A Whole New World for Britten’s ‘Spirit’

It is hard to imagine losing cultural treasures in this well documented, media-dominated century, but that’s what happened to a number of major works by British composer Benjamin Britten. Case in point: “The World of the Spirit,” a large cantata for soloists, chorus and orchestra, which gets its West Coast premiere Sunday at the Crystal Cathedral, courtesy of the California Master Chorale conducted by Larry Ball.

Long fascinated by the music of Britten, Ball had thought of doing his doctoral studies on the composer, only to be daunted by an apparent gap in Britten’s output in the late 1930s and early ‘40s.

“I thought, ‘What’s a young guy, who ought to be just boiling with ideas, doing with his time?’ It remained a big question, to which I could find no answers,” Ball says.

It turns out that Britten was much busier than the handful of known works from that period suggests, with some 25 commissions from the BBC between 1937 and 1947, few of which turn up in biographies or reference sources. A 45-minute cantata, “The World of the Spirit” was broadcast in 1938 and again in 1939, after which conductor Trevor Harvey took the manuscript with him to northern England for safekeeping during the war years.

The path of the manuscript from that point until it resurfaced in London a few years ago is unclear, Ball says. A chance meeting with conductor Richard Hickox after a concert in London confirmed for Ball the existence of missing Britteniana and served notice that Hickox was preparing to perform some of it. In December 1996, Chandos released Hickox’s recording of “The World of the Spirit,” fittingly with BBC forces.

A critic for the Guardian of London wrote of that recording: “Though the mature Britten style is only occasionally identifiable, the invention and imagination are characteristic from first to last, for these are the inspirations of a prolific young composer rising to early challenges, showing off his technical brilliance.”

The Times of London said, “The cantata does not make a particularly satisfying whole, but it shows the young Britten flirting outrageously with a dizzying variety of styles and responding with consummate professionalism. . . . A must for Brittenites.”

Ball recalls the first time he heard the work: “One night I was listening to the radio in my car, and just as I got home a piece I knew I had never heard before began to play. Sitting in my garage listening, I thought, ‘This is it,’ and it turned out to be ‘The World of the Spirit.’ I rushed out and got the CD as fast as I could.”

Ball then launched a long struggle to get performing rights and materials for the cantata from Oxford University Press. The publisher preferred to have the U.S. premiere on the East Coast. It was given by the Oratorio Society of New York, a 125-year-old amateur group, May 7 in New York to ironically scant notice. Ball was allowed the first West Coast performance.

*

The 150-voice California Master Chorale consists basically of the combined choirs of Santiago Canyon College and the First Presbyterian Church of Orange. Although the Santiago Canyon campus is in its first year, Ball has taught in the Rancho Santiago Community College District for 24 years. He has been at First Presbyterian Church for 32 years. In December, he will take the Chorale to New York and perform “The World of the Spirit” at Carnegie Hall.

The soloists are soprano Heather Calvete, mezzo Kristin Rothfuss, tenor Jonathan Mack and baritone Tod Fitzpatrick, on a program that includes established British masterpieces contemporary with the Britten cantata. The narrators are veteran radio personality Rich Capparela and Mary Ann Bonino, founder of the Chamber Music in Historic Sites series.

The narrators are of more than passing importance to this work, Ball says. “Britten had a great interest in not only developing a musical idea, but bringing biblical and literary texts together. The music seems to be a commentary on the spoken texts that are juxtaposed.”

*

Sources of the texts of the cantata, compiled for Britten by R. Ellis Roberts, range from the Gospel of John and the ancient Pentecost hymn “Veni Creator Spiritus” to Emily Bronte, Tennyson and Gerard Manley Hopkins. The clear collective call of these texts is love, peace and joy, and it is no coincidence that they inspired Britten passionately at a time when Europe was stumbling toward war.

“The abhorrence of war, violence and intolerance and a passion for peace, justice and reconciliation were important parts of Britten’s psyche,” Ball says, noting that Britten immigrated to North America temporarily in 1939. “Britten was always an avid pacifist and a champion of the downtrodden and oppressed.”

The music is a mix of styles and forms that reflects the diversity of the texts, beginning and ending with plainchant and including Bachian chorales, orchestral songs and arias, and, of course, opportunities for massive choral display.

“It’s just hot,” Ball says, with obvious awe and more than a hint of nervousness. “There are two huge choral pieces. ‘The Spirit of the Lord’ is very Waltonesque--the best piece Walton never wrote--and ‘The World Is Charged’ is unabashed chromatic writing, big chords just hammering at you. There are distinct lines that run from here through some of the choral writing in the ‘50s to the culmination of this style in the [1961] ‘War Requiem.’ ”

* Larry Ball leads the California Master Chorale and soloists Heather Calvete, Kristin Rothfuss, Jonathan Mack and Tod Fitzpatrick in the West Coast premiere of Benjamin Britten’s “The World of the Spirit” on Sunday at the Crystal Cathedral, 12141 Lewis St., Garden Grove. Rich Capparela and Mary Ann Bonino narrate. Also on the program: Walton’s “Crown Imperial” and Vaughan Williams’ “Serenade to Music.” 4:30 and 8 p.m. $7-$9. (714) 564-5661).