Belshazzar's Feast
From College of Fine Arts and Communications
Contents |
College History
In 1925, BYU President Franklin S. Harris created the College of Fine Arts at Brigham Young University. It was the first school of its kind to be located in the western United States, offering courses in art, music, and drama (Wilkinson).
Over the next forty years, the college continued to grow and expand, gaining prestige and recognition as its programs developed. In 1961, Music Department Chair Crawford Gates decided that it was time to introduce BYU to California in an unparalleled way. While discussing upcoming performance tours, a seemingly impossible idea was presented – take the combined choirs, Symphony Orchestra, and Concert Band on tour together.
The Tour
Preparations began immediately. The music was selected – Bach’s Magnificat and William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast – and a letter was sent to all choral members:
We feel that this tour and subsequent related performances will be among the outstanding events of your college career, and we invite each of you to so prepare the repertoir [sic] of the tour with all your mind and heart so that it can be the brilliant experience that it is capable of being (Gates).
True to their word, the directors did require the mind and heart of all those involved, holding fourteen separate rehearsals from five to eight in the morning in addition to regular rehearsals.
Finally, on April 8, 1963, after two years of planning, auditioning, and practicing, the eager performers and directors loaded into ten buses and began their monumental tour, traveling 2,500 miles across three states.
Stopping first in Las Vegas, the group performed at the LDS Cultural and Recreation Center. The following day they performed for the Western Division Conference of the Music Educators National Conference held in Bakersfield, California.
Their next stop was in Los Angeles, where Albert Goldberg, a music critic for the Los Angeles Times, praised their performance stating, “Brigham Young University . . . can well be proud of its accomplishments. . . The Brigham Young forces easily proved themselves among the best.” Goldberg lamented the “lack of publicity [which] held the attendance to slender proportions (Goldberg).”
The California tour concluded in San Francisco, and the group returned to Utah to give three final performances. The first was held in the Smith Field House on April 15, as part of the Fine Arts Festival. The second performance was to facilitate Century Records of Burbank, California in making a recording of the historic tour. A copy of this recording was sent to William Walton, composer of Belshazzar’s Feast, who later sent a letter to Crawford Gates, commending the performers and their achievements. On April 17, 1963, the final performance was held in the Salt Lake Tabernacle.
History Repeats
In November 2007, the historic tour was remembered and honored by the School of Music as they again performed Belshazzar's Feast. The BYU Philharmonic, BYU Singers, BYU Concert Choir, and soloists Shane Warby and Don Cook again brought the piece to BYU on November 9 and 10, 2007.
An additional performance was be held at the Salt Lake Tabernacle on November 17, 2007 at 7:30. This performance was done in conjunction with the combined choirs at the University of Utah as well as the combined conferences of the National Association of Schools of Music and the College Music Society.
Additional Information
References
- Wilkinson, Ernest. Brigham Young University: The First One Hundred Years. Brigham Young University Press, 1976: 2:285.
- Gates, Crawford. Records 1931-1971. Brigham Young University. Dept. of Music. Brigham Young University Special Collections. 2:16.
- Goldberg, Albert. “University Music Unit Wins Praise.” Los Angeles Times. 12 Apr. 1963:C7.
