Alfred Nash Patterson

Alfred Nash "Bud" Patterson (1914–1979) was an influential New England choral conductor, teacher, and mentor of choral musicians. Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts and a graduate of Lawrence public schools, he went on to study music at the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston University, and the Berkshire Music Center. He later became organist and choir director of Christ Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where In 1948 he expanded the church choir into a "semi concert choir" of 40–50 voices that he called the Polyphonic Choir. When, the following year, Patterson changed jobs, the group needed to find a new name, and settled on "Chorus pro Musica." The chorus rapidly became known for high-quality performances of new and rarely performed works, and Patterson's stature in the Boston musical community grew correspondingly.

Mr. Patterson began his public career at a time when choral music in the Boston area was in a kind of doldrums:

"Apart from church choirs, there were, essentially, only the Handel & Haydn Society and the Cecilia Society. In their nineteenth-century heyday, each organization had been an important musical force in the city, premiering new works and dusting off seldom heard classics. But they had specialized in oratorios, and no one was writing oratorios much anymore. For much of the first half of the twentieth century, H&H and Cecilia were content to serve up strictly traditional fare."

Interviewed 30 years later, Patterson said, “Our policy was to do unusual things in order to attract those musicians who were challenged by and capable of taking on new things and were tired of the old things."

Patterson's innovative and ambitious programming was there from the start, as in its year of existence the Polyphonic Choir gave the first Boston performances of Aaron Copland’s In the Beginning and Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols, and the American premiere of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Benedicite. This was followed by one of Chorus pro Musica's first performances, the sensational Boston premiere on March 21, 1949. of Mozart's Mass in C minor before a capacity audience at Boston's Trinity Church. For the next 30 years, Patterson's choruses were to continue introducing Boston audiences to both previously neglected and entirely new choral works, many of which have since become choral "standards." Just a few examples are Antonio Vivaldi's Gloria, Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem, Igor Stavinsky's Mass, and Francis Poulenc's Figure humaine; and, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Poulenc's Gloria (World premiere, in 1961) and Benjamin Britten's War Requiem (North American premiere, at Tanglewood, in 1963).

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