A Summing Up: Choral Composition through Nine Decades with Kirke Mechem

The February 2024 issue of Choral Journal is online and features an article titled “A Summing Up: Choral Composition through Nine Decades” by Kirke Mechem. Following is a portion from the article.
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After a lifetime of writing for chorus, how can I sum it up in a way that will interest conductors and composers of a later generation? Although I have composed a great deal of chamber music, songs, symphonic music, and five operas, choral music was my first love. I hope that my story might shed light on the way composers think, how we change (or do not change) over the years, how we deal with both success and failure, and how our philosophical, personal values affect our music.

“Why have you written so much choral music?” is a question I hope to answer. “Who are your favorite living choral composers?” is a frequent question, but I do not answer it because there are so many fine composers today that I would be sure to leave some of them out. Likewise, “Which of your own pieces are your favorites?” is too difficult to answer. You might as well ask me which of my children is my favorite. Still, here are a few favorites that I would like to see “discovered” or “resurrected”:

“The Shepherd and His Love”; American Madrigals; Five Centuries of Spring; Befana—A Christmas Fable; The Winged Joy (SSAA); Singing Is So Good a Thing; and “The Gift of Singing,” which is a kind of autobiography for all choral conductors and composers. Like many other composers, I have gone through many stages: the “beginner” (1940s); the “up-and-coming” (1950s); the “established” (1960s-1980s); the “veteran” (1990s-2000s); and finally (2010s-2020s), it seems that some benighted observers have promoted me to “legendary.” They must mean “forgotten,” but in any case, that’s getting too close to “the late composer.” So, if I want to comment on my life in the choral world, I’d better do it now. And this is a good place to state that the title I am sometimes given, “dean of American choral composers,” means only that I am the oldest American choral composer.

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Read the full article in the February 2024 issue of Choral Journal. acda.org/choraljournal