Choose Life

CLUB review Jan 1995
Composers Forum newsletter by Elizabeth Schmidt

"Adding a very significant piece of art to the word of religion."

The Basilica of Saint Mary in Minneapolis is a BIG SPACE-far from the sort of modest enclosure typically associated with concerts of contemporary music. Yet on November 17, this formidable structure was roughly two-thirds full for the world premiere of an oratorio (an oratorio!) by Mona Lyn Reese-this on a Thursday evening that boasted at least four other substantial musical events in the Twin cities.

The oratorio, entitled Choose Life! Uvacharta Bachayim, is an ecumenical work in commemoration of the Holocaust-hardly light listening. It draws on both Jewish and Christian music and scripture, and incorporates readings from texts by Holocaust survivors. The piece combines many musical styles, including Gregorian chant, polyphonic motets in the Christian church tradition, Anglican verse and choral anthems, Jewish modes and hymnody, recitative, and Klezmer idioms. The music and text express anger at God for permitting suffering, or sorrow and need for comfort, our will to overcome evil, and our determination to choose life over death. The final sections of the work express hope and praise.

While one might say that such a conglomeration of styles and attitudes "works" largely by providing something for everyone, the actual texture of Reese's work was anything but exploitive. She did write, however, with her listener in mind. Whatever religion that listener was or wasn't raised in, s/he is likely to connect with the ideas of personal freedom and hope powerfully articulated in the text of the oratorio and no less powerfully expressed in the music. In the words of Reverend Michael O'Connell of Basilica of Saint Mary, "[Choose Life!] was a deeply-moving presentation of choral music and spoken word in memory of the unbelievably tragic event of the Holocaust in this century. Many people around me during the production were weeping, and I myself was deeply moved several times during the performance."

…Choose Life! came about through the Minnesota Composers Forum's Church/Synagogue Residency program…the foremost beneficiaries of the program may well be its audiences. Those audiences are composed of individuals who are usually total strangers to the rather insular world of contemporary music and who nonetheless find themselves deeply and unexpectedly affected by what they hear-by music that engages the abiding questions of life, death, value, meaning, and purpose in a way that only music can. Such music can be and is being written today, and the crowd at the Basilica on November 17 suggests that listeners are ready to respond to it as they always have.