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During Donald Palumbo’s 10-year tenure in the 1980s as music director of Boston’s Chorus Pro Musica, one of his tasks was conceiving and preparing new holiday programs annually for the group, something he loved doing.
But when he went on to spend more than 30 years as chorus master of Lyric Opera of Chicago and then New York’s Metropolitan Opera, yuletide music was no longer part of his professional life, and he missed it.
When the Chicago Symphony Orchestra announced his three-year appointment as just its third chorus director, he was immediately excited about getting to take part in the ensemble’s annual Merry, Merry Chicago! program. This year’s version, with guest conductor John Morris Russell, will run for seven performances from Dec. 19 through 23.
“It’s a wonderful musical experience, but it’s also a way to bring the audience closer into what we do,” Palumbo said. “I think it’s fabulous that the Chicago Symphony, this great orchestra, does programs like this.”
And even though much of this year’s installment of Merry, Merry was already largely planned when he took over his position, he was able to make one suggestion that was added to the line-up — the Gloria from Daniel Pinkham’s Christmas Cantata (1957).
“In the 1970s and ’80s, Danny Pinkham was a major figure in Boston music,” Palumbo said. “The Christmas Cantata, because of the brass accompaniment and the last movement in particular, the Gloria, with its syncopations and its bouncy setting of the text was a big favorite at Christmastime. It is a fun piece to sing and listen to, and it was performed very often.”
Each December, Merry, Merry offers a fresh mix of audience-friendly classical holiday music mixed with arrangements of well-known carols. This upcoming edition puts the Chicago Symphony Chorus front and center, showcasing the group on eight of 15 selections.
“It’s a lot to sing, and many of the arrangements build to broad final cadences, with the sopranos and tenors sustaining forte notes at the top of their voices for several measures,” Palumbo said. “So, it’s a vocally demanding program.”
It might seem that little rehearsal would be needed for the widely known carols that the Chorus will be performing, such as Carol of the Bells, but Palumbo said that is far from the case. “We will rehearse this music just as seriously as the Mozart Requiem, and some of the pieces are quite tricky.”
Of course, all the singers know the melodies and perhaps the first verse of the traditional carols. But the subsequent verses are less familiar, and each arrangement has its own particular harmonies and voicings, with some versions providing descants for the sopranos or countermelodies for tenors or altos.
“The Angels We Have Heard on High arrangement that we’re doing has some crunchy chords sung syncopated rhythms, a big jump from unison singing of a well-known carol,” Palumbo said. “Most of them have three or four verses and are written so that each verse is harmonized a bit differently. So, we have many details and refinements to work on during our rehearsals.”
Other choral highlights of Merry, Merry this season include:
Margaret Bonds, Alleluia from The Ballad of the Brown King (1954, orchestrated 1960). Bonds (1913-72), a Chicago native who studied with Florence Price, was one of the first Black American female composers to gain national attention. This cantata, which incorporates text by Langston Hughes, focuses on the African king, Balthazar, who visited the baby Jesus. “It’s a charming cantata about the Three Kings,” Palumbo said. “The Alleluia is the final movement, and contains jazz elements, light percussion effects and gentle, swaying melodies.”
Robert Shaw, Many Moods of Christmas, Suite 4. Shaw ranks among the most famous American choral conductors of the 20th century. He and noted arranger Robert Russell Bennett collaborated on four medleys of Christmas carols that the Robert Shaw Chorale and the RCA Victor Symphony recorded in 1963. The collection soared to No. 11 on Billboard’s holiday records chart that December, and it remains a top seller even now. Included in this group of carols is O Come All Ye Faithful, Deck the Halls and The First Noel.
Gary Fry, Christmas in Chicago. Fry served nearly 20 years as arranger and composer for Welcome, Yule!, the CSO’s Christmas program before Merry, Merry. Commissioned in 1996 by Duain Wolfe, Palumbo’s predecessor as chorus director, this work has made repeat appearances on the CSO’s holiday line-ups. “It’s a little like the Chicago version of New York, New York, and it’s a fun celebration of the joys of Chicago during Christmastime,” Palumbo said.
Daniel Kantor, Night of Silence. The composer is best known for this choral work, which was published by GIA in 1984 and became the firm’s biggest-selling Christmas staple. The piece opens with a hushed section the piece opens with a hushed melody for the sopranos and altos that segues into Silent Night in such a way that "the two melodies blend as if they were originally written together.”
Next year, with a full season under his belt, Palumbo will be in a better position to play a bigger role in planning Merry, Merry, and he has plenty of possible holiday works he’d like to suggest by composers such as Benjamin Britten, Gerald Finzi, Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams.
“There is an endless repertoire of beautiful Christmas music for the CSO Chorus to explore,” he said.
