Mormon Tabernacle Choir Essay

Last Sunday I had the opportunity for the first time, to listen to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir live. I was able to attend “Music and the Spoken Word” which is the longest continuous network broadcast in the world. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir performed with roughly 360 members and were conducted by Mack Wilberg. They were accompanied by a phenomenal organist, Richard Elliott. The organ he performed on has 5 keyboards, 11623 pipes and 32 footpedals.

The choir opened with “I Sing the Greatness of Our God” by Fred Bock and words by Isaac Watts. This piece began with the organ playing the melody softly in triple meter. The choir came in on an off beat and sang a homorhythmic arch contour. The choir began softly and crescendoed quickly. After the introduction, the first verse was sung alternating between the men and women, they started out acapella. The choir came back together and sang the chorus of the song in unison and crescendoed with the organ until they were singing fortissimo. This piece had an overall allegro tempo and had a generally repetitive theme. It was apparent that

He performed “Sinfonia to Cantata #29” by Johann Sebastian Bach. This piece of music was beautiful and very calming to listen to. It began with one hand playing powerful chords while the other hand was playing an ascending contour, and then a little while later changed into a descending contour. This gave the song a very distinct shape. The tempo of the piece was allegro, which made it made it hard for me to keep up with. During one theme the music crescendoed while descending down the scale with a trill between notes on one hand until it was it was piano. The piece then quickly shifted into another crescendo and while the music got louder it also ascended back up the keyboard with stunning chords each played quickly and distinctly. The timing of this piece was triple meter, in a major key and had a large