Generations in harmony

Dale Boman still remembers the fear he felt when he auditioned for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

“You walk in the audition room, and the music director, associate director and accompanist are all in there, just staring at you,” Boman said. “You feel naked.”

Those feelings are widely shared among the singers and instrumentalists of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the legendary ensemble that appears Tuesday at the Holland Performing Arts Center.

These volunteer musicians, after all, are all amateurs.

But they have a generational edge because they come from families that have been represented in the choir for years.

“Singing in the choir is a family tradition they've been preparing for all their lives,” said Mack Wilberg, the group's music director. The group takes pride in its reputation as one of the most polished, precise and elegant ensembles in the world.

For many of the vocalists, singing and music-making are part of a legacy that dates to pioneer days, when the Mormons set up temporary Winter Quarters in Florence on the far north side of Omaha. That gives a portion of the choir's ties to the city.

Wilberg said the first Mormon groups that crossed the Plains between 1846 and 1848 always traveled with two essential people – someone who could repair wagon wheels and someone who could sing or play fiddle.

“They looked to music to lift their spirits,” he said.

The 56-year-old Boman, who lives about an hour's drive from Salt Lake City, traces his ancestry back to those early fiddle-playing, hymn-singing pioneers who passed through Nebraska.

His great-great grandfather, Ariah Coates Brower, was an artisan who made the death mask for Mormon church founder Joseph Smith, who was killed in 1844.

Brower traveled to Winter Quarters in Florence with Brigham Young in 1846. One of his sons, Ariah Hussey Brower, was born there on Nov. 19, 1846.

“We actually know exactly where he lived,” Boman said. “We have a map that shows his house, which was located in the 11th ward.”

The Mormon pioneers built a veritable city — complete with streets and wards — of more than 800 log and sod houses. They also erected the now-historic Florence Mill.

Young and about 3,000 of his followers from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had been traveling from Nauvoo, Ill., to the Salt Lake Valley. Fierce winter weather forced them to set up temporary quarters on Omaha Tribe land, on the west bank of the Missouri River.

Brower and his family moved to Utah in the second company of Mormons who crossed the Plains in 1847. Boman is a descendant of the third of Brower's four wives. More of Boman's ancestors followed the early treks.

His great-grandmother, Elizabeth Hursillar Johnson Nixon, was born in Council Bluffs in 1849.

“Those pioneers led hard lives,” Boman said. “Whenever I go out in the snow to pick up my newspaper, I think, ‘Gosh, my ancestors lived in this kind of cold all the time.'”

At least 350 of the pioneers in the area perished between 1846 and 1848. They had suffered from scurvy, tuberculosis and other diseases. Many are buried in the Mormon Cemetery off State Street in Florence.

Their stories are preserved at the Mormon Trail Center, a high-tech, interactive museum next to the cemetery.

The center features detailed maps showing the various routes the Mormons took on the journey west. There are also paintings, sculptures, dioramas — including an exact model of Winter Quarters — an authentic covered wagon and a full-size log cabin.

The importance of music to the pioneers is immediately apparent. One display case includes a period violin and hymn book —– two of the most essential items on every wagon train.

Diane Chatfield, a 22-year-old Brigham Young University student, is serving an 18-month religious mission at the museum, and her duties include giving tours.

Partway through one of her recent tours, she stopped at a display case containing the lyrics to “Come, Come, Ye Saints,” poet William Clayton's 1846 Mormon anthem. That hymn, of course, is a staple of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Chatfield, whose ancestor was a bishop at Winter Quarters, glanced at the case and began to sing.

“Why should we mourn or think our lot is hard?” Chatfield intoned in her soft, sweet soprano voice. “'Tis not so; all is right.”

Hoyt Brewster, the trail center's director, and Maury Schooff, a local church leader, listened for a moment and then joined in.

“Music is central to the faith,” Brewster said. “It's part of our scripture.”

Moments later, a group of tourists began their own rendition of the Clayton hymn, singing “we'll find the place which God for us prepared, far away, in the West.”

Boman, like all the singers in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, knows the hymn well.

But before he got to sing it with the choir, he had to go through a grueling three-part audition process.

The singers must first establish that they are members of the church in good standing, and that they are between the ages of 25 and 55 – mandatory retirement from the choir is 60, to make room for the next generation.

Applicants must submit an audition tape in which they sing various vocal exercises along with one of three hymns, “Abide With Me,” “O My Father” or “I Need Thee Every Hour.”

Next comes a daunting three-hour written music theory test that would no doubt challenge a Juilliard School student. Applicants who get through those hoops are then ushered into the presence of Wilberg, the choir's director, for whom they sing solo.

“It's rough, but Mack Wilberg is incredibly polite and encouraging,” Boman said.

Standards are high, Wilberg explained, in part because of the choir's august tradition. Over the years, this group has performed at 13 World's Fairs and Expositions and for 10 U.S. presidents. It was also watched by the 3.5 billion viewers who tuned in for the opening ceremonies of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

But there's also a practical consideration.

Every week, the singers must learn five or six new songs to perform on “Music and the Spoken Word,” a radio show the choir has produced every Sunday since July 1929 — nearly 80 years. At every Thursday night rehearsal, Wilberg and his associates pass out the sheet music for the new tunes — for 360 singers that comes to about 5,000 pages. The singers then have less than two weeks to learn the new material.

“To learn that much complicated music that fast, you have to be good,” Wilberg said.

Boman conceded that it's a challenge requiring a huge time commitment. But he said it's worth it.

“Singing in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir has been my dream,” he said. “It's been the greatest experience of my lifetime.”

Contact the writer:

444-1076, john.pitcher@owh.com

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