We lost a legend late last month. Norman O. Scribner was the founder and Creative Director of the Washington Choral Arts Society, a volunteer organization that touched millions with their voices united in soaring melody.

The Choral Arts Society formed in 1963 at the urging of Howard Mitchell, then director of the National Symphony Orchestra. Impressed by Mr. Scribner’s “ability and intensity” after watching his performance as a church choirmaster and witnessing his talent as the NSO’s staff keyboardist, Mitchell asked him to assemble a community chorus for the orchestra’s holiday performance of Handel’s oratorio “Messiah.”

To recruit volunteer singers, Mr. Scribner placed a help-wanted ad in a local newspaper. Nearly five hundred people responded, who auditioned to create a “first-class chorus of approximately 120 voices.” The singers enjoyed he experience so much that they decided to remain intact as a group.

The choral society was established as an independent choral organization in 1965 and formally incorporated in 1966. My pal Senior Executive Jerry had a full military career and then specialized as a Government budget analyst. In order to preserve his sanity, he joined the Society two decades ago, and he tips me off to performances of particular note, normally the matinees at the Kennedy Center. I don’t go to the evening shows since I periodically lose my car in the cavernous garage under the Opera Hall.

Jerry participated in the celebratory mass yesterday, and I think his observations on a great man and a wonderful institution are worth your attention. The Society is of our town, and they give back to it, year after year. They are the very embodiment of Norman Scribner’s vision.

Here is what Jerry wrote:

“This morning I had the great privilege to celebrate an extraordinary life. This celebration was conducted at the Washington National Cathedral and the wide circle of Norman’s friends and colleagues filled the beautiful structure,

As might be expected for a man of music, the service centered on the music – and each piece, selected with care, celebrated a facet of Norman’s musical legacy.

A volunteer choir of well over 150 voices made the sweetest music and filled the cathedral with the sound.

The first piece, “My Lord, What a Morning,” was conducted by one of Norman’s long time friend and colleague, Joe Holt, who flew in from Florida this morning just for the celebration. Norman always viewed music as one of the healing forces and on the one year anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination, Norman organized a tribute concert featuring his own Choral Arts Society of Washington and a combined choir from black churches within Washington DC. This became the model for the annual Choral Tributes Choral Arts co-sponsors every year, now during Black History month in February.

“Chichester Psalms” was written by Leonard Bernstein as a commission for the Chichester Music Festival. For Choral Arts singers, this piece reminds us of Norman’s long musical friendship with Bernstein going back to the work of the two in preparing “Mass” another commission piece, written to open the John F. Kennedy Center for the Arts in DC, at the personal request of the former first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy. Movement three is based on the 133rd Psalm, including the following text:

Behold how good
And how pleasant it is,
For brethren to dwell
Together in unity.

The entire piece is in sung in the original Hebrew of the Psalms – and the haunting final moment as the full choir this final refrain without accompaniment of any kind until the final Amen (when the might pipe organ joins) is surely one of the most sublime moments in the choral repertoire.

After a tribute by one of Norman’s many long-time musical colleagues (who conducted the Baltimore Chorale in the world premier of Norman’s piece, “The Nativity”), we sang the chorale movement to celebrate Norman’s artistic creations. This piece sets the poetry of the Elizabethan poet Richard Crashaw.

After a homily by Norman’s long time pastor at St Alban’s, which is on the close of the National Cathedral, the choir sang the fourth movement from Brahms’ “German Requiem” (natuerlich, auf Deutsch) “Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnune” (How Lovely Are Thy Dwelling Places). The Brahms was among the first pieces Norman conducted his Choral Arts Society and was the last piece he conducted the Society at the Kennedy Center before his retirement in 2012. Another of those touchstones between music and the soul that is magical.

After The Lord’s Prayer, the chorus sang “Bogoroditse Devo” (Slavonic setting of the familiar Latin Ave Maria text from Rachmaninov’s “Vespers.” Norman loved Sergei Rachmaninov, starting with his piano music.

One of my personal Norman stories involved coming into one of our yearly re-auditions with a prepared solo piece from the Rachmaninov songs. When I handed Norman the book to accompany me, Norman looked at the cover and remarked that the cover painting of Rachmaninov had hung over his piano as he was growing up and inspired him to keep practicing. I don’t know if I did the piece justice but I was asked to sing for another season.

The “Bogoroditse Devo” is another unaccompanied piece. It also reminded many long-time members of the close musical friendship between Norman and Mstislav (Slava) Rostropovich who conducted the NSO for many years and also conducted the Choral Arts recording of the “Vespers.” A few years before I joined Choral Arts, they toured with the NSO in Russia, singing at a large outdoor concert in Red Square, whichever 100,000 people attended – all thanks to Slava and Norman.

The chorus sang the final chorus from the Bach St. Matthew Passion (Wir setzen uns mit Traenen nieder//We sit down with tears) as the sending recessional. As a long time church organist at St Alban’s church, Norman also loved the Bach organ music as well as his choral music and his Passions along with the B Minor Mass are among the bedrock works of Western music.

Two congregational hymns, a series of Bach organ pieces during the prelude, and the Widor Organ Tocatta from his Symphony Number 5, rounded out the music of the morning, among which was also interspersed a high Anglican funeral rite.

I will close with one more story about Norman. After I first auditioned for Choral Arts in the summer of 1997, Norman called me as rehearsals were about to get under way and asked me to sing with the group. As I recall the conversation, Norman went on to say that I would be on trial. But once I started singing with the group, everyone (including Norman) made me feel like I was part of the family and there never seemed to be a question that this is something I would do for as long as I was able.

There are so many wonderful musical moments, from Carnegie Hall (Beethoven’s Ninth) and Lincoln Center (John Adams’ “Harmonium”) in New York to the Grand Teton and Jackson Hole (the Verdi Requiem), to England (amazing Mahler Eighth at St Paul’s Cathedral and Walton’s Belshazer’s Feast at Victoria and Albert Hall to open Proms) to Buenos Aires (Carmina Burana) and Rio de Janero (Verdi Requiem) to grand finale in France (singing the magnificent Berlioz Requiem), and a Mozart Requiem in Spoletto, Italy, along with singing American Spirituals in the church of St Frances in Assisi, I have been part of a wonderful musical legacy which was magical.

And that does NOT even begin to remember all of the musical magic year in and year out at the Kennedy Center and elsewhere in the National Capitol Region.

Hard to say how much fuller this has made my life. And I am just one of the very many lives he touched.”

Through the voices of the Choral Arts Society, he also touched mine. Rest in Peace, Norman Scriber. Your legacy endures.

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303