A commission to evoke ‘the other’

CLASSICAL NOTES

Inspired by Psalms, composer sets to music her years spent battling cancer

June 03, 2011|By David Weininger, Globe Correspondent

Composer Abbie Betinis at rehearsal with music director Betsy Burleigh… (BARRY CHIN/GLOBE STAFF )

CHORUS PRO MUSICA Music of Stravinsky and Betinis

At: Jordan Hall, Sunday, 3 p.m. Tickets: $25-$55. 617-267-7442, www.choruspromusica.org

Abbie Betinis was a little giddy on the phone last week, talking about the new piece she’s written for Chorus pro Musica. More than a little giddy, actually: Having arrived in Boston earlier that day, she’d just seen a review of one of her earlier pieces in The New York Times.

“You don’t realize when you’re sitting at a piano in the middle of Minnesota that you’re going to get a New York Times review the next day,’’ she said

You can forgive Betinis her exuberance. At 31 years of age, the St. Paul-based composer has survived three bouts of Hodgkin’s lymphoma over the past 13 years. Her journey, which seems both nightmarish and oddly redemptive, left a lasting mark on the choral-orchestral work “Expectans expectavi,’’ which Chorus pro Musica will premiere in a concert on Sunday.

Betinis’s first cancer diagnosis came in 1998. She had a six-month round of chemotherapy and returned to college. Early in 2009, not long after celebrating her 10th year of being cancer-free, the same diagnosis came down again. It was a devastating blow, but she went into the next round of treatment thinking, It was something I’ve kicked before, why can’t I kick it again?

The third diagnosis, in March 2010, necessitated what her oncologist called “the nuclear option’’ — a complete bone-marrow transplant. She’s pleased by the fact that the premiere of the new piece will take place almost exactly a year after she had the procedure.

“Any cancer survivor becomes a counter,’’ she said. “You count months, you count weeks, you count how long you’ve been in remission. People can tell you to the day how long that has been. You just never know when it’s coming back. So you wake up and say, I don’t have cancer today — what am I going to do today?’’

When she was invited by Chorus pro Musica director Betsy Burleigh to write a piece that would complement Stravinsky’s “Symphony of Psalms,’’ Betinis wasn’t sure if she was strong enough to fulfill the commission. But she soon decided that an opportunity to compose a response to one of the more popular works in the choral literature was “not a commission to turn down.’’

Betinis drew her texts from Psalms 38-40, two of which (38 and 39) Stravinsky had used as well. But there was a crucial difference in the composers’ choices. “[Stravinsky] set a lot of the praising and the believing,’’ Betinis said. “And I set a lot of the blaming, the hoping, the waiting, the wondering — and no praising.’’