Music: Terrible Thing

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Last month, when Philadelphia Composer Harl McDonald announced the first performance of a composition for women's chorus and orchestra commemorating the Lindbergh kidnapping, Philadelphians were apprehensive.

Last week Philadelphia socialites took their apprehensions to the Academy of Music to hear Composer McDonald's new opus, entitled Lament for the Stolen. As the Philadelphia Orchestra and a black-&-blue clad chorus of 216 swung out under Eugene Ormandy's baton, listeners jumped and groped for their program notes. There they were partially reassured by reading: "The whole chorus, unaccompanied, announces fear and shock in a series of neoprimitive wails, punctuated by a shriek— the orchestra is agitated, and ... the soprano section speaks the words 'This is a terrible thing to be done in our time.' "

Braced as they were for Composer McDonald's shocker, the audience found the neoprimitive chorus and agitated orchestra less terrible than they had anticipated. Aside from a screech or two, Composer McDonald had concocted his score with ingredients that recalled the work of several old masters. Press pundits, long critical of McDonald's lack of originality, loudly assured their readers that the title of his work, Lament for the Stolen, did not refer to McDonald's familiar-sounding themes and harmonies.