It occurs to me that some of us may be carrying around a double choral standard. When we happen across new British releases performed by the many university choirs of London, Oxford, and Cambridge, our supposition is that the results will be in line with the highest international choral standards. Is that assumption in place when we encounter America’s collegiate choirs? Or do we anticipate a finished product more in line with the diminished expectations of, say, school alumni and the parents of the singers?

Perhaps this disc should bear the title “American Choral Music, Volume 2”, as this same choir—a world-class group in every respect—released a similarly interesting, well-chosen, and impeccably-sung program of American works (by Ives, Corigliano, Persichetti, Foss, and Copland) for this same label in 2007 (type Q11034 in Search Reviews). Choral music fans should be very grateful to James Morrow and his excellent young singers, not only for the exemplary choral performances but for documenting repertoire that inexplicably remains rarely recorded.

The present disc opens with Vincent Persichetti’s Mass of 1960. Caroline Polk O’Meara’s booklet notes tell us that the work was conceived more for liturgical than for concert use, and first impressions confirm this. But first impressions can deceive too, and this mass is not really the austere, even severe composition that I initially thought. Repeated listening reveals a retrained, even understated work, but not an austere one. Most of the text is set to one note per syllable, and this, combined with the excellent diction of the University of Texas Chamber Singers, ensures that we hear every word. The work is based around a single theme, announced in unison at the outset. Only in the Sanctus does the music feel less focused, less convincing in the way it relates to the text. The Agnus Dei, however, wherein the composer relaxes a little his rule on syllabic word setting, is totally successful, the work closing serenely and touchingly on a bare fifth - not on a unison as the notes erroneously inform us. Getting to know this work has been a rewarding experience, and in spite of one or two difficult corners, it would make a most satisfying project for any competent amateur choir seeking to explore lesser known repertoire.

William Schuman’s almost contemporaneous and discouragingly entitled Carols of Death is more of a challenge, both for the performers and for the listener. The three pieces of which the work is composed are settings of words by Walt Whitman. The first two are largely homophonic, with a fair amount of chromatic writing mixed with extensive use of diatonic dissonance. There is some affecting word painting, particularly in the first song, and the second, which sets some of the same words as did Vaughan Williams in Toward the Unknown Region, opens with the words “Dearest thou now, O Soul” repeatedly passed from one voice to another in a way that presages John Adams. The third is a meditative setting of a single Whitman stanza, the music tender and touching, as the poet launches the invitation “Come lovely and soothing death.” Less immediately attractive that the Persichetti, the work similarly rewards patient attention.

With The Hour-Glass, the composer Irving Fine makes his first appearance in my recorded collection. I’ll be making sure it isn’t the last. Composed in 1949, this is the earliest music on this disc. It is also, I think, the finest. This is perhaps confirmed, consciously or unconsciously, by the cover photo. Setting six short lyrics by Ben Jonson, the composer, in spite of a fairly advanced musical language, avoids any suspicion of anachronism. This is virtuoso choral writing, with even more challenging parts for the six soloists who more than justify their identification in the booklet and above. Indeed, it is the kind of visionary choral writing that requires great faith on the part of the composer. The first piece, for example, demands pinpoint accuracy in fast moving polyphony, without which it simply wmore....

With the exception of William Bolcom’s The Mask (1990), all the music on the album was composed between 1949 and 1960, and it’s striking, although each composer had his own individual style, how many ideas were shared. The album’s narrow focus emerges in the end as a virtue, however. The program sticks together, and it includes at least one lost gem, Irving Fine’s The Hour-Glass (1949), to texts by the English poet Ben Jonson. These six short a cappella settings are masterful in their handling of choral register, with solo voices weaving in and out of the choir in a tapestry of complex shadings, all the while keeping closely to the contours of Jonson’s poetry and maintaining the intelligibility of the texts. The only thing that might not recommend this small work to college and university choirs is its considerable difficulty, but this poses no problem for the choristers of the University of Texas Chamber singers under James Morrow. Throughout, they deliver performances on a par with many professional choirs. The common features in the religious works by Persichetti and Foss that begin and end the program lie mostly in the realm of tonal language, with quasi-medieval techniques such as open intervals and temporary tonal centers established by means of unisons. These require great accuracy of intonation not to sound annoying, and the singing here is never less than a pleasure. Bolcom’s set of songs for chorus, soloists, and piano diverges from the rest of the program in its use of vernacular elements, missing from the music of the mid-century. The singers again display maturity beyond what is expected in their handling of the devastating emotional collapse in Heritage (track 10), one of Bolcom’s subtlest uses of the ragtime idiom. Strongly recommended for fans of American choral music of any type...

I will say at the beginning that the University of Texas Chamber Singers are a very well-balanced, and finely-honed ensemble of 35 mixed choristers (12-7-6-10) who deliver the goods in this repertory of bona-fide Americana. Naxos has captured the sound exceptionally well at the University Presbyterian Church in Austin, and Engineer Tom Handley should be proud of his work, as I know James Morrow is of his singers...William Bolcom’s The Mask is a setting of poems by African American poets...[in] Lukas Foss Psalms...the solo singing of soprano Lisa Sunset Holt and tenor John Len Wiles is excellent. Movements 2 and 3 return us to more typical—and very good—Foss.