Bernstein's eagerness to resume his career as a theater composer would find no outlet until Mass in 1971. Chichester Psalms was Bernstein's only completed work during the sabbatical. The commission came from Dr. William Hussey, dean of Chichester Cathedral, which had regular music festivals with choirs from Winchester and Salisbury Cathedrals. 8 Bernstein's inclusion in Chichester Psalms of music removed from West Side Story and the aborted The Skin of Our Teeth 9 lent the work a Broadway sound. 10 During this time period, Bernstein made a survey of contemporary compositional methods, an action that moved him back to writing more tonally, and Chichester Psalms is harmonically one of his simplest works.
Some segments even correspond to common-practice period tonality.
13 Texts are sung in Hebrew. Like many of Bernstein's works, Chichester Psalms includes dramatic juxtapositions based upon text, especially in the second movement, as will be shown below. It is harmonized with added tone chords and set to declamatory rhythms in che choir. 14 Subsequent statements in other keys also include the lowered seventh. It is jazzy and commercial, in a popular vein, as Bernstein mentioned in his letter to Hussey.