Event M35: American Choral Music on the 250th Anniversary of American Independence

On the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence, Portsmouth Baroque Choir present a programme of American Choral Music, from William Billings to Eric Whitacre.

In between there is music from Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, Randall Thompson and Samuel Barber. The main work is Morton Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna.

“Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The millions that around us are rushing into life cannot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests. Events, actions arise, that must be sung, that will sing themselves.”

The American states’ declaration of independence in 1786 marked a political breaking point but their cultural revolution had already begun well before Emerson’s famous American Scholar lecture articulated that resonant challenge some fifty years later.

American composers cannot ignore the vastness of the landscape and the excitement of their people’s talent for invention and enterprise: they inspire awesome textures, sounds of ineffable beauty, looking to a Pacific as well as to an Atlantic horizon. Neither can they entirely shake off the ancestral roots: old world structures and new world spirit intertwine.

Portsmouth Baroque Choir under the direction of Malcolm Keeler will take you across the American continent, a Route 66 calling at all decades and a range of vocal styles from the rule-busting, patriotic hymnody of William Billings (1770s) to the haunting lushness of Eric Whitacre (2000s) via Amy Beach, gentle bitonality from “Yankee Maverick” Charles Ives, Samuel Barber, George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Randall Thompson and Morten Lauridsen whose Lux Aeterna illuminates most of the second half of this celebration of a musical culture that in a relatively short space of time has reached extraordinary heights.