NEW YORK TIMES: 7 Things to Do This Weekend
NEW YORK TIMES: 7 Things to Do This Weekend
BY SETH COLTER WALLS
“The composer Sarah Kirkland Snider is an artistic director of the consistently rewarding label New Amsterdam Records. Her third full-length release, ‘Mass for the Endangered,’ due out on Friday, features the vocal ensemble Gallicantus and the conductor Gabriel Crouch.
This ‘Mass’ broadly follows the historical format, with some crucial tweaks. Some key phrases are sung in the original Latin; additions in English are by the poet Nathaniel Bellows. The conceptual pivot of the new text amounts to an environmentalist’s twist, through which the collaborators mean to praise ‘the majesty of plant and animal biodiversity.’
As with Snider’s past works, the surface details of this ‘Mass’ can be quickly identified as mellifluous and engaging. But there are additional levels to enjoy. During the ‘Kyrie,’ her affection for American minimalism is clear when insistent string writing powers the vocalists’ polyphonic plea for ‘mercy to all creed and claw.’
Equally telling is a moment in Snider’s ‘Credo’ — as greater complexity gives way to homorhythmic writing on the words “to change how we have lived.” This emphatic articulation of purpose, sung by and for other humans, seems to be reaching beyond environmentalism and toward morality at large. The moment also calls to mind the ‘Credo’ in the ‘Mass for Five Voices’ by William Byrd, a Renaissance composer whose influence Snider has cited when discussing the album.”