As home to the Music Department at the University of Waterloo, the culture at Conrad Grebel University College is steeped in harmony. The College hosts dozens of concerts each year – instrument ensembles, jazz band, vocal performances, and choral presentations. Nevertheless, it is truly a special occasion when the department joins together for a mass concert like the “Celebration in Song” that took place on November 30th at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church. With the audience filled to capacity, this special event celebrating Grebel’s 50th Anniversary showcased the College’s three choirs – the University Choir, the Chapel Choir, and the Chamber Choir. To cap the event off, the choirs formed a mass choir to perform the world premiere of Psalm 150, a commissioned piece by Grebel alumus Timothy Corlis.
According to composer Tim Corlis, the Psalmist in Psalm 150 expresses the “HalleluYah” with instruments – trumpets, organs, cymbals, harps, strings, tambourines – many of them loud instruments, and then ends with the word, neshamah (נשׁמה), translated as breath, spirit: ‘Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord!’ This is the same breath or soul that God gives in the Genesis creation story.” In setting Psalm 150 to music, Corlis describes the piece as “a journey up the mountain. We share earnest prayer and devotion in the beginning, and follow it by exuberance and excitement as we push on towards the summit. Sometimes the air gets a little thin up there. It reminds us that we are, physically and spiritually, inseparable from our creator. We may face fears of the unknown and the mysterious… wonder and awe as we climb higher. Life, breath, worship all at once, indistinguishable.”
This piece, commissioned by Conrad Grebel University College, was made possible with the Henry A. and Anna Schultz Memorial Fund. The fund, administered by the Mennonite Foundation of Canada, was established in 1982 by Lena Williams (pictured with husband Rudy) of St. Catharines, Ontario, in memory of her parents, Henry and Anna Schultz. Henry Schultz was a church music conductor and self-taught violinist, and all members of the family participated actively in singing and the playing of various instruments. Music, especially sacred music, was an important part of the life of the Schultz family and of their participation in Mennonite church life in rural Saskatchewan.
A recording of Corlis’ Psalm 150 is available online at:
www.timothycorlis.ca/composition/psalm-150/