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Track(s) taken from CDA66219

In the beginning

composer
1947
author of text
Genesis 1; 2:1-7

Corydon Singers, Catherine Denley (contralto), Matthew Best (conductor)
Recording details: May 1986
St Jude-on-the-Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Antony Howell
Release date: August 1987
Total duration: 15 minutes 46 seconds

Cover artwork: The raising of Lazarus.
Romanesque sculpture from Chichester Cathedral, Sussex, England
 

Reviews

‘An imaginative and enterprising programme, extremely well sung and recorded’ (Gramophone)

‘An exquisite disc. Indispensable’ (Acoustic Sounds Catalog, USA)
In the beginning is a substantial setting for mixed voices composed in 1947 for performance at the Harvard Symposium on Music Criticism. The university’s department of music had suggested a Hebrew text, but Copland opted ultimately for the version of the story as told in the King James Bible. It was first performed on 2 May 1947 by the by Collegiate Choir of Massachusetts, conducted by the composer.

Beautifully simple in outline and texture, its inoffensive modal flavour and lilting Britten-like polytonality sit easily with infectious jazz rhythms and soft hints of blues. Recitative and antiphonal writing dominates in a work the composer suggested be sung ‘in a gentle manner, like reading a familiar, oft-told story’. Before a performance in 1980 at Brown University, however, Copland told the student singers: ‘Creation was quite a stunt, so make it grand. Don’t be pathetic about it. What happened after creation is an entirely different story!’

from notes by Ken Walton © 2000

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