Concert Choir spring concert to feature world premiere by School of Music dean

The University of South Carolina’s Concert Choir and Chamber Orchestra will present “Songs of Love and War” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 2, at St. Joseph Catholic Church.

Admission is $10 at the door. The church is located at 3512 Devine St. in Columbia.

Larry Wyatt, director of choral studies at the university’s School of Music, will conduct. Faculty soloists Walter Cuttino (tenor) and Jacob Will (bass) will perform.

The program includes the premiere performance of “The War Prayer,” composed by School of Music Dean Tayloe Harding, and Benjamin Britten’s “Cantata Misericordium.” Also on the program are the Claudio Monteverdi madrigal, “Altri canti d’Amor,” from “Songs of Love and War,” and Johannes Brahms’ lament, “Nänie.”

Harding’s “The War Prayer” is based on Mark Twain’s short story of the same title. Twain’s story, a statement against war written during the Philippine-American War (1899-1902), is a jab at people who blindly tie patriotism to religion and assume that God is partial to their country’s cause. The story wasn’t published until after Twain’s death in 1910 because his family thought it too controversial.

Britten’s “Cantata Misericordium,” a setting of the parable of the good Samaritan that presents an alternative to war, was composed for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Red Cross.

“The Britten is rarely performed because of its difficulty and because there are few works that can be programmed with it,” Harding said. “There was a definite need for a complementary composition.”

“I was attracted to “The War Prayer” text because I found the format of Twain’s conscientious objections to war fascinating,” said Harding, who accepted a commission to set “The War Prayer” to music. “I feel strongly that there is a fundamental truth in Twain’s turn-of-the-20th-century words that holds fast at the turn of the 21st century. It is a moral absolute that praying for a victory in a hostility is at the same time praying for the defeat of another, regardless of the nature of the hostility.”

For more information, call Sara Beardsley at 803-777-5369, or visit the Web site: http://www.music.sc.edu/.