The second concert of the Harvard Symposium on Music Criticism offered last night in the Memorial Church a program of three lengthy choral works commissioned for the occasion. These were, in the order of their performance: a "Last Judgement" by Paul Hindemith; a set of excerpts from Virgil's "Georgies", set to music under the title of "La Terra" by Gian-Francesco Malipiero; and the Genesis account of creation, entitled by its composer, Aaron Copland, "In the Beginning." All three were performed to a miraculous perfection by New York's Collegiate Chorale, under the direction of Robert Shaw. Nell Tangeman sang with all vocal beauty the extended and difficult solo passages of the Copland work. Mary Crowley accompanied the Malipiero piece on the organ, and a brass choir from the Boston Symphony Orchestra helped out in the Hindemith.

The latter work, entitled "Apparebit Repentina Dies", is based on a Latin poem of uncertain date and authorship ("before A.D. 700", said the program). This is a description in unrhymed octameter couplets of a Doomsday that recalls by its luridness the same scene as painted in the liturgical "Dies Irae." Mr. Hindemith's musical setting, though interspersed with brass interludes in his familiar fugal style, is perhaps a shade expeditious for so picturesque a subject. It trips, or rather bumps along in a jolly fashion that depicts little and scares no one; but it is distinguished music, if a bit ineffective (largely on account of the constant use of contrapuntal repeating-patterns) in its efforts at vividness. Its most vigorously expressive moment is one that describes the gnashing of teeth.

Malipiero's "La Terra," also in Latin, is Virgil in his loveliest pastoral vein and the Venetian master at his sweetest. All is suave and dreamy, with constant rhythmic complexities and a wealth of melody and grace that suggest the careless abundance of nature itself. Perhaps it is over-dreamy, for even the storm scene is mild; but the peaceful pastoral tone has rarely been achieved in our time with such expressive variety or with such sustained musical interest. "La Terra" is more than a distinguished piece of work. It is original, interesting, expressive, and beautiful.

Aaron Copland's "In the Beginning" was the most warmly received of the three commissioned works. It is a simple piece, consisting largely of recitative choral chant and of solos in arioso form. Some of the more extended choral passages are in two widely-spaced parts only. A few are more compact. The English declamation, though utterly clear, is not rhythmically idiomatic. It resembles rather Gregorian chant as sung by the Benedictine monks at Solesmes, except that the melodic intervals are neither proximate nor melismatic, lying chiefly between the fourth and the ninth. This constant skipping around is not unpleasant to hear, but it does not sound like English. It gives to the text an air of having been translated from the German.

It was entirely justified, however, on expressive grounds in the passage that describes chorally God's setting the lights in the firmament. The whole work, indeed, though agreeable for its simplicity and general plainness, would have profited from more of these picturesque set-pieces and less of the rambling recitative that was neither ritualistic in character nor quite naturalistic in its speech inflections.

All three composers would seem to have chosen texts that are somewhat over-weighty both by their antiquity and by their abundance of imagery. In all three cases, less text and more music would have produced works better equilibrated. Copland's is the least ambitious expressively of the three pieces. It is modest and thin of substance. Hindemith's is more pretentious and more complex but not a whit more expressive. Malipicro's is the richest of them, matches most nearly with music the grandeur of its verbal text. It might seem even more adequately Virgilian than it does if, orchestral instruments were to be substituted in the accompaniment for the pipe-organ, a graceless and lumbering instrument.