Charpentier’s Petits Motets

Charpentier’s Petits Motets for the Feasts of Christmas, Epiphany, Circumcision, Purification, and Saint Geneviève (Patron Saint of Paris)

by John S. Powell

[Magnificat's next concerts, on the weekend of January 18-20, will feature four petits motets by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Charpentier scholar John Powell, who will give the pre-concert lectures, has written this article about the works to be performed.]

Four sacred works follow successively in Charpentier’s manuscripts: Pour la Feste de l'Épiphanie (for the Feast of Epiphany), In Circumcisione Domini (for the Circumcision of our Lord), In Festo Purificationis (for the Feast of Purification), and Pour le Jour de Ste Geneviève (for the Day of Saint Geneviève). Earlier in the notebooks is the Canticum in nativitatem Domini. The similar musical forces required imply that they were performed by the same ensemble of singers and instrumentalists. Their placement in the Mélanges autographes suggests that these works were composed during the Christmas season of 1676-1677.

Such are the facts, the forensic evidence, offered up by Charpentier’s autograph manuscripts these works. From this we can broaden our understanding of them by considering the various Christmastide feasts and saint’s days for which they were intended.

Epiphany is from a Greek word meaning “appearance” or “manifestation”, and it is the Christian feast to celebrate the “shining forth” or revelation of God to mankind in human form. The feast is also called Twelfth Night, as it falls 12 days after Christmas. This observance has its origins in the Eastern Orthodox church, and included the commemoration of Jesus’s birth, the visit of the “Wise Men” who arrived in Bethlehem, and all of Jesus’s childhood events up to and including his baptism by John and Baptist. By 534, the Western Christian church had established December 25th as the date of Jesus’s birth, and January 6th the arrival of the wise men. These are the events dramatized in Charpentier’s Pour la Feste de l’Épiphanie, the words of which are taken the second chapter of the book of Matthew:

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet, and thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel. Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, enquired of them diligently what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also. When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.

The Feast of the Circumcision falls on January 1st for the Western Christian church, and it celebrates Jesus consenting to submit to Jewish law…and the first time that he spilled his blood for mankind. The beginning text of Charpentier’s motet is taken from the second book of Luke, with newly-written words of adoration:

And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called JESUS, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

Following immediately in Luke is the text for the Feast of the Purification, also known as the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple. In the Roman Catholic church this feast is celebrated on February 2nd, and marks the end of the Epiphany season. According to gospel, Mary and Joseph took the baby Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem 40 days after his birth to dedicate him to God…in line with Jewish law of the time:

And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord; (as it is written in the law of the LORD, every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord;) and to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, A pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.

Upon bringing Jesus to the Temple, the family encountered Simeon, who had been promised “he should not see death before he had seen the Messiah of the Lord”. Simeon then prayed the prayer that became known as the “Nunc Dimitis” or the “Canticle of Simeon”.

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: for mine eyes have seen they salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.

Charpentier’s text is taken from Luke 2, verses 25-33, with the usual words of adoration appended.

Another name for this is the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin. Under Mosaic law as found in the Torah, a mother who had given birth to a male child was considered unclean for 7 days; moreover, the new mother was to remain for 33 days “in the blood of her purification”. This feast therefore falls on the day which, according to Jewish law, Mary should have attended a ceremony of ritual purification. The gospel of Luke relates that after Jesus’s presentation in the Temple Mary was purified according to the religious law. This feast also became known as “Candlemas”, which refers to the practice whereby a priest would bless the beeswax candles with holy water and distribute some of them to the faithful for use within their homes.

In Poland this feast is called “Matka Boska Gromnicza”…”Matka Boska” meaning “Mother of God”, and “Gromnicza” meaning beeswax candle. The image captures a Polish legend and is associated to Candlemas Day celebrated on February 2. The legend relates that Mary, the Mother of God of the Candle (Matka Boska Gromniczna), watches over the people on cold February nights. With her candle she wards off the ravenous pack of wolves and protects the peasants from all harm. In Poland, dying persons are given the Gromnica to light their way to eternity.

The final motet in this succession is entitled “For the Day of St. Geneviève”, which may provide some clues regarding the performing circumstances of the other three works.

Saint Geneviève is the patron saint of Paris, whose feast is celebrated on January 3rd. She was a peasant girl born in Nanterre around the year 420, and who became a nun at age 15. On the death of her parents she went to live with her godmother in Lutetia…the Roman name for the city of Paris. There she became known for her piety and devotion to works of charity. She had frequent visions, which she reported in her prophecies. Shortly after Attila the Hun attacked Paris in 451, the panic-stricken people of Paris were persuaded not to abandon their homes. The diversion of Attila’s army to Orléans was attributed to Geneviève’s prayers. Then during Chileric siege of Paris in 464, Geneviève was able to pass through thee siege lines to Troyes, and she brought back grain to the starving city.

When Geneviève died in 512, King Clovis had her remains put in what became known as the Church of the Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève. Under the care of the Benedictines, the church was so named owing to numerous miracles that her associated with her tomb. In 1129, for example, when Paris was suffering from an epidemic of ergot poisoning, this “burning sickness” was halted after her relics were carried in public procession. The miracle occurred as the people approached Notre Dame de Paris, and were in the parvis before the cathedral. Afterwards, the little church was renamed Sainte-Geneviève des Ardents, which soon was honored with becoming a parish church. This did not take away the luster from Sainte-Geneviève du Mont, which owned the relics and kept them on display in the reliquary that would be taken in public procession.

On January 3rd of each year, high Mass was sung at Sainte-Geneviève du Mont, on the hill above the Sorbonne, by the archbishop, the canons of that church, and the choir of Notre Dame de Paris. Thereafter, St. Geneviève’s relics were carried in procession to the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris (see the Offices propres de Sainte Geneviefve Patrone de Paris et de toute la France, Paris 1667). In the summer of 1675 there had been especially heavy rains in France, and the archbishop called for a special procession to stop the rain. In her letter of July 19th, 1675, Mme de Sévigné gives a description of this pageant:

Do you know what a fine procession this is? All the religious orders, all the parishes, all the reliquaries, all the parish priests, all the canons of Notre-Dame, and the Archbishop, who processes on foot, pontifically blessing to the right and left, up to the cathedral. However he does only the left side, and on the right it is the abbé of Sainte-Geneviève barefooted, preceded by 150 monks also barefooted, with his crosier, his miter, like the Archbishop, and also blessing, but modestly and devoutly, and on an empty stomach, with an air of penance that shows that ‘tis he who will say mass in Notre-Dame. The Parliament in red robes and all the sovereign companies following the reliquary, which glitters with precious gems, borne by 20 men dressed in white and barefooted. At Sainte-Geneviève are left in hostage the provost marshal of the merchants and four counselors, until such time as this precious treasure is returned. You will ask me why they took the relic down from its place; it was to make the rain stop, and bring on the warmth. The one and the other came as soon as this plan was decided upon, so that, as it generally is done to bring about all sorts of good things, I believe that it is to her that we owe the return of the King. He will arrive on Sunday.

Given the place of the Sainte-Geneviève motet in the Mélanges, close to the motets intended for the Epiphany season, it is unlikely that Charpentier composed this work for the special procession of July 1675. Its title “Pour le Jour de Ste Geneviefve” (for the Day of Saint Geneviève) all but proves that it was intended for the annual Feast of Saint-Geneviève held on January 3rd (however…see below). It is doubtful that it was performed during the pontifical Mass celebrated at Sainte-Geneviève du Mont, for on this occasion the music would have been furnished by the musicians of Notre Dame. Yet, there are some internal clues in the text that suggest the event that prompted this piece, advances the possibility that it was performed on January 5th (rather than January 3rd), and the venue where it might have been performed.

First of all, the anonymous text is non-liturgical, and so was presumably written specifically for this setting. That the words emphasize the “virginity” of Saint Geneviève, suggests that the motet was possibly intended for the “Feast of Sainte Geneviève Virgin,” celebrated on January 5th.

Patricia Ranum has advanced the hypothesis that this motet was composed for the Abbey of Montmartre, one of the most prestigious female convents that ringed Paris in the 17th Century. In 1685 Charpentier composed another piece for Ste Geneviève, an antienne for January 3 that was evidently sung in the processional at the royal abbey of Montmartre (its liturgical text of which is found in the Processionnal Monastique de l’Abbaye Royale de Montmartre, ordre de saint Benoist (Paris: Billaine, 1675), pp. 220-21). Since this convent celebrated the Feast of Sainte-Geneviève, it is a plausible venue for Charpentier’s motet. Furthermore, this connection is strengthened through Charpentier’s two protectresses: Marie de Lorraine, Duchess of Guise, known as “Mademoiselle de Guise,” and Isabelle d’Orléans, Duchess of Alençon, known as “Madame de Guise.”

Who was Isabelle d’Orléans, Duchess of Alençon, known as “Madame de Guise”? As one of four daughter of Gaston d’Orléans—brother of Louis XIII—she was first cousin to Louis XIV and a close friend of Queen Marie-Thérèse. Mme de Guise had strong ties to the Abbey of Montmartre: her husband’s, mother’s and son’s hearts were buried there, and since the summer of 1675, Montmartre had been the residence of her sister, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany.


Her cousin/aunt was Marie de Lorraine, Duchess of Guise, known as “Mademoiselle de Guise”. Charpentier is known to have composed music for her musical establishment in the 1670s and 1680s, and in turn he was provided with an apartment in the Hôtel de Guise (near the Hôtel de Ville) during this time.

Both women were very devout. After Mme de Guise lost her infant son—the last male of the House of Guise—in March of 1675, both women became increasingly drawn to the cult of Virgin and Child. The tragedy that had plunged both houses into mourning brought an abrupt about-face in the preoccupation of the two Guise princesses. They sought consolation and new meaning for existence in the Mother and Child, and they decided that they could best serve the Christ Child by promoting childhood education. Patricia Ranum has suggested that the two Guise princesses were the material and spiritual protectors of two religious institutions that were founded that year: the "Hôtel de l'Enfant Jésus," and the "Institut des écoles charitables du Saint Enfant Jésus."

In Charpentier’s notebooks we find in succession music for the principal holidays for the Infant Jesus—Christmas, Circumcision, Epiphany, and Purification. It seems likely that Charpentier’s music was composed for the devotionals of the two Guise princesses. Its performing forces matches those used by the Guise establishment during these years: soprano, soprano, bass, 2 instruments, continuo.

Where might this music have been performed? Possibly in the ground-floor chapel of the Hôtel de Guise, where Mlle de Guise lived. Or perhaps at the Church of Our Lady of Mercy, next to the Hôtel de Guise. Maybe at the chapel in the Luxembourg Palace, which was the principal residence of Mme de Guise. Or, still less hypothetically, especially as far as the motet for the Saint Geneviève motet is concerned, at the Abbey of Montmartre.

H. Wiley Hitchcock (1923-2007)

H. Wiley Hitchcock was instrumental in the "re-discovery" of Marc-Antoine Charpentier in the 20th Century. We are indebted to the seminal research he undertook to resurrect this almost forgotten master, whose music has delighted and moved audiences and who has now assumed a rightful place as one of the greatest composers in the history of music. His obituary was released today by Conservatory of Music of Brooklyn College (CUNY).

The Conservatory of Music of Brooklyn College (CUNY) deeply regrets to announce that Distinguished Professor emeritus H. Wiley Hitchcock, 84, passed away in the early morning of December 5, 2007, after a lengthy illness. He was born September 28, 1923, in Detroit, MI. After attending Dartmouth (A.B., 1944) and University of Michigan (M.M. 1948, Ph.D. 1954) – studying in 1949 at the Conservatoire Américain (under Nadia Boulanger) – and after teaching at the University of Michigan, N.Y.U., and Hunter College, Professor Hitchcock came to Brooklyn College in 1971 where he was the founding director of the college's Institute for Studies in American Music (ISAM). Wiley was brilliant, a true man of letters, a model musicologist with multifaceted interests, impeccable standards, and path-breaking publications. His highly esteemed work in American music studies (New Grove Dictionary of American Music; his Prentice-Hall textbook series that included his Music in the United States; studies on Charles Ives, etc. etc.) was built upon his excellent contributions to the fields of French and Italian Baroque music (M.-A. Charpentier, G. Caccini, et al.).

He was a staunch advocate for American music of all kinds. In 1990-92 he served as elected president of the American Musicological Society, and the number of distinguished projects and boards on which he served seems endless. Wiley was a respected colleague at the Conservatory as well as at the CUNY Graduate Center's Doctoral Program in Music, where he became a helpful and encouraging mentor and friend to many newly minted Ph.D.'s in music. Those of us who knew Wiley personally always relished the notes or letters he sent us or the newsy gossip he might share.

For an interview that Wiley gave Frank J. Oteri in November 2002 and recalls for us his special style and wit, see: http://newmusicbox.org/44/interview_hitchcock.pdf

The Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College hopes to rename ISAM as the Hitchcock Institute for Studies in American Music, in Professor Hitchcock's memory.

Wiley is survived by his wife Janet and a daughter and son, Susan and Hugh, from his first marriage, as well as two grandchildren. There will be a memorial service at a later date to be announced by the family.

Music From The Turn of the (18th) Century

This weekend, Magnificat will perform three concerts that will feature music by two of the most respected and influential composers at the turn of the 18th century: Alessandro Scarlatti and Arcangelo Corelli. The program will feature soprano Catherine Webster and focus on the intersection of the rich tradition of “pastoral” music and settings of the Christmas story.

Scarlatti and Corelli knew each other well, each having benefited from the patronage of the exiled Queen Christina of Sweden in the 1680s. They were inducted together into the Arcadian Academy in 1706. Corelli had lead orchestras for productions of Scarlatti’s operas and Scarlatti was influenced by the violinist’s virtuoso performances and the crisp, clear tonal language of his sonatas and concerti.

Webster will sing three cantatas by Scarlatti, two specifically associated with Christmas and one from the pastoral tradition that touches on themes on longing and darkness that resonate with the Advent season. Though Scarlatti wrote operas and oratorios, it is in his more intimate works of vocal chamber music that his most perfectly realized and imaginative music is to be found, as he excelled in the art of the soliloquy, in detailed imagery, and in dialogue between voice and instruments.

In addition to the vocal music, Magnificat will perform three instrumental works, including two concerti grossi performed as sonatas "a quattro" - that is, as chamber music rather than with a full orchestra. Violinist Rob Diggins will be featured in the first of Corelli's magnificent collection of violin sonatas.

The program can be heard on Friday December 7 at 8:00 p.m. at First Lutheran Church, Homer and Webster in Palo Alto; Saturday December 8 at 8:00 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bancroft and Ellsworth in Berkeley; and Sunday December 9 at 4:00 p.m. at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, 111 O’Farrell in San Francisco. Pre-concert lectures begin 45 minutes before each performance and are open to all ticket-holders. For tickets or more information please call 800-853-8155 or visit www.magnificatbaroque.org.

The Association of "Pastoral" Music with Christmas

The pastoral tradition in music has had a long and distinguished history dating back to ancient times. The transfer of music styles associated with pastoral themes to settings of Christmas texts was quite natural. Not only the bucolic setting of the Angel’s announcement of the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, but more generally the image of Christ as the good shepherd.

Composers of the 17th century developed a vocabulary of instrumental motifs associated with music depicted the Christmas story, with reference from Castaldo as early as 1616. Similar pastoral topoi in settings of Christmas texts can be seen around the same time or earlier in German sacred songs and the Spannish villancico. Castaldo was one of several writers who claimed that the custom a associating pastoral literary traditions with Christmas originated with St. Cajetan of Thiene after a vision he had on Christmas Eve in 1517. The earliest surviving collection of Christmas pastorals in Italy was written by Francesco Fiamengo for the Christmas Eve celebrations at Messina and published in 1637.

Already in the Fiamengo collection many of the basic stylistic elements that are found in the pastorale compositions of Scarlatti and Corelli were already present. Typically in a slow and lilting 6/8 or 12/8 “siciliana” meter, pastorale compositions frequently utilized drones and parallel intervals in imitation of rustic instruments like bagpipes and the hurdy-gurdy. Such features are prominent in the music of shepherds who have played shawns and bagpipes in Italian towns as part of Christmas festivities since the 19th century at least, but it is unclear whether this was in imitation of the conventions of art music or the other way around.

The popularity of Corelli’s “Christmas Concerto” led to innumerable imitations and echoes of this work can be heard in the “Pifa” from Handel’s Messiah, in the second part of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and into the 19th and 20th centuries.

Arcangelo Corelli, 17th Century Superstar

Few musicians of the seventeenth century enjoyed the exalted status bestowed on Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713). He was called the ‘new Orpheus of Our Times’ and the ‘divine Arc Angelo’, a clever pun on his Christian name and the Italian word for a bow (arco). The Englishman musician and writer Roger North described Corelli’s music as ‘transcendant’, ‘immortal’ and ‘the bread of life’ to musicians. Renowned as a virtuoso performer, an influential composer, and sought-after teacher, Corelli commanded respect and praise throughout Europe at the turn of the 18th century.

The fifth child born to a prosperous family of landowners in Fusignano; Corelli’s first musical study was probably with the local clergy, then in nearby Lugo and Faenza, and finally in Bologna, where he went in 1666. In Bologna he studied with Giovanni Benvenuti and Leonardo Brugnoli, the former representing the disciplined style of the Accademia filarmonica (to which Corelli was admitted in 1670), the latter a virtuoso violinist.

By 1675 Corelli was in Rome where he may have studied composition under Matteo Simonelli, from whom he would have absorbed the styles of Roman polyphony inherited from Palestrina. He may have traveled to France and Spain, though neither journey has been securely documented. In 1675 he is listed as a violinists in Roman payment documents and by the end of the decade he was active as a performer and leader of small and large instrumental ensembles in Roman homes and churches and at public celebrations.

By 1679 had entered the service of Queen Christina of Sweden. Thanks to his musical achievements and growing international reputation he found no trouble in obtaining the support of a succession of influential patrons. In addition to Queen Christina, his Roman patrons included Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili, and Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, both wealthy and influential leaders of Roman society.

In 1684, Corelli and Alessandro Scarlatti became members of the Congregazione dei Virtuosi di S. Cecilia and in 1706, along with Pasquini and Scarlatti, he was inducted into the Arcadian Academy round the time that he met Handel in engagements at the Pamphili and Ruspoli palaces. He would direct the orchestra for performances of Handel’s La resurrezione shortly before retiring from public life in 1708.

Wealthy since birth, Corelli had the luxury of cultivating a personal mystique, acting more like a gentleman than a common musician. His wealthy patrons treating him almost as their equal, he was not burdened by the pressure of writing music on demand and composed selectively and at a his own pace, meticulously revising his music before publishing them late in life. This careful polishing made Corelli’s published pieces into models of economy and elegance. Their concision and urbanity contrasted sharply with the unbridled passion and unpredictability of music earlier in the seventeenth century.

Corelli's reputation as a performer and teacher was at least equal to the reputation he achieved as a composer. Among his many students were Geminiani, Vivaldi, Gasparini, and Somis. His sonatas were widely performed and often reprinted, both as ideal practice material for students and as models for composers. For the solo sonatas (op. 5) there are several extant sets of ornaments, some attributed to the composer himself (Walsh, 1710); his works remained especially popular in England, where Ravenscroft imitated the trio sonatas and Geminiani transformed several solo and trio sonatas into concertos.

Corelli died a wealthy man on January 19, 1713, at Rome in the 59th year of his life. But long before his death, he had taken a place among the immortal musicians of all time, and he maintains that exalted position today.

Listen to Handl's Alleluia from October Berkeley Performance

I wanted to share one selection from Magnificat's recent performances. Click the link below to hear Alleluia: Cantate Domino of Jakob Handl from the performance on Saturday evening October 27 at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Berkeley.

Jakob Handl Alleluia Berkeley

Enjoy!

Magnificat Shifts Gears for December Program

Magnificat’s second program could hardly be a more striking contrast with our first. Geographically we move from Northern Germany to Rome, and musically from the end of the Renaissance to the beginning of the High Baroque. And of course the scale of the programs contrast dramatically. The music written for the 1607 re-dedication of St. Gertrude’s chapel in Hamburg was intended to overwhelm the congregation with grandeur and awe – and those in attendance can attest to the powerful effect of Hieronymus Prætorius’ setting of the Te Deum. The December program will focus on more intimate and nuanced musical gestures – with plenty of virtuosity.

The program will feature two composers – Alessandro Scarlatti and Arcangelo Corelli - who benefited from the patronage of Queen Christina of Sweden during her extended and much celebrated exile in Rome. In Rome Scarlatti met Corelli, who had already established himself as the most celebrated violin virtuoso of his age.

Alessandro Scarlatti's Roman Cantatas

Alessandro Scarlatti was born into poverty in famine-stricken Sicily in 1660 and it has been suggested that his humble origins made his a compulsive worker and contributed to his prolific and varied output. While his reputation as the founder of the Neapolitan school of 18th century opera may be somewhat over-stated, his works in the genre are highly skilled and original, and marked by innovations in orchestration, strong dramatic characterization and, above all, an unfailing melodic sense.

It is in the genre of works for voice and instruments, like those featured in Magnificat’s December concerts, that Scarlatti’s most perfectly realized and imaginative music is to be found, as he excelled in the art of the soliloquy, in detailed imagery, and in dialogue between voice and instruments. These works represent the most refined and intellectual type of chamber music at the turn of the 18th century and it is unfortunate that most of Scarlatti hundreds of cantatas have remained in manuscript, though many have recently become available in modern editions through the work of The Scarlatti Project.

As a boy of 12, Scarlatti had the good fortune of moving to Rome where he most likely studied with Iacomo Carissimi. He married in 1678 and later that year was appointed maestro di capella of San Giacomo degli Incurabili. The composer’s career was established in Rome with the acclaimed production of his second opera Gli equivoce nel sembiante at the Collegio Clementino in 1679, after which he was appointed maestro di capella to the exiled Queen Christina of Sweden.

After several successful operas in Rome, Scarlatti was appointed in 1684 as maestro di cappella at the vice-regal court of Naples, at the same time as his brother Francesco was made first violinist. It was alleged that they owed their appointments to the intrigues of one of their sisters, who were both opera singers, with two court officials, who were dismissed. During his nearly two decades in Naples, Scarlatti wrote a steady output of operas, typically two each year and his reputation grew as many of these operas were performed elsewhere in Italy.

While resident in Naples Scarlatti occasionally returned to Rome to supervise carnival performances of new operas, contributions to pasticci and cantatas at the Palazzo Doria Pamphili and the Villa Medicea (at nearby Pratolino), as well as oratorios at Ss. Crocifisso, the Palazzo Apostolico and the Collegio Clementino. Astonishingly, he also produced at least ten serenatas, nine oratorios, and sixty-five cantatas for Naples. He continued to enjoy patronage from Roman nobility as well as Ferdinand di Medici of Florence, to whom he turned when changes in the political situation in Naples and the financial insecurity that resulted caused Scarlatti to look elsewhere for work.

With the death of Charles II in 1700, the political tension that had been brewing was ignited into what would become known as the Wars of the Spanish Succession, and consequent undermining of the privileged status that many his noble patrons in Naples (a contested Spanish territory) had enjoyed, Scarlatti began looking in earnest for employment elsewhere. He was especially eager to find a position for his talented teenage son Domenico, with whom he traveled first to Florence after obtaining his release from his engagement in Naples. After a brief there, he accepted a position as assistant to Antonio Foggia, the music director of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.

While the role of church musician suited Scarlatti poorly and the papal ban on operas restricted what had been his primary musical focus, the composer’s second tenure in Rome proved to be very important. He had the chance to work together with great instrumental virtuosi including the violinist Corelli, the violoncellist Franceschino, and harpsichordists like Pasquini and Gasparini.

With the production of operas limited to occasional private performances staged by noblemen, Scarlatti turned his attention to the genres of the cantata and serenata. In 1706 he was elected, along with Pasquini and Corelli, to the Accademia dell'Arcadia, which encouraged a lively and sophisticated audience for chamber music, and, along with the enlightened “conversazioni” of patrons like the Cardinals Ottoboni and Pamphili, gave Scarlatti the opportunity to compose many of his finest cantatas. The cantatas Magnificat will perform in December most likely date from this period.

In Rome Scarlatti also witnessed the many musical triumphs of the young German composer Georg Friedrich Handel, who was to co-opt so many of Scarlatti’s tunes later in his successful career. It may be no coincidence that around this time Scarlatti again began looking elsewhere for employment first in Venice, with a new opera, and later in Urbino followed, where he composed a number of chamber duets on pastoral themes. Towards the end of 1708 he accepted the Austrian Viceroy's invitation to return to his position in Naples, taking the place of Francesco Mancini, who had served in Scarlatti's prolonged absence.

Scarlatti remained in Naples for the rest of his life, but maintained close contacts with his Roman patrons and made several visits there, some of them of long duration. In 1716 he received the honor of a knighthood from Pope Clement XI. His final opera, La Griselda, was written for Rome in 1721, and he seems to have spent his last years in Naples in semi-retirement until his death in 1725.

Soprano Catherine Webster to be Featured in Magnificat's Scarlatti Program

Magnificat’s next program features soprano Catherine Webster, who has delighted Magnificat audiences regularly since since her first apearances in the December 1999 performances of Cozzolani Vespers music on the San Francisco Early Music Society series. � Catherine now lives in Montréal, but she still regularly returns to her native California to sing with Magnificat and other ensembles.

As the top of the ensemble, Catherine, together with soprano Jennifer Ellis Kampani have defined the sound of Magnificat for nearly a decade, and we are thrilled to be able give Magnificat’s audiences the opportunity to hear her interpretations of three of Scarlatti’s magnificent cantatas. She will be joined by violinists Rob Diggins, Cynthia Freivogel, David Wilson (who will also double on viola), harpsichordist Katherine Heater, and cellist Warren Stewart. The concerts will take place on the weekend of December 7-9.

In addition to Magnificat, Catherine has appeared with The San Antonio Symphony, American Baroque Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, Camerata Pacifica, Four Nations Ensemble, Les Violons du Roy with La Chapelle de Quebec, Early Music Vancouver, Musica Angelica, Sex Chordae Viol Consort, and in the Berkeley and Indianapolis Early Music Festivals, among others. One of the finest rising young singers of early music, her fluid lyrical voice is praised as peerless and luminous with dazzling coloratura and beautiful tone. She has performed under directors such as Paul Hillier, Jos van Immerseel and Stephen Stubbs in projects ranging from French Baroque opera to oratorio to contemporary works. Recently she was engaged in the U.S. premiere of Nicola Porpora’s Il Gedeone under Martin Haselboeck, and in the role of Drusilla in Early Music Vancouver’s 2003 production of L’Incoronazione di Poppea for Festival Vancouver, under the direction of Stephen Stubbs and Paul ODette. Active also in contemporary music, Catherine appeared with The Kronos Quartet in Terry Rileys Sun Rings in the fall of 2003 and with Theatre of Voices and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in John Adams Grand Pianola Music in 2004.

Ms. Webster has toured the United States and Holland with Theatre of Voices and recorded with the group for Harmonia Mundi; other recording releases include projects as varied as the music of 17th-century composer Chiara Margarita Cozzolani with Magnificat for Musica Omnia, and songs of Anton von Webern with American Baroque Orchestra for radio broadcast. Ms. Webster is the grand-prize winner of the 2003 EMA Naxos Recording Competition as the featured artist with the Catacoustic Consort. She holds a Masters in Music from the Early Music Institute at Indiana University and has been a guest faculty member and artist for The San Francisco Early Music Society’s summer workshops and the Madison Early Music Festival.

San Francisco Classical Voice Review of Last Weekend's Concert

In "Revivifying Liturgical Gems", reviewer Scott Edwards, writing for San Francisco Classical Voice, appears to have really enjoyed the experience in spite of his predisposition against liturgical reconstructions. We're glad he enjoyed the concert!

By the way, Classical Voice does a terrific job of covering the Bay Area classical music scene. Many thanks for the service they provide!

Performing Sacred Music in Liturgical Context

At two points in the course of one of Magnificat’s performances last weekend, I turned to face the audience – the “congregation” – to direct them in singing verses from traditional Lutheran chorales. In each concert it was a highlight – not least due to the spirited singing of many of the concert-goers – because it reminded me of the experience that first kindled my interest in performing sacred music in liturgical context.

In the early 80s, while studying baroque cello at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland I had the opportunity to play Bach St. John Passion at a lovely church in the Schwarzwald. I was thrilled. There are few assignments for a baroque cellist that can compare with be in the middle of this consummate masterpiece and I set about studying the work in preparation for the project. My German was even worse then than it is now, and I strugled to to stay afloat in the rehearsals with the help of an expat colleague who sat near me in the orchestra. I eagerly looked forward to the performance but I was a bit perplexed at first by by the fact that it was scheduled for 3:00 pm on a Friday afternoon.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that, of course, Bach’s work was to be performed as part of the Good Friday liturgy. More than just the unusual timing made sense to me that afternoon.

Anyone who has played or attended a concert performance of the St. John Passion is struck by the imbalance of the two sections of the work – so counter to the accepted wisdom of good programming. The first half is always longer than the second and the intermission arrives uncomfortably early in the program. This is, of course, not an issue in the liturgy for which the piece was intended.

Once the liturgy made its way through Introit, Kyrie, Gloria, prayer, and epistle, I remember a certain satisfaction in hearing the congregation singing the chorale that would later appear within Bach’s Passion setting. The balance and integration of the full experience left me convinced that the great master knew what he was doing – he wrote his work with a specific liturgical context in mind and never even considered the possibility that it might be performed in a concert hall, divorced from that liturgy.

I considered other great musical works that had been composed that set liturgical texts and became intrigued by the notion of performing them in their original liturgical context. I first had a chance to try this out in Magnificat’s first season in performances of Schütz’ Christmas Story, and found that the experience of reconstructing the liturgy for a mid-century Dresden Christmas Vespers was immensely challenging and rewarding. The overwhelmingly positive response of the audiences at those concerts convinced me that this was an approach worth pursuing that fit perfectly with Magnficat’s emphasis on the historical and social context of the music we were exploring and performing.

Over the decade and a half since that first experiment, I have had many opportunities to offer audiences the chance to hear great works of sacred music surrounded by chanted texts, chorales, and service music that would have adorned the music originally. Each project has presented a different musical-historical puzzle through which I have learned a great deal about the aesthetics and culture of the music I programmed – knowledge that has informed performers and audiences alike.

Magnificat’s liturgical reconstructions will never be like my experience in the Schwarwald church two decades ago – there is no pretense that these programs are anything but concerts. However, they have given the musicians and audiences a very special sonic taste of those who first participated in and listened to so many of the great works of scared music.

St. Gertrude’s Chapel, Hamburg

by Frederick K. Gable

St. Gertrude’s Chapel (shown in a 1830 engraving at right) was built in the late fourteenth century by the Bruderschaft of St. Gertrude, listed in 1356 as one of eighteen charitable fraternities associated with the Jakobikirche in Hamburg. Like similar orders throughout Europe, the fraternity promoted good works through financial support of the church and participation in its religious activities. Members could thereby improve their reputation in the city and increase their chances of gaining salvation. St. Gertrude’s Fraternity was chiefly devoted to caring for the poor and the sick, especially persons afflicted with leprosy. The chapel land was originally known as “der wüste Kirchof” (the desolate churchyard) and “platea leprosorum” (place of the lepers).

In 1391 the fraternity began construction of the chapel, probably assisted by a guild of masons known as the “Mauerleute.” Its first stage was an octagonal Gothic-domed structure, twenty-five feet on a side, completed in 1399. This octagonal shape resembled other burial buildings and pilgrimage chapels fashionable in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in Northern Europe often named for St. George or St. Gertrude of Nivelles, a seventh century abbess. Since the chapel stood within the parish of the Jacobikirche, regular masses in addition to funerals were conducted there by the priests of that church until the Reformation.

In the fifteenth century the building’s size was increased by adding a chancel area to the east side of the octagon and attaching two small wings on the north and south sides of the domed area. The Mason’s Guild owned the north wing. No precise information about the dates of these additions has survived, but they seem to have existed by 1500, when the chapel assumed its final size and shape. During this same period, the burial of the dead, including the making of coffins, became the chief activity of the chapel, supported by the fraternity. Poor women were given lodging in little houses nearby in exchange for assistance with burial preparations.

After the Reformation reached Hamburg in 1528-29, regular church services were no longer held in the chapel, but the burial work and other charitable activities of the fraternity continued. In 1578 renovation work began so the building could be used for Protestant services. This was completed in 1580, and the chapel was dedicated for the second time by Jakob Kröger, a pastor of the Jacobikirche. From this time on, the Jacobi pastors conducted regular preaching services there on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the chapel functioning as a church for the poor, administered by the Jacobikirche. This also meant that the organist of the larger church, Jacob Prætorius I (to 1586) and Hieronymus Prætorius (from 1586 to 1629), served at St. Gertrude’s Chapel.

After a fire in June 1606, the chapel underwent extensive renovation and was refurnished with a new pulpit, clock, seats, and organ. The following April it was dedicated for the third time in the festival service that will be recreated in Magnificat’s concerts.

From 1697 until the middle of the eighteenth century St. Gertrude’s Chapel enjoyed a lively musical life and was especially important as a site for Passion performances in Hamburg. Although its musical importance declined after 1800, the building was kept in good condition until the great Hamburg fire of 1842, when it burned during the evening of May 7th.

Despite repeated proposals to rebuild the chapel, the ruins were finally cleared away and it was never rebuilt. The name of St. Gertrude was transferred to a large church built between 1882 and 1885 in another area of the city. The chapel’s former site near the Jacobikirche in central Hamburg is now a small park and children’s playground called the Gertrudenkirchhof.

Forgotten Composers Brought to Life in Magnificat's Concerts

Magnificat’s first concerts feature music by composers that are obscure even by Magnificat standards. The four composers whose polyphonic works are featured on the program are hardly household names, but each was a significant composer during his lifetime. The compositions on the Magnificat program demonstrate that the high regard of their contemporaries was well deserved.

Pierre Bonhomme (Latinized Bonomius) was a Flemish composer who lived most of his life in Liège. In addition to several published volumes, his works appear in many manuscripts and his elegant contrapuntal writing seems to have been much admired. The Motet In nomine Jesu appears in a collection published in Frankfurt in 1603 and was dedicated to Ferdinand of Bavaria. Bonhomme’s style most closely resembles the Roman compostions of Soriano and the Nanino brothers, whom he may have encountered during the time he spent in Rome in the early 1590s.

Jakob Handl, who often used the Latinized version of his name, Jacobus Gallus, on publications was born as Jakob Petelin in 1550 in Reifnitz, Carniola (now Ribnica), Slovenia. He left Slovenia in his youth, was probably educated in a Cistercian monastery, and travelled widely across Central Europe. He was a member of the Viennese court chapel in 1574, and was choirmaster (Kapellmeister) to the bishop of Olomouc, Moravia between 1579 (or 1580) and 1585. From 1585 to his death in 1591 he worked in Prague as organist to the church sv. Jan na Zábradlí.

His most notable work is the six part Opus musicum, 1577, a collection of motets from which the motet Magnificat will be performing was drawn. An excellent article about Handl (Gallus) is available online at Goldberg Magazine.

From that article:

That the music of Gallus immediately met with very great success is attested by the number of mentions of his work throughout the 17th century. Publications in anthologies, manuscript dissemination of the work, references to the composer in treatises on composition: it seems that in Bohemia, but above all in Saxony and Silesia, for nearly half a century Gallus’s compositions continued to be sung. One has only to glance through the anthologies of Bodenschatz, Schade, Calvisius, Grimm or Praetorius to be convinced of it. Gallus was one of the virtually obligatory references in places in Central and North Germany where there was an attempt to define the conditions of a “well composed” piece of music, that is to say conforming to the rules of counterpoint while being expressive as to the perception of the text’s meaning. The evidence of the manuscripts is no less eloquent: numerous motets and unpublished Masses were copied and preserved in Wroclaw, Legnica, Zwickau or Görlitz, which indicates the importance of this region of Europe for the diffusion of Gallus’s work. Some few works then cross into the 1650s, seeming no longer to quit the polyphonic repertoire, and among these is the motet for Good Friday, Ecce quomodo moritur justus, of which more than fifteen or so sources have been preserved. At the end of the 17th century Gallus is still mentioned by the French composer and theoretician Sébastien de Brossard, whose immense collection of musical manuscripts and prints was to form the core of King Louis XIV’s musical library: in the margin of his catalogue Brossard notes, in reference to the Moralia, that the music of it is “among the most excellent of that time”... After a relative eclipse in the 18th century (except for some manuscripts of the motet Ecce quomodo still being re-copied), Gallus’s compositions returned in force in the following century, where they followed the renewal of interest in the old polyphonists caused by the various musical societies in Europe in favour of religious music for unaccompanied choir.

Arnold Grothusius (sometimes written Gothausen, or Gorothusio) was the cantor of Helmstedt. The Missa Deus misereatur nostri that Magnificat will perform was published in Helmstedt in 1588. It is a parody mass based on a Lasso motet and was falsely attributed to Lasso in several publications. It is included (with attribution to Grothusius) in the new Lasso complete works collection.

Hieronymus Praetorius spent almost his entire life in his native Hamburg. He studied organ with his father, Jacob Praetorius, also a composer), and later studied in Hamburg with Hinrich thor Molen and in Köln with Albinus Walran. His first position was as organist at Erfurt from 1580 to 1582, when he returned to Hamburg as assistant organist to his father at the Jacobikirche (with the chapel of St Gertrud); on his father’s death in 1586 he became first organist, and he held this post until his death. In 1596 he took part in an organ examination in Gröningen where he met Michael Praetorius and Hans Leo Hassler. It was most likely his only contact with composers of polychoral works and it may have been through them that he became acquainted with the music of the contemporary Italian Venetian School. The two works by Praetorius on Magnificat’s program reflect the Italian polychoral style.

There is a good article about Praetorius online here.

Praetorius was the name of a distinguished family, or possibly two families, of musicians in Germany in the 16th and 17th centuries. In Germany in the early modern period it became a fashion that educated people called "Schulze" or "Schultheiß", which means "Mayor", put their name into the Latin language = "Praetorius". The Latin word "Praetor" means "going ahead". It was a title of high officials (Praetor urbanus).

* Anton Praetorius (1560–1613), protestant pastor, fighter against the persecution of witches and against torture.
* Bartholomaeus Praetorius (c.1590;–3 August 1623), composer and cornettist.
* Michael Praetorius (c.1571–1621), composer, music theorist, and organist, was the most famous member of the family.
* Hieronymus Praetorius (1560–1629), composer and organist. He was not related to Michael.
* Jacob Praetorius (c.1530–1586), composer and organist, was the father of Hieronymus.
* Jacob Praetorius (1586–1651), composer, organist and teacher, was the son of Hieronymus.
* Christoph Praetorius (died 1609), composer, was the uncle of Michael.
* Franz Praetorius (1847-1927), semitist and hebraist.

[Thanks to Wikipedia for the information about the Praetorius family.]

Magnificat Welcomes Back Old Friends for New Season

First Season Veterans Martin Hummel, Neal Rogers, The Whole Noyse, and members of Sex Chordæ Return for 16th Season Opener

Magnificat's first set of concerts will be a homecoming for many of the musicians who performed in our first season. In fact eight of the performers in this month's concert of music from Hamburg participated in a set of concerts of music by Heinrich Schütz in 1992 that was on both the Magnificat and San Francisco Early Music Society Series.

We are pleased to welcome back Martin Hummel for he first concerts in Magnificat's new season. Martin first sang with Magnificat in our first season - way back in December of 1992, when he sang the Evangelist role in the Schütz Christmas Story. He was back in 1994 for Schütz' Resurrection Story and reprised both pieces in 2001 (Christmas) and 2004 (Resurrection).

I first met Martin when he was a teenager. I had shared a stand with his brother Cornelius at the Aspen Music Festival in 1980. I went to Germany at Christmastime that year to work with Karlheinz Stockhausen on a piece he was transcribing for cello (this was before my baroque cello days) and while there I stayed with the Hummel family in Würzburg. Martin charmed us all singing German folksongs and accompanying himself on a guitar.

Another returning veteran of that first Magnificat season is Neal Rogers, who sang the some of the first self-produced Magnificat concerts in 1991 and all three sets in our first season. Neal went on to sing many seasons with Magnificat and also sang many concerts with me when I conducted the California Bach Society. He moved to Southern California for several years but is back in the area and we're glad he can join us for this set.

The Whole Noyse also performed in the Schütz concerts in the first season and have appeared with Magnificat many times since. Well known to Bay Area audiences, the Whole Noyse celebrated their 20th anniversary in 2006. Over the past two decades they have established themselves as one of the Bay Area's leading early music ensembles. They have made repeated appearances on the San Francisco Early Music Society concert series and have been presented by early music societies of Vancouver, BC, and San Diego, California, as well as in numerous other venues. They have performed in a dozen different Magnificat programs over the years and it is a pleasure to have them back for another set.

The Sex Chordæ Consort of Viols had not yet formed at the time of those Schütz perfomances in 1992, but two members of the ensemble, John Dornenburg and Julie Jeffrey played in the concerts. Since John formed Sex Chordæ they have performed widely including appearance at the Berkeley Early Music Festival, and on the San Francisco Early Music Society, San Jose Chamber Music Society, Santa Cruz Baroque Festival, and Gualala Arts concert series and have recorded three excellent CDs. John has of course also appeared frequently playing viol and violone with Magnificat.

Magnificat regular David Tayler was also on board for that Schütz concert in our first season. It seems like only yesterday…

Magnificat Moves San Francisco Concerts to St. Mark's Lutheran

After a decade of performances at St. Gregory Nyssen, Magnificat will be moving our San Francisco performances to St. Mark's Lutheran Church this season. While we will miss St. Gregory's, we are excited to be moving to the newly-renovated St. Mark's (pictured below).


In particular, the new Taylor and Boody organ is a welcome addition. The instrument has a mechanical playing action and stop action, as did all organs until the latter part of the 19th century. Direct linkage between the keys and their valves is made by thin strips of wood called trackers, hence the term tracker organ, which distinguishes this type of construction from those employing more recent developments. Tracker organs are valued for their longevity and the artistic responsiveness of pipe speech to the player's touch.

St. Mark's Lutheran Church is located in St. Mark's Square at 1111 O'Farrell St. in San Francisco. St. Mark's Square, at the corner of O'Farrell St. and Franklin St., is home to the church, the Urban Life Center, and Martin Luther Tower. All spaces in the lot off Gough Street are available on Sundays for St. Mark's use. (See map below)

Hamburg Gertrudenmusik

by Frederick K. Gable

On the weekend of October 26-28, Magnificat will open our 2007-2008 season with a recreation of the service marking the re-dedication of St. Gertrude's Chapel in Hamburg. Professor Gable has very kindly provided these notes revised from the booklet for the CD recording “Gertrudenmusik Hamburg 1607” Intim Musik, Lerum, Sweden: IMCD 071.

On Thursday morning, April 16, 1607, many professional musicians of Hamburg participated in a festival service dedicating for the third time the newly re-furnished St. Gertrude’s Chapel. The music was so splendid that Lucas van Cöllen, the Chief Pastor of the nearby St. James’s Church (Jacobikirche), described its performance in the published version of his sermon (reproduced following this commentary). This detailed account, supplemented by information from musical, pictorial, liturgical, and theological sources, makes possible a reconstruction of the full liturgical context. The service includes impressive double-choir works by Bonhomme, Lassus and Hieronymus Praetorius, a triple-choir motet by Jacob Handl, and the magnificent German Te Deum setting for four choirs of instruments and voices also by Praetorius. A complete edition of the service, along with an extensive introduction, is available in Dedication Service for St. Gertrude’s Chapel, Hamburg, 1607, edited by Frederick K. Gable, in vol. 91 of Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era (Madison: A-R Editions, 1998).

History of the St. Gertrude’s Chapel

The Hamburg Gertrudenkapelle was built in central Hamburg between 1391 and 1399 as a sister church to the nearby Jacobikirche on cemetery land owned by the St. Gertrude’s Guild. The Gothic-style chapel was originally an eight-sided domed building, but by 1500, north and south wings and a choir area to the east had been added to the octagon, creating the Chapel’s distinctive shape. Following the Reformation, the building was closed from 1530 until 1580, when it was re-dedicated as a Protestant church. After a fire in June 1606. the Chapel was refurnished with a new pulpit, clock, seats, and organ, and dedicated the next April in the festival service described by Lucas van Cöllen.

From 1607 until the middle of the 18th century the Chapel enjoyed a lively musical life and was especially important in the history of Passion performances in Hamburg. Although its musical activities declined after 1800, the building was kept in good condition until the great Hamburg fire of 1842, when it burned on the evening of May 7. Despite repeated proposals to rebuild the Chapel, the ruins were finally cleared away and it was never rebuilt.

Sermon text

Given below is a translated transcription of the preface to the original printed sermon as given in Liselotte Krüger, Die hamburgische Musikorganisation im XVII. Jahrhundert (Straßburg, 1933; reprint Baden-Baden, 1981), pp. 263-64. The text was taken directly from the lost original print formerly in the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky and includes two important additions by Johann Kortkamp (1643-1718?), organist of the Chapel from 1676 to 1718.

Dedication of the church of St. Gertrude in Hamburg. A dedication sermon given in the renovated and refurnished St. Gertrude’s Chapel by Lucas van Cöllen, Pastor of the same church. A.D.1607, year of the world 5569, 16 April. Printed by the heirs of Philipp von Ohr.

. . . Secondly, I want to recall, for the sake of those not present, how this dedication was conducted with singing and preaching, so that anyone could know, even if not present, what kind of ceremonies were used and in what a Christian manner this dedication took place, not in a popish way, with crosses, banners, incense, holy oils and the like, but with hymns, [musical] instruments, sermons and prayers, after the manner of Solomon, as in the following shall be recounted.

At at 6:30 in the morning the bells were rung for Mass. A little before 7 our school cantor began to sing the Veni sancte Spiritus in chant. After that was sung the Introit In nomine Jesu in eight parts by Bandovius [Bonhomius?]. Next followed the Missa super Deus misereatur nostri, also in eight parts, by the excellent composer Orlando [di Lasso]. Instead of the Sequence was sung Alleluia by Handl [Jacobus Gallus], composed for twelve parts, but in three choirs. The first choir was sung by the boys and musicians in the chancel, the second [was played] by cornetts and sackbuts, the third by the organ. Both these choirs were placed on special platforms, in the corners of the octagonal Chapel, because of the way it was built, so arranged and erected for the people to stand on and to hear the sermon [Kortkamp: on the newly-built rood screen]. This took place before the sermon. After the sermon O Gott wir dancken deiner Güte was begun from the Pulpit. After a short prelude played by the organist, by which the pitch was given, the whole congregation sang the chorale in unison. The other parts were played polyphonically by the organs, cornetts, and sackbuts, and so it was performed. Then the usual blessing was spoken from the pulpit. After that was sung Herr Gott dich loben wir which Hieronymus Praetorius, our church organist, has composed for sixteen parts in four choirs. The first choir was sung, the second was played by cornetts and sackbuts from a special platform, the third by string instruments and regals from another place [Kortkamp: in the Mason’s Chapel], [and] the fourth by the organ, but in such a way that the boys intoned the usual melody and the Sanctus was repeated three times. Following that was also sung the Cantate [Domino] in eight parts, by the same Hieronymus Praetorius, by the choir, organs, cornetts, and sackbuts all together. To conclude, Sei Lob und Ehr mit hohem Preis was sung by the congregation, choir, organ, and instruments. These are the ceremonies which, besides the sermon, were used for the dedication of the Chapel. I must here add and declare that, although I have many times heard music, yet I have not often heard it sound better than that which was heard then in the Chapel.

Hamburg, 7 January, 1609, Lucas van Cöllen; Pastor of St. Jacobi [St. James’s Church] in that city.

This document is the most complete description of a specific liturgical church service that has come down to us from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The account not only names the primary musical works, but also describes some aspects of their performance: the designation of continuo accompaniment for vocal and instrumental groups, the use of specific instruments with voices, the functioning of the large organ as an independent choir, the precise placement of choirs for performing polychoral motets, and an unusual manner of performing German chorales.

Original Performers

Even though van Cöllen left the valuable written account, the music was probably assembled by Hieronymus Praetorius (1560-1629), organist of both the Jacobikirche and the St. Gertrude’s Chapel. As the chief organist of the service and Hamburg’s most famous and prolific musician, Praetorius influenced the choice of music due to his own compositions in Venetian polychoral style, including two of the most significant works in the dedication service. The second identifiable musician is the city cantor, Erasmus Sartorius (1577-1637), who led the vocal ensemble of school boys and adult male singers and probably hired the eight city instrumentalists to play the specified cornetts, sackbuts, and string instruments. On this important city and church occasion, the smaller keyboard instruments mentioned in the account were possibly played by the organists of the other three Hamburg Hauptkirchen: David Scheidemann of the Katharinenkirche, Joachim Decker of the Nicolaikirche, and Jacob Praetorius II of the Petrikirche, the oldest son of Hieronymus Praetorius and later a well-known teacher and composer.

The Reconstructed Service

Veni sancte Spiritus Franz Eler, Cantica sacra (1588), p. 146
In nomine Jesu, Bandovius Pierre Bonhomme, Melodiae sacrae (1603), No. 16
Organ prelude: Aliud Kyrie dominicale minus Visby (Petri) Tabulatur (1611)
Missa super Deus miserator nostri, Orlando Arnold Grothusius, Missa (1588)
Salutatio und Kollekte Martin Luther, Deutsche Messe (1526)
Epistel Offenbarung Johannes 21:1-5a
Orgel praeludium Lüneburger Orgeltabulatur KN 146, No. 155
Alleluia. Cantate Domino, Handel Jacob Handl, Opus Musicum II (1587), No. 34
Evangelium, Lucas 19:1-10
Intonatione, G. Gabrieli Bernhard Schmid, Tabulatur Buch (1607), No. 1
O Godt wy dancken dyner Güde, J. Decker Melodeyen Gesangbuch (1604), No. 58
Orgel Vers Celler Tabulatur (1601), No. 41
Segen Johann Bugenhagen, De Ordeninge Pomerani (1529)
Orgel praeludium Lüneburger Orgeltabulatur KN 208/1, No. 41
Here Godt wy lauen dy, Hieronymus Praetorius Cantiones variae (1618), No. 36
Vater unser Bugenhagen, De Ordeninge Pomerani (1529)
Orgel praeludium Lüneburger Orgeltabulatur KN 208/1, No. 12
Cantate Domino, Hieronymus Praetorius Magnificat octo vocum (1602), No. 4
Salutatio und Kollekte Luther, Geistliche Lieder (1529)
Benedictio Bugenhagen, De Ordeninge Pomerani (1529)
Orgel praeludium Celler Tabulatur (1601), No. 29
Sy loff unde Ehr mit hogem Prysz, J. Decker Melodeyen Gesangbuch (1604), No. 23 N. Orgel Lüneburger Orgeltabulatur KN 208/1, No. 1

Musical and liturgical effect

In looking at the service as a whole, it can be seen that the order of the major musical items adheres closely to contemporary liturgical practices, but also forms an interesting and varied artistic structure. Simple chant begins the service, followed by double-choir music primarily for voices alone, sung in the choir area of the Chapel. A first high point is reached with the Handl triple-choir motet which adds instrumental sonorities to the voices and is performed closer to the listeners under the dome of the Chapel. After the sermon, an even larger group of performers join together in the first simple chorale.

The musical climax of the service is reached with the four-choir Herr Gott dich loben wir in which the listeners are completely surrounded by the music, and "We praise you, O God" is vividly expressed in impressive and emphatic music. Instead of ending at that high level, however, the refreshing style of the Cantate Domino follows, replacing grandiose praise with light-hearted rejoicing. Furthermore, a kind of rounding effect occurs in its repetition of lines from the Handl triple-choir motet, "Cantate Domino, canticum novum," and a stylistic climax is achieved by placing this, the most modern work, near the end. Reserved for the very end, though, is the singing of the second chorale in which everyone participates, so that the congregation members for whom the Chapel has been refurbished can offer their personal words of praise and thanks.

How fortunate we are that the detailed description by Lucas van Cöllen has come down to us, so that we too can more closely experience this music as he did, music that he said "never sounded better to him than he heard it this time in the Chapel.”

Magnificat Announces 2007-2008 Season

Magnificat is pleased to announce our 16th Season of concerts exploring the rich and varied repertoire of the Seventeenth Century. This season offers tremendous variety in genres and national styles with an opera and a program of cantatas and instrumental music from Italy; several petit motets from France, and a liturgical reconstruction from northern Germany.

The season opens on the weekend of October 26-28 with a program that will recreate the musical festivities surrounding the 1607 re-dedication of St. Gertrude’s chapel in Hamburg (pictured at right). Joined by The Whole Noyse and The Sex Chordæ Consort of Viols, Magnificat will perform music of Hieronymus Prætorius, Jakob Handl, and others in this program that weaves polychoral motets, traditional chant, and Lutheran chorales in a rich sonic tapestry. We are pleased to welcome back German baritone Martin Hummel, who will act as celebrant and sing in several of the motets.

The re-dedication service was reconstructed by UC Riverside musicologist Frederick Gable and is based on the detailed description written by the pastor of another Hamburg church, Lucas von Cöllen, who delivered the sermon on the occasion. Cöllen was deeply impressed with the dignity and solemnity of this service - which featured "hymns, [musical] instruments, sermons, and prayers, after the manner of Solomon." The description of the performing forces and their disposition in the chapel make it clear that the antiphonal styles associated with Venice had already reached northern Europe by the turn of the Seventeenth Century.

The concerts will be Friday October 26, 8:00 p.m. at All Saints Episcopal Church in Palo Alto; Saturday October 27, 8:00 p.m. at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Berkeley; and Sunday October 28, 4:00 p.m. at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco.

For our holiday concerts, soprano Catherine Webster (left) will be featured in Magnifcat’s holiday program of music by the towering figures of Roman music of the end of the Seventeenth Century: Alessandro Scarlatti and Arcangelo Corelli.

Scarlatti was born into poverty in famine stricken Sicily, his talent and good fortune allowed him to travel to Rome where he studied with Iacomo Carissimi. After writing several successful operas he gained the favor of Queen Christina of Sweden during her extended exile in Rome, and served as maestro di capella.

Scarlatti was in Rome during Pope Innocent XI’s reign, when opera was banned from Rome, and as a result he produced instead a wealth of sacred oratorios and cantatas, including two Christmas cantatas for soprano and strings. He later worked in Naples, Florence, and Venice, before returning to Rome later in life. A prolific and hard-working artist, Scarlatti's operas, oratorios, and cantatas circulated widely throughout Italy and beyond and heavily influenced the music of the Eighteenth Century.

Our program focuses on Scarlatti's cantatas in which we find the detailed and imaginative imagery and the dialogue between voice and instruments that characterize his finest work. In addition to the well known nativity pastorale O di Betlemme altera, Ms. Webster will also perform a later setting of the Christmas story Non sò qual più m'ingombra and an allegorical cantata Hor che di Febo.

Renowned as a violinist, composer and teacher, Corelli had a profound influence on musical style in the last quarter of the century. He also enjoyed the favor of Queen Christina and he was received in the highest circles of the aristocracy. The "Paganini" of his time, Corelli's trio sonatas and concerti grossi went through many editions and spread his fame across Europe. Our program will include a trio sonata, a solo violin sonata, and the composer's beloved Christmas Concerto.

The concerts will be Friday, December 7, 8:00 p.m. at First Lutheran Church in Palo Alto; Saturday December 8, 8:00 p.m. at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Berkeley; and Sunday December 9, 4:00 p.m. at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco.

Magnificat will return to the glorious music of Marc-Antoine Charpentier (right) in January with performances of four of his “petit motets”. Most likely writing for the Chapel of Saint-Suplice, Charpentier produced these intimate masterpieces for two sopranos and bass with violins during the first month of 1677. As always the master’s subtle harmonic palette and sensitive text expression are on display in these small-scale musical gems. The concert will include motets for New Year's Day, Epiphany, Purification, and for the Feast of St. Genevieve.

Some, if not all of these works were written for the musical ensemble of Charpentier’s patron, Mademoiselle de Guise, in whose household the composer lived and worked after returning from Rome, where he also was a student of Carissimi. The protected environment of the Hotel de Guise was conducive to Charpentier's development as a composer and allowed him the luxury of writing and performing music for his close friends and musical colleagues. Charpentier scholar and Magnificat artistic advisory board member John Powell prepared the editions from which Magnificat will perform and ill present the pre-concert lectures for these concerts.

The concerts will be Friday, January 18, 8:00 p.m. at First Lutheran Church in Palo Alto; Saturday January 19, 8:00 p.m. at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Berkeley; and Sunday January 20, 4:00 p.m. at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco.

With the support of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Magnificat will present the American premiere of Stradella’s opera Il Trespolo Tutore in April. After fleeing Rome in 1677, Stradella, one of the most colorful figures of the Seventeenth Century, wrote several operas in Genoa before his untimely death there in 1682. Il Trespolo Tutore is a light-hearted comedy that features a basso buffo title role, which will be sung by Peter Becker
(left).

The story of the opera is based on a play by the Tuscan playwright Giovanni Battista Ricciardi. Ricciardi created a cantankerous, bumbling character named Trespolo, who featured in a series of prose comedies, one of which served as the basis for a libretto by Giovanni Cosimo Villifranchi. Following the success of Trespolo, Villifranchi went on to become the leading comic opera librettist in Florence, writing several original works plus an opera based on another one of Ricciardi’s Trespolo comedies.

The opera has an entirely farcical plot and the characters of the ridiculous Trespolo and his maid Despina are prototypes of characters used widely later in the opera buffa genre. Stylistically, the opera is similar to the oratorio La Susanna, performed last season by Magnificat. Magnificat's performances will mark the North American premiere of the work, and the first performances in the original language since the 17th century.

The concerts will be Friday, April 11, 8:00 p.m. at First Lutheran Church in Palo Alto; Saturday April 12, 8:00 p.m. at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Berkeley; and Sunday April 13, 4:00 p.m. at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco. Pre-Concert lectures are open to all ticket holders and begin 45 minutes before the concert. For more information and to purchase tickets visit www.magnificatbaroque.org or call 800-853-8155.

Magnificat Performs at Notre Dame University and the Tropical Baroque Festival in Miami

Just a few days after concluding our 2006-2007 season, Magnificat was honored to be presented by the Society for Seventeenth Century Music as part of their annual conference. The concert was a repeat of our subscription series program that featured music of Chiara Margharita Cozzolani in a reconstruction of an Easter Vespers liturgy. The musicians performing were (left to right in the photo) Catherine Webster, Margaret Bragle, Jennifer Ellis, Kristen Dubenion Smith, John Dornenburg, Katherine Heater, Warren Stewart, Elizabeth Anker, David Tayler, Andrea Fullington, Suzanne Elder Wallace, and Jennifer Paulino.

The concert took place in the beautiful Patricia George Decio Theatre in the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center on the Notre Dame campus. The recently built concert hall boasts extraordinarily clear acoustics and the stage crew were exemplary - making us all feel like rock stars. A small but remarkable audience, made up almost entirely of scholars specializing in seventeenth century music, attended the concert. It was particularly meaningful for me to perform Cozzolani's music for colleagues that I have known and worked with for many years, including members of Magnificat's artistic advisory board, Jeffrey Kurtzman of Washington University St. Louis and Robert Kendrick of the University of Chicago, who graciously supplied authoritative program notes. The appreciative audience and the post-concert conversations made this one of the most memorable Magnificat concerts and a fitting conclusion to our 15th season.

Earlier in the Spring, Magnificat performed at the Tropical Baroque Festival in Miami. The program was Stradella'a oratorio La Susanna, which we had recently performed on our subscription series in the Bay Area.

The concert was enthusiastically received and the Miami Herald noted the "heady mixture of seamless, voluptuous melody", and commented that "all of the other singers and instrumentalists contributed towards the success of a sublime work". The reviewer was especially taken by soprano Laura Heimes, who sang the title role and will return for three sets next season. "Heimes, given a lion's share of the singing as Susanna, was balm to the ears. Her tones were perfectly floated over the ensemble, and her willingness to sing softly made her a Susanna of beauty indeed."

In addition to Ms. Heimes, the musicians for the Miami performance were Jennifer Paulino, Chris Conley, Paul Elliott, Peter Becker, Rob Diggins, David Wilson, Waren Stewart, and Katherine Heater.

Cozzolani Program Notes by Robert L. Kendrick

This evening’s program allows us to experience again some of the repertory produced by seventeenth-century Italian cloistered women. Thanks not least to groups like Magnificat, over the last decade the sacred music heard in their institutions throughout the peninsula has made the leap from printed page to a real presence on recordings and in concert. In addition, the work of several SSCM members on sacred music outside convent walls—ranging from problems of tonal organization to those of liturgical use—helps provide a better context in which to understand nuns’ repertory.

The basics of tonight’s concert are fairly well-known: music by the Benedictine nun Chiara Margarita Cozzolani (1602-c.1677), a sister at the musically famous convent of Santa Radegonda, located across the street from Milan Cathedral. Cozzolani’s psalms and motet are here presented as they would have been first heard, in the context of her order's liturgy for Easter Vespers. S. Radegonda was famous for its sisters’ music-making on such feast-days, as visitors from all over Europe crowded into its half-church open to the public (chiesa esteriore). We hear the major musical items, in polyphony and chant, for such a Vespers, using largely Cozzolani's music and reflecting the convent's repertory around 1650; the psalms and Magnificat are scored for eight voices plus basso continuo, while the intervening motets are for smaller forces. The psalms and canticle come from her Salmi a otto voci concertati, op. 3 (Venice, 1650), published as a result of the 1649 visit to Milan of the Austrian Habsburg princess Maria Anna, a young woman soon to be married to her cousin Philip IV of Spain. Four of the five motets appeared in Cozzolani’s Concerti sacri, op. 2 (Venice, 1642; only the Mary Magdalen motet is found in the 1650 book). As a whole, the music reflects S. Radegonda’s festal liturgy at the time of Maria Anna’s visit, and could have been heard by the princess during her stay in the city, a sojourn which both reaffirmed Milan’s place in the Habsburg domains and linked the two branches of the House of Habsburg.

Like her sister, aunt, and nieces, Cozzolani took her vows at the house in her late teens. She had been born into a well-off family in Milan, and might have received her early musical training from members of the well-known Rognoni family, instrumental and vocal teachers in the city. Her four musical publications appeared between 1640 and 1650; later, she served as prioress and abbess at S. Radegonda, helping to guide the house through troubled times in the 1660’s, as it came under attack by the strict Archbishop Alfonso Litta, concerned to limit nuns’ practice of music, along with other “irregular” contact with the outside world. She disappears from the convent's lists between 1676 and 1678.

The fame of Cozzolani and her house during her lifetime is evident in a passage from her contemporary Filippo Picinelli's urban panegyric, the Ateneo dei letterati milanesi (Milan, 1670): “The nuns of Santa Radegonda of Milan are gifted with such rare and exquisite talents in music that they are acknowledged to be the best singers of Italy. They wear the Cassinese habits of [the order of] St. Benedict, but (under their black garb) they seem to any listener to be white and melodious swans, who fill hearts with wonder, and enrapture tongues in their praise. Among these sisters, Donna Chiara Margarita Cozzolani merits the highest praise, Chiara [literally, ‘clear’, Cozzolani’s religious name] in name but even more so in merit, and Margarita [literally, ‘a pearl’] for her unusual and excellent nobility of [musical] invention…”. She was of course only one of over a dozen nuns in seventeenth-century Italy who published their music, but the ongoing tributes to her and to the musical culture of her house are remarkable on any count.

The canonical Hour begins with the versicle and response Deus in adiutorium meum, of which Cozzolani set the latter part (“Domine ad adiuvandum me festina”). Although this is normally a fairly straightforward text, the composer signaled the formal innovations to come in her psalm settings by rearranging various parts of the liturgical text (‘festina, Domine’ and the ‘Gloria Patri’) and troping them into earlier sections of the response. As per Benedictine Use in the seventeenth century, the four psalms (not five, as in the secular Use familiar from Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610) and the ensuing Magnificat are each flanked by a chant antiphon and, substituting for the antiphon's normal repetition after the psalm, a motet. The hymn sung before the Magnificat is here given in an alternatim (i.e., alternate stanzas divided between Gregorian chant and organ versets) version from the standard contemporary publication for such practice, G. B. Fasolo’s Annuale (Venice, 1645).

The vocal resources of S. Radegonda allowed Cozzolani to apportion a wide variety of textures to the verses of the eight-voice items. The psalms use this kind of kaleidoscopically changing scorings in order to differentiate verses and half-verses, often responding to the imagery of each with a directly representative gesture. The troping found in Domine ad adiuvandum is also evident in the opening psalm Dixit Dominus, in which the three members of the doxology (one for each of the Trinity) are inserted ‘prematurely’ among the verses. The martial affect of the 'Gloria' motive, repeated throughout the first half, heightens the victorious tone of the psalm, and to render the setting even more festive. Although refrains do occur in contemporary Vespers of composers working elsewhere in Italy—those of Monteverdi, Giovanni Rovetta, Gasparo Casati and Orazio Tarditi—such a use of the ‘Gloria Patri’ displaced to various parts of the psalm seems to occur only in Cozzolani’s psalms. For a Milanese audience of the 1640s, unused to refrains in psalm settings, the effect must have been uncommon, even ‘witty’. While Dixit tropes the doxology into the verses, Laudate pueri reverses the process, by troping the initial refrain into later sections, including the doxology. Another notable feature is the apportioning of solos to the first-choir alto, a favorite voice-type (?perhaps her own) for Cozzolani.

Dixit Dominus, with its unusual refrain, constantly varying textures, and martial affect represents one side of the 1650 collection; the second psalm, Confitebor tibi Domine (Ps 110) displays another. The concertato duet and trio writing found in Dixit Dominus are present here as well, as are the tutti declamatory, martial, and antiphonal sections. The difference begins on the structural level: there are no refrains in the strict sense. Instead the common pun of the return of the opening at ‘Sicut erat’ is employed. However, one feature distinguishes Confitebor tibi: the return of this opening’s ‘walking’ bass at two points: in a triple-time form at verse 7, ‘Ut det illis’ and at the soprano duet ‘Redemptionem misit’. Thus Confitebor represents a more subtle recurrence of the refrain idea that characterizes almost all of Cozzolani’s eight-voice settings. Second are smaller-scale features: the declamation in the tuttis is rather quicker than in Dixit; and there is more interest in local solo-tutti contrast (‘Fidelia omnia’). The relative brevity and economy of this setting marks it as closer to the subgenre of the salmo corrente, a more declamatory psalm setting with little or no internal textual repetition.

The pervasive influence of the dialogue made itself felt in Cozzolani’s setting of Beatus vir, sub-titled “in forma di Dialogo”. The ‘dialogic’ influence functions on both the small-scale level (the verses are largely multi-voice concertato passages), and on the larger overall structure. For the psalm in interspersed with two interlocking refrains, one on ‘Beatus vir’ and one on ‘Jocundus homo’. The print supplies question marks for non-interrogative clauses in the text of the psalm verse (e.g. ‘qui habitabit?’), normally allotted to a solo voice or pair of voices. These ‘forced’ interrogatives are then followed by another set of voices (or by the whole ensemble), giving the whole text (verse or half-verse) as an answer. It is this characteristic that seems to impart a ‘dialogic’ trait to the piece. Although the idea may seem constructivist, Cozzolani uses the structure to reinforce certain qualities of the ‘blessed man’, in what may be a reference to a venerated saint or possibly even a (deceased) religious superior (in his edition of this piece, Jeffrey Kurtzman has noted Cozzolani’s sensitivity to textual semantics). This structural feature doubles the length of the text as sung, in addition to the musical echoes provided by the dialogue of voices, and the unpredictable returns of the two refrains; Beatus vir is one of the more extended and individually reworked psalms in the mid-century north Italian repertory.

The Magnificat primo (there are two in the 1650 edition) also tropes the rearranged first verse (‘anima mea magnificat’, here used as a kind of emblem of the overall affect of the piece) into various places of the canticle. But it also repeats parts of adjacent verses in the interest of local binary contrast, textual and musical, as in the case of the forceful ‘dispersit superbos’ followed immediately by the humble ‘respexit humilitatatem ancillae suae’ from an earlier verse. The entire declamation then becomes: ‘dispersit . . . [interspersed contrast:] respexit . . . mente cordis sui’. This setting also uses direct antiphony between the two groups of four voices (‘a progenie in progenies’), a procedure that is somewhat rare in the collection.

The printed version of the canticle setting also highlights issues of performance practice: at ‘Quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae’, the Basso II voice descends to a low D# (i.e. below the bass staff), for obvious mimetic reasons. Similarly, in Confitebor at “Magna opera Domini”, the Basso I, the only voice declaming the text, descends to low F. Indeed, in these settings as in the rest of Cozzolani’s music, the vocal ranges are entirely normal (even extended) by seventeenth-century standards, and so the problem of how the music was performed by the all-female ensembles of S. Radegonda is directly posed. There is some evidence that, given the large numbers of women in the house along with a tradition of female singers named as ‘bassi’ in the archival records, convent ensembles must have had women who could sing tenor lines, at least, at pitch. Bass parts might then have been transposed up an octave; alternately, entire pieces might have been transposed up a fourth or fifth. Since the conditions of convent performance are not reproducible today (without major social engineering), tonight’s concert offers a solution in which both tenor and bass parts are taken up an octave, so as to give something of the ethereal, ‘celestial’ sonority of nuns’ ensembles that so impressed contemporary listeners.

As scholars from Stephen Bonta onwards have pointed out, it was common Italian practice to replace the antiphons with motets. We have chosen five: one for solo voice, three for two voices, and one for four voices, based either on their direct suitability for Easter or on their general Christological traits appropriate for this highest of feasts of Christ. The motet O quam bonum, O quam jocundum, for solo soprano, alternates quick triple meter sections with more declamatory writing. Its text adumbrates the healing effects of the Eucharist, and it switches between addressing Christ and the urban public listening in the external church of the convent. It invites the listeners to enter the “Lord’s gate”, namely the wound in Christ’s side, the door to salvation. The repetition of the motet’s opening section halfway through is balanced by its conclusion, featuring ornamental dissonance in the voice part over long pedals in the basso continuo, an appropriate climax to the setting of an intense text.

Three duets show other aspects of Cozzolani’s style. The soprano/alto motet Ave mater dilectissima sets a dialogue between Mary and the Risen Christ, appropriate for the feast. In its modal stability, and gradually expanding range of the vocal lines, this dialogue exemplifies the traditional side of Cozzolani’s writing. The duet for two canti, Bone Jesu, fons amoris, is a setting of a late-medieval text addressed to Christ. With its opening ostinato section and two imitative periods at the end (“fac habere premium” and “ut cantemus”), this motet displays the rhythmic drive and intensity of the new musical styles in northern Italy around 1640. O dulcis Jesu, whose text, scoring, and musical procedures recall those of Bone Jesu, fons amoris, was reprinted by the German Lutheran organist Ambrosius Profe in his anthology of 1649, Corollarium geistlicher collectaneorum (copies of which survive in various Lutheran collections), while the piece also circulated in Bohemian manuscript copies with violin parts added later (one other piece from Cozzolani’s 1650 book, not performed here, has been found by Bernardo Illari and T. Frank Kennedy in the musical archive of the Jesuit reduction in Concepción, Bolivia). Thus the Christological piety—and up-to-date musical traits—of O dulcis Jesu seem to have appealed to a wide (confessional) variety of singers and listeners.

As the substitute for the Magnificat antiphon we hear the motet Maria Magdalena stabat, a dramatic setting of Mary Magdalen’s encounter with the angels at Christ’s tomb on Easter morning. This text would have had special meaning for Cozzolani, the other nuns, and S. Radegonda’s public, for the convent was the only church in Milan to house a relic of the penitent saint. Even more importantly, she was used as a model for nuns in particular, and for Christians (as sinners) more generally. The first half of the piece is a dialogue between the Magdalen and the angels, in which the saint expresses her desire to find the missing Christ, using language taken from the Song of Songs and featuring musical periods of gradually increasing length, complexity, and dissonance (its climax being “Dilectus meus, amor meus…crucifixus est”). This adumbration of grief and longing for Jesus, an example of what an individual nun and Christian would have felt when contemplating the mystery of the empty Tomb on Easter morning, is then balanced by a long conclusion (beginning at “Dicamus ergo gaudentes”), three sentences each ending with “alleluia”, unified by a recurring cadential figure. In its combination of specifically female spirituality with the universal joy of believers at the Resurrection, the dialogue sums up the devotional and musical themes present in much of Cozzolani’s output.

The variety and “meraviglia” of Cozzolani's musical invention are well on display in these selections. Three and a half centuries later, this music has lost none of its power to attract and impress listeners, and its restoration to the liturgical context in which it was originally heard only reinforces the power of the music.