Vincent Persichetti, Mendelssohn Club Of Philadelphia, Tamara Brooks

Vincent Persichetti's choral music plays an important part role in his output. In many ways his Mass is an orthodox a cappella Mass, its Renaissance heritage reflected in its use of a Gregorian chant as the unifying theme, and in its reliance on imitative counterpoint as its chief developmental technique. His Winter Cantata, based on a collection of haiku, is scored for women's chorus, flute, and marimba. Without any overt musical references, the work is Japanese in spirit, largely as a result of its own delicate, highly concentrated gestures. The coolness of the flute and the brittleness of the marimba evoke the winter moods and images of the poems. Persichetti composed the tender Love, a short setting for women's voices of a portion of the Book of Corinthians, as a thirtieth wedding anniversary present for his wife, Dorothea.