Many choirs will have sung Randall Thompson’s Alleluia this past Easter Day. At first glance, it may seem a curious choice for such a morning. It has no bright fanfares or exuberant declarations, no soaring shouts of triumph. Instead, it sets a single word – Alleluia – repeated over and over again, unfolding with quiet intensity, restraint, and a deep undercurrent of longing.
The piece was composed in July 1940 in a world that was already unraveling. France had fallen. The British army had narrowly escaped destruction at Dunkirk. London braced for aerial assault. The United States, though not yet at war, stood at a moral and political crossroads – hesitant, divided, and slow to act. There was, for many, a growing sense that something was breaking apart in the world and that whatever came next would not be easily mended.
It was in this climate that Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, commissioned Thompson to write a choral fanfare for the opening of the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood. He asked for something joyful – something bright and uplifting. But Thompson,listening to the world with his whole being, answered with a work that held no easy joy. ‘This is a sad Alleluia’, he later said. ‘It is a slow, melancholy piece. It is not a whoopee’.
Yet what he composed was far more than