An Upbeat Cantata on AIDS Crisis? : Music: Unlike previous sad dirges, a new work by two UCLA professors focuses on positive aspects of survival. ‘Hidden Legacies’ premieres Sunday.

A lot of music has come out of the AIDS crisis, says Jon Bailey, conductor and artistic director of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles. The problem with much of that music, Bailey says, is that “it’s in the nature of a Requiem--it’s not hopeful, and it’s very self-involved.”

More than a year ago, the leadership of the chorus decided to commission its own affirmative musical response to the crisis, one which would give, as Bailey says, “a positive sense of how we have been changed for the better, of how, as a result of this devastating situation, we are actually richer and better human beings.”

The commission, awarded to composer Roger Bourland and lyricist John Hall--both of the UCLA music faculty--specified a “cantata for the AIDS generation.” Bourland and Hall spent the next few months writing “Hidden Legacies,” which will have its world premiere Sunday at UCLA’s Royce Hall.

Scored for the 165 male voices of the chorus, plus four synthesizers, bass and percussion, “Hidden Legacies” is a seven-movement piece that explores the aspects of survivorship--anger, rage and hopelessness among them.

Yet its creators have attempted to keep the work upbeat and accessible. That’s no small achievement considering that in just the last nine years, more than 70 members of the chorus have died of AIDS. “That’s about 10 a year,” Bailey says.

Foremost in his mind in writing the texts, Hall said recently, was that “I could speak for these 165 men of the chorus, could try to put into words feelings that they have in many cases blocked. It’s no accident that the last four movements deal with being survivors.”

Bourland, a versatile composer with more than 100 works in his catalogue and experience in a number of musical fields including films and public-radio series, says he and Hall had already conceived an AIDS-related piece before being contacted by the chorus.

“John and I were considering a much more cynical, one-act musical show based on ‘Patient Zero,’ the airline steward who is said to have brought the plague to this country in the first place,” Bourland said. “Then, when I got the commission, Jon Bailey convinced me to take this much more positive approach to the subject. I’m so glad I did.

“It turns out that this experience has magic all around it. The singers are not professionals, yet they are singing like professionals. And they have rallied around the piece beyond anything I might have imagined. Truly, this is one of the high points of my life as a composer.”

Bourland’s melodic inventions eventually determined the overall sound of the work, whose styles range from classical to country and Western.

In collaborating on “Legacies,” Bourland and Hall say they used the same method with which they produced the two musicals they wrote together in recent years. Bourland, 39, has been on the UCLA faculty for eight years; Hall, 46, is a 17-year veteran.

“I would present Roger with a lyric, he would work it out melodically, then we would look at it together,” Hall says. “It wasn’t always that simple, of course. I was in France last summer and a lot of this happened through the mails.

“I wanted to write a total work which would make sense to these 165 singers. Thinking about that, we threw out several proposed or completed pieces that didn’t fit. Throughout, we were trying to find a balance. This is not a Hallmark card. The language had to be simple and direct. After all, I’m not a poet, I’m just a lyricist who’s learning.”

The 40-minute cantata will be sung by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles in Royce Hall, UCLA, Sunday at 4 p.m., on a program also offering new or recent works by David Goodman, R. Murray Schafer, John Adams and David Conte.

Subsequent performances of the same program are scheduled April 11 at 8 p.m. in the Wiltern Theatre and April 12 at 7:30 p.m. in Bridges Hall of Music at Pomona College in Claremont.