Entertaiment

Merrill Jensen’s Book of Mormon Oratorio
by Steven Kapp Perry

Singing the Song of Redeeming Love
With the release of Come Unto Christ, the Conversion of Alma the Younger, LDS composer Merrill Jenson becomes only the 5th composer to receive Ricks College’s prestigious biennial commission for a new scripturally-based work for their Symphony Orchestra and Chorus–the “Sacred Music Series.”

The Composer
Born and raised in Richfield, Utah, Merrill Jenson played trumpet and graduated in music composition from BYU where he got his first break scoring The First Vision, the film every returned missionary can quote by heart. In the twenty years since, Jenson has scored 19 feature-length scores, several IMAX films (including Legacy, seen by thousands each year in the Joseph Smith Building’s Legacy Theater), over 50 television and videotape productions, and produced over 60 record albums including two for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. So what does a CLIO and Emmy and Pearl Award winning composer do for an encore?

The Work
Come Unto Christ is a sixty-five minute oratorio for orchestra, choir, and four soloists, divided into three parts: Invitation, Conversion, and Testimony. Jenson credits his wife, Betsy, a BYU Theater graduate, for assembling the scriptural texts and finding the narrative structure of the work.

“I was serving as a bishop when I received the commission,” says Jenson, “so my calling and the work on this piece was about all I had time for over a year. It took longer than it might have, but I think being bishop made me more sensitive to the spirit, and to the ideas of repentance, forgiveness, and the love of the Savior–I don’t know if I could have written it without that calling. I love Alma for what he learned and what he taught. His story isn’t just about a one-time event of an angel coming and striking him down, it’s about a mighty change of heart followed by a lifetime of commitment to the gospel. Repentance and finding the love of God is the cycle of life.”

Come Unto Christ is written in a 20th century orchestral and choral style which will be a stretch for those accustomed to the verse/chorus/verse/chorus forms of everything from folks songs to pop, but it’s not so modern or atonal as to scare the lay person. And it’s worth the stretch. “I had to dig as deep as I could,” says Jenson. “Songwriting is a compact form which usually has one layer. Film scoring adds a visual element which is another layer, and works for the concert hall add yet another. This oratorio and the text I was setting demanded a depth and complexity which would bear up under repeated listening and do justice to the themes without trivializing them in any way.” The results of this deep digging have been an exciting stylistic breakthrough for the composer.

The initial “Invitation” section begins four pieces in which an older Alma recalls the central themes of his ministry, the words of his father, and his dramatic conversion. For me these introductory recitations of scripture are pleasant enough food for thought, but it’s not until mid-way through the second section–“Conversion”–where there is meat for the heart and spirit and where the emotional and dramatic energy begin.

Throughout this section, beginning with the 5th piece, “The Voice of Thunder,” Jenson is at his cinematic best using the orchestra to comment on the solos, duets, and choral sections which expound the story. This builds to a climax through “Repentance” and “May the Spirit of the Lord,” which introduce solo lines from witnesses, Alma himself and finally Alma the Elder, rejoicing in the hand of God upon his stricken son. As each of these elements start to interweave and layer over each other, the music and text rise to the highest artistic level on the album–a sublime passage. The perfect exclamation point on this section is “Gloria: Oh What Joy,” a joyous and bright vocal and instrumental fanfare bound to be the favorite selection for most listeners.

In part three–“Testimony”–we hear Alma passing on what he has learned to his sons, including a new setting to Alma’s heartfelt psalm, “O That I Were an Angel.”

Number thirteen, “He Is the Life and Light,” concludes the message and life of Alma, but is followed by the somewhat confusing final title piece, “Come Unto Christ,” which consists of quotes from Omni, Matthew, Joseph Smith, and Moroni, but not Alma. It’s beautiful music, but it feels like a selection from another work, especially after the moving concluding words of Alma in the previous piece; “…there is no other way or means whereby man can be saved, only in and through Christ.”

The Performance
One of the purposes of Ricks College commissioning works for the “Sacred Music Series” is not only to enlarge the serious musical literature of the Saints, but is, of course, to give students the challenge and joy of preparing and premiering demanding new spirit-filled works. This is a challenge conductor Kevin Call and the various choir directors take on with evident joy and determination. The orchestra and choir perform with a conviction and level of excellence all the more surprising coming from a two-year college. An apparent weakness is that the solo voices are young and lack the passion of more experienced performers, and while their pitch and diction are serviceable, especially the sopranos, it is this aspect which prevents this from being the definitive recording of the oratorio.

This is a work that isn’t absorbed in one sitting, and bears up under repeated listening. Ricks College deserves much credit for its additions to LDS choral literature, anf Come Unto Christ, the Conversion of Alma The Younger is a new benchmark of excellence for deservedly acclaimed composer Merrill Jenson.

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[Editor’s note: Come Unto Christ, the Conversion of Alma the Younger is a Deseret Book release. It is available at LDS bookstores.]

Other works commissioned in the “Sacred Music Series” by Ricks College:

1986 Darwin Wolford Behold, He Cometh!

1993 Crawford Gates Visions of Eternity

1995 Robert Cundick Song of Nephi

1997 K. Newell Dayley Immanuel