Underrated Classical Music - Thompson's Last Words of David (really)

This is about Randall Thompson, not Koussevitzky. This is Thompson's Last Words of David. Along with Thompson's Alleluia, this is literally the foundational piece of American choral music - the absolute heart of the repertoire. There is not a single American choral singer who has never sung this work. American choral music is not anybody's idea of the eighth wonder of the world, but Thompson touches on something of the old WASP American spirit of Victorian porches, church hymnals, pancake breakfasts and temperance societies. It's nearly disappeared by now, but go around New England or the towns of New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, you see its remnants everywhere. In my early teens I went to summer music camp in Maine, and the disappearing WASP class was in every town - polo shirts, black shoes with khaki shorts and socks pulled up to the knees, frozen expressions, terrible teeth, men and women looking vaguely indistinguishable and rarely talking to each other. It looked as though they had passed on some large, terrible truth about the founding of this country which we would rather not hear.

So here is The Last Words of David as you've never, ever heard it before. Oh to have been in Tanglewood in those years. The idealism and optimism about music and America and the world was something never seen again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfwuXg6GmPU&fbclid=IwAR1lkUrxE1S5v_Z7sjkmlD5kuGwDIwsy9NMLoQ9xvLl-sN0IqZHTNldMNMA