As a 2001 article from Harvard magazine recounts, the center was set to open on July 8, 1940. The center's choral director, G. Wallace Woodworth, had been expecting sheet music for the new Thompson composition well in advance of the opening festivities to give him time to rehearse with his students. But after days of waiting, the sheet music never arrived.
That is, not until 45 minutes before the performance.
Upon reviewing the work, Woodworth was surprised that Thompson hadn't penned the triumphant vocal fanfare that Koussevitsky had ordered. Instead, the composer had written a solemn a cappella piece marked lento--meaning "slowly" (40-45 beats per minute)--with just a single lyric, repeated over and over: alleluia.
In the weeks prior to the opening, France had fallen to Nazi forces. Therefore, Thompson felt a boisterous, celebratory song was completely inappropriate in light of world events. In turn, he penned a humble cry from the heart of humanity to the Almighty.
Thompson later said his composition was akin to Job 1:21: "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."
The piece is still performed each summer when the center opens for the season.
...
I got the chance to perform Thompson's "Alleluia" for the first time my freshman year of high school (our music director pushed us like professional musicians, and I'm eternally grateful for that).
If you've ever been part of a vocal group, choir, or band (of any sort--I'm not just talking classical music), you've likely experienced one of those moments where your level of interaction with your fellow musicians suddenly goes from conscious to pure ESP, where you're no longer having to think about what notes come next or what each voice/instrument is supposed to do. Instead, the music just flows. It's times like those when you sense that, what you're creating is not only good, it's bigger than each/all of you. It's life-affirming.
One specific performance sticks out in my mind: I remember getting up on stage at a choral competition in Asheville, NC, with about 50 of my classmates. Many of the vocal groups that had gone before us had (painfully) mumbled their way through Appalachian folk and children's songs. (Although, I recall one high school doing a funky, piano-driven rendition of Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" that was pretty good.) As we began to sing Thompson's "Alleluia," without sheet music in front of us, completely a cappella in whisper-soft triple pianissimo, we could feel the energy in that cavernous auditorium, which was filled to capacity with fidgety teenagers and their directors, starting to shift. Being a shorty on the front row of the risers, I could see people in the audience leaning forward in their seats, their faces revealing that they could not believe what they were hearing. I could see it on our director's face, too, as she literally pulled the music through us. Suddenly, there was this collective sense that we were creating something bigger than ourselves and bigger than what we thought we were capable of.
When we breathed those final notes at the end of five minutes, there was complete silence in the auditorium, followed by a minute of thunderous applause.
After that, I don't think any groups in our region ever presented half-hearted versions of "Bile Them Cabbage Down" as the "best they could do"--at least not at that competition. And I don't think any of us in our group ever doubted for a second that we could face any challenge thrown at us (musical or otherwise) after that.
I haven't.
(The great performance of Thompson's "Alleluia" below is by Kansas City, MO-based Octarium, a vocal octet.)
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