Category Archives: liturgical music

Vespers in the Chestnut Hill Local

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In “Masterpiece brings packed house Sunday to Hill church,” Michael Caruso called the 2008 premiere of Vespers “a masterpiece of composition within the context of religious devotion,” singling out as “most impressive” my “commitment to the powerful traditions of German Lutheran piety as expressed in music.”

He then says about Sunday’s (Jan. 8th) performance, that the “marvel of Smith’s music is found in its ability to sound both old and new at one and the same time. The timbres of Piffaro’s Renaissance instruments and the straight-tone singing of The Crossing recall the music of centuries ago, as does Smith’s sophisticated use of contrapuntal techniques.”

Caruso rightly praises Donald Nally, who “elicited flawless singing and exuberant playing from his musicians.”

Vespers in Condemned to Music, Arts Journal

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David Patrick Stearns compares Monteverdi and me. He went to recent performances of a “Vespers” (not 1610), put together from later Monteverdi works by the Green Mountain Project, and my Vespers, and believes that both the master and I resolve dichotomies by bringing “enemies together.”

Monteverdi brought a new kind of music—less contrapuntal, more operatic—into the Church. My piece comes from someone Stearns describes as an “ultra-devout” composer who writes “almost anti- evangelical,” or not preachy, music. It “speaks to him without histrionics.”

“There’s absolutely no guile or strategy behind it…. There’s plenty of joy – though not with anything as superficial or as potentially vulgar as jubilation. Smith’s Magnificat is full of wonderful canonic writing that has a simple, straightforward effect – achieved through a complexity of means that could only be the work of an extremely accomplished composer… De-dramatized, de-politicized spiritually-oriented music is no stranger to admirers of Arvo Pärt. But even at his most secular, Pärt seems to echo, however distantly, the asceticism of the Eastern Orthodox Church. If Smith is writing for a church, it’s one without walls.”

I don’t know what that means, though people of all faiths have told me marvelous things about their experiences listening to it. I see, simply, a Lutheran Vespers, a traditionally formed Christian work with Psalms, hymns, a Lord’s Prayer, and so on. What I tried to put in it was what I have felt from the inside: the power of a chant, of a hymn, that churns and overwhelms. Many, many greater ones than I feel this, the saints from books, the saints who I sit next to. He says it speaks to his “integration-starved soul.” I bow my head at those kind words.

Vespers in the Broad Street Review

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Tom Purdom likes Vespers even more the second time around, in the Broad Street Review. Giving well-deserved raves to all the musicians for a performance that “actually exceeded” the premiere, he says, “the real basis of its success was the quality of Smith’s work. You can listen to first-class pieces more than once because they evoke deep feelings and present you with music so varied and complex that you hear new things every time you listen to them.”

He describes “a deeply spiritual quality from beginning to end,” saying that “variety and complexity” carry the piece with imagination, marveling, again, at the genius of the musicians to pull it off.

Having written, most of my life, simple music for amateur choirs, it’s an irony to have complexity singled out. In any case, I believe in writing for the musicians, and I’m delighted to no end that Vespers is such a great match for the superlative forces of Piffaro and The Crossing.

Vespers, Philadelphia Inquirer review

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In the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daniel Webster reviews Vespers in the first of its three 2012 reprise concerts. He calls it “a tangy, new-old gloss on a historic form” becoming, in German and Latin, “like musical conversation among friends.”

He writes that “Smith’s harmonic vocabulary ranges widely, demands keen ears, and gives vitality to texts that can invite routine. A single voice, moving in consonance, is joined by another on an edgily different route, then by others until the vision emerges of a crowd jostling, before a resolution unpredictably appears. No assumptions can be rewarded in this writing, for surprise is everywhere.”

He points to the weaving of lines, voices, textures, and dynamics that “craftily prepare for the work’s climax, in the Magnificat, to reach a doubly dramatic forte. That section, beginning with single high soprano voices, grew to a tumult, and included historical musical references and gestures to summarize the entire work’s premise.”

He rightly praises Piffaro and The Crossing for their work in creating the “sonic novelty” of transparency and ever-changing mixtures. “Piffaro’s seven musicians play so many instruments that it is, by turns, a discrete group of plucked strings, a sweet wind ensemble, or even a rowdy band of sackbuts stomping through the fields. To hear a finely tuned interval in the voices supported by a small harp, guitar, and theorbo is to stand near the center of music itself.”

And again, “Piffaro’s players are magicians in stirring fresh sounds for the work…. Listeners could hear every line and interval within that transparent singing.”

Webster continues, “the color and densities of the setting of Herr Christ, der einig Sohn, and Psalm 27 anchored the structure of the whole. Smith’s music seems to rejoice in meeting old forms and greeting them like new friends.”

Vespers review in iTunes

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I don’t know who the reviewer of Vespers is, but I thank him:

Mr. Smith has managed to take several elements I’ve come to love (German and Latin liturgical music, modern choral writing, renaissance instruments and counterpoint) and turn them into one interesting and beautiful work. He plays with an amazing variety of voicing combinations, for instance a rather exciting three-part canon in the Magnificat. This one-of-a-kind work has both strong echoes of the ancient and modern in wonderful juxtaposition, and is well worth the listen!


Vespers, Liturgy Hymnody Pulpit Review

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The Rev. Paul J. Cain reviews Vespers in the Liturgy, Hymnody, and Pulpit Quarterly Book Review, whose motto is: Critical reviews (by Lutheran pastors and church musicians) of books and other resources for Christian worship, preaching, and church music from a perspective rooted in Holy Scripture, the Lutheran Confessions and good common sense. LHP Quarterly Book Review asks, “Is it worth the money to buy, the time to read, the shelf space to store, and the effort to teach?”

…an exceptional treat… a modern restatement of Renaissance-era wind bands for a sacred context… a fusion of the 16th Century and our 21st. I think Dr. Luther would be at home and J. S. Bach would appreciate what was going on… one hears a transcendent heavenly setting of “O Morning Star, How Fair and Bright”… Psalm 113 completes the trilogy of psalms in preparation for a 13th Century tune used by the Bohemian Brethren in the 16th Century. The psalm setting is hauntingly beautiful. I simply couldn’t wait to sing along. Remember that included sheet music?

The recording is at once recognizable as a liturgical service of Vespers… may be able to include some pared-down portions of the music for a congregational service of Vespers. The music is full of life, joy, and celebration appropriate for a New Year’s Eve service, a congregational anniversary, a building dedication, or an ordination.

Piffaro is blessed with skilled musicians, a creative composer in Kile Smith, and a daring record label, Navona Records. The combination produced a fresh, reverent, and timeless recording that is historically and musically grounded in the best of Christian liturgy and hymnody. What are they working on next?

The composition and recording of Vespers is inspired and inspiring.

Read it all here.

First review of Vespers CD

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This reviewer must know what it’s like to be a composer; he knows all about harmonic calamities! Jeff Simon in The Buffalo News writes:

What a beautiful and remarkable thing this turns out to be… altogether gorgeous and haunting. And when, out of some necessity of text and some version of harmonic calamity, a sudden dissonance arrives that out-Gesualdos Gesualdo, you remember that Kile Smith is a 21st century composer living in Philadelphia who has, almost like some Borgesian Pierre Menard (who wrote “Don Quixote” out of his own modern needs), synthesized all of this anew… a piece of contemporary music that, in its very different way, deserves to be mentioned along with Rachmaninoff’s “Vespers.” The performance here is stunning. ★★★★

The complete review is here.