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Hussey himself argued that a piece of religious art had two purposes:
Firstly, ‘it should convey to those who see it some aspect of the Christian
truth.’: the artist ‘may, by forcing us to share his vision, lead us to the
spiritual reality that lies behind the sounds and sights that we perceive
with our senses.’ As well as conveying truth, for Hussey the work itself
was an offering, as was the effort of the artist in making it. The work of
art ‘should adorn God’s House with as worthy an offering of man’s
creative spirit as can be managed’. Whatever pleasures the artist gained
from their work, ‘whether he is entirely conscious of it or not, [he does
it] because it is an act of worship which he must make.’
What did the patron owe the artist? ‘He must try to understand the
artist’s point of view, always expressing his thought honestly, but at the
same time willing to learn and to trust the artist.’ For there to be that
trust, was it necessary that the artist be a Christian believer? The logical
conclusion of Hussey’s view of the work of art itself – that the making of
art was intrinsically religious – suggested not. What was required from
the artist was not belief, but ‘real sympathy with the work [and] an
ability and willingness to understand from the inside.’
Why Bernstein?
Hussey’s patronage was marked by a mixture of daring – a simple
inability to know his place as a provincial parish priest – and a certain
naivety as to the ways in which artists and composers were accustomed
to working. The Chichester Psalms are a fine example, since it was (on
the face of it) rather improbable that a figure such as Bernstein could be
persuaded to write for Chichester, particularly for the size of fee
available. US-based and infrequently in the UK, with little record in
religious music, and a rich man by virtue of the success of West Side
Story, Bernstein was an unlikely choice.
New in the early 1960s was the annual Southern Cathedrals Festival. In
many ways similar to the more famous Three Choirs Festival, the event
had been revived in 1960 by Hussey and the cathedral organist John
Birch, in partnership with their counterparts at Salisbury and
Winchester. The Three Choirs festival had a long history of
commissioning new pieces of music, by Elgar, Vaughan Williams and
many others. In this light, Hussey and Birch were in 1963 looking for a
name to approach.
In the UK, only recently emerged from post-war austerity, Bernstein the
wealthy and flamboyant conductor from New York had star quality.
Hussey had the opportunity to see something of the star in his home
environment. A year or two earlier Hussey had attended a New York
Philharmonic rehearsal and was briefly introduced to the maestro at the
podium. Nothing followed from this initial meeting until late 1963 when
Hussey and Birch fell to thinking about the 1965 festival. Birch thought a
piece ‘in a slightly popular style’ (Hussey’s words) would be appropriate,
but their accounts differ as to who first thought of Bernstein.
Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic during a rehearsal for TV,
1958. Image by Bert Biall, via Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 2.5
Birch recalled that Hussey thought Bernstein too busy and that he would
never accept. In this Hussey was realistic. Bernstein was firmly
established as one of America’s foremost conductors, both with the
enormous success of West Side Story, and in his more ‘serious’
compositions. However, so occupied was he with conducting that he had
completed only one composition since 1957, and had no established
body of religious music behind him of which Hussey was likely to be
aware. He was also a Jew.
First performance
The British premiere was given by the combined choirs of Chichester,
Salisbury and Winchester cathedrals on July 31st 1965. ‘I cannot begin
to tell you how grateful I am’ wrote Hussey: ‘We were all thrilled with
them. I was specially excited that they came into being as a statement of
praise that is oecumenical. I shall be terribly proud for them to go
around the world bearing the name of Chichester.’ Roger Wilson, bishop
of Chichester, found the Psalms a revelation; unsurprisingly so, as
Bernstein’s psalms were far from the tradition of daily Anglican chanting
of the Psalms. Wilson found them ‘joyous & ecstatic & calm & poetic’, a
vision of David dancing before the Ark.
Bernstein also thought the performance had gone well, although not
without alarm. The orchestra had only begun to rehearse on the day of
the performance, perhaps due in part to the fact that their parts were
still being copied, in New York, on 30 June. ‘The choirs were a delight!’
Bernstein wrote to his secretary. ‘They had everything down pat, but the
orchestra was swimming in the open sea. They simply didn’t know it.
But somehow the glorious acoustics of Chichester Cathedral cushion
everything so that even mistakes sound pretty.’ Bernstein was heard to
mutter at the end of the rehearsal ‘all we can do now is pray.’
The composer Anthony Payne made perhaps the most significant point,
when reviewing two later London performances in programmes
including Dave Brubeck and Duke Ellington. The Psalms suffered by
comparison set alongside such pieces because both Brubeck and
Ellington ‘were writing at first hand in a popular style which Bernstein
seems only capable of wearing like a cloak, and the gain in artistic
sincerity was considerable.’ The critic Arthur Jacobs, writing for
the Jewish Chronicle, objected to the piece having the ‘slick
professionalism of Bernstein without much else’. For Sadie, Bernstein’s
music seemed ‘perilously lacking in identity’. For these critics, in
attempting to bridge two musical worlds, Bernstein had produced music
authentic to neither.
The vocal score of Chichester Psalms, with dedication from
Bernstein to Hussey. WSRO MS 356, all rights reserved.
By and large, however, the Psalms avoided the kind of savaging that
much of the experimentation with pop and jazz in church music in the
previous few years had received. The probable reasons are several.
Firstly, as it was a piece designed for extra-liturgical use, it could be
more successfully avoided than a setting of the Mass such as
Beaumont’s.
Crucially the Psalms were well-crafted music, made by a recognised
composer. Much of the criticism of church pop centred not so much on
the introduction of popular style per se, but more on the fact that it was
inferior music of its kind – that it was of insufficient quality.
Hussey told the Daily Mail that he had been looking for a piece that was
‘in the popular idiom without being vulgar’. The importance of this
controlling, restraining influence of musical qualification was a regular
note in the critical reception of figures such as Malcolm Williamson, one
of the key figures in serious experimentation with popular church music.
Here, wrote one critic of Williamson, was ‘an intensely intelligent and
sensitive musical mind grappling […] with the problems of providing
music for the Church … in a language which uses the techniques of
“popular” musical experience without compromising the composer’s
own high standards of taste and craftsmanship.’
Bernstein had succeeded in just this: the Psalms were ‘popular but not
vulgar’, and it is in Hussey’s flirtation with popular style that we see the
limits of much of the experimentation of the 1960s. Hussey could cope
with the Psalms having something of West Side Story about them, as
long as they were both composed and performed by serious musicians. It
was a remarkable coincidence: on one side, a patron looking for
something right at the edge of what was possible for the Church to
accept, and on the other, possibly the only composer who could have
provided it.
Further reading
A fuller version of this essay is in chapter 7 of Peter Webster, Church
and Patronage in 20th Century Britain: Walter Hussey and the
Arts (2017)
Humphrey Burton, Leonard Bernstein (1994).
Paul Laird, The Chichester Psalms of Leonard Bernstein (2010)
Nigel Simeone (ed.), The Leonard Bernstein Letters (2013)