, a movement had begun in Oxford to renew in the Anglican church the Catholic traditions of the ancient past. The Church restored the ancient practice of singing the liturgy for the services and designed the rituals of worship to express the awe and mystery of the Christian faith. Choirs proliferated and there was a great demand for new liturgical music and anthems. During the years of Beach's marriage to Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, her publisher issued 14 separate pieces, including most of the music contained on this wonderful CD. The origin of The Canticle of the Sun is interesting. In 1924, she went to the MacDowell Colony. Here, she came across the text of St. Francis of Assisi's Canticle of the Sun. In a 1943 interview published in The Etude, she told this story. "I took it up and read it over - and the only way I can describe what happened as that it jumped at me and struck me, most forcibly! As if from dictation, I jotted down the notes of my Canticle. In less than five days the entire work was done." The first performance of the work with Organ accompaniment took place on December 8, 1928 at St. Bartholomew's in New York. The Toledo Choral Society, performing with the Chicago Symphony, gave the premiere of The Canticle with Orchestra on May 13, 1930. "The Canticle of the Sun by Mrs. H.H. A. Beach proved the sensation of the evening. This biblical hymn of praise and jubilation, set in a glorious musical expression of majestic melody... literally brought the audience to its feet in a desire to honor the composer."

Margaret Garwood, like many earlier composers, is essentially self-taught. She passed the requirements for a Bachelor's degree in music by examination, and now holds a graduate degree in composition. She is greatly indebted to composers Julia Smith, Louise Talma, and especially Miriam Gideon for their support. While she has written several instrumental chamber works, the majority of her output is for voices, and includes four operas, numerous song cycles, and works for combined chorus and orchestra. Her operas have received fully staged productions in New York, Philadelphia and on the West Coast. They include The Trojan Women, The Nightingale and the Rose, Rappaccini's Daughter, and an opera for children entitled Joringel and the Songflower. She has written the librettos to all her own operas, with the exception of the first one. She is presently working on an opera based on Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.

Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) is today recognized as a leading symphonic composer of the Viennese school in the direct lineage of Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert. Nine of his 11 symphonies are central to the late Romantic orchestral repertory, with the three mature masses and Te Deum representing the final flowering of the Austro-German symphonic choral tradition as exemplified by the festive mass-oratorios of Haydn and Schubert. A less familiar side of Bruckner's work is found in his many smaller occasional pieces for choir, some with instrumental accompaniment, all of which, in contrast to the symphonies, take only a few minutes in performance. These short choral works, both sacred and secular, date from all periods of Bruckner's creative life, which is to say from his first known work as a child of 11, to the last completed opus in 1893. In many cases, the motets and choruses show a development of Bruckner's skill and imagination paralleling that seen in his better-known symphonies.

The Counterpoint Chorale and the Vermont Symphony Brass Quintet gave their first holiday concert in 2003 and, after countless requests, here is their first CD. It begins with a 50th anniversary performance of the late Daniel Pinkham's marvelous Christmas Cantata and continues through a bright and joyful collection of traditional tunes and discoveries. Christmas in Vermont is a feast for your ears and a gift for your heart.

Essential Voices USA conducted by Judith Clurman performs choral music for Christmas including Illumination by Pierre Jalbert; The Snow by Bill Cutter; and a superlative arrangement of favorite Christmas carols for chorus and string quartet. Titled Christmas Joy, the work includes Silent Night; Hark! The Herald Angels Sing; Angels We Have Heard on High; O Come, O Come, Emmanuel; O Come, All Ye Faithful; and Joy to the World.

The joy we feel in anticipating the sun's return after the winter solstice is greatly magnified by the spiritual light that comes with Christmas. This recording, Christmas Joy in Latvia, is a collection of new musical works to enrich the season's array of colors. The essence of the CD is expressed by its title: it highlights age-old values in a contemporary fashion. The old world and its traditions change with each new year.

The Master Chorale of Washington (formerly the Paul Hill Chorale) has attracted the praise of critics nationwide through over 200 performances at the Kennedy Center, American and European tours, and national radio and television broadcasts. Since 1969, the Chorale has performed with the National Symphony Orchestra under Howard Mitchell, Antal Dorati, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Julius Rudel, Neville Marriner and Mstislav Rostropovich. In 1971, the Chorale was featured in the inaugural concerts of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, and performs an annual series of concerts in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. There are 140 singers in the group, including a professional core. In June 1999, the Chorale was awarded the prestigious Margaret Hillis Achievement Award for Choral Excellence by Chorus America.

A disc of first recordings, the Bernstein is presented in the original narrative context, while the Moyse is a 2002 Counterpoint commission. These two works are complimented with Castelnuovo-Tedesco's spirit of flamenco and the jazzy swing idiom of the Levi. Founded by Robert De Cormier in 2000, Counterpoint is dedicated to performing choral chamber music of diverse cultures with an emphasis on rarely performed works, unique arrangements and the work of contemporary composers.

Robert de Cormier, a graduate of Juilliard, acted as music director of the New York Choral Society for seventeen years. His other conducting engagements have taken him from Broadway and opera to the Berkshire Choral Institute, the Zimriya World Assembly of Choirs in Israel and numerous tours throughout the United States and Europe with the famed Robert de Cormier Singers. He has also been musical arranger and director for Harry Belafonte and Peter, Paul and Mary. In 2000 he established Counterpoint, an eleven-voice vocal ensemble based in Vermont. Here they sing a beautiful collection of carols covering many periods and cultures, celebrating the holiday season in truly memorable fashion. Counterpoint is also featured on two other Albany releases: When the Rabbi Danced (TROY676) and Missa Criolla (TROY746).

Composer Don Walker says that he has always felt a strong affinity for vocal music, having been a boy soprano soloist, a baritone soloist, and a member of several choirs. He composed and performed his first solo arias while still in high school and had written several song cycles and choral works before receiving his undergraduate degree. All told, he has written five operas, 30 song cycles and equivalent numbers of cantatas and other choral works over the past 50 years. This recording showcases select works from his oeuvre, some for a cappella chorus and others for chorus and piano and one work (Cummings Country) for chorus, vibraphone and contrabass. This is Walker's third recording for Albany Records -- the first a collection of song cycles and the second feature his works for chamber ensemble.

Carl MaultsBy is a contemporary "renaissance artist" whose talents have been utilized both in the commercial realm of musical theatre, film, television, records and in the cultural media as well. A former artist and repertoire staff producer for RCA records, MaultsBy attended Columbia University where he studied with the late Vladimir Ussachevsky and Mario Davidovsky. His credits include liturgical music, music for the Harry Belafonte film Beat Street and the dance music for the Broadway musical "It's So Nice to be Civilized." As he writes, "Eye of the Sparrow" was conceived as a joint installation project between visual artist Karen Fitzgerald and myself...which took place in January 2006, at the Celebration of the Life of Dr. Martin Luther King at St. Bartholomew's Church, New York City. The title was inspired by the evangelical hymn, "His Eye is on the Sparrow," a personal favorite of Dr. King."

This is a recording of five cantatas written by 20th century Latvian composers, some of whom grew up outside of Latvia, while othrs lived under the Soviet regime. From the forced emigration of 1944 up until 1988, when the Iron Curtain started to collapse, composers living outside Latvia were omitted from the music history books of the Soviet Union. They were treated as invisible, despite the fact that for more than 40 years they created a significant number of important works. After Latvia regained its independence, there was an opportunity to introduce these works to Latvian audiences. The music on this recording was written beteen 1960 and 1980, at a time when Latvians around the world, although in foreign lands, felt open and free, but Latvians living in their homeland felt oppressed and morally humiliated. In addition to the four cantatas composed by Latvians living outside Latvia, the work of Imants Kalnins, who was living in Latvia, is included as it was composed at a time when the stirrings of overcoming the Soviet Union were in the air.

Led by conductor Giselle Wyers, the Solaris Vocal Ensemble performs a program of contemporary American music that includes works by Meredith Monk, the 2012 Musical America Composer of the Year; Ingram Marshall, whose music concentrates on combining tape and electronic processing with ensembles and soloists; Anne LaBaron, whose compositions embrace an exotic array of subjects; and Frances White, whose study of the shakuhachi informs and influences her works as a composer. All world premiere recordings, these works reflect a renaissance of innovation in the field of choral music.

All of the works on this disc of choral music are world premiere recordings. As Dr. Hailstork says in the notes for this album, he has always enjoyed singing, right from the beginning when he was a boy soprano in the choir of the Cathedral of All Saints in Albany, New York. Here he was exposed to a wide range of choral music. When he went to Howard University from 1959-1963, he also sang in the choir. The choir often appeared with the National Symphony Orchestra singing the great works from the choral-orchestral repertoire. Dr. Hailstork studied with H. Owen Reed, David Diamond, Vittorio Giannini, Nadia Boulanger, and Mark Fax at Howard University. He is currently on the faculty of Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Virginia, where he is Professor of Music and Composer-in-Residence. In the past few years his music has been performed more and more often. The McCullough Chorale, founded in 1984 by Donald McCullough is Virginia's only professional chorale.

Almost from the moment of its first performance, Haydn's The Creation was ranked as his greatest single achievement. For all his brilliance in composing symphonies, string quartets, operas, and masses over a period of decades, Haydn had never produced a composition of such scope, such variety, and such immediacy. Its text and Haydn's music gave the oratorio near-universal appeal, making it accessible and moving to listeners of every class and even of strongly opposed religious and political views. The Creation was as enthusiastically received by Vienna's Catholics as by her freemasons; Berlin's Lutherans and London's Anglicans and the revolutionary theists of Paris hailed it with as much fervor as the Viennese. For many it ranked with Handel's Messiah as one of the two greatest oratorios - and perhaps greatest musical compositions - ever written.

The story of the wide-eyed lad from Kansas City who became the toast of Paris via Harvard, one of America's most influential music critics from his decades' long perch at the New York Herald Tribune and a truly unique and productive composer, is almost hackneyed now, but still bears that "only in America" cachet. It was as a long-term resident of the Chelsea Hotel in New York that Gregg Smith and his Singers got to know the redoubtable Virgil in the later decades of his long life (born in 1896, he died at the age of 92 in 1989.) The present CD is an offering of gratitude for Virgil's support and friendship, as well as a concise overview of his work in the choral field--along with a brief excursion into his solo output.

It is well-known that during the Holocaust inmates wrote music while incarcerated in concentration camps. What about the music that was composed by the common man in these camps? Music embraced by the whole community and passed secretly by aural transmission - music that carried with it powerful words revealing different aspects of camp life, or expressing the inmates' innermost feelings, of mourning, resistance, or patriotism? Was there another Holocaust music from the one we are more familiar with today? Was there a music that spoke with startling immediacy to express the agony of the victims of the Nazi regime? It was this question that first led Donald McCullough on a year-long journey through one of the cruelest chapters of the 20th century. His quest, to extract from the mammoth archives of the United States Holocaust Museum, the material that formed the basis of the Holocaust Cantata , was, like all difficult endeavors, marked with equal amounts of intuition and good luck. The result is the music heard on this disc.

Horatio Parker was born in Auburndale, Massachusetts on September 15, 1863. Although today he is remembered primarily as the teacher of Charles Ives, his music was well-known nationwide and in England during his day. He also had an excellent reputation as an organist-choirmaster, conductor, and teacher-administrator. He began the study of music at the age of 14 with piano and organ lessons from his mother, who was also librettist for some of his mature choral works. He studied composition with George Chadwick and attended the Hochschule fÜr Musik in Munich where he studied with Josef Rheinberger. Parker became Dean of the School of Music at Yale University and conductor of the New Haven Symphony in 1894, positions he retained until his death in 1919. Hora Novissima, written in 1893, remains Parker's most inspired, popular, and best work. The venerable critic Philip Hale summed up how Americans were to feel about their native oratorio for the next 25 years, as choral societies gave it performance after performance throughout the country. He said: "A future historian will point back to a young man [who] appeared with a choral work of long breath that showed not only a mastery of the technique of composition, but spontaneous, flowing, and warmly colored melody, a keen sense of values in rhythm and in instrumentation, and the imagination of the born, inspired poet." Hora Novissima is a contemplative rather than a dramatic oratorio. It is a reflection on the Christian heritage through the words of a medieval monk, Bernard of Cluny, from whose monumental poem, De Contemptu Mundi, Hora is taken.