Having a Spiritual Encounter With Pulitzer Prize-Winner Henry Brant

With composer Henry Brant’s spatial music, “being there” is central to the art.

That was an unstated message when his piece “Prophets” was given its U.S. premiere in Santa Barbara’s First Methodist Church on Sunday. Listeners were literally surrounded by music, treated to the engaging, enigmatic sound of four cantors singing Old Testament texts in Hebrew in separate corners of the chapel, while the ceremonial Jewish horn called the shofar punctuated their incantations.

It was a special occasion for more than just sonic reasons. It was the first performance by the Santa Barbara-based Brant since the composer, at age 88, rose out of cult status to a more general celebrity by winning the Pulitzer Prize for composition earlier this month.

Even without the Pulitzer, this has been a gleaming season for Brant. The prize-winning “Ice Fields” was premiered by the San Francisco Symphony in December; he conducted his chamber work “Glossary” in a recent Green Umbrella concert in Los Angeles; and he will also be composer-in-residence at next month’s UC Santa Barbara New Music Festival.

Ostensibly, the main event of Sunday’s program, presented collaboratively by the First Methodist Church and Santa Barbara’s Congregation B’nai Brith, was a fine and moving presentation of Mendelssohn’s oratorio “Elijah,” clocking in at nearly two hours.

Clearly, though, the notable event was Brant’s 15-minute opener.

A modest but characteristically Brant-ian piece, “Prophets” follows a simple scheme by the composer’s unorthodox standards. But it resulted in a sonic maze that was in sharp contrast to classical music convention, as represented by the Mendelssohn.

Spatial experimentation was just part of it, with cantors--Mark Childs, Lee Rothfarb, Judy Karin and Janet Laichas--positioned on either side of the stage and in the uppermost corners of the balcony. Additionally, like the work of Charles Ives (one of Brant’s heroes), the confluent pileup of different musical materials is important to his aesthetics.

Brant served as the conductor guiding the swirling musical activity, not counting out time but choreographing the structure by cueing vocalist’s entrances. The actual notes on the score are more traditional than the sum effect suggests, as focused solo parts yielded to increasingly overlapping voices, with maximum polytonal density by the end.

This being a house of worship, and for this occasion, an ecumenical Jewish and Christian gathering, the indecipherable mesh of parts conspired toward a uniquely meditative effect. True to the nature of many Brant works, it wasn’t the specifics, but the spirit, that counted.