Choral Marathon: Robert Kyr And His Singers Cross The Finish Line

By John Burnett

When we checked in with composer Robert Kyr last September, he
was at Christ in the Desert Monastery in northern New Mexico,
sitting at a creaky upright piano, composing harmonies for an
ambitious choral project. I’ve been following this musical creation
from inception to completion — and I have the final chapter.

The piece was recently premiered in Austin, Texas, by
Conspirare, the acclaimed chamber chorus based in that city. The
group had only four days of rehearsal to master the most
challenging and lengthy composition most of its singers have ever
encountered.

Wearing jeans and sipping bottled water, the vocalists stood
before thick scores inside St. Martin’s Lutheran Church in Austin.
Robert Kyr — a prolific American composer of luminous choral works
— sat in the front pew, straining to hear how his musical ideas
sounded in practice.

Kyr was commissioned by Conspirare to compose several choral
works as a 21st-century response to the music of four Renaissance
and Baroque masters: Josquin des Prez, Orlando di Lasso, Tomás Luis
de Victoria and Johann Sebastian Bach. They all wrote polyphonic
music — literally, works for “many voices.”