Handel and Haydn Associate Conductor and Chorusmaster John Finney on the unique sound of the Society Chorus:

"One of the things that makes the Handel and Haydn Society Chorus so special is the sheer beauty of the sound it makes. One reason the sound is so extraordinary is that the sound of each individual voice is remarkable; every member of the Chorus is a soloist in his or her own right. A chorus made up entirely of soloists is not always a sure bet to provide a pleasurable listening experience; but a unique quality of the Society Chorus is every member's willingness and ability to adjust his or her manner of singing to blend into a composite sound. It is one of the joys of good choral singing that the whole is truly greater than the sum of the parts. No individual chorister could make the powerful yet flexible sound that a fine chorus can produce.

"Of course, having a beautiful sound does not in itself make a chorus great. It is what it can do with the sound that sets it apart from the average chorus. Much of the choral music we perform at Handel and Haydn could be described with a single word: virtuosic. Take a look at any movement of Bach's Mass in B Minor, for example: lengthy passages of sixteenth notes, which must be performed with all the accuracy and agility of a fine violinist; marvelously intricate counterpoint, which can sound like mush if not sung with a sensitive ear for clarity and transparency; and achingly beautiful chromatic lines, which demand absolute purity of intonation in order to reach the highest level of expressiveness.

"These are but a few of the challenges that await the members of the chorus. And with what great gusto the Chorus members meet those challenges! No coloratura is too complicated, no chromatic line too bizarre, no tessitura too daunting for these singers. At Handel and Haydn we love to point out that the virtuosity of the Orchestra is matched by that of the Chorus the resulting collaboration is often a sort of ‘anything you can play, I can sing better’ situation, in which one ensemble is constantly encouraged and inspired by the other.

"Another component of great choral singing has to do with the one thing singers have that instrumentalists do not: words. Instrumentalists occasionally have to rack their brains to come up with the emotion that a composer is trying to convey at a certain point in the music (does this strange harmony signify anguish? despair? ecstasy? indigestion?). Singers have a distinct advantage in that they are given a text to go along with their music, and the music of the greatest composers is usually crafted to explicitly convey the emotion of the text. Here is another area where the Handel and Haydn Society’s singers excel delivering not only the words, but the meaning and feeling of the words, whether in English, German, Italian, Latin, or any other language."

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