Chichester Cathedral Choir honour the 60th anniversary of the Chichester Psalms

Tickets are now available for Together in Unity which takes place on Saturday, May 17 as part of Chichester950, the year-long celebrations marking the Cathedral’s 950th year.

The concert will feature a special performance of the Chichester Psalms, originally commissioned in 1965 by then Dean of Chichester, Walter Hussey. Bernstein’s masterpiece, composed for the Southern Cathedrals Festival, will be performed in arrangement for harp, organ and percussion by the Cathedral Choir under the direction of Charles Harrison, organist and master of the choristers.

Tickets for Together in Unity can be bought online at www.chichestercathedral.org.uk.

It’s an exciting challenge ahead. As Charles says: “It is one of the most important and famous choral works of the 20th century and we will be performing it with the cathedral choir and some additional guest singers. We're bringing in ten extra singers. The instrumentation is quite noisy especially the percussion, and with our refined cathedral choir we might struggle to make ourselves heard. So we need the extra voices, most of whom are London professionals.

“The interesting thing is that the style of the music is rather closer to musical theatre than it is to a standard piece of religious music. We know that at the time Bernstein was writing a lot of music for Broadway, and long before cross-over became a term, Bernstein married these ancient texts with a modern musical theatre style. It has emerged that some of the music was written for a stage show that was never produced. So you've got that great vibrancy and energy of musical theatre but you have also got the profound resonance of the psalms.

“The challenge will be in controlling the rhythm of it. It is driven by these intensely powerful rhythmic patterns. It is almost like a dance at times and holding that together will be difficult – and also the organ which is at some distance from the singers.

“We have programmed a rehearsal the previous evening and we have another three hours on the day. There are other pieces that we will be performing in the concert. We will be doing some works from our more regular repertoire and there is also a new commission (from British composer Joanna Marsh) which is very exciting. It is written for the same forces as the Bernstein and it also takes its text from the book of psalms but is written much more in the style of traditional western religious music. But is still a very original piece.”

The piece is inspired by Psalm 90 (‘Behold how good and joyful a thing it is, brethren, to dwell together in unity’). The Cathedral is describing it as one of the most significant musical commissions the Cathedral has had in 60 years and underscores its “commitment to sustaining choral music for future generations.”

As Charles says: “Joanna has the knack of writing music which is original and fresh and innovative but which is also approachable. It is a sensitive response to the text and the piece seems to have an unshakeable core at the centre. The composer throws a lot at that core but the stability holds all the way through.”