A Mormon Record | Leroy Robertson, Book of Mormon Oratorio

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Mormons know Governor Romney, Billy Casper, Gene Fullmer, and Grant Johannesen. Most have heard of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms. Fewer know of Gershwin, Bernstein, Copland, Bloch. 

But who can name the Church’s only living composer of national and international stature? Better still, how many can walk into a record shop and order the only significant commercially recorded “Mormon” composition of the Church’s 137 years and identify performers, conductor, label? 

The answers: Leroy Robertson’s Book of Mormon Oratorio, performed by Utah Symphony and University of Utah Choruses under Maurice Abravanel with soloists and chief Tabernacle Organist Alexander Schreiner. Label: Vanguard VSD-2099. 

Robertson has had a distinguished and productive career. He is chairman of the General Church Music Committee. Former head of both University of Utah and Brigham Young University Music Departments, he has been a nationally recognized composer for over three decades, prominent world-wide for over two.

The Depression produced his greatest works. Two were prize-winners: the Quintet won the New York Music Critics Circle Award (1936); the Trilogy won the largest cash prize ($25,000) in history (1947). The latter was belated recognition, for the three-movement symphony was completed years earlier (1939) and gathered dust until the Reichhold Competition. 

On receipt of the prize the Mormon composer was quoted as saying: “By the time Internal Revenue and tithing are taken care of, there’s not going to be a whole lot left for me.” In fact, on advice of counsel, he appealed income tax payment on grounds that the actual work involved in the 1947 prize work was done nearly a decade before under different tax laws. The case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, where he lost on a 5-4 decision. 

The Book of Mormon Oratorio may not be Robertson’s best work in strictly musical terms, but it is apt to be the most enduring. I feel the Trilogy, Quartet, and Quintet are all more unified and better, musically—but none are available on recordings yet. The only other Robertson work on commercial disc is his Violin Concerto—on the flip-side of Stravinsky’s Concerto (Vanguard). Or, as Robert son buffs say: “The Stravinsky is on the flip-side of the Robertson album.” Both are beautifully played by one of the handful of current violin greats, Tossy Spivakovsky. 

I am convinced the Oratorio will be the most enduring because of its indigenous nature and textual subject matter and because of its potential emotional appeal to all Mormons. It is set to Book of Mormon texts freely selected and adapted by the composer. Its high point textually, though not musically, is the appearance of the Savior as recorded in III Nephi. 

Narrative action moves via tenor Kenly Whitelock in the role of Evangelist. The major solo role goes to Roy Samuelson, finest baritone in Mormon history and a faculty member at Indiana University’s prestigious, opera-geared Music School. As Samuel the Lamanite prophet—one of Mormondom’s most colorful figures—he dominates the performance vocally, both by weight of the role and by his forceful, artistic performance. 

The Savior’s piercing words to the Nephites are effectively—and carefully— set by the composer and movingly sung by basso Warren Wood. Soprano Jean Preston does well in a short solo. 

Maurice Abravanel and the Utah Symphony are superb. One of the nation’s top dozen recording orchestras (especially in the connoisseur literature), they premiered the Oratorio in 1953 with University of Utah Choruses in the Tabernacle, repeating it in subsequent months throughout the state. That 1953 performance was recorded by a fledgling Salt Lake company but didn’t attain much circulation. The Oratorio has been revived in several Utah Symphony seasons through the years. 

Its most listenable sections—and probably best—are the familiar Lord’s Prayer, in my opinion the Prayer’s best setting, which has enjoyed a lengthy, profitable life of its own apart from the Oratorio for decades; the peaceful, modulatory, and chromatic How Beautiful Upon the Mountain; Old Things Are Done Away\ simplicity and poignancy as scored for ladies voices; and the orchestral interlude, Pastoral, performed as encore on the Utah Symphony’s 1966 European Tour.

Some sections will cause problems for most listeners: the rather severe opening (and, interestingly enough, one of the last written) baritone recitative with surging orchestral undertow, and the finale – a magnificent, but musically involved, Gloria (in English).

University of Utah Choruses (David A. Shand and J. Marlowe Nielson, conductors) and South High Girls’ Chorus (Armont Willardsenj conductor) do commendably. The still immature college voices make one wish for greater depth, power, and richness of tone quality, particularly in climactic moments – as in the finale , which fails to reach its potential.

This leads one to the question: Why not the Tabernacle Choir? Its 375 mature, routined voices would seem the answer. I’ve asked this question for years—ever since the Oratorio’ s completion in 1947.

Robertson completed the Oratorio with the Tabernacle Choir and the Brigham Young University Symphony (which he then conducted) in mind. He wrote a special Tabernacle organ part for Alexander Schreiner. A few months later he won the Reichhold Award, left Brigham Young University for the University of Utah—and the Oratorio went on the shelf.

It remained—years later—for non-Mormon-Greek-Portuguese-Swiss-French-Jewish Maurice Abravanel (“Salt Lake City is the only city in the world where I’m a gentile“) to bring it off the shelf to performance.

The day will—and should—come when the Tabernacle Choir and the Philadelphia Orchestra or Utah Symphony bring out another—better—stereo Book of Mormon Oratorio pressing. It would seem to be a logical recording project for the Church’s “most effective missionary.” One hopes that the Choir’s tight, demanding schedule could accommodate such a venture.

And while we’re at it, why not annual July 24th Tabernacle performances by Tabernacle Choir and orchestra as a serious counterpart to Crawford Gates’ popular Mormon folk-musical, Promised Valley, which enjoyed a successful sixty-day tourist run under Church sponsorship last summer? What an improvement on the annual Days of ’47 pageant.

Until a new, better Oratorio recording is made, the Vanguard album, with Arnold Friberg cover-drawing, is available—but not moving briskly—at some record dealers or the Utah Symphony office. We might hope the M.I.A. would consider offering the Oratorio as a mass-listening project some year in the Church’s myriad cultural halls. The existing enviable physical culture program might be persuaded to move over for a week or so.