The Bucks County Choral Society will perform Anton Bruckner’s Mass No 1 in D minor”and Margaret Bonds’ “Credo,” at 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 29, at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, 235 E. State St. Doylestown.
Artistic Director Thomas Lloyd will conduct the combined forces of the Choral Society, the Bucks County Community College Concert Choir (Rochelle Reed, director) and Symphony in C in addition to featuring soloists Kayla Hariott, Jenny Anne Flory, Luke Norvell and Shafiq Hicks.
Bruckner’s Mass No 1 in D minor is a freshly original work where Bruckner, who had meticulously adhered to details and rules of harmony, gave himself permission to break free of those rules, indulging his own muse.
Bonds earned degrees in piano and composition from Northestern University’s School of music where, at her entrance at age 16 in 1929, as one of the few Black students, she was forced to live off campus. She was the first Black person to perform with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as featured soloist in 1933.
Bonds composed the piano version of “Credo” in 1965, with the first edition of the orchestral score (which will be sung at this concert) produced by Rollo Dilworth and premiered in 1972. This setting of W.E.B. DuBois’ “Credo” contains a wide range of musical styles from blues, to orchestral declamation to modernist dissonance.
DuBois is considered one of the most important American intellectual voices of the 20th century, and this text, written in 1904, is packed with double meanings intended to build the cultural self-confidence of his African American readers and to persuade white readers that Black people should be respected as equals. It is a text that has often found a place on the wall in many African American family homes.
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