The dissolution of a functional difference between line and harmony opened the door to the enormous possibility of the moment.
Trembling strings repeat the introductory phrase, and then a chasm of spooky harmony opens: loud, bleak A-minor chords in the winds and strings alternate with ominous brass sonorities of C minor, E-flat minor, and F-sharp minor.
"Aus der Tieffen" ("Out of the Depths"), by Christoph Bernhard (1628-92), here featuring the tenor Marc Molomot, is similarly mournful until, on the repeated line "My soul waits for the Lord from one morning watch to the other," the harmony opens up, and the sun seems to come out.
At the start of Mr. Shepherd's first movement, marked "Ceremonial, lofty," the winds announce a broad fanfare theme that is taken up by the strings and passed back and forth, its harmonies opening up into something resembling Copland.
UPDATE: Aug. 29 ― Fifth Harmony has opened up about the VMAs performance that got everyone talking.
Mr. Davis coaxed the orchestra to play the shimmering harmonies that open the piece with a hushed delicacy touched with a jolt of tremulous tension.
"Just being in front of 88 keys, to play them and learn about the intervals and harmonies, it opened up another side of musical training," said Mr. Svec, who has perfect pitch.
Still, a listener primed for opera kept hearing it: in the melting woodwind harmonies of the opening movement's subsidiary theme, in the long-breathed sighs of the second movement.
Even so, the state's education commissioner, Robert Scott, last year took the unusual step of granting Harmony permission to open new schools outside the normal approval process.
These opening lines of Harmony will strike many people as something of a paradox.
