Remembering Steven Stucky

The musical world suffered a great loss this week in the death of Steven Stucky.  As musicians across the country mourned his passing, my thoughts went back a decade or so to 2005 when we had the privilege of working with him in Grinnell.  In the spring of that year, The Grinnell Singers commissioned three new choral works from Stucky, who at that time was the Composer-in Residence with the LA Philharmonic.  The commission was offered by a consortium of three choirs: the Grinnell Singers, the Kansas City Chorale, and Seattle Pro Musica, with support from a Meet The Composer grant.  I pulled the consortium together and wrote the grant proposal.   Our ensemble was the odd one out -- a good college choir displaying pluck perhaps a little beyond what our talent would warrant, grouped together implausibly with two of the country’s finest professional choirs.  Imagine our surprise when we found that just about a month after we had arranged for the commission, Stucky won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for his Second Concerto for Orchestra.

Stucky was gracious toward me as we discussed the details of the commission, and he was interested to get to know The Grinnell Singers as much as possible so that he could compose a work that would work well for all three ensembles.  In our discussions, I had expressed my admiration for Stucky’s “Whispers,” which had been recorded by Chanticleer.  I had performed “Whispers” with the Grinnell Singers, and though it was, to tell the truth, just on the edge of our capabilities, in the end it was a richly satisfying piece to sing, with its deft blending of Byrd’s familiar “Ave Verum Corpus” and an ethereal setting of Walt Whitman’s poem “Whispers of Heavenly Death.” Since “Whispers,” a double choir piece, had worked for us, we agreed that the motets would be for double choir.   When I received the scores toward the end of summer, I should admit that I had a “what have I gotten myself into?” moment.  “Whispers” calls for soloists on one of the two choirs, but the pieces Stucky sent were true double choir pieces, with both choirs meant to be of equal strength.  We were going to need a lot of depth and strong singers throughout the choir.  Despite the high anxiety, in the end, I was enormously proud of how we did with his pieces, and I’m glad to have played a small part in bringing some fine music into the world.

 Stucky came out to Iowa meet with the choir and to give a workshop for student composers.  When news came of his passing this week, I received an email from Brian Cavanagh-Strong one of the students in the choir at the time who is now a composer, who expressed to me how inspired he was by that visit, by Stucky’s generosity in his composition lessons, and by having the opportunity to sing in the premiere of a significant work.  During our spring tour in 2006, we performed two of the pieces, “O vos omnes” and “O sacrum convivium” in Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey.  In thinking back about this commission, I was eager to know how the pieces have fared, and whether or not they have entered the repertoire.  Of the three pieces, the first “O admirabile commercium” is probably the most difficult, and as I did a quick search for recordings this morning, it appears that choirs have taken it on less often than the other two.  The rich eight-part writing in the first work is extremely subtle and delicate. To hear a particularly fine recording of this piece, listen to The Trinity College Choir’s CD, Beyond All Mortal Dreams  which includes an exquisite performance of all three motets.  ACDA members will remember  The Brigham Young University Choir’s spirited performance of the second piece, “O Sacrum Convivium” at the 2014 National ACDA convention (purchase recording on Amazon).  There’s a also fine recording of “O Vos Omnes” posted on YouTube by the Easter Michigan University Choir.  When I heard of Stucky’s passing, I went back to listen to the recording of our 2006 performance of the work.  If you’re interested to know how we did, here are concert recordings from our premiere of the three movements: “O admirabile commercium,” “O sacrum convivium ” and “O vos omnes.”  Thinking back on the experience, I’m glad that we took the risk and commissioned these works from this distinguished composer who had a wonderful understanding of how to write for choir, but who also did not pull his punches in terms of creating challenges for the performers.