Candide Choral Suite Monday, April 20, 2020
In 1953, the renowned playwright Lillian Hellman proposed to Leonard Bernstein that they adapt Voltaire’s Candide for the musical theater. Voltaire’s 1758 novella satirized the fashionable philosophies of his day and, especially, the Catholic Church whose Inquisition routinely tortured and killed “heretics” in a ghastly event known as an “Auto da Fé” (“act of faith”). Hellman observed a sinister parallel between the Inquisition’s church-sponsored purges and the “Washington Witch Trials,” fueled by anti-Communist hysteria and waged by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Charged with rage and indignation, she began her adaptation of Voltaire’s with lyricist John LaTouche and Bernstein, who wrote numerous musical sketches.
Although unsuccessful at its premiere in 1956, Candide has now overcome the unenthusiastic reaction of early audiences and critics and achieved enormous popularity. It is very popular among major music schools as a student show because of the quality of its music and the opportunities it offers to student singers.
Newly available is a lovely Candide: Choral Suite, which includes “The Best of All Possible Worlds,” “Oh, Happy We,” “It Must Be So,” “This World (Candide’s Lament),” and “Make Our Garden Grow.”
Contact us for more recommendations, and shop Stanton’s for all your sheet music needs!