Some concerts entertain. Some educate. A rare few fundamentally alter an audience. Skylark Vocal Ensemble’s “Clear Voices in the Dark” accomplished all three.
By the end of the afternoon at New York City’s Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, one felt less like an audience member than a witness. Artistic Director Matthew Guard’s extraordinary program (which Bostonians heard earlier in the week), built around Francis Poulenc’s formidable Figure Humaine and interwoven with songs from the American Civil War, became far more than a choral concert. It unfolded as a meditation on war, memory, loss, faith, and the stubborn persistence of hope in humanity’s darkest hours.
Composed in Nazi-occupied France in 1943, Figure Humaine remains one of the most daunting works in the choral repertoire. Scored for 12 independent vocal lines divided between two six-part choirs, it is a work of relentless motion and complexity, its harmonic language shifting constantly. Skylark met those demands with remarkable assurance, navigating Poulenc’s jagged intervals and rapid-fire exchanges before turning effortlessly to the direct simplicity of nineteenth-century American song. Just as impressive was the ensemble’s unanimity of purpose. Individual voices emerged when required, but the greater achievement was the group’s ability to function as a single expressive instrument, navigating Poulenc’s complexities without sacrificing textual clarity or emotional immediacy.
Guard’s decision to interweave Civil War repertoire with Figure Humaine proved both insightful and dramatically effective. Each selection emerged organically from the emotional world of the preceding movement. Following a grim depiction of a battlefield, for example, the haunting “Break It Gently to My Mother” appeared not as contrast but continuation. Different wars, different languages, yet the same human grief.
If “Clear Voices in the Dark” possesses a central heartbeat, it is duality. Poulenc’s setting of Paul Éluard’s poetry inhabits a world where hope and despair, beauty and terror, freedom and oppression exist side by side. The two choirs engage in near-constant dialogue, hurling fragments of text and melody across the sanctuary with startling intensity. At times the exchanges resemble opposing forces locked in struggle; elsewhere they feel like the competing voices of a troubled conscience. Guard’s placement of the singers heightened these tensions, transforming the church itself into part of the drama.
Yet Poulenc never permits easy distinctions. Hope emerges only after darkness has had its say. The score accumulates tension through countless fragmented exchanges until those rare moments when all 12 voices unite in complete homophony. After so much musical argument, the effect is overwhelming. The sound blooms outward with startling force, as though the work has finally discovered its own answer. In those moments, one understands why Figure Humaine remains one of the towering achievements of the choral repertoire.
One of the afternoon’s most affecting moments came during the sixth movement, a brief and unsettling meditation on wandering through darkness while pursued by unseen terrors. Out of that uncertainty emerged the familiar strains of “Abide With Me.” The simplicity of the beloved hymn felt almost shocking after Poulenc’s complexity, functioning as both prayer and refuge. It was one of several moments when Guard’s programming achieved something genuinely profound.
Although war forms the backdrop of the evening, “Clear Voices in the Dark” never glorified conflict. Poulenc’s cantata is unmistakably anti-war, and the Civil War songs likewise focus not on victory but on loss, endurance, and the fragile persistence of hope. Even familiar works such as “Battle Hymn of the Republic” emerged less as martial declarations than as affirmations of moral purpose.
The culmination arrived with Poulenc’s final movement and its ecstatic cry of “Liberté.” Here, technical perfection became almost beside the point. What mattered was the emotional truth being communicated. More than 80 years after Poulenc composed the work in occupied France, Skylark transformed his vision of liberation into something immediate and deeply felt.
The concert concluded with a radiant “America the Beautiful,” Katherine Lee Bates’s hymn to the American landscape and spirit. After an afternoon spent confronting humanity at its darkest, the choice felt less patriotic than restorative. Through music born of two of history’s most devastating conflicts, Skylark reminded us that even amid violence, oppression, and uncertainty, human beings continue to create beauty. The final cry of “Liberté” issued not only from Poulenc’s voice. For one remarkable afternoon, it belonged to everyone in the room.