Scott Jackson Wiley
Music Director
Music Director
Randall Thompson (1899-1984)
Alleluia
Randall Thompson was a revered composer and music educator, who composed one of the most popular American choral works of all time. The work was commissioned by Serge Koussevitsky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1940 for the July 8th opening of the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood. The a capella anthem is a study of choral dynamics and styles using only the repeated word “Alleluia.”
One of Thompson’s younger colleagues, musicologist James Haar wrote:
"Randall Thompson’s choral works are a shining reflection of the joy and creative skill with which he taught musical craft – of Palestrina and Lasso, of Monteverdi, of Bach and Handel. It has been his belief that music of this craft is timeless in its nature, and can form part of the basis of a composer’s working vocabulary without loss to his individual talent. In this he is a true classicist and an academic in the best sense.”
(Elliot Forbes in Harvard Magazine, July 2001)
Program notes by Beth Bergman Fisher