Magnificat

The Magnificat Blog Has Moved!

2009-06-22T09:52:00.000-07:00

The Magnificat Weblog has moved to a new URL (with a new design as well!): http://magnificatmusic.wordpress.com. All the content in this blog has been imported to the new one. This blog will remain as an archive.

Please visit the new blog!

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2009-06-16T13:40:00.001-07:00

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The 17th Century Meets the 21st: Magnificat Now on Facebook and Twitter

2009-06-01T13:40:00.000-07:00

Magnificat has launched a Facebook Page and you are all encouraged to become "fans" (including all who already are!) The page currently has a discography, notice of upcoming events, and lots of other information about Magnificat. Soon we will have the capability to post mp3s and videos. Our page can be visited by clicking here.

We are also on Twitter, so those of you who dwell in Twitterspace please follow us @MagnificatMusic. We are working to develop a discussion of Baroque music and culture in this new medium as a way of increasing interest in Magnificat and early music in general.

Georg Muffat's Birthday and David Wilson's Translation and Commentary

2009-06-01T09:01:00.000-07:00

Georg Muffat was born on June 1 in 1653. A special day for Jubilate personnel manager, Magnificat violinist, Muffat expert and all around great guy David Wilson, who, in 2001, published a translation of texts from Florilegium Primum, Florilegium Secundum, and Auserlesene Instrumentalmusik together with very enlightening commentary on performance practice issues.

Born in Savoy, Muffat studied with Lully in Paris in the 1660s and then studied law at Ingolstadt. According to the biographical blurb at Goldberg Magazine, he later traveled to Vienna but could not obtain an official appointment and subsequently appeared in Prague (1677), ultimately finding a position in Salzburg in the service of Archbishop Max Gandolf, a post he held for over ten years.

He was given leave to travel in the 1680s and studied in Rome with Pasquini ; some of his compositions were performed in Corelli 's house. From 1690 until his death he was Kapellmeister to Johann Philipp von Lamberg, Bishop of Passau.

Muffat was instrumental in bringing the French and Italian styles into German- speaking countries, the prefaces to his published works providing details about Lully 's and Corelli 's practice for his German audience. David's book was reviewed by Kris Worsley in the Frankfurter Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, excerpted below. The full review can be read here. Several pages can be read at Google Books. It can be ordered here.

The complex diversity of Georg Muffat’s musical inheritance causes many problems for the modern performer. The significance of his studies in France (with Lully) may be weighed up against that of his later affinity to Austria and Italy. This book provides an extremely useful translation of Muffat’s own instructions on the correct approach to his works. David K. Wilson (who was handed the project by the late Thomas Binkley) sets out to provide a complete, self-contained guide to Muffat’s writings on performance practice, prefacing the translations with a biographical sketch of Georg Muffat, and following them with a commentary which discusses the implications of these writings on Muffat's Intentions, Instruments, Pitch and Temperament, Techniques, German Performance Practice, and Performance Settings.

The thoroughness of the study does help to clarify the confusion that all too easily results from Muffat’s own cosmopolitan style (Wilson admits that "questions can be asked about how representative of French music of the seventeenth century Muffat’s writings actually are" (page 119)). The biographical sketch that opens the volume stresses the importance of the political circumstances that framed Muffat’s life, from his beginnings in Savoy, his presumed studies with Lully in Paris, and his further travels to Vienna, Salzburg and Rome and his eventual settling in Passau. This emphasis on Muffat’s travels brings a welcome sense of clarity to the problem of the composer’s stylistic diversity and enlightens many of his comments in the texts in a most direct way.

Suzanne Cusick's "Francesca Caccini at the Medici Court" to be Published Next Month

2009-05-30T07:55:00.000-07:00

Magnificat will open our 2009-2010 season with Francesca Caccini's opera "The Liberation of Ruggiero". I am looking forward to reading New York University Professor Suzanne Cusick's new book about this remarkable composer. The book is available for order on the University of Chicago Press website. The synopsis provided by the publisher follows:

A contemporary of Shakespeare and Monteverdi, and a colleague of Galileo and Artemisia Gentileschi at the Medici court, Francesca Caccini was a dominant figure of musical life there for thirty years. Dazzling listeners with the transformative power of her performances and the sparkling wit of the music she composed for more than a dozen court theatricals, Caccini is best remembered today as the first woman to have composed opera. Francesca Caccini at the Medici Court reveals, for the first time, how this multitalented composer established a fully professional musical career at a time when virtually no other women were able to achieve comparable success.

Suzanne Cusick argues that Caccini’s career depended on the usefulness of her talents to the political agenda of Grand Duchess Christine de Lorraine, Tuscany’s de facto regent from 1606 to 1636. Drawing on Classical and feminist theory, Cusick shows how the music Caccini made for the Medici court sustained the culture that enabled Christine’s power, thereby also supporting the sexual and political aims of its women. A CD of rare recorded samples of Caccini’s oeuvre, specially prepared, further enhances this long-awaited study.

In bringing Caccini’s surprising story so vividly to life, Cusick ultimately illuminates how music making functioned in early modern Italy as a significant medium for the circulation of power.

Magnificat Looking Forward to the Return of the Puppets

2009-05-28T15:37:00.000-07:00

On the weekend of October 16-18, 2009, Manificat will join forces with Northwest Puppet Theater in a production first mounted in Seattle in 2007. Below is a review of that production from the Seattle Post Intelligencer. We look forward to working with the Stephen and Chris Carter and their troupe of wooden friends!

Marionettes Make Fine Work of Italian Opera

by Phillipa Kiraly (originally posted on April 22, 2007 at the Seattle Post Intelligencer)

Kudos to the Northwest Puppet Center for doing it yet again: opera in miniature with all the trimmings. On Friday night, "The Liberation of Ruggiero from the Island of Alcina," by Francesca Caccini, opened at the center with five singers, four musicians, more than 30 puppets and a wave machine.

"Ruggiero" was one of the earliest operas, written in 1625; the first written by a woman -- Caccini was a younger contemporary of composer Claudio Monteverdi; and the first to be presented outside Italy -- in Poland in 1628.

Like many Baroque operas, it was originally presented full size on a lavish scale with complicated stage machinery and effects, and the story is a legend complete with sorcery, battles, gods, animals and talking trees.

Northwest Puppet Center's production includes a dragon that blasts smoke, dancing fish and seahorses, a sea creature spewing forth the character Pulcinella, a goddess flying in on a griffin and a sheep that, well, I'm not giving away what it does.

Sung in Italian with supertitles, with the spoken words in English, the opera is largely recitative, but with duets and trios as well.

Read the Entire Article at The Seattle Post Intelligencer

Puppets, Nuns, Melodies, and Masterpieces: Magnificat’s 18th Season Takes a Tour of Italy

2009-05-22T10:19:00.000-07:00

[UPDATE: Magnificat's February Concerts will feature music by the Venetian composer Alessandro Grandi.] Magnificat’s 18th Season will be a grand tour through four Italian cities: Florence, Milan, Venice, and Mantua. Along the way, we will hear a delightful puppet opera, a glorious mass for Christmas, a program of madrigals and motets, and perhaps the greatest masterpiece of the early Baroque. The season feature music by two remarkable women and two pioneers of the new music of the seventeenth century.

The notion of constructing a season as a tour of Italy began in a trip I took in the summer of 2008. While in Milan I made a pilgrimage to Cozzolani’s convent, Santa Radegonda, now a multiplex cinema ("Sex in the City" was premiering that day) and wandered around the marvelous Duomo. I also visited Florence, where so many of the radical ideas that shaped the music of the seventeenth century were first articulated. Throughout the journey, I was struck by how strongly the aesthetic of the seicento survives in spite of the noise of the intervening centuries.

So much of what we consider to be “modern” has its roots in the new ideas of the seventeenth century. The Earth went from being the center of the universe to a speck in the midst of an infinite eternity. Artists and poets sought to depict the subtleties of human emotion through jarring contrast and exaggeration. Composers gave us opera, the virtuoso, and art music for the masses. And almost every bold new idea began in the collection of duchies, independent cities, republics, and colonies that we now know collectively as Italy.

Given the 400th anniversary of the great and complex masterpiece of the seicento, Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, it seemed like an excellent idea to explore the various strands of the new music of the seventeenth century in the context of four cities: Florence, Milan, Venice, and Mantua. While certainly not a comprehensive list, these cities offer a broad perspective on the many artistic trends that so powerfully shaped the music of the entire continent.

October 18-20, 2009 - Florence: “The Liberation of Ruggiero” by Francesca Caccini
with The Northwest Puppet Theatre

Magnificat welcomes back the Northwest Puppet Theatre for a production of the only surviving opera by Francesca Caccini. The daughter of the father of the nuove musiche of the 17th century, Giulio Caccini, Francesca had a remarkable career in her own right, arguably the first “diva”, an accomplished composer, and an independent woman centuries ahead of her time.

December 4-6, 2009 - Milan: Christmas Mass by Chiara Margarita Cozzolani.

By popular demand, Magnificat will revisit the music from the remarkable Benedictine nun, Chiara Margarita Cozzolani. In this program, Cozzolani’s setting of the Mass will be performed together with seasonal motets for solo voices and traditional chant.

February 12-14, 2010 - Venice: "Celesti fiori" by Alessandro Grandi

A student of Giovanni Gabrieli, Grandi served as an assistant to Monteverdi at San Marco and was a prolific composer of vocal chamber music in the evolving concerto style of the first qurter of the 17th Century. His unfailing gift for melody and daring use of harmony resulted in initimate and deeply expressive music that speaks across the centuries with clarity and power. Most of the motets and madrigals performed on this program will be modern premieres.

April 23-25, 2010 - Mantua: Vespro della Beata Vergine by Claudio Monteverdi

With his famous Vespers of 1610 Monteverdi, consciously melded the competing styles of old and new that fueled the great musical debate of the new century. Based on ancient psalm tones, the polyphonic settings of the Vespers liturgy offer a kaleidoscopic tour through the new musical styles that were evolving at the time. Magnificat will be joined by The Whole Noyse in these performances.

Details of the season will be available soon on Magnificat's new website.

San Francisco Chronicle Review: 'Venere, Amore e Ragione'

2009-04-07T14:59:00.000-07:00

by Joshua Kosman

This review was published in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 7, 2009.

The thing about love, as most people learn sooner or later, is that it stubbornly refuses to be guided by the precepts of logic and rationality. A pretty smile, an enticing gaze, some shapely body part or other, and boom - there goes common sense.

Not so in "Venere, Amore e Ragione" ("Venus, Cupid and Reason"), the comely little musical entertainment presented over the weekend by the early-music ensemble Magnificat. In Alessandro Scarlatti's serenata, probably first performed in Rome in 1706, Cupid throws off his blindfold, and amid great rejoicing by the pastoral crowds, embraces Reason as his mentor.

Uh-huh. And you thought 19th century operas were unrealistic.

The charms of this work, scored for three singers in the title roles and a complement of six instrumentalists, are slight but genuine. Compared with composers writing even 10 or 20 years later, Scarlatti works on a compact scale, writing terse little arias that make their points and hurry away again.

Paradoxically, perhaps, his music is better appreciated in full-length operas, where these gemlike miniatures acquire dramatic heft through sheer accumulation. In a modest pastoral like "Venere, Amore e Ragione" - which includes scarcely an hour's worth of music - a listener can sup contentedly enough on musical canapes while waiting in vain for a meatier dish.

Still, there is no denying the vigor, stylishness and sheer beauty of Scarlatti's score, which moves briskly through its set pieces and culminates, like some Baroque version of "Der Rosenkavalier," with a lushly scored trio for the three female voices. There's also a surprise ending (musical, not textual) to rival anything concocted by O. Henry.

Saturday's performance at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Berkeley brought out these appealing qualities without alleviating the essential modesty of the undertaking. The instrumental playing, led from the harpsichord by Hanneke van Proosdij, was lively and evocative, with occasional bursts of recorder to leaven the string textures.

The vocal casting was evidently done in accordance with a principle whereby only singers named Jennifer need apply. Among these, soprano Jennifer Ellis Kampani was the standout, singing the role of Cupid with a bright, sweeping tone and effortlessly negotiating the sometimes daunting thickets of coloratura writing in the part. One aria, "D'amor l'accesa face" ("The burning torch of love"), proved to be the dramatic climax of the evening, a bravura showpiece that Ellis Kampani brought home superbly.

Soprano Jennifer Paulino made a cool, sweet-toned but rather impassive Venus. Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Lane's recessive performance as Reason made that luminary's ultimate triumph seem all the more implausible.

E-mail Joshua Kosman at jkosman@sfchronicle.com.

SFCV Review of Scarlatti Concert: In Light of Reason

2009-04-07T14:42:00.000-07:00

by Joseph Sargent

This review was posted at San Francisco Classical Voice on April 6, 2009.

An unmistakable allure surrounds concerts that bring long-neglected music into the new light of day. Aside from the sheer novelty of presenting repertory otherwise seldom available in concert or on recordings, these efforts can prove highly memorable for the listener, who comes away with a distinct feeling of having experienced something special. Such encounters happen frequently with Warren Stewart’s Baroque ensemble Magnificat, whose penchant for seeking out hidden treasures often yields delightful performances of music by underappreciated composers.

For Magnificat’s latest concert set, the presumptive diamond in the rough was a genre rather than a composer. Alessandro Scarlatti’s Venere, Amore, e Ragione (Venus, Cupid, and Reason) is a “serenata” — a term with slippery historical connotations but that in Scarlatti’s day denoted a festive, cantatalike work associated with important occasions, from grand state affairs to more intimate celebrations. Its text, by the Roman poet Silvio Stampiglia, details a dispute between Venus and Reason involving the latter’s newfound influence over Cupid, with Venus conceding in the end that love guided by reason yields better lovers.

Although Scarlatti wrote nearly two dozen serenatas during his lifetime, these pieces tend to play second fiddle to his better-known operas and solo-voice chamber cantatas. Compounding the obscurity of Venere, Amore, e Ragione is a lack of information about its original performance context. (Educated guesses place the work around 1706, in association with the composer’s election to the Roman literary academy/cultural institution Accademia dell’Arcadia.)

Of course, the act of reviving seldom-heard works loses some luster if the piece itself lacks charisma. Hearing Magnificat’s performance on Friday in Palo Alto’s First Lutheran Church, I was struck by the generic, repetitive quality of much of this music. Certainly this can be attributed, at least partially, to the relentless alternations of recitative and arias and to standardized da capo aria structures typical of Baroque practice. But even allowing for these structural rigidities, Scarlatti’s music comes off as merely serviceable: pleasant but largely uninspired.

Persuasive Proponent of Scarlatti

All this should take nothing away from Magnificat’s actual performance, which lived up fully to this ensemble’s usual high standards. If any ensemble were to advocate for Scarlatti’s serenatas through compelling performances, this is the one. Magnificat’s sterling trio of vocalists and sextet of instrumentalists approached the piece with great elegance, imparting a sense of grace, fluidity, and intimacy. Vocal qualities were exquisitely matched to the characters portrayed, with soprano Jennifer Paulino’s warm, vibrant sound perfectly suited to the sensual Venus. Jennifer Ellis Kampani’s bright, clarion soprano ably captured the youthful Cupid, while the rich, magisterial quality of mezzo-soprano Jennifer Lane offered a fine counterbalance as the more grounded Reason.

Amid Scarlatti’s pervasive stylistic homogeneity, select moments of variety proved to be the evening’s highlights. Reason’s aria “Quella ninfa d’accese pupille” (That nymph with inflamed eyes) featured Lane in a zestful performance, emphasizing the nymph’s “beautiful eyes” and “passionate splendor.” The exclusive use of low-sounding instruments for accompaniment offered an appealing contrast, even if intonation issues occasionally marred the texture.

The performers handled isolated instances of florid coloratura expertly. Kampani’s confident declamation of “D’amor l’accesa face” (If the burning torch of love), in perfect counterpoint with violinists Rob Diggins and Jolianne von Einem, invigorated the pyrotechnics of this paean to love blended with reason. All three vocalists triumphed in the serenata’s finale, “Impari ad amar bene” (Learn to love well), coming together in a virtuoso display of vocal agility, impeccable blend, and fine balance, right up to the surprisingly inconclusive final chord.

The instrumental consort, solid throughout, shone brightest in a dance movement that perfectly captured the rustic character of nimble nymphs and shepherds in jubilant celebration. Especially engaging were the delightful string portamentos and the ever-steady harmonic support from the dynamic duo of harpsichordist Hanneke van Proosdij and theorbist David Tayler.

Joseph Sargent, a doctoral candidate in musicology at Stanford University, is a professional writer and editor as well as a performer, conductor, and scholar of early music.

Alessandro Scarlatti’s Serenata Venere, Amore e Ragione

2009-03-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

By the 17th century the term serenata had lost its original association with the custom of offering a musical tribute to a beloved woman. Already in the 16th century, compositions entitled serenata were composed to amuse a sophisticated, aristocratic audience to satirize the custom, especially as practiced by the lower classes. In mid 17th century Rome, the serenade became associated with magnificent events produced for civic or diplomatic occasions. At the same time, serenades were also written for more intimate environments.

Manuscript scores and libretti survive for 22 cantatas for two or more voices by Scarlatti bear the term serenata. Like most of Scarlatti’s vocal chamber works, these serenatas were heard in highly exclusive, aristocratic circles. The precise circumstances of the first performance of Venere, Amore, e Ragione are unknown. Musicologist Thomas E. Griffin has suggested that the serenata is associated with Scarlatti’s induction in the Accademia dell'Arcadia in 1706.

The libretto for Venere, Amore, e Ragione is attributed to the Roman poet Silvio Stampiglia, a fellow member of the Accademia dell'Arcadia who collaborated with Scarlatti on many occasions. The libretto recounts a dispute between Venus and Reason over the conduct of Venus’ son Cupid. Distressed at finding her son among the nymphs and shepherds of Rome and a changed under the influence of Reason, Venus fears that he will lose his power. After much discussion Cupid, with the support of Reason, persuades his mother that the quality and quantity of his followers has only improved since he adopted Reason as his guide.

The elegant and highly mannered style, both Scarlatti’s music and Stampiglia’s language are well suited to the aesthetic espoused by the Arcadians, who explicitly rejected what they perceived as the artificiality of the seventeenth century literary style associated with the poet Giambattista Marini. The “Marinists” sought novel and striking contrasts and the poetic inventiveness that created bold and unexpected conceits. The Arcadians sought simplicity and “naturalness” and Scarlatti’s music expresses this sensibility in its sparing use of coloratura and preference for lyrical melodies in conjunct motion.

Scarlatti was born 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 chamber works for voice and instruments 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.

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.

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 vocal works.

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.

"The Three Jennifers" – Magnificat Performs Scarlatti’s Venere, Amore e Ragione

2009-03-23T06:49:00.000-07:00

On the weekend of April 3-5, Magnificat will concludes our 2009-2010 season with performances of Venere, Amore e Ragione, a delightful serenade by Alessandro Scarlatti that will feature three Jennifers: Jennifer Ellis Kampani, Jennifer Paulino and Jennifer Lane. Together with instrumentalists Rob Diggins, Jolianne von Einem, Vicki Gunn Pich, David Tayler, and Hanneke van Proosdij, they will perform a work that Scarlatti wrote during the years he spent in Rome at the turn of the 18th century.

All three Jennifers are well known to Bay Area audiences. Jennifer Ellis Kampani, who with sing the role of Amore, first appeared with Magnificat in the role of “Jealousy” in our production of Il Capriccio in 1997. She enjoys an international career that has included appearances with the period instrument groups American Bach Soloists, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Santa Fe Pro Musica, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Opera Lafayette, Apollo's Fire, Musica Angelica, Magnificat, Washington Catherdral Choral Society, Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, Ensemble Solamente (Budapest, Hungary), Ensemble Tourbillon (Prague, Czech Republic), and Musica Aeterna (Bratislava, Slovakia). In addition, Ms. Kampani has sung with the Mark Morris Dance Group and the Charlotte Symphony. Opera highlights include leading roles in Handel's Acis and Galata, Blow’s Venus and Adonis, Pergolesi's La Serva Padrona, Duron’s zarzuela “Salir el Amor del Mundo”, Handel's "Semele", and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas.

Jennifer Paulino, who will sing Venere, has performed frequently with Magnificat since singing the role of “Daniele” in our production of Stradella’s La Susanna in 2007. In addition to her work with Magnificat, Jennifer has appeared with the Leiden Baroque Ensemble (Netherlands), and the Catacoustic Consort (Cincinnati), and is a founding member of the Baroque ensemble Les grâces. She has sung Messiah selections and Vivaldi's Gloria with the Southwest Florida Symphony, the title role in Acis and Galatea (Handel), and a concert at the Bach Festival of Gliwice, Poland. She was a founding member of The Choral Scholars (1999-2004), a vocal ensemble dedicated to the study and performance of early music and new works. Her tenure with the ensemble culminated in a recording and concert in collaboration with Trio Mediæval and the Washington National Cathedral girls choir.

Jennifer Lane sings on Magnificat’s rcordings of the music of Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, but will mark her Magnificat concert debut with these performances. Jennifer, who will sing the role of Ragione in Magnificat's performances, is recognized internationally for her stunning interpretations of repertoire ranging from the early Baroque to that of contemporary composers. She has appeared at festivals worldwide, with such noted conductors Michael Tilson-Thomas, Mstislav Rostropovich, William Christie, Nicholas McGegan, Andrew Parrott, Christopher Hogwood, Marc Minkowski, Helmut Rilling, and Robert Shaw, among others. Her performances have brought acclaim from audiences in opera and concert at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, Salzburger Bachgesellschaft, National Arts Center in Ottawa, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Tanglewood Festival, Caramoor Festival, Boston Early Music Festival, Bethlehem Bach Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, the New Getty Center, the Frick Collection in New York, Cité de la Musique in Paris, Opernhaus Halle, Opernhaus Dessau, Utah Opera and Opera du Caen.

A noted early music specialist, Jennifer Lane appears frequently with many of the most noted period instrument orchestras: Les Arts Florissants, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the Smithsonian Chamber Players, New York Collegium, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Tafelmusik, American Bach Soloists, Boston's Handel & Haydn Society and Le Parlement de Musique. She is also a frequent guest with symphony orchestras and has performed with the Jerusalem Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Honolulu Symphony and the Orchestra della Toscana. She has been seen in opera at Opernhaus Halle, Opernhaus Dessau, Santa Fe Opera, Utah Opera and in New York City Opera, where she has performed over twenty roles, including the role of Amastre in NYCO's acclaimed production of Georg Frideric Handel’s Xerxes, directed by Stephen Wadsworth and voted "opera production of the year" by USA Today. She joined the Metropolitan Opera in productions of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron and Janacek's Katya Kabanova in 1999.

SFCV Review: When the Audience is the Congregation

2009-02-13T06:00:00.000-08:00

by Anna Carol Dudley

This review appeared in the February 10, 2009 edition of San Francisco Classical Voice.

Heinrich Schütz suggested that his Musikalische Exequien could be a substitute for a German mass. Warren Stewart has taken him at his word, incorporating the work into a full-length church service. Stewart’s Magnificat, complete with two organs, a continuo group, and eight singers (including a preacher and a deacon), performed the mass Saturday night at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley. The so-called audience served as congregation, joining in on some verses of the chorales.

Nowadays, chorales are called hymns, and in American churches are usually sung in English. The congregation was invited to applaud at the end, but that increasingly happens routinely in American church services. And lo, nobody was turned away for not singing or not knowing German or not caring much for sermons. In fact, the congregation seemed to enjoy singing chorale verses and listening to the more elaborate verse settings. Preacher Hummel chanted the Epistle and spoke the sermon in German, risking encouragement of the traditional practice of sleeping through the sermon.

Schütz, born a hundred years before J.S. Bach, was a prolific composer. Greatly esteemed in his own time, he retained a sort of connoisseurs’ fame long after musical tastes had changed, and now his music — all available in good modern editions — is as highly regarded as it ever has been.

A Splendid Team, Artfully Deployed

The Musikalische Exequien is a masterwork, and Magnificat gave it superb voice. Every singer rose magnificently to the occasion: tenor Martin Hummel (the preacher) and bass Hugh Davies (the deacon), tenor Paul Elliott and bass Peter Becker, altos Daniel Hutchings and Kristen Dubenion Smith, and sopranos Ruth Escher and Jennifer Paulino.

The work (whose opening was preceded by unison chanting of an introit from the Psalms) began with the extraordinary “Nakket bin ich von Mutterleibe kommen” (Naked I came out of my mother’s womb). The tenor preacher began with a solo line, to be joined by the other male voices, followed by the full sextet, then by a two-soprano duet. And so the music continued, weaving from the eight distinctive voices a tapestry of small ensembles, flashes of solo singing, and full choral sound, and ending on a text by Martin Luther with all eight singers.

“Exequien” (obsequies) are burial masses, but this mass was commissioned by the widow of Prince Heinrich Reuss Posthumus, and the text was not the usual mass, but rather a collection of scriptural verses from both Old and New Testaments, plus quotations from several Protestant leaders, Luther prominent among them. One of my personal favorite moments in the great feast of sound was a duet by the two basses, who sang of life’s labor and sorrow but “delighted therein.” And the Messiah-singing soprano in me was charmed by a tenor rendition of the German text that translates as “I know that my Redeemer liveth.”

Schütz included two motets in the Musicalische Exequien. The singers moved into two quartets to sing the polychoral “Herr, wenn ich nur dich habe” (Lord, if I only have you). The second motet was a setting of two separate texts. From the front of the church a quintet (altos, tenors and one bass) sang “Lord, now let Thy servant depart in peace,” and at the back, two sopranos and a bass sang “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord” — a lovely antiphonal moment.

The continuo players were Katherine Heater on organ, John Dornenburg on violone, and David Tayler on mandora (a kind of lute). Davitt Moroney, at the back of the sanctuary, played the splendid St. Mark’s Flentrop organ. He provided elaborate chorale introductions by Scheidt, Schein and Praetorius, and began and ended the service with a ricercar prelude and a toccata postlude, both by Johann Jacob Froberger.

Davitt Moroney to Perform with Magnificat

2009-02-02T14:00:00.000-08:00

For our performances in February, Magnificat will be joined by organist Davitt Moroney who will perform works by Froberger, Scheidt, and others. Magnificat worked with Davitt last summer in two memorable performances at the Berkeley Early Music Festival.

Davitt was born in England in 1950. He studied organ, clavichord, and harpsichord with Susi Jeans, Kenneth Gilbert and Gustav Leonhardt. For over twenty years he was based in Paris, working primarily as a freelance recitalist in many countries. In 2001 he moved to California as a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is Professor of Music, University Organist, and Director of the University Baroque Ensemble.

His scholarly career started with a study of the vocal music of Thomas Tallis and William Byrd for his doctoral thesis (UC Berkeley, 1980), and has ranged widely over repertoires from the Renaissance and Baroque periods, with particular attention to the music of Byrd, Bach, and various members of the Couperin family. His many scholarly editions include Bach’s The Art of Fugue with his own completion of the final unfinished fugue (Henle, 1989), the complete harpsichord works of Louis Couperin (1985) and of Louis Marchand (1987), as well as the collection of harpsichord pieces by Purcell discovered in 1994, now known as the “Purcell Manuscript” (1999). His monograph Bach, An Extraordinary Life—a short introduction to the composer’s life and works—was published by ABRSM Publishing in 2000 and has since been translated into French, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Romanian, and Dutch. In 2005 he rediscovered Alessandro Striggio’s long-lost Mass in 40 and 60 Parts, dating from 1565-66; he conducted the first modern performance of this massive work at London’s Royal Albert Hall in July 2007 and conducted two further performances at the Berkeley Early Music Festival in June 2008. His recent published articles have been studies of the music of François Couperin and Alessandro Striggio. This year he is also visiting director of a research seminar in Paris at the Sorbonne’s École pratique des hautes études.

His international performing career has lead him in recent years to give organ and harpsichord masterclasses at the Paris Conservatoire, the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire, the Juilliard School in New York, and Oberlin Conservatory, as well as in South Korea, Finland, Belgium, and Switzerland. Other recent concerts have included recitals in Germany, Holland, Italy, England, and Scotland. He is regularly invited as a jury member for international organ and harpsichord competitions.

He has made nearly sixty commercial CDs, especially of music by Bach, Byrd, and various members of the Couperin family. Many of these recordings feature historic organs and harpsichords dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His recordings include several devoted to Henry Purcell, including the first recording of the “Purcell Manuscript” (Virgin). He has also recorded Bach’s French Suites (two CDs; Virgin), The Well tempered Clavier (four CDs; Harmonia Mundi), the Musical Offering (with Janet See and John Holloway; Harmonia Mundi), the complete Bach sonatas for flute and harpsichord (with Janet See; Harmonia Mundi) and for violin and harpsichord (with John Holloway; Virgin), as well as The Art of Fugue (a work he has recorded twice). Among his most substantial recordings are William Byrd’s complete keyboard works (127 pieces, on seven CDs, using six instruments; Hyperion), as well as the complete harpsichord and organ music of Louis Couperin (over 200 pieces, on seven CDs, using four historic instruments). His recent recordings include: the complete harpsichord works of Louis Marchand and Louis-Nicolas Clérambault (Plectra, 2007), a CD that includes Nicolas Lebègue’s Les Cloches; a two-CD album of pieces from “The Borel Manuscript” (Plectra, 2008), comprising pieces from a recently discovered manuscript of French harpsichord music acquired in 2004 by UC Berkeley’s Hargrove Music Library; and the first of a 10-CD series devoted to the complete harpsichord works of François Couperin (234 pieces).

His recordings have been awarded the French Grand Prix du Disque (1996), the German Preis der Deutschen Schallplatenkritik (2000), and three British Gramophone Awards (1986, 1991, 2000). In 1987 he was named Chevalier dans l’Ordre du mérite culturel by Prince Rainier of Monaco and, in 2000, Officier des arts et des lettres by the French government.

Martin Hummel Returns for Magnificat Concerts

2009-02-01T14:01:00.000-08:00

It is always a pleasure to welcome German baritone Martin Hummel back for another Magnificat set. I first met Martin in 1980, when he was still a teenager. I had met his brother Cornelius (a very fine cellist) at the Aspen Music Festival, and ended up staying with his family in Würzburg over the Christmas vacation. I had gone to Germany to work with composer Karlheinz Stockhausen on a cello transcription of his work In Freundschaft (this was before my conversion to baroque cello!) I remember being charmed by Martin's voice as he sang christmas carols and folk song, accompanying himself on guitar.

Many years later I saw his name on a recording on Schütz's Weihnachtshistorie (the definitive recording of that work, by the way) and set about finding him. Martin sang the Evangelist role of the Weihnachtshistorie in Magnificat's first season in December of 1992. Two years later he returned for Schütz's Auferstehungshistorie. He has been back three times since, and it is always a pleasure.

Martin was born into a musical family and had his training in Würzburg and at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with Kurt Widmer and René Jacobs. He further continued his music study with Margaret Hönig, Peter Schreier, Julia Hamari, Hans Hotter, and others. After his studies, Martin Hummel embarked on a career of song recitals and concerts that has taken him to a number of European countries, to the USA, and to Asia. He has taken part in first performances under leading conductors, and has undertaken broadcasts and television engagements, in addition to his recordings for major record companies. He teaches at the Würzburg and Bayreuth Musikhochschule.

Welcome back Martin!

Heinrich Schütz's "Slight Work"

2009-02-01T13:53:00.001-08:00

"This slight work consists of only three pieces... anyone liking this work of mine may find that it can be used to good effect as a substitute for a German Missa, and possibly for the Feast of the Purification..."

Thus did Heinrich Schütz hope to give the three pieces he composed for the funeral of Prince Heinrich Reuss Posthumus a life beyond their specific commission. Our intention in this program is to realize Schütz's suggestion, and incorporate the three pieces known collectively as the Musikalische Exequien, along with music by Schütz’s musical colleagues, into a Lutheran Mass for the Feast of the Purification, following the liturgical practice of the Dresden Court Chapel of the mid-1630s.

Shortly after the death of the prince in December 1635, Schütz received a commission from the widow to set the nearly two dozen scriptural verses and chorale strophes that the prince had ordered engraved on the copper coffin in which he was interred. Not only the choice of texts but also their order was prescribed, presenting Schütz with the formidable task of devising a coherent musical structure from an disparate array of texts. His ingenious solution to the architectural and musical problems was to manipulate the texts into "the form of a German Burial Mass", parsing them so as to paraphrase the Kyrie and Gloria. Thus resulted one of his finest masterpieces, the vocal concerto for six voices and continuo Nakket bin ich von Mutterleibe kommen (SWV 279). Schütz also provided two motets for the funeral service, one a setting of the verses from Psalm 73 which served as the sermon text, Herr, wenn ich nur dich habe (SWV 280), the other a setting of the Canticle of Simeon, Herr, nun leßestu deinen Deiner in Friede fahren (SWV 281), which the prince wished to have sung during the interment of his coffin. The three works were later published together in an elegant edition as the Musikalische Exequien.

Fulfillment and farewell are the themes of the Feast of the Purification, also called the Presentation in the Temple, which commemorates the presentation of the Christ child by Mary, in fulfillment of Jewish law. The central figure in the event is the old man Simeon, who after a long life of waiting has the joy of taking in his arms the child whom he recognizes as the promised one. The Canticle of Simeon, as recorded in Luke, "Lord, now let your servant depart in peace...” expresses the old man's joyful acceptance of death and welcome to a new life. This feast, with its intersection of welcome and farewell, union and separation, was a traditional day for funerals for German nobility in the 17th century and, in fact, was the date that marked the beginning of the funeral observances that included the first performance of the Musikalische Exequien. Thus, Schütz's suggestion of Purification as an appropriate feast on which to use his "slight work" is not surprising.

Our reconstruction follows the order of service for the Feast of the Purification described in the Ordung der Christlichen deutschen Gesänge so auf alle Fest- und Soontagsevangelia gerichtet und in der SchloßKirchen zu Dreßden gesungen werden... 1581, which was the basis for liturgical practice in Saxony throughout the first half of the seventeenth century We have also used this document as a source for the prayers and readings, and to determine which chorales were sung. The chorale melodies are drawn from the Dresden hymnal published by Gimel Bergen in 1625 and 1632, while their harmonizations are adapted from publications by Samuel Scheidt, Michael Praetorius, and Johann Hermann Schein. In common with all Reformation chapel orders, the Dresden liturgy allowed for considerable flexibility in many details of the service, reflecting Luther's desire to create a liturgy that remained responsive to local tradition and developing interpretation. The resulting structures form a beautiful setting for a wide variety of music, from the simple folk-song derived chorales to the latest Italian concerted style.

Mass begins with an organ prelude and an introit, sung to accompany the entry of the clergy. The Kyrie and Gloria followed immediately, paraphrased in our program by the first part of the Musikalische Exequien. The pair of readings, proper to the feast day, which followed were retained essentially unchanged from the pre-Reformation church, and established the themes for the entire service. The Gradual, sung between the two readings in the pre-Reformation church, was replaced in Lutheran practice by congregational hymns that varied according to the season. Purification was the last day on which the Christmas Gradual-Lied Gelobet seistu Jesus Christ was sung.

Luther encouraged the continued use of Latin alongside the vernacular and so the Dresden chapel order calls for either the Latin and the German Credo, and typically Luther's metrical paraphrase "Wir gläuben all in einen Gott" was sung by the congregation in unison. The first and third strophes of Luther’s chorale will be sung by the congregation in our program, while the second strophe is drawn from Schütz’s second collection of Kleine Geistliche Konzerte, published in 1639. After the German Credo a motet was often sung, and it is here that we have placed the second part of Schütz's Musikalische Exequien.

A chorale verse, the Our Father, and a recitation of the text on which the sermon was based, most often, the gospel of the day, introduced the sermon. We will perform the recitation of the Sermon text in a setting by Schein that employs a technique known as falso bordone, a type of harmonized chant. A polyphonic setting of that same text often followed the sermon, and the third part of the Musikalische Exequien serves perfectly in this role. A chorale, benedictory prayer, and blessing follow. Luther's chorale Mit Fried und Freud, a paraphrase of the Canticle of Simeon, was universally associated with Purification, and served as the basis for Michael Prætorius's motet that will conclude our program. The three musical jewels that are the Musikalische Exequien fit gracefully into this noble setting so beloved by Schütz, enriching the liturgy even as the liturgy reveals their most profound beauty.

Giovanni Antonio Rigatti

2008-11-07T08:47:00.000-08:00

by Jeffrey Kurtzman

Giovanni Antonio Rigatti is a name that until recent times was virtually unknown to music history. Living in Venice in the first half of the 17th-century, he has been overshadowed by his famous contemporaries, the chapel masters and vice chapel masters of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice: Claudio Monteverdi, Alessandro Grandi, Giovanni Rovetta and Francesco Cavalli. Thanks to the research and publications of an international coterie of scholars, Jerome Roche (England), Linda Maria Koldau (Germany), Metoda Kokole (Slovenia) and Gianluca Viglizzo (Italy), both the biography and music of this fascinating composer of the mid-17th century are at long last coming to light. I am especially grateful to Gianluca Viglizzo for sharing with me his as-yet-unpublished article on Rigatti containing new biographical data. Much of the information below is derived from this article and an earlier one by the late Jerome Roche.

Baptized on October 15, 1613 in the Church of San Severo in Venice, Rigatti became a boy singer in the chapel of St. Mark’s under Monteverdi’s direction on September 25, 1621. As with many such boy choristers, his early training led to a musical career as a singer, organist and composer. It is unknown how long he remained at St. Mark’s, but he must have been composing from at least his late teenage years, for his first book of motets for 2, 3 and 4 voices and ripieno choir was published in 1634, and the dedication of his first published collection of madrigals for 2, 3 and 4 voices, issued in 1636, refers to pieces composed “in the spring of my youth.” Also in his teenage years he entered the Patriarchal Seminary in Venice, finally attaining the rank of deacon in 1637. Even before becoming a deacon, Rigatti served for eighteen months (1635-1637) as chapel master at the cathedral in Udine in the Friuli region north of Venice, being cited at his installation as “one of the best musicians of Venice,” certainly a distinction for someone barely 22 years old!

In March of 1637 Rigatti left his post in Udine to return to Venice, where in August of 1639 he was appointed organist, master of the choir and music teacher to the girls at the Ospedale dei Mendicanti (beggar’s refuge), one of the Venetian orphanages for girls where music was such an important factor in their education (in the 18th century Vivaldi was for many years director of music at the Ospedale della Pietà, which attracted many Venetian and foreign visitors because of the quality of its concerts). Rigatti, however, was released from his post at the Ospedale dei Mendicanti in the late summer of 1642 because of moonlighting at other Venetian Ospedali. While retaining a relationship with the Ospedale degli Incurabili (refuge of the incurables), he went to work before the year was out for Monsignor Gian Francesco Morosini, a member of one of the most distinguished patrician families of Venice, who became the Patriarch of Venice in 1644 and a Procurator (one of three ruling officers) of St. Mark’s in 1645.

As Patriarch, Morosini was in charge of the church of San Pietro in Castello, the cathedral of Venice (St. Mark’s was the ducal basilica, and of much greater importance than the official cathedral). San Pietro did not have its own professional choir, but rather a group of canons who sang under the direction of the organist. Once Morosini became a Procurator of St. Mark’s, Rigatti was named “Sottocanonico” of the basilica in 1646, a position he assumed in July 1647. This was an administrative post, so that Rigatti’s musical activity was mostly limited to his ongoing association with the Ospedale degli Incurabili. At the height of his career, and having survived the terrible Venetian plague of 1630-31, Rigatti suddenly took sick with a fever on October 18, 1648 and died six days later at the young age of 35.

During his short career, Rigatti was very active as a composer. In addition to the motet and madrigal prints of 1634 and 1636 mentioned above, a truly monumental collection was published in 1640, comprising a mass and many psalms for different combinations of voices, two violins and other instruments, dedicated to the Hapsburg emperor Ferdinand III in Vienna. This is the primary source, in a modern edition by Linda Maria Koldau, of the music of Magnificat’s December concerts. In the next few years Rigatti published even further music: in 1641 a set of secular monodies; in 1643 a collection of psalms and a mass for three solo voices and ripieno choir as well as a separate collection of motets for solo voice; in 1646 psalms and other pieces for the Office of Compline; in 1647 motets for solo voice and a mass and motets for two and three voices; and in 1648, the year of his death, another collection of psalms and a mass for three voices, two violins and ripieno choir.

Rigatti’s music, published by the most prominent publishing houses in Venice, circulated widely. Copies can still be found not only in Italy, but also in England, Poland, Germany and France. His 1647 motets are even found in the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, though obviously not acquired at the time of their publication! But the research of Metoda Kokole in the archives of the cathedral in Capo d’Istria (Koper in Slovenian), down the Istrian peninsula from Trieste, has turned up not only copies of some of Rigatti’s publications, but also a number of compositions in manuscript that are not found in his published works. Rigatti’s music was obviously much prized in Koper, for his repertoire constitutes a major part of the cathedral’s musical archive, far more than any other Venetian composer, and may have arrived there through personal connections with Rigatti’s publishers and other Venetian acquaintances.

Today, only a small number of Rigatti’s compositions have been recorded on CD. Indeed, Magnificat’s December concerts may well represent the largest assemblage of Rigatti’s music performed at one time since the 17th century. The style of his music, especially the concertato psalms to be heard in these concerts, is akin to Monteverdi’s concertato psalms, performed on many occasions by Magnificat, but with a particular emphasis on passages for small numbers of voices, often in parallel thirds; a prominent role for the violins and other strings, who sometimes take the lead in introducing new motives and frequently play in counterpoint to the voices; a simpler harmonic language; longer passages of rapid text declamation; more repetitive patterning of melodies through such means as sequences and four-square rhythms in ornamental passages, as well as more emphasis on triple meter with graceful melodies; and systematic construction of overall form by such devices as ostinato basses, “walking” basses and other repetitive bass patterns. At times Rigatti’s music reveals weaknesses in contrapuntal technique, but its attractiveness overcomes any such faults.

The Office of Vespers

2008-10-16T23:13:00.000-07:00

by Jeffrey Kurtzman

When St. Benedict established the first monastic order in Western Christendom in the sixth century A.D., he prescribed round-the-clock prayers for his monks consisting of eight separate services, one every three hours. These services, the primary texts of which were the Old Testament Psalms of David, comprised the Office Hours, and the most prominent became the evening Office, Vespers, from the Latin word for evening.
All of these Offices were sung throughout to music commonly known as Gregorian Chant—a large repertoire of single-line melodies that dates back to the earliest years of the Catholic Church.

At some unknown point in history it became a frequent practice to perform the Vespers service not only in monasteries and monastic churches, but also in public, so-called “secular” churches as well as in the private chapels of nobles and high clerics. Moreover, Vespers services came, in the 15th century, to be occasionally performed at least partly in polyphony rather than exclusively Gregorian Chant. The 15th century was a period of rapid expansion in the quantity of polyphony used in the central public service of the Catholic Church, the Mass, and by the end of the century, polyphony had become more prominent in Vespers services as well.

The advent of music printing in 1501 in Venice led by the middle of the century to Italian published collections of music for Vespers, which now could circulate widely to monasteries, churches and chapels. Indeed, the interest in polyphonic music for Vespers expanded so rapidly in the late 16th century that by the early 17th century more music was being published in Italy for Vespers than for the Mass itself. That trend continued throughout the century until the publishing of sacred music in Italy gradually died out in the early 18th century.

The liturgy of Vespers is somewhat complicated (see the Table below). The very first item in the service is an unchanging versicle and response asking for the help of the Lord. But the primary elements are five psalms, a hymn and the Magnificat—a song (canticle) from the Gospel according to Luke in which the Virgin Mary rejoices in the news that she will bear the Christ Child. The Magnificat is sung as the last major element in every Vespers service, but the five psalms and the hymn vary according to the category of feast (feasts of the Virgin, feasts of Martyrs, etc.) or the specific feast (Christmas, Feast of St. John the Baptist, etc.).

Early in the history of the Office Hours, the practice developed of singing a separate short text and melody in conjunction with each psalm, both before and after the psalm, and sometimes interpolated between psalm verses as well. These short chants are called antiphons, and each psalm and the Magnificat has its own antiphon, which like the psalms themselves, vary according to the category of feast or specific feast.

Main Elements of a Vespers Service

1. Versicle and Response: Deus in adiutorium meum invariable
2. First Psalm with Antiphon both variable
3. Second Psalm with Antiphon both variable
4. Third Psalm with Antiphon both variable
5. Fourth Psalm with Antiphon both variable
6. Fifth Psalm with Antiphon both variable
7. Hymn variable
8. Magnificat with Antiphon Magnificat invariable, Antiphon variable

Some of these main texts of the Vespers service were often still sung in Gregorian Chant in the 16th and 17th centuries, especially the versicle and response and the antiphons. In addition, there are a few other minor elements in the Vespers service that are either spoken or sung: the New Testament Chapter reading, which precedes the hymn, and a few further short versicles and responses, including a closing series after the Magnificat. Vespers is the penultimate Office Hour of the daily Hours, with Compline following three hours later. But if Compline is not sung and Vespers is the last Office performed in the day, then one of four seasonal prayers to the Virgin Mary, called Marian Antiphons, which normally follow Compline, is sung at the conclusion of Vespers.

By the 17th century antiphons were no longer sung between verses of the psalm and Magnificat, but only before and after. Moreover, it also became common practice to substitute a vocal motet or even an instrumental piece for the official antiphon text either before or after the psalm or Magnificat.

From its humble beginnings, the Vespers service had grown by the 17th century into a concert of polyphony, sometimes very elaborate polyphony with soloists, multiple choirs, instruments and the organ. It is such elaborate Vespers services that have been reconstructed and performed on numerous occasions by Warren Stewart and Magnificat.

San Francisco Classical Voice: Royal Delights

2008-10-12T13:39:00.000-07:00

by Joseph Sargent in the October 7, 2008 issue of San Francisco Classical Voice.

For several years now, the Baroque ensemble Magnificat has made seventeenth-century French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier into something of a cottage industry. A regular fixture on the ensemble’s season calendars, this composer embodies Magnificat’s stated mission of uncovering the “‘new music’ of the early Baroque” — masters of the era who have yet to receive their due. Few composers indeed may fit the description of “hidden treasure” more aptly than Charpentier, who is often upstaged in performances today by Jean-Baptiste Lully but was highly regarded in his lifetime by such giants as King Louis XIV and Molière.

With Saturday’s brief concert of two divertissements (short operatic entertainments) at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley, Magnificat Music Director Warren Stewart and company took another decisive step toward reclaiming Charpentier’s reputation. Delivering a crystalline performance marked by luscious vocal purity and elegant instrumental support, Magnificat captured the vitality and freshness of these charming works, turning the evening into an impeccably refined affair.

Les Plaisirs de Versailles (The pleasures of Versailles; 1682) is house music in the literal sense, originally performed for Louis’ thrice-weekly “fêtes of the apartments” in the main rooms of the Great Apartment of Versailles. Its dramatis personae comprise various pleasures that the Sun King evidently enjoyed in these digs: music, conversation, gambling, and that perennial favorite chocolate. Striking contrasts in instrumentation and style — lyrical airs for La Musique, prattling recitative for La Conversation, solemn tones for the temptations of Comus, the god of festivities — accentuate the central debate over which of these elements best satisfies the king’s pleasures.

Both vocally and in their gestures, sopranos Laura Heimes (as Musique) and Jennifer Paulino (as Conversation) nicely captured the comedic aspects of their characters’ arguments. Finely matched tone colors, keen attention to melodic shape, and vivid stage presence accentuated the elegance of even their most stinging put-downs. Both singers deserve credit for creating vivid personifications of Musique’s campy haughtiness and Conversation’s irksome blabbering. As the purveyor of chocolates, wines, and other delectables, bass Hugh Davies added an appealingly robust and seductive quality to the mix.

Considerably less resounding was the evening’s vocal projection, the one flaw marring an otherwise finely polished gem. Many singers (Heimes and Davies excepted) had difficulty carrying over the orchestra, a crackerjack group of eight players whose superlative accompaniment should not have posed particular problems. St. Mark’s acoustic didn’t help matters, but placement of the vocalists in front of rather than behind the orchestra might have alleviated the problem.
Pastoral Pleasures

Also with a connection to royalty was the evening’s other divertissement, La Couronne des fleurs (The crown of flowers; 1685), a work likely composed for the singers of Marie de Lorraine, Duchesse de Guise and cousin to Louis. Freely adapted from the prologue of Charpentier’s comedy-ballet Le Malade imaginaire (The imaginary invalid; 1673, with text by Molière), this work emphasizes the pastoral over the allegorical. A cast of gods and shepherds celebrates the arrival of springtime with a contest to see who can extol the king’s virtues most beautifully, the winner receiving a crown of flowers.

A graceful orchestral introduction, establishing the pastoral mood, segued into the spring goddess Flora’s declamation of that season’s arrival and the rules of the contest, delightfully captured in Haimes’ pitch-perfect performance. Four characters then made their cases to win the crown, with fine contributions from sopranos Paulino and Ruth Escher and tenors Paul Elliott and Daniel Hutchings. Especially appealing were the alternating trios between women and men, the airtight ensemble singing flawless in intonation and blend. The divertissement concludes with Flora declaring all participants to be equally worthy of the crown and dividing its flowers among them, a judgment also well suited to the evening’s performances as a whole.

Du chocolat! Dieu nous en garde!

2008-09-29T09:34:00.001-07:00

In Charpentier's delightful divertissement Les plaisirs de Versailles, Comus, the “God of Feasting” seeks to calm a dispute between the haughty diva Music and the loquacious Conversation by offering the delights of marzipan, fine wine, and above all, Chocolate. Music is aghast, but Conversation is quite eager to sample the delicacy.

Comus: Let your disputes not cause commotion here! Let us play. To both of you beauties I shall give chocolates.

La Musique: Chocolate! God forbid that he give any to this chatterbox. As for me, I tell you, I do not wish to taste any. She would never cease her hot-air chatter.

La Conversation: Chocolate is good, dear Comus. By your influence I long to taste a little.

La Musique: No, Comus!

La Conversation: Comus, to listen to her is to waste good time. Chocolate!

Music’s concern about the effect of chocolate on the “babbling divitnity” Conversation, is understandable to anyone who has spent Halloweeen in the company of a 5-year-old.

Columbus brought cacao to Europe when he returned in 1502, but it was not until the 1615 wedding of Louis XIII to Anne of Austria (the daughter of Phillip II of Spain) that the French court discovered the strange brew known for its revitalizing and aphrodisiacal properties and declared chocolate as the drink of the French court. In France, as elsewhere in Europe, chocolate was met with skepticism and was considered a "barbarous product and noxious drug". As with coffee, not everyone was eager to accept the mysterious new drink.

Initially, Chocolate was seen as having largely medicinal properties. In the first official statement about chocolate is made by Bonavontura Di Aragon, brother of Cardinal Richelieu, described the use of chocolate as stimulating the healthy functioning of the spleen and other digestive functions. 1659 Louis XIV gives the chocolate monopolies of the Paris chocolate drink trade and the French Royal Court to David Chaillou, a baker who made costly biscuits and cakes with chocolate—France’s first “chocolatier.”

Charpentier's Music for the Grand Dauphin

2008-09-07T14:46:00.000-07:00

Notes by John Powell. Magnificat will perform to of Charpentier's divertissements for the Dauphin, Les Plaisirs de Versailles and La Couronne de Fleurs on the weekend of October 3-5, 2008.

From late 1679 until mid-1683, Charpentier composed music for the establishment of the eldest son of Louis XIV and Queen Marie-Thérèse. Also named Louis, he was popularly known as the Grand Dauphin and referred-to at court as “Monseigneur”. Monseigneur had been given a musical establishment of his own a few months prior to his wedding (on 7 March 1680) to Maria Anna of Bavaria, and for several years he remained loyal to Charpentier and his musicians—who would provide music throughout the 1680s.

“The Dauphin’s Music” consisted of three vocalists: Magdaleine Pièche, a high soprano (haut-dessus); Marguerite Pièche, a soprano (dessus); and Antoine Frison, a bass (basse). They were accompanied by two treble instruments—usually flutes, played by Antoine and Pierre Pièche—and basso continuo. Charpentier had known the singers from his collaborations with Molière in the early 1670s, when the Pièche sisters (then ages 7 and 9) had danced in, and Monsieur Frison had sung in, Le Malade imaginaire (1673).

So taken was Monseigneur with his Music, and so eager was he to please his new bride (who had a fine voice and extensive vocal training), that he began taking singing lessons himself. The Dauphin, “in his extreme youth, where the generosity and the kindness of his heart were continually appearing, thought only of his pleasures and left the cares of the Crown to the King his father.” By contrast, the Dauphine was proving to be “a princess with a great deal of wit, but she did not permit its breadth to be seen in all sorts of situations. She kept her eyes on the King, wanting to let his wishes entirely rule hers, and to do nothing that would appear disagreeable to him.” (Sourches, I, 11)

The Dauphin’s education was all but over by the final months of 1682, and his Bavarian bride was becoming quite outspoken about her musical and theatrical tastes. Mirroring this change in focus, Madame de Guise ordered some entertainments for the coming winter season, when she would be in residence at Versailles. One of these court events was the “Fête of the Apartments”, an innovation by Louis XIV himself that began in November of that year and continued well into January. Three times a week, from 6 until 10 in the evening, a variety of entertainments were held in the principal rooms of the Great Apartment of Versailles: billiards, cards, games of chance, refreshments (including fruits, sorbets, wine and liqueurs, and hot coffee and chocolate), plus “symphonies” and “dancing”. Throughout the fête, only a few guards were present, and the King, the Queen, and all the royal family stepped down from their grandeur, to gamble with some of those present, who have never before been so honored…[The King] goes to one game or another. He allows no one to rise or stop the game when he approaches. (Mercure, Dec. 1682)

During this fête, an “opera” was performed every Saturday (Mercure, Jan. 1683). Les Plaisirs de Versailles and La Couronne des Fleurs were most probably performed on these occasions. In an annotated list of the manuscripts that Charpentier bequeathed to him, the composer’s nephew Jacques Edouard claimed that Les Plaisirs de Versailles was a “piece for the King’s apartments”—for those evening entertainments in the royal palace at Versailles hosted by the King (and referred to generally as “the apartments”). Indeed, on his manuscript title page Charpetier includes the rubric: “la scène est dans les app[artements] ”.

These two works are examples of the operatic divertissement: a short entertainment that is sung throughout in the manner of an opera, but has only one act and lasts a mere half-hour. As common in the divertissements of French opera, the main characters of Les Plaisirs de Versailles are all allegorical—La Musique, La Conversation, Le Jeu, a “Choeur des Plaisirs”—and one mythological figure, Momus, the god of festivities. The singing of La Musique is interrupted by La Conversation, who cannot stop prattling. They argue at length and with increasing heat: which of them is more essential to pleasure…expecially the King’s pleasure? Fearful that they both will leave the château of Versailles in anger, the Chorus of Pleasures calls upon Comus to mediate. He offeres them chocolate, fine wine, exquisite pastries. No use. He then pleads for help from Le Jeu, who is equally unsuccessful, for La Musique and La Conversation continue their bickering. Finally, however, they are reconciled, and the Chorus of Pleasures sigh with relief: Music, Conversation, “our flutes and our voices” can continue to help distract the great King from his military pursuits.

The most striking thing about this lightweight mini-opera, besides its witty and sparkling text, is the sharpness with which Charpentier portrays each character musically. La Musique is languid, tender, sensuous. La Conversation has to admit that she is a “sociable siren”. La Conversation is a nonstop chatterbox, and something of an idiot: she cannot tell a minuet from a courante. La Musique confesses, however, that she is a “babillarde divinité”. Comus, a bass, is a gourmand of small sensibility and Falstaffian bluster. Le Jeu (perhaps played by Charpentier himself) is a wheedling card-sharp.

La Couronne de Fleurs was most probably also performed at Versailles for such an occasion. Names of singers from the musical establishment of the king’s cousin, Marie de Lorraine, Duchess of Guise, known as “Mademoiselle de Guise”—which she shared with her cousin/aunt Isabelle d’Orléans, Duchess of Alençon, known as “Madame de Guise”—appear in the margins of Charpentier’s manuscript. We will recall that Madame de Guise had arranged for musical events to coincide with her winter residence at Versailles; given the flatteries paid to the King in La Couronne des fleurs, it seems likely that Louis XIV was present for the performances.

The text is a free adaptation of the original 1673 Prologue to Molière’s final comedy-ballet, Le Malade imaginaire (1673). In fact, the unknown librettist (perhaps Charpentier himself?) retained only the skeletal outlines of the Prologue. Flora, goddess of spring, calls upon the flowers to repopulate the desolate winter fields, and summons the shepherds and shepherdesses to return. “Louis has banished from them the dire sounds that the cries of the dying and the clash of arms had once allowed to reign there.” She then calls for a contest to see who can best sing of the valiant deeds of Louis. Four brave shepherds (Amaranthe, Forestan, Hyacinte, and Mirtil) try their best, and compare Louis’s warlike prowess to that of a devastating spring torrent, to a bolt of lightning, to the great deeds of ancient Greece, and lament that future generations will scarcely believe the least of his exploits…as they will have nothing with which to compare. Pan then appears to call a halt to the contest, and Flora renders her decision: although they all lack the strength and ability to do justice in song to Louis’s immortal glory, it was enough that they attempted it. So she divides the flowers among the four contestants. In a final ensemble, they wish that just as Louis is the master of the world, may he become the master of time and live a hundred years.

Two New Magnificat Board Members

2008-09-04T12:01:00.000-07:00

by Dominique Pelletey, Managing Director, Magnificat

As we enter our 17th Season, Magnificat is pleased to welcome two new Board members. Nicholas Elsishans will be taking over for John Golenski as president and Shane Gasbarra has been installed as our new treasurer. Both joined the Board of Directors of Magnificat on July 19, 2008.

Nicholas, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer at The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Executive Board member of Grace Cathedral of San Francisco . Nicholas assumes the position of President of the Board and brings to this position a long history of Board and Executive level leadership experience in major organizations throughout the Bay Area. Nicholas’ passion for the music of Magnificat stems from his own extensive training as a keyboard performer and scholar at the Juilliard School in New York and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

For the past three seasons, Shane was Director of Artistic and Music Administration for the San Francisco Opera. He held a similar position with the Houston Opera before moving to San Francisco. Shane studied Classics at Yale, where he also studied oboe and piano. He received his Ph.D. in Renaissance studies from Yale and subsequently held teaching posts there as well as at Princeton and the University of Michigan, where his academic areas included Renaissance comparative literature, intellectual history, and visual arts; poetic theory; and the classical tradition.

"We are extremely pleased to have Nicholas and Shane on board for the upcoming season," said Magnifict Artistic Director Warren Stewart. "Each brings a blend of artistic, academic, and business perspective to Magnificat at a very exciting time in our development."

Magnificat Announces 2008-2009 Season

2008-09-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

Magnificat proudly announces its 17th Season of concerts in the Bay Area, and invites you to explore the “new music” of the Early Baroque. Continuing its tradition of innovative programs and expressive interpretations that have made Magnificat a Bay Area treasure, this season’s programs feature music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Giovanni Antonio Rigatti, Heinrich Schütz, and Alessandro Scarlatti.

The season begins on the weekend of October 3-5, 2008 with performances of two delightful divertissements by Charpentier (1643-1704) –“Les plaisirs de Versailles” and “La couronne de fleurs.” Unjustly over-shadowed by Lully during his lifetime, Charpentier is now recognized as one of the finest musicians of his time and Magnificat has become the premiere interpreter of Charpentier’s music in the Bay Area, exploring new gems from the composer’s notebooks almost every season. Both works on the program were composed for the ensemble of Mademoiselle de Guise, in whose household Charpentier lived and worked after returning from his studies in Rome with Carissimi.

“Les plaisirs de Versailles” was inspired by the soirées that Louis XIV held at Versailles in 1682 and its four scenes celebrate the pleasures of the royal residence with charm and humor. The singers, taking on the roles of “Music”, “Conversation”, “Games” and “Festivities”, contribute to the amusement of the Sun King.

The pastorale “La couronne de fleurs” is an adaptation of the original Prologue to “Le Malade imaginaire” (1673), which Charpentier arranged for the singers of Mlle de Guise in the mid-1680s. In fact, of the 19 movements only 2 are borrowed (and are extensively recomposed); the rest of the opera is entirely original (though the text is wholly by Molière). Magnificat will perform from editions prepared by Charpentier scholar and Magnificat Artistic Advisory Board member John Powell.

For tickets or more information please call 800-853-5188 or visit our website order form at www.magnificatbaroque.org

Friday, October 3, 2008 - 8:00 pm - First Lutheran Church, Palo Alto
Saturday, October 4, 2008 - 8:00 pm - St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Berkeley
Sunday, October 5 - 4:00 pm - St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco

Pre-concert Lecture 45 minutes before each performance

Magnificat Names New Managing Director

2008-08-20T16:13:00.000-07:00

Magnificat is pleased to announce that Dominique Pelletey has joined Magnificat's staff as managing director. Mr. Pelletey will coordinate all administrative aspects of the organization. Mr. Pelletey was born in France, and completed his studies cum laude in Holland. On graduating from the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, Mr. Pelletey embarked on a career that included international exhibitions, a nomination to the Dutch Prix de Rome and many publications. Parallel to his artistic work, he pursued work as museum curator/director. After two years as independent curator with one of Holland's leading artist run spaces W139, he was named both executive and artistic director of the organization. Under his leadership, a structure for the organization was created, bringing it to the attention of the main federal funding arm of the government, allowing the overall budget to double.

In 1992 Mr. Pelletey co-founded and directed an arts space, protonICA Amsterdam, which specializes in producing multi-media works and collaborative projects. This unique organization achieved international acclaim within its first year of operation. Concurrently, Mr. Pelletey was a founding member and chairman of the Association of Dutch Art Centers, publishing a successful arts newspaper, HTV de Ijsberg (Apex of the Iceberg) which was distributed nationally, bringing a partnership amongst art spaces and the arts community.

Mr. Pelletey was a respected authority on the arts in Holland, his knowledge recognized with his appointment by the Queen of the Netherlands to the Raad voor de Kunst (Dutch national arts foundation), serving a three-year term as one of four national advisors on art and art policy. He also was a member of the jury for the Fonds voor de beeldende kunsten, design en architectuur (Foundation for Art, Design and Architecture), one of Holland's major granting organizations for several years.

On relocation to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1999, Mr. Pelletey became PR and Marketing Director at the San Francisco Community Music Center, where he remained until 2004. For the next two years, he worked with the Del Sol String Quartet, as Managing Director, until taking up the post of Executive Director of the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music in mid-2005.

Berkeley Festival Triumph

2008-06-08T23:11:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to the Berkeley Festival and to Maestro Davitt Moroney for two magnficent performances of Alessandro Striggio's monumental Missa sopra ‘Ecco sì beato giorno’, in cinque corri divisa, in 40 and 60 parts.

All those participating - The Philharmonia Baroque Chorale, American Bach Soloists Choir, Schola Cantorum San Francisco, The Perfect Fifth, and His Majesties Sagbutts and Cornetts and the other instrumentalists - performed beautifully, though I was, of course, most aware of Magnificat. It was an unusual experience for me to sit idly in the audience while my colleagues participated in this glorious production. But at the same time it gave me the opportunity to appreciate what a tremendous honor and privilege it is to have worked with these friends - in some cases for over a decade - and to look forward to many more concerts together.

So, to Ruth Escher, Kristen Dubenion-Smith, Christopher LeCluyse, Hugh Davies, Jennifer Paulino, Elizabeth Anker, Daniel Hutchings, and Peter Becker: Bravo Tutti!

Magnificat Ad for Berkeley Festival Program

2008-05-27T12:37:00.001-07:00

Here's a peek at the "new look" for next season.

Magnificat Performs Striggio Mass at Berkeley Early Music Festival

2008-05-25T07:17:00.000-07:00

Magnificat will appear at the Berkeley Early Music Festival this June in performances of Striggios's Missa sopra ‘Ecco sì beato giorno’, in cinque corri divisa, in 40 and 60 parts. The concerts will be directed by Davitt Moroney of the Univeristy of California at Berkeley Music Department. The concerts will be on June 7 at 8:00 pm and June 8 at 7:00 at First Congregational Church. Tickets are available here.

Professor Moroney (pictured at right) prepared the following notes for performances of Striggio's Mass at the BBC Proms in September, 2007. They have been slightly adapted for posting here. More information about this performance can be found here.

It has been known for over 25 years that in December 1566 Alessandro Striggio (pictured at left) travelled from Florence, where he was the chief musician at the Medici court, to Vienna, the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian II. He crossed the Alps in mid-winter, on horseback with a servant and a baggage mule. (The mule died.) This harrowing journey seems to have been timed to enable him to make an exceptional musical gift to the emperor, a gigantic setting of the ‘Ordinary’ of the Catholic Mass (the parts that do not change from service to service: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei), composed in 40 parts divided into five eight-part choirs.

Striggio’s work was based on a now lost piece of secular music entitled Ecco sì beato giorno. The Mass was thought to be lost, but a manuscript survives in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, in Paris, having been donated to Louis XV in 1726. The work escaped identification because in the library’s catalogue, printed in 1914, it occurs without a title, is listed as being for ‘4 voices’ instead of 40, and is described as being by a non-existent composer, ‘A. Strusco’. With these three strikes against it, Striggio’s magnum opus became invisible.

This is one of the major artworks of the Italian Renaissance, a symbol of all that is magnificent in Florentine art of the 16th century. It should come as no surprise to anyone that Florentine music at that time was as spectacular as Florentine painting, sculpture, literature and architecture. The full title of the work is ‘Mass on Ecco sì beato giorno divided into five choirs’.

The Mass’s importance derives not only from its overwhelming musical power, but also from the innovative ways it uses space, with the different choirs answering each other back and forth. This polychoral technique is used with consummate skill and with greater complexity and assurance than any Venetian music of the period.

The Mass is also unique for the unprecedented political role it played at a time when the Medici family had just (in December 1565) concluded a matrimonial alliance with the imperial Habsburg family in Vienna. Cosimo de’ Medici, Duke of Florence and Siena, was hoping that the emperor would now grant him a more important title. The musical work was a clever gift. By its choice of the Latin Mass text, it explicitly underscored that the Medici could be relied on to uphold unwavering Catholicism during the turmoils of the Reformation. In addition, by its musical sonorities of unrivalled complexity and richness, it implicitly demonstrated the regal splendour of the Medici, as well as their worthiness of a higher royal title. However, the work failed to convince Maximilian of the political matters involved and he declined to grant the new royal title. Cosimo’s ambitions were only answered two years later by the Pope, who in 1569 unilaterally named him Grand Duke of Tuscany. This title was ratified by the emperor seven years later, but only after a very large donation of Medici money helped him at last make up his mind.

In January 1567, Striggio’s journey took him to Vienna, where he presented the Mass in person to the emperor, and then to Munich, where in early February it was performed liturgically at High Mass in front of the Duke of Bavaria. The Duke’s musicians were normally directed by Lassus, who one year later conducted three performances of another 40-part work by Striggio, an unidentified motet that might have been Ecce beatam lucem. This link explains the presence in tonight’s programme not only of Striggio’s motet but also of polychoral works by Lassus. The two composers were certainly colleagues and probably friends.

After Munich, Striggio travelled to Paris where on 11 May 1567 the Mass was performed non-liturgically, in a concert performance at the Château de Saint-Maur, in front of King Charles IX and his mother, Catherine de’ Medici. While in Paris Striggio wrote to his Medici employers asking for an extension to his leave of absence in order to visit England ‘and the virtuosos in the profession of music in that country’. It seems almost impossible that during his two-week trip to London in June 1567 he didn’t meet the composer who was unquestionably the leading virtuoso in England: Thomas Tallis. There is strong evidence that Tallis wrote his own Spem in alium as a direct result of the younger man’s visit. If Tallis’s masterpiece shows the strengths of his great maturity (he was in his sixties at the time), the quite different work by Striggio (who was about 30 in 1567) shows no less forcefully the strengths of his ambitious and energetic youth.

Performing the Mass

For the Berkeley Festival performance, I am including a wide variety of instruments. A full double choir of sackbuts and cornetts adds immeasurably to the sonorities, like gold leaf on a fine picture frame. But unlike a frame surrounding the picture, I have chosen to have these instruments double the third choir, in the very centre. I also chose to use a substantial group of different instruments to support the Bassus ad organum line, the general bass line that accompanies the whole work. Evidence from Striggio’s time implies that this line was performed by a double-bass trombone, and we are very fortunate to have been able to include such a rare instrument tonight. This also suggested the use of a stringed instrument at double-bass pitch.

I have included a wide range of instruments capable of providing chordal accompaniment to play the fundamental bass. It would be anachronistic to call this a continuo group since such terminology did not emerge until some 40 years after Striggio wrote his Mass; but that’s nevertheless what it is. Florence was well in advance of other cities in this respect and by the 1550s Florentine musicians were already regularly using such fundamental instruments to accompany chordally. The instruments I have chosen for Striggio’s bass line range from the ubiquitous organ (whose suave sustained sonorities can bind the sounds together), to the harpsichord (whose rhythmic precision, by contrast, can help hold the disparate choirs together); also included are the theorbo and the harp, which offer a different range of expressive nuance from the keyboards. On the manuscript of Ecce beatam lucem all these instruments are mentioned as forming the accompanying group. The result is only one of many instrumental possibilities that would be appropriate. Our use of instruments tonight is conservative, not extravagant. A performance paid for by the Medici or the Habsburg families would have had access to vastly richer resources.

I have added the Our Father (Pater noster) sung in plainsong to provide a moment of repose before the two settings of the Agnus Dei. The text of the various plainsongs heard tonight is derived from the Roman Missal printed in 1563. As a closing gesture, we have also included the short Ite missa est/Deo gratias, the closing words of the Roman Mass signifying that the Mass is ended. This text was usually considered part of the Ordinary of the Mass, but was almost never set to polyphony.

Forty singers is not in itself an exceptional number. The effect of Striggio’s 40-part writing, at least for modern audiences, is not so much one of astonishing volume, especially since for many sections of the Mass only one or two choirs are singing simultaneously.

(Striggio saves the first moment in full 40-part sonority for the seventh phrase of the Gloria: ‘we give you thanks for your great glory’.) Rather than sheer volume, the richly woven musical texture is a key characteristic. The 40 voices create luscious, luxuriant sonorities, comparable to the rich brocades, fine furniture and other opulent ornaments that were considered appropriate for a royal or imperial chapel.

In the second setting of the Agnus Dei, Striggio subdivides each of his five double choirs even further, requiring an extra set of four voices in each choir, a third sub-choir. The result is a piece for five 12-voice choirs, a tour de force in 60 real parts unique in the history of Western music. It alone should surely earn Striggio a place in all musical history books. This remarkable appeal for peace, dona nobis pacem, begins much like Tallis’s Spem in alium, with the voices coming in one by one (heard tonight as a wave of sound, from left to right). Whether Tallis borrowed this idea from Striggio or not is hardly important. What the two composers have in common is less significant than what makes each one of them unique. Striggio has usually been labelled by music historians as a rather unexceptional musical conservative, but historians don’t always get things right. The listeners to tonight’s concert have a chance to decide for themselves, discovering this music along with everyone else.

Magnificat Announces 2008-2009 Season

2008-04-20T19:59:00.000-07:00

Magnificat is proud to announce our 17th Season of concerts in the Bay Area. Once again, Magnificat offers our audiences the opportunity to experience rarely-heard masterpieces of the Early Baroque with programs that feature music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Giovanni Antonio Rigatti, Heinrich Schütz, and Alessandro Scarlatti.

The season begins on the weekend of October 3-5, 2008 with performances of two divertissements by Charpentier: Les Plaisirs de Versailles and La Couronne des Fleurs. Magnificat has become the premiere interpreter of Charpentier’s music in the Bay Area, exploring new gems from the composer’s notebooks almost every season.

Both works on the program were composed for the ensemble of Mlle de Guise, in whose household Charpentier lived and worked after returning from his studies in Rome with Carissimi. Les Plaisirs de Versailles was inspired by the soirées that Louis XIV held at Versailles in 1682, and it's four scenes celbrates the pleasures of the royal residence with charm and humor. The singers, taking on the roles of “Music”, “Conversation”, “Games, and “Festivities”, contribute to the amusement of the Sun King.

The pastorale La Couronne des Fleurs is an adaptation of the original Prologue to La Malade Imaginaire (1673), which Charpentier arranged for the singers of Mlle de Guise in the mid-1680s. In fact, of the 19 movements only 2 are borrowed (and are extensively recomposed); the rest of the opera is entirely original (though the text is wholly by Molière). Magnificat will perform from editions prepared by Charpentier scholar John Powell.��

The concerts will be Friday, October 3 at 8:00 pm, First Lutheran Church, Palo Alto; Saturday October 4 at 8:00 pm, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Berkeley; and Sunday October 5 at 4:00 pm, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco.

Magnificat’s season continues with a program of Vespers music for Christmas by Rigatti on the weekend on December 5-7, 2008. Before his untimely death in 1648, Rigatti was already regarded as one of the most talented Italian composers to emerge from the generation after Monteverdi. Rigatti was choirmaster at Udine Cathedral in 1635-7, and later a priest in Venice, singing at St Mark's and teaching singing at one of the Venetian conservatories; in 1646 he directed music for the Patriarch of Venice.

In 1640 and 1641, the Venetian printer Bartolomeo Magni published two magnificent collections of music for Mass and Vespers: Selva morale e spirituale by the venerable Monteverdi and Messa e Salmi by the 23 year old Rigatti. Both collections were dedicated to Hapsburg royalty and both embodied the concertato style, most favored at the time, in which large musical structures are built from a variety of vocal/instrumental combinations. Rigatti’s music is characterized by frequent changes of meter and tempo, virtuso passages for voices and instruments alike, and a striking sensitivity to text and emotion.

The concerts will be Friday, December 5 at 8:00 pm, First Lutheran Church, Palo Alto; Saturday December 6 at 8:00 pm, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Berkeley; and Sunday December 7 at 4:00 pm, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco.

On the weekend of February 6-8, 2009, Magnificat will return to the music of Heinrich Schütz with a performance of his masterpiece the Musikalisches Exequien. During the bleakest years of the Thirty Years War, Schütz received a commission from a wealthy nobleman to set texts that had been carved onto the patron’s pewter casket. The work was to be performed at the nobleman’s funeral. Schütz the disparate texts, drawn from Scripture and Lutheran chorales, and formed them into a extraordinary three part Requiem.

Recognizing the occasional nature of the composition, Schütz suggested that the work could be used a a paraphrase for the Kyrie and Gloria in a Lutheran Mass for the Feast of Purification. It is in this context that Magnificat will perform Schütz’s work, incorporating chorales, and elements of the liturgy of the Dresden chapel.

The concerts will be Friday, February 6 at 8:00 pm, All Saints Episcopal Church, Palo Alto; Saturday February 7 at 8:00 pm, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Berkeley; and Sunday February 8 at 4:00 pm, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco.

The season will conclude with performances of Scarlatti’s Venere, Amore, e Ragione, an allegorical serenata written for the entertainment of the Roman nobility at the turn of the 18th Century. The libretto, written by the Roman poet Silvio Stampiglia, features Cupid, who mediates a timeless debate between Venus and Reason. A showcase for Scarlatti’s unparalleled mastery of melody and lyricism, Venere, Amore, e Ragione is a delightful and colorful masterpiece.

The concerts will be Friday, April 3 at 8:00 pm, First Lutheran Church, Palo Alto; Saturday April 4 at 8:00 pm, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Berkeley; and Sunday April 5 at 4:00 pm, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco.

Pre-concert lectures will begin 45 minutes before each performance and are open to all ticket-holders. Subscriptions and single tickets can be purchased here.

San Francisco Classical Voice Review: Funny, Even in Translation

2008-04-20T19:57:00.000-07:00

by Thomas Busse

The crack early-music ensemble Magnificat attempted the difficult challenge of performing a Baroque comic opera in concert over the weekend. The form is unlike serious opera or slighter genres such as intermezzos or serenatas, which readily lend themselves to unstaged presentation. Comic opera, with its typically recitative-heavy, slighter music, depends on stage action, comic timing, and the conveyance of complicated and farcical plots, much of which gets lost by singers in dress clothes standing in place.

I am happy to report that Magnificat, under Warren Stewart’s direction, pulled off the challenge magnificently on Saturday in Berkeley’s St. Mark’s Episcopal Church.

The evening’s dusted-off museum piece was Alessandro Stradella’s penultimate stage work, Il Trespolo Tutore, a charming work from 1679, for which modern performing material was prepared by Michael Burden for performance at New College, Oxford, in 2004, with translations of the recitatives by Simon Dees and of the arias by Dorothy Manly.

The entire era of 17th-century opera is perhaps the largest unexplored territory in both modern performance and modern musicology. Unlike in later time periods, the delineation between aria and recitative was much less strict — “aria” was truer to its original meaning of “song” than were the extravagant da capo productions of, say, Handel. The recitatives tended to be more tuneful, yet they were built on functional harmony much more than the borderline-repertory works we hear now and then from Monteverdi and Cavalli.

Read the Entire Review at The San Francisco Classical Voice

“Un’ opera ridicola, ma bellissima”

2008-04-04T17:20:00.000-07:00

“Monday or Tuesday, I will put on stage the third opera, also mine, which is for amusement, because it is a comic opera, but most beautiful, and it is called Il Trespolo; and because here they delight in comic things, I believe it will be an infallible hit.”

So Alessandro Stradella described his opera Il Tespolo Tutore in a letter to one of his patrons in 1679 before performances at the Teatro Falcone in Genoa. Featuring the bumbling character Trespolo from the popular stories of Ricciardi, Stradella’s opera is indeed “ridicola” bordering on slapstick and replete with vulgar language, cross dressing, and sexual innuendo - as popular in the early days of comic opera as today.

The main character, and the butt of endless jokes, is the foolish tutor Trespolo (sung in Magnificat's performances by Peter Becker). “Trespolo” is not a real name – it’s rough meaning is “tripod” – and it was used at the time to mean something rickety that can barely stand up – an apt description of the main protagonist. The remainder of the cast includes Trespolo’s ward Artemisia (Catherine Webster) who is in love with him but too shy to tell him, Nino (José Lemos) who is in love with her and later goes mad, Ciro (Jennifer Ellis-Kampani) his initially crazy brother who also loves Artemisia, Simona (Paul Elliott) their old, foolish nurse, and Despina (Laura Heimes), her shrewd daughter. The instrumental ensemble, typically small as in all of Stradella’s operas, consists of two violins (Rob Diggins and Jolianne von Einem), violoncello (me), theorbo (David Tayler), and harpsichord (Katherine Heater).

Comic opera was still relatively new to Italy at the end of the 1670s. Stradella had composed a comic prologue for O di Cocito oscure deità in 1668, which then traveled with Jacopo Melani’s Il Girello, which Magnificat performed in 1998. He had also composed other comic prologues and intermezzi for the Teatro Tordinona in Rome in the early 70s, so he was quite familiar with the emerging genre of comic opera by the time he wrote Il Trespolo.

Amid the silliness, there are several moments of more serious music, when characters express emotions of despair and rejection over love unrequited. Indeed Villifranchi’s alternate tile for Il Trespolo “Amore è veleno e medicina degl’intelletti” - roughly “Love as medicine and poison for the intellect” - suggests a far more profound subtext within the general inanity of mistaken identity and mis-delivered love letters. Nino’s despair at Artemisia’s rejection provides an opportunity for two mad scenes, which had become a staple of Italian drama by the last quarter of the 17th century. Stradella had already composed such scenes for his earlier opera La forza dell’ amor paterno. The mad scenes were not derived from Ricciardi’s original, but were inserted by the librettist Villifranchi, no doubt to the delight of the Genoese audiences.

The success of Il Trespolo is evidenced by the interest shown by several noblemen in a repeat performance, though it is unclear if any of these proposals came to fruition. In any case Stradella completed only one more opera before his untimely death in 1682.

Magnificat will perform Il Trespolo Tutore on the weekend on April 11-13. For tickets and more information call 800-853-5188 or visit our website order form at www.magnificatbaroque.org.

Magnificat to Perform at Berkeley Early Music Festival

2008-03-30T16:42:00.000-07:00

Magnificat will join with the Philharmonia Chorale, American Bach Soloists, Schola Cantorum
San Francisco, The Perfect Fifth, and His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts in the American premiere of Alessandro Striggio's Missa sopra Ecco Sì Beato Giorno under the direction of Davitt Moroney.

Striggio's Mass in 40 and 60 parts is the largest known contrapuntal choral work in Western music. Written under the auspices of the 16th-century Medici court and recently discovered in the Bibliotèque Nationale de France by UC Berkeley musicologist Moroney, this example of Florentine art at its most spectacular is "a masterpiece...not just the choral event of the year but possibly of the decade," said London's The Guardian of the work's modern day premiere at the BBC Proms in 2007.

The performances will be on June 7th and 8th. For tickets and information call (510) 642-9988 or visit http://bfx.berkeley.edu.

Countertenor José Lemos to Sing with Magnificat

2008-03-30T15:34:00.000-07:00

Brazilian counter tenor José Lemos will make his Magnificat debut in our upcoming performances of Stradella's comic opera Il Trespolo tutore.

Lemos is the First Prize winner and the Audience Prize winner of the 2003 International Baroque Singing Competition of Chimay, Belgium. Having recently completed his Masters Degree at the New England Conservatory in Boston, he has appeared in opera roles and in concert with companies such as Boston Baroque, Boston Cecilia, Harvard Early Music Society, Les Parlement de Musique, Piccolo Spoleto Festival Early Music Series, and the Aldeburgh Snape Proms in England.

In the summer of 2003 he made his USA opera debut at The Tanglewood Music Festival in Robert Zuidam's Rage D'Amours, and returned for their 2004 production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream as Oberon. He has also joined the Tanglewood Music Center in the Los Angeles premiere of the opera Ainadamar by composer Osvaldo Golijov at the new Disney Center with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

José Lemos is the main guest artist with the renowned Baltimore Consort with whom he tours the United States in concert and educational outreach. A versatile performer, he has charmed audiences in recitals with his exuberant renditions of native Brazilian songs. He has also delved deeply into the medieval and renaissance repertory in his performances with the Charleston Pro Musica and Quartetto Brio.

In April 2005 he made his European opera debut in a production of the Zürich Opera House of Handel's Giulio Cesare under the batton of Marc Minkowski. In June of the same year he performed at the famous Aldeburgh Festival in a production of Purcell's Faery Queen under the batton of Harry Bicket, receiving raving reviews by the London Times. He has made frequent appearances in places such as Jordan Hall, Chimay Theater, Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood Theater, The Cloisters Museum in New York, and the National Gallery in Washington, DC.

Some of the highlights for the 2007 and 2008 seasons include the release of his first recording with the Quartetto Brio, entitled "Romance", featuring the incredibly beautiful songs of the Sephardic Jews. He has made his debut as Ottone in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea with the Seattle Early Music Guild directed by Stephen Stubbs, sang the role of Tolomeo in Handel's Giulio Cesare at the Göttingen Handel Festival directed by Nicholas McGegan, and the role of Silène in a new production of Lully's Psyche with the Boston Early Music Festival. And for the second part of the season, he will be touring with William Christie's Les Arts Florissants in their new production of Stefano Landi's Il Sant'Alessio which will also be released on DVD by Virgin/EMI this coming spring.

Synopsis of Il Trespolo Tutore

2008-03-30T15:29:00.000-07:00

The following Synopsis was prepared by Dr. Michael Burden of New College Oxford and is reposted here with permission of the author.

The story centres on Signor Trespolo's attempts to find a husband for his ward, Artemisia; if she is satisfied, then they will both inherit money under her father's will.

At the beginning of Act I, Simona is trying to get Despina to agree to a marriage with Trespolo, saying that a husband is like medicine, but Despina says that Trespolo is like a hairy bear, and has no brain. Simona welcomes Nino, who has been away, business unspecified. He inquires the reason for the argument, and, when told that Despina does not want to get married, says that that is only natural, since she is young. Nino then mentions his brother Ciro, who has been driven crazy by love. He sends Simona away with the comment that he will find a way to marry off Despina without shouting. With Simona out of the way, Nino wants to know if Artemisia has 'relaxed'? Nino is deeply in love with Artemisia who refuses to marry him. Despina says, well, if Artemisia won't marry him, she won't, and why is Nino wasting his time on it? Nino asks Despina to be Artemisia's 'tutor in love'; she agrees. But as he leaves, Despina tells us that it is Nino she really wants to marry. Artemisia arrives, repressed by her love for Trespolo; she lies down and sleeps. Ciro, quite mad from love, now enters and in his madness, lies down to sleep along side her. Trespolo finds them both asleep. He wakes them, and when the raving Ciro tells them that his name means dog in Persian, Artemisia orders him to leave. Trespolo then broaches the subject of Artemisia's marriage;the subject is important to him, because under her father's will, he has to give his permission for the nuptials, but Artemisia has to be satisfied; if she is, then he benefits financially. However, Artemisia will only agree to marry someone she loves, but finds it impossible to utter the name of the one she wishes for her husband, so she passes him a cryptic note before going into the house. Trespolo cannot understand the note at all; it says 'the one who is here', and he, Trespolo, is the only one there! However, at that moment, Ciro, the 'crazy one', arrives on the scene, and Trespolo leaps to the conclusion that it is Ciro who Artemisia loves. Trespolo is shocked that Artemisia's beautiful face should be wasted on someone like him. Trespolo asks Ciro if he has thought marrying Artemisia; he is delighted at the idea. Artemisia does not come out to them, so they knock on the door. Trespolo tells Artemisia that he is there with her 'husband'. When Artemisia realises that it is Ciro who Trespolo means, she is appalled; she rejects him, and departs, followed by Trespolo, leaving Ciro disappointed. In desperation to get her message across, Artemisia now dictates Trespolo a note which repeatedly says 'It's you'; he still does not get the message, and when Nino arrives declaring his love, Artemisia makes her escape. Her flight misleads Trespolo; he decides that it is Nino with whom Artemisia is in love, and hands him Artemisia's note.

Act II starts with Simona trying to teach Ciro proper behaviour and how to court a lady; she persuades him that Artemisia will love him if he makes himself attractive. Trespolo is still in love with Despina; she, however, sarcastically rejects him. They revert to discussing Nino and Artemisia. Despina has brought an open note from Nino to Artemisia (this is a reply to the love letter Artemisia wrote to Trespolo, but which he mistakenly gave to Nino at the end of Act 1). They both criticise the grammar (Nino is clearly a vulgarian) but Trespolo has no glasses and cannot see the text clearly; he reads that Despina has embraced Nino, and bursts into a jealous rage. When Despina gets hold of the letter, it says something quite different, of course. Trespolo apologises, and asks Despina to tell Nino that he now awaits him. As she leaves, Trespolo inquires after Simona; Despina tells him that he is teaching 'seriousness' to the crazy one. When Nino appears, Trespolo says he has Nino's reply to Artemisia's note, but can't understand it. Trespolo states that, as he understands it, Nino wants to marry Artemisia. However, as she is Trespolo's ward, his consent is required for the wedding, and Trespolo will only give it if Nino 'gives' him his true love, Despina. Artemisia overhears Trespolo speaking of another love, and hears the discussion on the exchange of 'wives to be'. She withdraws in shock and distress. Trespolo, knocking on the window, gives Artemisia Nino's reply. Nino makes love to her, but Artemisia rejects him and tears up the note; she is a lady, and will not be bought as though she were merchandise; she retreats into the house. Nino muses: what has he done to have the fates work against him so? Ciro enters; neither appear to see each other. Both sing of Artemisia, Nino dwelling resentfully on her rejection of his love for her, swearing to hate her, while Ciro sings of her beauty, but how he must say goodbye for a while. [Interval] Artemisia is still unable to utter the name of her beloved; she tells him that the one she loves is the same height as Trespolo, and that he has three syllables to his name. Trespolo agrees to look at a picture of him; she comes back with a mirror, and then leaves to spare her blushes! Trespolo, looking into it, cannot work out of whom the 'picture' is, but at that moment, Simona arrives on the scene, and as her image is reflected briefly in the mirror, Trespolo decides that it must be Simona that Artemisia loves. But, he muses, although the number syllables is right - Si-mo-na - why would one woman want to marry another? But it will have to happen, otherwise he will not get Despina; Artemisia must be satisfied.

As Act III opens, Trespolo cannot understand why Simona does not want to marry Artemisia. Simona eventually agrees, scheming to put Ciro in her place. Artemisia arrives, to be greeted by Simona; she tells Artemisia that Trespolo has told her to spare Artemisia's blushes; he KNOWS - but about Artemisia's supposed desire for Simona. Believing that Trespolo has AT LAST realised that her love is for him, Artemisia gives Simona a ring for him as a token of affection, and asks her to return with him; she disappears into the house. Simona muses that she never thought she would have to take a wife in her old age, but sees Artemisia's sterling qualities. Ciro arrives, mad with love; he concludes that love is our medicine, and not our poison. Nino enters, also mad with love. Despina has been talking to Simona; and has discovered the plot to marry her to Trespolo. Trespolo is attempting to persuade Despina to marry him clandestinely; Despina agrees, reluctantly, to meet him there at two o'clock. Simona tells Trespolo that she finds Artemisia so beautiful that she wants to marry her herself, and produces the ring that Artemisia gave her. Ciro arrives in time to overhear the end of the conversation, which arrouses his curiosity. Now sane, he does not know whether to feel sorriest for himself, or his brother, Nino. Despina tells Ciro of the secret plan for her to go to Trespolo at 2am. Ciro is mystified; why all the secrecy? Despina replies that Artemisia does not want them to marry. Artemisia enters to find Trespolo alone; where is Simona, she asks? Artemisia speaks of her love for Trespolo, but is very tired; Trespolo is fed up with waiting, and they go to dinner. Nino and Ciro sing of love; Nino is now completely mad, Ciro now completely sane. Ciro realises that Nino is beyond help, and concentrates on his quest to protect Despina from Trespolo's advances. Nino sings to himself of the hell of love; he is still obsessed with Artemisia. Artemisia and Trespolo are disturbed by Ciro, banging about; however, they cannot see who it is. Ciro tells Artemisia the truth about Trespolo and his pursuit of Despina; she sees that Trespolo has misled her. In her fury at these revelations, Artemisia accidentally puts out Trespolo's candle, and he sneaks out to re-light it. In the darkness, Artemisia does not notice that he has left, and continues talking of love as if to Trespolo, but it is Ciro who hears her, and when, much to Artemisia's surprise, the voice in the dark says that he wants to marry her, she agrees at once. Simona is very confused; Nino is crazy, Ciro is sane, and Despina is not married! She will just have to stay at home and spin. To be loved, you need to be young; but the appetite grows when your teeth fall out. Ciro tells the noisy Trespolo to keep quiet; Artemisia is now his wife. Trespolo is shocked; surely people should not choose their own husbands? Ciro says Artemisia offered to marry him, and he knew a good thing when he saw it! Simona comments that if Artemisia is Ciro's wife, then she will have a bisexual wife. Artemisia says that her school-girl love for her tutor will now be silent, and she will let her heart change its destiny; thus honour and virtue will be satisfied. Simona reports that Nino is now completely mad; Ciro, recognising that it is only man's ordered thoughts that separate him from animals, moralises that it is love that is able to make men crazy or wise.

A Historical Note on Il Trespolo Tutore

2008-03-30T15:07:00.000-07:00

by Samuel Dwinell

January of 1679 saw the premiere of Alessandro Stradella's Il Trespolo tutore in the Teatro Falcone in Genoa, a city well suited to the plot of this opera; as Stradella himself noted, the Genoese had a penchant for 'comic things'. By the time he wrote Trespolo, the recent genre of Italian comic opera was becoming well established, and Stradella had already written comic prologues and intermezzos for the Teatro Tordinona. However, with this opera, Stradella invented the operatic buffo bass (something which would become a defining characteristic of later comic opera), and placed him in the title role as Trespolo, the foolish guardian.

The libretto is Giovanni Cosimo Villifranchi's reworking of a popular comic play by Giovanni Battista Ricciardi. With just the same emphasis on intrigue, misunderstandings, and farce as Villifranchi's adaptation, Ricciardi's play contains a light comedy, often bordering on slap-stick in a language which resembles the everyday, colloquial Italian suitable to the narrative. Yet more serious moments punctuate the opera's comedy in a way so indicative of Stradella's expert handling of text, music, and plot.

If the colourful nature of the plot tends in places towards the absurd, it is positively mundane in comparison with Stradella's extraordinary life, particularly as he lived it in the 1670s. He indulged himself in the carefree life of the leisured classes, spending his time as he pleased and frequently moving around Italy. But while on a sojourn in Rome in 1677, he incurred the wrath of Cardinal Alderan Cibo, and was forced to flee to Venice. Here, in his new position of musical pedagogue to the mistress of Alvise Contarini, a powerful nobleman, he became more amorous towards his pupil than his aristocratic employer found appropriate. Much to the anger of the Contarini family, the couple fled to Turin as fugitives pursued by a 40-strong band of men headed by Alvise Contarini himself hoping to capture the girl and to kill Stradella. Thankfully for us, their efforts were unsuccessful, but Contraini did not give up. He sent two more would-be assassins to the composer's hiding place, but again the attempts on his life led only to more cunning on Stradella's part. Unlike any self-respecting action-movie hero, he fled Turin without the girl and ended up in Genoa, just in time to oversee the production of his new opera, Il Trespolo tutore.

See Synopsis here

Charpentier’s Petits Motets

2007-12-25T09:48:00.000-08:00

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)

2007-12-07T09:50:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-03T10:33:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-02T21:39:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-29T11:35:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-15T10:56:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-15T09:09:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-04T14:49:00.001-08:00

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

2007-11-03T10:45:00.000-07:00

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

2007-11-02T18:23:00.000-07:00

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

2007-11-02T18:16:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-19T15:51:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-19T14:45:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-04T19:44:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-17T12:41:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-13T18:12:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-01T11:40:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-25T11:02:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-13T11:56:00.000-07:00

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.

SFCV Review of Rosenmüller Vespers

2006-04-04T02:08:00.000-07:00

A Magical Re-creation
By Rebekah Ahrendt

The following review appeared on San Francisco Classical Voice.

The sanctuary of St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco was transformed into the Cathedral of San Marco in Venice Sunday afternoon. Performing a re-creation of a vespers service for the Feast of the Annunciation, Magnificat wowed the audience with works by Johann Rosenmüller, Giovanni Rovetta, and Francesco Cavalli. This program was a great example of what happens when good colleagues perform the music of good colleagues.

Rosenmüller, Rovetta, and Cavalli all worked together at San Marco beginning in 1658, when Rosenmüller arrived from his native Germany. He had been scheduled to take up the cantorate in Leipzig (the eventual job of J.S. Bach), but was arrested in 1655, having been accused of homosexual activity. Somehow he managed to escape and found a warm welcome in Venice, where he took a job as trombonist in the San Marco Cathedral.

Rovetta was maestro di capella there, assuming Monteverdi's duties after that great composer's death in 1643, and serving until his own death in 1668. Cavalli was employed as a singer and organist, and eventually succeeded Rovetta as maestro di capella, a position he held until his death in 1676. Rosenmüller stayed on in Venice, eventually moving back to German lands in 1682. For all three of these composers, the steady employment and good wage that San Marco offered allowed them to produce and perform exceptional music. The collegiality of the capella gave them opportunity to experiment and influence one another.

Modern-day capella

Magnificat is a good modern-day example of a collegial capella. Under artistic director Warren Stewart, the core of Magnificat's ensemble has experimented with all kinds of music rarely heard today. Together, they have developed a distinct sound and approach to repertoire that never fails to please. Sunday's concert was no exception.

Magnificat's Annunciation Vespers service was quite long — only counting the polyphonic works, there were five psalms, six church sonatas in place of antiphons, a hymn, and a magnificat. These were interspersed with chant antiphons, responsories, and prayers. Altogether, that added up to two hours of music, performed without a break. Though it caused some numbness of the rear end, the program was altogether overwhelming and beautifully performed.

Two of the psalm settings by Rosenmüller had probably not been performed since the 17th century. Both his Dixit Dominus à 4 and his Nisi Dominus à 4 have not appeared in modern editions. According to the program notes, Stewart obtained copies of the manuscript from Rosenmüller specialist Kerala J. Snyder. It is amazing to me that such wonderful music has been so largely ignored.

Nisi Dominus in particular was a great find. As is typical of the late Venetian style, the piece is scored for a combination of voices and instruments, which effectively illustrated every line of the psalm. For example, "Sicut sagittae in manu potentis" (As arrows in the hands of the mighty) featured a martial figure in the accompaniment, with all voices uniting in a show of strength. Soprano Jennifer Ellis was highlighted in a solo setting of the first part of the doxology that was extremely melismatic.

Just listening to the six different settings of the doxology on this program was an enlightening experience. Besides that of Rosenmüller's Nisi Dominus, the doxology for Cavalli's Laetatus sum was also special. Tending more toward the mystical and strange, Cavalli's setting focused on darker tones. A five-part string ensemble (including two violas and violone) emphasized the contributions of the alto, tenor, and bass, sung beautifully by Margaret Bragle, Daniel Hutchings, and Hugh Davies. Their muted melodies, often in a low register, seemed to highlight the anxiety of war underneath the rejoicing of this psalm.

Musical delights

On the high end, soprano Laura Heimes was a welcome addition to the ensemble, one I had not heard with Magnificat before. Her clear soprano blended excellently with Ellis' in the five-part works, which often paired the high voices. Her solo portions were equally well performed, with precision and sensitivity.

Offsetting the vocal works were a number of sonatas by Rosenmüller, performed by two violins, two violas, and violone. At San Marco it was common to substitute instrumental works for portions of the service. With so many fine instrumentalists on call, the so-called sonata da chiesa (church sonata) became popular. This type of sonata contrasts elaborate contrapuntal moments with contemplative or meditative slow sections. A few of the sonatas on this program featured wildly chromatic themes that were richly elaborated and deliciously performed by the ensemble. The five-part texture is typical of 17th century Italian music and became standard also in French music after Lully.

The violas were a special treat. It is not often that I get to hear two independent viola parts in a concert, especially when played by fine violists like David Wilson and Vicki Gunn Pich. John Dornenburg's violone playing was also quite fine and was surprisingly florid and agile on an instrument best known for being rather lugubrious. Violinists Rob Diggins and Jolianne von Einem were simply delightful, as was (as always) the continuo playing of Hanneke van Proosdij and David Tayler on organ and lute, respectively.

Proosdij was given a moment in the soloist's spotlight on a hymn setting by Giovanni Battista Fasolo, a famous organist who published an all-purpose collection of organ pieces for liturgical use in 1645. The hymn "Ave maris stella" was performed in alternation between the singers on the hymn tune and the organ in a richly ornamented version. The effect was stunning. Though the tune was recognizable in the organ parts, the inventiveness of the elaboration and the skill of Proosdij in bringing it all together created a wholly new experience of this popular hymn.

Altogether, this was a most impressive concert. Though I did have trouble walking for some time afterward, and though a few more tuning breaks would have been desirable for the strings, it was a more than worthwhile experience. I felt transported back to San Marco for an afternoon, listening to the music of those who worked there long ago. Thanks to the work of Magnificat, it is possible, and rewarding, to take such an imaginary journey.

Rebekah Ahrendt holds the artist's diploma in viola da gamba and historical performance practice from the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. Currently, she is a graduate student in historical musicology at UC Berkeley.

Program Notes for Rosenmüller Vespers

2006-03-27T01:19:00.000-08:00

Vespro della Beata Vergine, with music by Johann Rosenmüller, Giovanni Rovetta, and Pier Francesco Cavalli will be performed on Friday March 31, 8:00 p.m. at First Lutheran Church, Palo Alto; Saturday April 1, 8:00 p.m. at The Berkeley City Club, Berkeley; and Sunday April 2, 4:00 p.m. at St. Gregory Nyssen Episcopal Church, San Francisco. The program featured Laura Heimes, soprano; Jennifer Ellis, soprano, Margaret Bragle, alto; Daniel Hutchings, tenor; Hugh Davies, bass; Rob Diggins, violin; Jolianne von Einem, violin; David Wilson, viola; Vicki Gunn Pich, viola; John Dornenburg, violone; David Tayler, theorbo; Hanneke van Proosdij, organ.

One of the most highly regarded German composers of the second half of the seventeenth century, Johann Rosenmüller’s music has been rarely performed since then. Following the practice of many northern composers of the period, he preferred to have his sacred music disseminated in manuscript. Fortunately a considerable number of those manuscripts have survived and we are pleased to feature Rosenmüller in this reconstruction of a vespers service as it would have been performed in Venice, the composer’s adopted home.

Born around 1619 in a small town near Zwickau in Saxony, Rosenmüller studied theology at the University of Leipzig and music with Tobias Michael, cantor of the Thomasschule. His quickly rose to the postion of assistant cantor by 1650. He was appointed organist at Nikolaikirche in 1651 and in 1653 he was promised the succession to the cantorate.

This promising career came to an abrupt halt in 1655 when, along with several of the St. Thomas schoolboys was accused of homosexuality for which he was jailed. While awaiting trial he managed to escape and eventually made his way to Venice where, in January of 1658 he was appointed as a trombonist in the orchestra of San Marco. He remained in Venice until 1682, when he was kappelmaister in Wolfenbüttel until he died in 1684. While in Venice, rosenmüller was active as a composer, both at San Marco and at the Ospedale della Pietà, where Vivaldi would be employed a few decades later.

Almost all of Rosenmüller’s extant vocal music is sacred with a significant body of music for Vespers. While the psalms and Magnificat we will perform were no doubt written during Rosenmüller’s time in Venice, it has thus far proven impossible to date them with any accuracy or to associate them with any particular occasion or location. Stylistically the setting of Lauda Jerusalem would seem to be the earliest composition, and the key of the Nisi Dominus would suggest a relative later date. The Dixit Dominus and Magnificat settings are particular fine examples of the late Venetian concertato style, demonstrating a satisfying blend of Rosenm’ller's native Northern tast for intricate counterpoint and the bold harmonic language and clear tonal structures characteristic of the Italian masters.

Near the end of his life Rosenmüller published a collection of twelve sonatas from which our antiphon substitutes are drawn. A compendium of the stylistic and gestural possibilities of the mid seventeenth century ensemble sonata, the collection most likely contains works composed from various atges of Rosenmüller’s life. The collection was dedicated to the cousin of Duke Johann Friedrich of Brunswick-Lüneburg, who may have been responsible for the composers return to Germany.

Two composers that Rosenmüller would have worked closely with while in Venice are also represented on our program. Giovanni Rovetta assumed the post of maestro di cappella at San Marco on th death of Caludio Monteverdi in 1643 and remained in that position for the remainder of his life. During this period Pier Francesco Cavalli, though best known as a composer of stage works for the newly created public opera houses of Venice, was the organist at San Marco through the 1640s and 1650s, assuming the role of maestro di cappella when Rovetta died in 1664.

I am extremely grateful to Prof. Kerala Snyder for providing copies of the manuscripts for Dixit Dominus and Nisi Dominus and to Johan Tufveson for his excellent website, the source for the 1682 sonatas. Thanks also to Herb Myers and William Mahrt, the music libraries of UC Berkeley and Stanford, Nika Korniyenko, and Tchocky.

Magnificat Revives Charpentier Program

2005-10-26T13:08:00.000-07:00

On the weekend of December 9-11, Magnificat will revive one of our most beloved programs that features the Pastorale sur la naissance de Nostre Seigneur of Marc-Antoine Charpentier together with traditional French noels, or Christmas carols from the period. This program was performed by Magnificat as part of our 1993-1994 season and again in 1997 on the San Francisco Early Music Society concert series.

Like many, I first encountered the music of Charpentier in the delightful Midnight Mass, a work that uses the tunes associated with many popular noels in setting the text of the Mass ordinary. Charming as this piece is, it gives only a faint glimpse of the range and profundity of Charpentier’s compositional skills. Nevertheless, in making reference to the infectious melodies, it captures the earthy flavor of these tunes, which were known and loved by Frenchmen of all classes.

Charpentier’s Pastorale is once removed from the noels, borrowing much of the imagery and tone of the texts but providing them with a rich and highly refined musical setting. It was exactly these parallels that motivated the construction of Magnificat’s original program in 1993. The Pastorale on its own was a bit short for an entire concert and by framing its four sections with arrangements of noels (some by Charpentier himself) a satisfying and revealing program resulted.

In 1670, upon returning to France from his studies with Carissimi in Rome, Marc-Antoine Charpentier became a member of the household of Marie de Lorraine, called Mademoiselle de Guise. One of the wealthiest women in Europe, and a princess in rank, Mlle. de Guise chose to live in Paris independent of the intrigues and obligations of court life under Louis XIV. She was a passionate lover of music, and maintained an ensemble of musicians, less opulent than that to be found at court, but highly admired by the Parisian connoisseurs of the time. It was for this ensemble of companions that Charpentier wrote his Pastorale.

During this time, Charpentier was primarily involved with writing music for the stage, working briefly with Moliére before the playwright’s untimely death, and later with others. His gifts as a composer of dramatic music contributed significantly to the Pastorale and it has been suggested that the work was intended to accompany a traditional Christmas pageant. This possibility is supported by the list of characters on the title page of the manuscript: along with the shepherds and angels are the names of Mary and Joseph, who have no singing parts anywhere in the piece. Charpentier’s biographer Catherine Cessac has suggested that the Pastorale may have been intended for performance at a school for the education of poor girls supported by Mlle. de Guise. It is easy to imagine costumed young girls arranged in the traditional tableaux vivants during this musical expression of the Christmas story.

Three versions of the Pastorale are preserved in the composer’s manuscripts, the first having been performed in 1684. The following two years the piece was performed again but with some new music and some of the previous music rearranged. The reasons for the revisions is not clear, though it is easy to surmise that perhaps the capabilities of different singers may have motivated the changes. In any case, the basic form of the piece remained consistent and for Magnificat’s program an amalgamation of the three versions has been assembled using the opening scenes common to all three arrangements which tell the story up to the appearance of the angels to the shepherds, while the scene at the crèche comes from the1685 version and the closing scene depicting the shepherds on their way home at dawn is taken from the 1686 version.

Mille grazie!

2005-10-13T10:41:00.000-07:00

Just a brief post to thank all those who contributed to our very successful first concert set - musicians, box office staff, ushers, stage hands - and most of all the very warm audiences!

SFCV Review of September 30 Magnificat concert

2005-10-13T10:35:00.000-07:00

http://www.sfcv.org/arts_revs/magnificat_10_4_05.php

EARLY MUSIC
A Running Start
09/30/05
By Joseph Sargent

Giovan Battista Guarini's play Il Pastor Fido (The Faithful Shepherd) was a failure as drama but proved extraordinarily successful as literature. The tragicomic 17th-century play of pastoral love, lust and loss was first published in 1590. No other source of lyrical texts surpassed it in popularity among Italian composers of the time.

Il Pastor Fido evidently holds a similar appeal for Magnificat, which compiled a selection of solo and polyphonic pieces from the play for its opening concert of the 2005-2006 season, organized into a narrative structure that mimics the play's plot. Under the guidance of artistic director/violoncellist Warren Stewart, a consort of five vocalists and three instrumentalists tackled this repertoire Friday at Palo Alto's First Lutheran Church with abandon, delivering an animated performance that represented a strong debut for the ensemble's new season.

Any effective performance of Italian madrigals ought to lavish great attention on the tell-tale aspects of the genre: frequent emotional shifts in the text, an innate sense of theatricality, and distinctive “text paintings” in which musical devices accentuate the literal meaning of individual words. Magnificat proved to be adept interpreters in this regard, their approach focused on conveying the dramatic as well as musical power of these settings.

An effective match

This combination of music and drama paid off with Tarquinio Merula's "Oimè, son morta!" (O, I'm dead), a struggle between "wanton nymph" Corisca and the hunter Satiro. Soprano Jennifer Ellis and bass Peter Becker were a delightfully combative pair of foes, their virtuosic vocal displays and captivating affective gestures a highlight of the evening. Ellis' beguiling voice was pure and lithe with a delicate vibrato, perfect for this repertoire. Becker had a sparkling presence here and throughout the evening with his gorgeous tone, impeccable skill in ornamentation and winning theatricality.

Among the other soloists, tenor Dan Hutchings deployed his gentle, polished voice to good effect in Sigismondo d'India's "Cruda Amarilli" (Cruel Amaryllis), though he might have offered more passionate expression (both physical and vocal) to the text's heart-wrenching sentiments. Tenor Paul Elliott displayed a somewhat darker tone in a series of d'India songs, conveying a somber quality that, while matching the affective nature of the texts, sometimes seemed heavy-handed. He and Hutchings were well-matched, however, in their Alessandro Grandi duet "Udite lagrimosi" (Hear, weeping), their voices distinctive in alternating phrases yet merging seamlessly at several points to create a satisfying whole.

Magnificat displayed impressive command in the ensemble madrigals, their faultless intonation and carefully matched phrasing adding greatly to this music's effectiveness. Particularly successful was the closing madrigal set, d'India's Se tu, Silvio crudel, mi saettasti (When you, cruel Silvio, shot me). Following an agile opening flourish from soprano Laura Heimes, the ensemble depicted Silvio's tragic accidental wounding of his beloved Dorinda with virtuoso panache, effortlessly moving between fugal and homophonic lines and poring over the many expressive word paintings with great care. Also impressive was Claudio Monteverdi's masterly "Ah dolente partita" (Oh, painful separation), in which the character Mirtillo agonizes over the absence of his beloved Amaryllis. Ellis and Heimes gave haunting expression to the piece's opening dissonances and the ensemble followed with passionate cries of anguish, supplemented by powerful dynamic swells.

Love's labors

In Giovanni Ghizzolo's Il Gioco della Cieca (The game of Blind Man's Bluff), Heimes displayed a bright, dulcet sound as Amaryllis, tangling with Mirtillo in a game in which the participants' furtive movements symbolize the blindness of love. Heimes also combined with Ellis and Becker for several delightful moments as the Nymph's Chorus, their gleeful passages commenting wryly on the characters' machinations.

A couple of quibbles, however. Balance was a nagging issue at several points in the program, particularly in the classic Monteverdi setting of "Cruda Amarilli," with Elliott in particular tending to overpower his comrades. And some of Magnificat's performers seem generally more comfortable in the madrigal idiom than others — dramatic expression was occasionally unequal and ornamental lines were delivered in varying degrees of fluency, for instance.

The two continuo performers, theorbist David Tayler and harpsichordist Hanneke van Proosdij, masterfully accompanied the vocal consort and also commanded their own moments in the spotlight. Tayler's gentle grace and technical polish imbued a pavan of Alfonso Ferrabosco II with quiet emotion, while Proosdij added graceful lyricism and flawless passagework to a canzona by Merula and a toccata of Giovanni Picchi.

Un Pasticcio di Madrigaletti (program notes)

2005-09-25T09:57:00.000-07:00

“A pastiche of little madrigals” is how Gaspare Murtola described Guarini’s Il Pastor Fido in 1626, and while his comment was intended as derogatory, he succeeding in pointing both to the strength and weakness of the play. The overblown and self-consciously poetic language of Guarini’s tragicomedy succeeded in making the play a relative failure on the stage, tremendous success as a work of literature, and a goldmine for composers seeking affective, emotional texts through which to display the new compositional techniques of the early baroque.

Guarini’s play, whether by design or not, turned out to be just as Murtola had described it: a series of little madrigals, from which composers drew texts for decades. Many of the “little madrigals” took on a life of their own, with composers seemingly competing with each other with their different settings. Often when the names of specific characters from the play occurred in the text, composers would alter the text or substitute generic pastoral names (Tirsi, Clori, etc.) to make their madrigal more general.

Though the play in many ways springs from the same humanist orientation that was leading the avant-garde composers of the late sixteenth century to develop the new monodic style of recitative, the majority of settings that were published at the time were in the form of polyphonic madrigals. Our program emphasizes the settings from the seventeenth century and features both monodic and polyphonic settings. While the program is ordered according to the narrative of the play, it is of course not a complete nor balanced rendering of the play, since certain sections received considerable attention from composers and other relatively little.

A little background is needed to understand the action of the play. In the prologue and first act it is revealed that Arcadia, where the play is set, is suffering under a plague cast by Diana. It seems that Aminta, a priest of Diana, was in love with Lucrina. She spurned him for another and Aminta asked his goddess to avenge him and Diana obliged with a plague on Arcadia which the oracle stated would have no end unless Lucrina, or someone who would take her place, were sacrificed. Aminta, appointed executioner, stabbed himself at the altar and Lucrina, stricken with guilt, followed suit. Diana, still angry, renewed the plague and the oracle made three pronouncements: that a young woman must be sacrificed each year to abate the plague; that any faithless woman should die unless a voluntary substitute were found; and that the preceding should be valid until Love united two people of divine ancestry.

The chief priest, Montano, is the theocratic hierarch of Arcadia. His son, Silvio, is descended from Hercules and, in order to end the curse, is betrothed to Amarilli who is descended from Pan. However, they do not love each other. Silvio it seems is only interested in the hunt and in the first scene his older servant Linco tries to persuade him. An excerpt from his entreaty, Quell augellin che canta, became one of the most frequently set excerpts with 15 surviving prints beginning with Leoni’s in 1591. Many, including Monteverdi’s found in his fourth book of madrigals, contain additional verses. The setting we will perform, from Sigismondo d’India’s third book of madrigals, published in 1615.

In the next scene we meet Mirtillo, lately arrived in Arcadia, and Ergasto, a doorkeeper at the temple who has befriended him. Mirtillo is in love with Amarilli and we find out later that she, albeit chastely, loves him in return. Perhaps the most famous of all the Pastor Fido madrigals comes from this scene, Crud’ Amarilli, in which Mirtillo bemoans his unrequited love. This text first appears in a music print in 1595 in a setting by Marenzio. Monteverdi’s famous setting, the subject of fierce and pedantic criticism by Artusi, was most likely written in 1597 or 1598, but published only in 1605 in the composer’s fifth book of madrigals. We will also perform a solo setting of the text by d’India that was published in 1609.

In the third scene we meet Corisca, described in the cast of characters as “a wanton nymph”. A great beauty, she reveals herself to be vain, jealous, and mischievous, but the extent of her treachery will only be discovered later. In scene four Montano, the father of Silvio and Titiro, the father of Amarilli congratulate themselves for arranging a marriage for their children that they assume will end the plague. Their encounter also provides a chance to fill the audience in on a lot of the background. In the final scene of Act I, we meet the Satyr, a comic character who ends up playing a significant role later in the play.

The second act opens with a breathless Ergasto telling Mirtillo that Corisca has cooked a scheme whereby Mirtillo to disclose his love to Amarilli. Mirtillo then recounts his first encounter with Amarilli, in which he was dressed as a nymph (this took place presumably before facial hair or a broken voice might have given him away) and got him invited to a nymph-only affair. At the party the frisky nymphs all decide to have a kissing contest and since Amarilli clearly possessed the most desirable lips she was chosen as the kissing judge. Sure enough Mirtillo-as-mystery-nymph won the contest but left with some uncertainty about whether Amarilli might have suspected the ruse.

In the next scene we meet Dorinda, who is as lovesick over Silvio as Mirtillo is over Amarilli. She is about in the woods with her servant Lupino (everyone has a sidekick in these pastorals) and happens upon Silvio’s faithful dog Melampo, who has strayed from his owner. She asks Lupino to hide with the dog and, upon encountering Silvio, tries pathetically and futilely to get him to promise his love to her in return for his beloved hound. Their exchange continues in the third scene, where Dorinda likens herself to a doe wounded in the heart. The frustratingly literal and impatient Silvio asks for an explanation and Dorinda’s responds tthat she is like a doe caught by the arrow of love, a statement that foreshadows the action of the fourth act.

In scene four, Corisca reveals a bit of her scheme, along with her very jealous nature, and in scene five she sets her “friend” Amarilli up for a meeting with Mirtillo, knowing that she is duty bound to reject him, owing to her forced engagement to Silvio. Corisca has planned for Mirtillo to appear during a game of Blind Man’s Bluff that seems to be a favorite of the local nymphs in Arcadia. Amarilli departs just before the final scene of Act II in which Corisca is trapped by the Satyr who attempts to drag her off to a cave and have his way with her. They engage in a spirited exchange of insults before Corisca finally escapes because the Satyr has grabbed her hair only to discover that she is wearing a wig causing him to fall down as she flees. His ego (and various parts of his body) bruised he concludes the scene with a self-pitying monologue. We are fortunate that this entire scene was set in the new operatic style for soprano and bass by Tarquinio Merula. Merula was a Cremonese composer who appears to have composed his Corisca e Satiro while working in Poland in the early 1620s, though it was not published until 1626, after his returned to Italy.

The Third Act was clearly the favorite source for composers and the first lines of scene one, which begin O Primavera, were chosen for over twenty madrigals beginning with a setting in Monteverdi’s third book of madrigals in 1592. One could assemble a very satisfying, if perhaps monotonous, program from the many beautiful settings of Mirtillo’s monologue including madrigals by Wert, Monte, Luzzaschi, Schütz and others. We will perform d’India’s exceptional five part setting for tenor and continuo published in 1609. Mirtillo’s soliloquy takes up the entire first scene and in the second scene he encounters Amarilli in the Gioco della Cieca (Game of Blind Man’s Bluff). This scene with its conceits of the blindness of love in many ways is a microcosm of the entire play and was perhaps the most famous scene and the most troublesome to stage. Apparently, Guarini wrote the words to fit the music, which had been written to fit the dance in an initial performance of the play during the mid-1580s. Neither the music nor a detailed description of the resulting performance have survived, but there is a complete setting of the scene by Giovanni Ghizzolo that was published in his Madrigali e arie, of 1609 which we will perform.

A long and emotional dialogue between Mirtillo and Amarilli, in which the former musters his most poetic possible expression of his fidelity and devotion for the latter, who is unable to return the love she so ardently feels in her heart, follows the game. Their departure is marked by another of the most beloved madrigal texts, Ah dolente partita, in which Mirtillo laments their separation. With 37 published settings, the last from the 1640s, Ah dolente partita was the most often set text drawn from Il Pastor Fido, and we willbegin the second half of our program with the setting from Monteverdi’s fourth book of madrigals published in 1603, though most likely composed several years before.

The program continues with Amarilli’s opening lines from scene four, O Mirtillo anima mea. Another extremely popular text, we will perform the famous setting from Monteverdi’s fifth book of madrigals. Along with Crud’ Amarilli, this madrigal was singled out for its harmonic infelicities by the Bolognese academic Giovanni Maria Artusi in 1601, commencing a public argument in print that Monteverdi at first ignored and then belated joined, with his brother eventually coming to the composer’s defense and coining the term seconda prattica to describe the new music that violated the old rules for expressive effect.

The following two scenes pair Corisca, first with Amarilli and then with Mirtillo, and she continues to play her devious psychological games with each of them. In her conversation with Corisca, Amaryllis reveals the depth of her love for Mirtillo and the anguish that her dilemma causes her. Corisca convinces Amaryllis that if Silvio is caught in an apparently adulterous situation, she will be free of her duty to marry him. Corisca’s scheme involves arranging a tryst in a notorious cave between Silvio and Lisetta, another nymph, which will be discovered by Amarilli. After some persuasion Amarilli agrees but insists on first visiting the temple and goes off leaving Corisca to congratulate herself on her sinister plan. She intends to arrange for Amaryllis herself to be caught in a compromising situation with Corydon (who is in love with Corisca, but that’s another subplot) which will lead to her death, thus freeing Mirtillo (or so she imagines) for her own lustful designs.

Next Corisca sets about deceiving Mirtillo, who conveniently wanders by, distraught from Amarilli’s rejection. His tragic and emotional opening soliloquy, Udite lagrimosi, was a favorite of madrigalists with over twenty settings, beginning with Marenzio’s in 1594. The tortured and pathos-laden lines were irresistible for composers and inspired some of the most exquisitely chromatic and expressive madrigals of the early baroque. We will perform a setting for tenor duet by Alessandro Grandi, Monteverdi assistant at San Marco in Venice.

Corisca then engages Mirtillo in a discussion of his love and marvels, jealously, at the constancy of his fidelity to Amaryllis. In not very subtly promoting herself as a more willing and desirable lover, she describes a less tortured and more carefree hypothetical situation in which love is actually requited by the object of one’s desire. An excerpt of this description Com’è soave cosa was set by many composers, including the brief monody found in d’India Musiche, book 3 of 1618 that we will perform. After painting this appealing, though false, picture of her desirability as a potential lover, Corisca tells Mirtillo that the true object of his love is unfaithful and directs him to the same notorious cave to catch Amarilli in the arms of another. Mirtillo of course refuses to believe but nevertheless is persuaded to go to the cave to see for himself.

Soliloquies for Amarilli and Mirtillo follow in which they further embellish their individual predicaments as they make their separate ways to the cave. Amarilli enters the cave first, and Mirtillo, thinking that she is there waiting for her lover, decides to hide in the cave where he will then attack his rival with darts when he enters The Satyr overhears Mirtillo as he goes into the cave and, suspecting that it is Corisca that Mirtillo is meeting in the cave, mischievously rolls a great stone in front of the cave’s opening, trapping the pair inside, leading to the chorus that concludes the Act.

The Fourth Act begins with Corisca discovering that the entrance to the cave has been blocked. She finally decides that it must have been Mirtillo who, in rage at finding Amarilli and Corydon there, moved the stone over the opening. She decides to go in through the secret entrance (of course there’s a secret entrance!) and find out what is happening. With the second scene of the act we return to Dorinda, whom her father’s servant Linco finds dressed in furs, a disguise that allowed her to watch her beloved Silvio in the hunt. Linco is understandably perplexed by the extremes to which Dorinda has gone and suggests that she should return to more normal attire. However, it seems that Dorinda’s servant Lupino, who was minding her clothes, has thoughtlessly gone off somewhere and Dorinda asks Linco to find him.

Next Ergasto relates the dreadful scene when, at the Satyr’s bidding, the chief priest's minister went to the cave to apprehend the adulterous Amarilli. Mirtillo attacked Nicandro, the minister, thinking him to be Corydon, and threw a dart that miraculously missed its mark, but Mirtillo was nonetheless taken prisoner along with Amarilli. Corisca gloats in the next act of the success of her plans, since, by the double standard of the day, only the female half of such an adulterous pair is punished by death and Mirtillo will doubtless soon be set free. However, she reckons that it would be best for her to hide for a while, until her rival has been sacrificed.

In the fifth scene, Nicandro interrogates Amarilli. All of Arcadia is of course incredulous that the most virtuous Amarilli has been found in such a compromising position – on the very day that she was to be married to Silvio and thus end the horrible plague. This incredulity does not, however, seem to cause Nicandro to give Amaryllis the benefit of the doubt and her pleas that Mirtillo be questioned to corroborate her story fall on deaf ears. After all why should they believe her accomplice? In spite of several madrigals worth of entreaties, Nicandro is unmovable, heartlessly counseling her to nobly accept her punishment and reminding her that one “who fears to die, dies every hour of the day” - hardly adequate comfort for someone in Amarilli’s predicament.

In the very brief scene six, Silvio, fresh from his triumphs in hunting the wild boar, basks in the praise of the other shepherds and huntsman. In the next scene, Corydon appears to explain his tardiness in arriving at the cave. Corisca had sent Lisetta to beacon Corydon to hasten to the cave to see her but he was detained by his father and arrived only to find the cave closed up. He takes the opportunity to relate Corisca’s many betrayals and deceits and his resolve to forgo her for another nymph. It seems that Amarilli and Mirtillo were the only shepherds left gullible enough to take Corisca at her word.

In scene eight, Silvio ruminates on the sad news of Amarilli and congratulates himself on his immunity from the sickness of love only to find him in an argument with a mischievous and informative echo that seems to be Cupid himself. The echo dialogue, in which the final syllables are returned as an echo was the most popular of late Renaissance conceits and it is somewhat surprising that only one madrigal setting of Silvio’s echo scene survives, an eight voice setting by Monte published in 1599. The echo neatly foreshadows the events of the next scene, pointing out that not only would Love conquer Silvio but also it would be the huntsman’s bow and not Cupid's, that would accomplish Silvio’s unlikely submission to Love’s commands. Silvio, unconvinced, dismisses the echo as a drunkard and turns to leave the forest when he spots a movement in the bushes and instinctively fires an arrow that, typically for such a fine marksman, hits its target. Only when its too late does he see that it was a human in wolf’s clothing (an interesting twist on the proverb) at first thinking he had inadvertently hit a shepherd.

Silvio rushes to aid the fallen shepherd and sees that it is Dorinda, with Linco at her side. Eventually, Linco, who recognized Silvio’s arrow, sees the huntsman and berates him for shooting before looking and Silvio rushes to Dorinda’s side. Three extraordinary madrigal cycles, by Monteverdi, Marenzio, and d’India have immortalized the ensuing dialogue between the wounded Dorinda and Silvio, who suddenly (as foretold by the Cupid echo) is overwhelmed by love for her. We have chosen to perform d’India’s five-voice setting, Se tu me saettasti, published in his eighth and last book of madrigals in 1637. Written near the end of the d’India’s life and well after the popularity of the polyphonic madrigal had faded, this five-part cycle is arguably the composer’s greatest masterpiece. D’India avoided the issue of dramatic verity by incorporating the best of his skill as a monodist and polyphonist in a style that was called madrigale concertato, or concerted madrigal.

In the ensuing dialogue, Silvio offers his arrows to Dorinda to avenge her wounds on him, an offer she of course refuses protesting

“I should wound you? Let Love wound you, rather,
for I could not desire
greater revenge than to see you in love.”

Silvio and Linco carry Dorinda, still gravely wounded, to Silvio’s family. Our program ends here but that is still another act of the play necessary to resolve all the various plots.

It takes the appearance of visitors from a distant land to untangle Mirtillo and Amarilli’s dilemma and we meet them as the fifth act begins. Carino and his friend Uranio (as noted before, everyone has a sidekick in these plays) have journeyed back to Carino’s beloved homeland of Arcadia. Sure enough, he is Mirtillo’s father, or at least he has acted as a father to him since he was washed ashore in a cradle many years before. (Oh, did I forget to mention that Silvio’s older brother had been swept away in a flood in infancy? Details, details…) Well Mirtillo had gone off journeying some time before and Carino had thought to find him in Arcadia.

In the next scene, Titiro, the father of Amarilli, is disconsolate not only over the imminent death of his only child, but at the lost hope of ending the plague. A messenger arrives to fill us all in on the recent events at the temple. It seems that her life has been spared; Mirtillo has offered to be sacrificed in her place. This turn of events was highly extraordinary to say the least and caused some consternation at the temple. Apparently Amarilli had protested that Corisca could vouch for her story, but, not surprisingly, the sneaky nymph was nowhere to be found. Then at the crucial moment, Mirtillo had appeared with his self-sacrificing offer, confounding Corisca’s scheme and creating an uproar amongst the priests. Needless to say, Amarilli was quite distressed and argued that Mirtillo should be spared but apparently temple protocol allowed for only one pinch-hit victim and all the knives and vestments were sent off to be re-sanctified.

In the next scene we witness the last preparations for the sacrificial rite. Mirtillo apparently speaks his last and is sworn to silence as the rite begins. In the nick of time Carino appears and, noting the sacrificial rite in progress, quickly realizes that it is his son Mirtillo that is about to die. Carino's vociferous protests are not appreciated by Montano, who complains loudly about being disturbed from his priestly duties by the stranger. After much rancor, Mirtillo, who has silently endured the entire argument, spoils everything by blurting out that the life that his father had given him could not be spent for a better cause than saving that of Amaryllis. Breaking his vow of silence apparently required that the entire ritual had to begin anew and he was sent back to the temple to take his vows over again. This unexpected delay allows for Carino and Montano to sort things out with the help of an old shepherd, Demeta. Apparently Demeta had been sent to look for Montano’s lost child during the flood and had returned empty handed. Now it seems that he had indeed found the child but having been told by an oracle that were the child to return to Arcadia he would die of his father’s hand, he thought better of it and delivered it to a gentleman of Arcadian heritage in far off Elis in hopes of preserving the child from this fate.

As if this weren’t enough, the blind hermit Tirenio appears just then to clarify everything. It seems that actually all has worked out quite well since what was required to end the plague was that two souls of noble lineage should fall in love, and a forced marriage of Silvio and Amaryllis would not have sufficed. However, now that Mirtillo had been revealed as Montano’s son and also demonstrated his unbending fidelity to Amarilli all would be well. In the next two scenes, Corisca learns to her displeasure that love was winning on all sides and she was losing. Linco informs her that Dorinda, revived by Silvio’s newly discovered love for her, had made a miraculous recovery after Silvio himself had removed the arrowhead from her wound. The next scene brings even worse news to Corisca when Ergasto informs her of the happy fate of Mirtillo and Amaryllis. The last scenes are spent tying up all the loose ends including a rather disappointing pardon granted inexplicably to Corisca, but then, this is a tragic-comedy.

Magnificat's concerts will be September 30-October 2. For times locations, and to purchase tickets please call 415-979-4500 or visit our the Magnificat Website

A Word About Translations

2005-09-18T19:31:00.000-07:00

Sorry I've been away from the blog for a couple weeks. We're very close to performance week and I've been scrambling to get the program together and then there's all the usual logistics. One of the fascinating aspects of presenting this old music for a new audience is the question of translations. Attitudes to translation change and different circumsstances require different approaches to transaltion.

When we're performing liturgical music in Latin, many traditional translations exist. I have long prefered to draw biblical translations from the Douay translation of the Vulgate, first published in 1609, one year before the King James version. More than once after concerts, members of the audience have asked why the translation of some psalm wasn't the one they'd always known. After all the King James translation is a 17thy century transaltion. In a way though King James is a bit too good.

The King James version is a translation of the original languages, Hebrew in the case of the psalms, and is therefore a more "accurate" translation of the original. The Douay version is a translation of the Vulgate, which is itself a translation of the original, traditionally ascribed to St. Jerome in the 3rd century. My point is that the singers are singing the Vulgate, not the HEbrew, the audience are best served by a literal translation of what the singers are singing, even if it doesn't match the "original".

With the Pastor Fido texts I encountered an interesting problem. At first I figured it would be easy since there was a very good, roughly contemporary English translation by Sir Richard Fanshawe and published in 1647. However, Fanshawe chose to write his version in rhymed couplets and was much more concerned about communicating the sense of any particular passage than the exact meaning of the original Italian.

For example, the first setting we will perform from Il Pastor Fido, comes from Linco's monologue to Silvio in Act I, Quell' augellin che canta. The Italian reads:

Quell’ augellin, che canta
sì dolcemente e lascivetto vola
or da l’abete al faggio
e or dal faggio al mirto,
s’avesse umano spirto,
direbbe: ‘Ardo d’amore, ardo d’amore’.
Ma ben arde nel core
e parla in sua favella,
sì che l’intende il suo dolce desio.
E odi a punto, Silvio,
il suo desio
che gli risponde: ‘Ardo d’amore anch’io’.

A more or less literal translation would be:

That little bird which sings
so sweetly and flies merrily
now from the fir to the beech
and now from the beech to the myrtle,
if it had human understanding
it would say: “I burn with love, I burn with love.”
But it does really burn in its heart
and speaks in its language,
of his sweet desire
And hear now, Silvio,
its beloved mate
which answers it: “I also burn with love.”

While Fanshawe wrote:

That little bird which sings
So sweetly, and so nimbly plyes the wings,
Flying from tree to tree, from Grove to Grove,
If he could speak, would say, I am in love.
But his heart sayes it, and his tongue doth say't
In language understood by his deer Mate:
And Silvio, heark how from that wildernesse
His dear Mate answers, And I love no lesse.
The Cowes low in the valley; and what's this
But an inviting unto amorous blisse?

The sense is there, but it wouldn't really help a listener to appreciate the musical tricks that Monteverdi or d'India used to grace their settings of Guarini's blank verse.

To Speak Through Singing

2005-08-28T13:49:00.000-07:00

Claudio Monteverdi, wrote in a letter in the 1630s that the goal of music was ‘to speak through singing” In spending much of my life researching, promoting, and performing the ‘new music’ of the 17th century, I have observed that it is characterized by an underlying urgent impulse to communicate the human experience - and it is precisely the intensity of that impulse that continues to draw me to music of this fascinating, unsettled, and dynamic period. [1]

The 17th century was a period of pervasive upheaval, which violently shook the very foundations of the world in all realms of life. It was a time when alchemy and empirical science easily coexisted, a time when the exploration of new worlds and the investigation of the sky challenged traditional conceptions of the place of earth in the universe, a time of religious persecution and political conflict - a time not that different from today. And like tumultuous periods throughout history it was also a time that produced some of our most treasured art, architecture, poetry, and music.

In the first decade of the 17th century Monteverdi wrote that he intended to publish a treatise describing the 'secunda pratica' or ‘second practice,’ the new compositional attitude that he and his colleagues had adopted. Drawing on Plato, he said that his book would be laid out in three parts and would begin with a chapter on oration. How appropriate that a manifesto of the new music of the 17th century should give such prominence to the rhetorical art, for the communication of words and the emotions they express was the dominant motivation driving composers of the period. Through the experiments that led to the creation of the genres of opera, oratorio, and cantata, composers sought to integrate drama and music into new compositional approaches that reflected the immediacy and engagement so essential to the art of oratory.

Perhaps because the fruits of these experiments remain fundamental to musical perception three centuries later, they take on a special significance for us. The basic elements of what we now call “common practice” tonality, the dominance of the keyboard as the basis of musical conception, the emergence of institutions like orchestras and opera companies and the appearance of professional virtuoso performers – the very notion that the purpose of music was to move the passions and communicate emotions – all this developed in the seventeenth century. I would argue that beyond a mere curiosity about the origins of our current musical universe, the music of the seventeenth century has a special resonance for us today because we also are living through a 'paradigm shift' comparable to the crises of the seventeenth century, with all the attendant upheaval characteristic of such times.

The culture of late 16th century Italy was marked by sharp philosophical contrasts and an eclectic intellectual climate. Historians typically portray this culture as a confrontation of conflicting intellectual, spiritual and social forces: classical versus Christian tradition, totalitarianism versus republicanism, feudalism versus capitalism, logic versus rhetoric, mysticism versus scientific rationalism. Certainly the turn of the seventeenth century was no worse than any other time – wars, famine, recessions, epidemics and religious controversies were not inventions of the seventeenth century. Nevertheless the constant political and economic insecurity of the 16th century had succeeded in shaking the self-confidence of Renaissance society to such a degree that awareness of a sense inescapable crisis, of the absurdity of human endeavor, could effectively replace his faith in the creative forces of man as a rational creature.

Just as powerfully, the effect of the Protestant Reformation and the subsequent Catholic reaction had shattered any sense of spiritual universality (though this was always a myth in any case). Religious denomination became a favorite pre-text in power politics, the most horrific example being the Thirty Years War that dominated the lives of most of Europe for the first half of the 17th century.

The human species’ place at the center of the universe had been challenged by discoveries of Copernicus and especially by Galileo’s experiments with telescopes. Though it would not be until the 18th century that a conception of the Earth as a speck lost in an infinite universe would be widely accepted, doubt nevertheless prevailed about the accepted Aristotelian cosmology despite the draconian efforts of the Church to maintain it.

In his influential book Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance, Gary Tomlinson focuses on the dichotomy between scholasticism and humanism in charting the development of Monteverdi’s music and his observations tell us a great deal about the fundamental shift in the attitudes of artists, musicians, and poets of the period and the new techniques and genres of expression that they created. This struggle between authority and innovation can serve as a useful window into the artistic climate of the time that highlights the role of oratory and rhetoric in stimulating its artistic expression.

Scholasticism arouse in the universities of the Middle Ages and was closely associated with the teaching there of theology, philosophy, medicine and law. It was characterized by a reliance on authority in the form of Scripture and Classical texts and a faith in the absolute truth of knowledge gained through rigorous deductive logic.

Aristotle in particular appeared to present a systematic exploration of the full potential of human reason itself. Many scholastic writers were confident that complete knowledge was attainable and indeed already had been attained by a few ancient and early Christian writers in their fields of expertise. It can be said that the scholastic vision assumed not only the existence of a universal order but also a substantial capacity of the human mind to grasp this order. The appeal of such a attitude is of course its fundamentally optimistic view of man’s intellectual capabilities and the fact that it reinforced the unity, perfection and authority of an omnipotent God.

However, if reality was closed, systematically ordered, and completely apprehensible as the scholastics believed, then knowledge itself must be limited. Accepting the authority of the ancients could ultimately entail rejecting the possibility of new ideas. Though it may be easy to dismiss the “Schoolmen” as hopelessly old fashioned, their arguments have much in common with the influential arguments of various fundamentalists of our own day. At any rate, facing the geographical, cosmological, technological, and other discoveries of the sixteenth century, the scholastic deference to authority sometimes hardened into dogmatism – a dogmatism that stimulated important questions about scientific, scholarly, and artistic innovation.

Humanism, by contrast, was native to Italy – a response to the imported scholastic ideas that seems to have been nurtured by the circumstances of Italian urban life. The necessities of business and self-governance encouraged a pragmatic view of the uses and ends of knowledge – learning was applied to everyday concerns and human actions, foreign to scholastic thinkers. A whole class of educated men emerged who were employed to work out contracts and negotiate with foreign traders and man the government bureaucracies. Soon a new breed of scholars, referred to as humanisti, appeared. They stressed moral philosophy and teachings derived from poetry and above all history. The humanisti promoted a new dialectic that blurred the distinction between scientific demonstration and plausible argumentation, marking a shift from syllogistic to topical logic.

In this new view, human will attained a centrality and importance that was at odds with its scholastic position as merely a mediator between reason and passion.
Petrarch, one of the first humanists, wrote that “It is safer to strive for the good and pious will, than for a capable and clear intellect. The object of the will is to be good; that of the intellect is truth. It is better to will the good than to know the truth.”

The Humanists esteem for man’s will and their pragmatic view of knowledge arose in interaction with the requisites of republican self-governance and commercial necessity. Through the will, more than the intellect, man’s passions could be swayed and channeled to result in right action. The importance of rhetorical persuasion to this new vision is obvious.

Behind the humanistic exaltation of oratory lay a recognition of the passions as dynamic forces directing human actions and thought and a need to control and exploit these forces. The humanist had little faith in the encompassing theories of the ancients, recognizing instead the validity of practical experience and accepting its fragmentary and unsystematic nature as the inevitable impression of a complex reality on the imperfect human intellect.

This humanist perception of reality encouraged a reconsideration of the relationships among the intellectual disciplines and the consideration of their differing methods and goals. Natural philosophy or science was seen by the scholastics as governed by universal laws and they distinguished their discipline, characterized by its logical search for universal truth, from the lower disciplines like astronomy, which merely observed phenomena. But in the face of ever more exact and diverse empirical observation humanists tended to admit their meager understanding of the laws of nature and came to a healthy realization of the limitations of classical authority. The unpredictable actions of man, ruled as often by his passions as by his intellect, became the focus of their study. So how did this opposition of humanism and scholasticism play out in music?

In the first decade of the 17th century a controversy has been preserved in an exchange of published letters between a Bolognese academic named Giovanni Maria Artusi, often under the guise of the pseudonym Bracchino da Todi (they were gentlemen after all) and Monteverdi. Monteverdi figures so prominently not only because he was arguably the most celebrated musician of the time but also because we are fortunate to have so much of his correspondence – so many of the composers of the 17th century left little beyond their music for our consideration. He also serves admirably as a representative of the new music of the 17th century. He was by no means a radical like Peri or Caccini or Galileo’s father Vincenzo. Rather he was a synthesizer, taking the avant-garde techniques of the time and fashioning it into powerful enduring masterpieces that exerted a profound influence on all who followed.

Artusi objected to certain contrapuntal practices he had observed in some as yet unpublished madrigals of Monteverdi, noting that they violated the rules of correct composition as laid down in the magisterial treatise of Zarlino in 1555 that was widely accepted as the authority on musical composition. Monteverdi eventually responded in the preface to one of his madrigal collections that was later expanded by his brother, Giulio Cesare. Essentially Monteverdi couldn’t really be bothered to engage with a pedant like Artusi but felt he must make some defense of new musical practices, which he saw as already well established by that time. It is here that he promised his treatise on the seconda prattica, or second practice, second as in following chronologically not as superior to or superceding the older or ‘prima prattica".

This new practice is not based on a compositional principle or a new set of rules but rather on a new attitude toward the respective roles of text and music. For thinkers like Artusi, the intellect and not the feelings were the last resort when judging a work of art. Monteverdi, however, perceived the goal of music as being an appeal to the emotions of the audience, not to their understanding and in attaining this goal, music was justified in using any means, even if it infringed on the established rules. For Artusi ‘art’ meant artistic skill, a craft at the highest level, constrained by a theory, which established its rules and thus made it teachable and learnable, debatable and controllable. For Monetverdi art began where it stopped for Artusi. The ingenious idea, the non-verifiable, the non-teachable, the step past the boundaries of instruction, was the essence of art – based, significantly on an otherwise compulsory set of rules, so that a transgression against them could be recognized as such. For Monteverdi a work of art distinguished itself by the very fact that it could not be completely understood, that it possessed something disconcerting, mysterious and not entirely explicable. Within this idea of the seconda prattica are found the origins of the later aesthetic theory of genius in which the genius breaks the shackles of tradition and creates his own rules.

Fundamental to Monteverdi’s rebuttal of Artusi is his claim that words should be the ‘mistress’ of the music and not the other way around. Later defenders of this new attitude sited with disdain composers who could write whole compositions of perfect counterpoint and afterward hang on the notes whatever words would fit. For a musician of humanist leanings like Monteverdi, the expressive power of music was a function of its relation to its text.

The highest goal that music could seek was to form a syntactic and semantic union with its text so perfect that the distinction of musical and nonmusical elements seemed to fade before the heightened oratorical power of a single musical speech. “To speak through singing...”

In its specifics, the dispute between Artusi and Monteverdi was over fairly minor compositonal procedures that strike us as arcane and inconsequential. Its importance lies in the insights it offers into the changing attitude to authority so characteristic of the period. Artusi grounded an optimistic view of the capabilities of human intellect in the comprehension of an unchanging natural order. He, and others like him, could not admit a universe so disconcerting that the sun itself had stopped moving and the earth had taken its place.

Monteverdi, as a representative of humanist inclinations among musicians of his time, understood that the artistic authorities of the past were conditioned by their own cultures to express themselves in ways not necessarily relevant to the present – he rejected the scholastic placing of theory over practice. Perhaps most importantly, Monteverdi’s concern for the joining of music to poetry in a single moving and persuasive language links him to the humanist’s high estimation of man’s will and their urge to sway the passions, associating him with the humanist’s pursuit of rhetorical eloquence, the key to those passions.

[1] This article, which originated as a lecture at the University Club in San Francisco in September, 2004, benefits substantially from several scholarly works. Due to its nature as an unpublished lecture for a general audience, I was not scrupulous about specific citations. I hope that a general citation in the following bibliography will convey my recognition of the role of the works cited in informing this article and excuse me for any unintentionally uncited quotes.

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Select Bibliography
Arnold, Denis and Fortune, Nigel. The Monteverdi Companion. New York, 1968.
Bianconi, Lorenzo. Music in the Seventeenth Century. Turin, 1982.
Brouwsma, William. The Waning of the Renaissance. New Haven and London, 2000.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Copernican Revolution. Cambridge and London, 1957.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, 1962.
Tomlinson, Gary. Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance. Berkeley, 1987.

Il Pastor Fido, Aminta and the Pastoral Tradition in 16th century Italy

2005-08-18T09:18:00.000-07:00

Guarini’s pastoral drama Il Pastor Fido was very consciously modeled on Aminta, written by his slightly younger colleague at the Este court in Ferrara Torquato Tasso. Both Aminta and the Pastor fido belong to the tradition of pastoral literature that was very much in vogue in Renaissance Italy. The fundamental characteristic of the pastoral drama was its idealized setting in ‘nature’, most often peopled by shepherds and nymphs who contradict the bucolic setting of their lives by expressing very urban sentiments in sophisticated language. Pastoral literature in general tended to idealize the innocent and serene lives of its rustic characters in contrast to complex and corrupt city life. The archetypal paradigm of the pastoral life was the Golden Age: a mythical, utopian time when human beings were content with their simple, peaceful lives, and when the uncultivated earth offered them everything they needed. The myth of the Golden Age, already present in the Greek poet Hesiod, was later treated by, among others, the Roman poet Virgil.[1]

The pastoral eclogue had been a relatively minor literary form in the classical times but was very popular among Renaissance humanists writing in first in Latin and then in the vernacular, and developed a rich complex of native, Christian, and classical themes in novels, lyric poetry, and drama. [2] While Boccaccio’s Ameto, can be considered a pastoral work, it is really Sanazaro’s Arcadia (1504) that has been considered the embodiment and culmination of the Renaissance pastoral tradition and it is from this Arcadian ideal that the new genre of pastoral drama arose. The genre had found expression as early as Poliziano’s Orfeo (1471), which was most likely the first of the Renaissance pastoral plays presented on stage to accompany courtly celebrations. The pastoral poem with its relatively free structure of dialogue developed into a stricter five-act format, typically in hendecasyllabic blank verse punctuated by more lyrical passages through the sixteenth century. Their were various attempts to codify this structure by Cinzio, Tansillo, Lollio, Argenti, and Beccari, all associated with the court in Ferrara, but it was only with Aminta and Il Pastor Fido that the pastoral drama acquired a place in the poetic canon between the dialogic eclogue and the developing melodrama.[3]

The fact that Il Pastor Fido shares so many themes and even plot lines with the earlier Aminta is certainly not a sign of simple plagiarism. Rather, it is more a sort of one-upsmanship, since Guarini intended to emphasize his rivalry with Tasso by writing several parallel scenes and in any case both plays used elements common to the tradition of pastoral drama. For example, Tasso presents the opposition between chastity and love, a common theme of Classical eclogues, in his opening dialogue between Silvia, the chaste shepherdess, and her companion Daphne, while Guarini places a similar dialogue in the first scene of Il Pastor fido with the dialogue between Silvio, the chaste hunter and his confidant Linco. An excerpt from Linco’s response became one of the most frequently set madrigal texts of the period, Quel augellin. Other similarities, like the presence of lustful satyrs in both plays are stock characters in pastoral dramas. The result in terms of reception history has often been to view Guarini’s work as derivative rather than complementary.

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1. Jernigan, Charles and Jones, Irene M. Aminta, a Pastoral Play by Torquato Tasso. New York, 2000.
2. Staton, Walter and Simeone, William. A Critical Edition of Sir Richard Fanshawe’s 1647 translation of Giovanni Battista Guarini’s Il Pastor Fido. Oxford, 1964. p. x.
3. Jernigan. op. cit., pp. x-xi.

Singing Guarini's Il Pastor Fido

2005-08-07T10:47:00.000-07:00

In our first set of concerts, Magnificat will explore musical settings of the most popular play of the Baroque era.

In 1605 Cardinal Robert Bellarmine wrote that Guarini’s play Il Pastor fido (The Faithful Shepherd) was more harmful to Catholic morals than the Protestant Reformation itself. While such hyperbole is typical of polemical tracts of the period and is characteristic of conservative reaction to any challenge to the established order, the Cardinal’s comments nevertheless highlight the impact of Guarini’s pastoral drama on the artistic and cultural climate of the time. The arguments echo those leveled against Monteverdi by Giovanni Maria Artusi beginning in 1600: the unacceptable violation of established classical principles. In fact the madrigals that Artusi quoted in his attacks were settings of texts drawn by Monteverdi from Guarini’s play, though Artusi left out the texts and commented only on Monteverdi’s harmonic improprieties.

Of course ecclesiastical criticism of Guarini’s heretic mingling of the Aritotelian dramatic genres in creating his pastoral tragicomedy and the licentious behavior of its bucolic characters had little effect on the play’s continuing popularity. This popularity can hardly be overstated. In the five years that it circulated in manuscript copies before its first publication 1590, the Pastor fido had already attracted a large and enthusiastic following and by the time of Bellarmine’s complaints it had already seen more than twenty editions. The play’s fame was not limited to Italy, as it spread in numerous translations across Europe. In all, well over one hundred editions of the play were published including six different French translations, five in English in over thirteen editions, with translations also into Spanish, German, Greek, Swedish, Dutch, Polish, several Italian dialects and even Latin. It was arguably the most widely read work of secular literature in Europe throughout the seventeenth century and its vogue was only slightly less for much of the eighteenth.

Riding the wave of the Pastor fido’s fame, over 125 composers drew texts from the play for madrigals and monodies with over 550 settings surviving in print from the first decades of the seventeenth century alone. The play’s lyrical monologues of tearful nymphs and shepherds were particularly appealing to those writing in the affective style that became known as the seconda prattica. In spite of the reputation of the play and the attraction of its poetry to composers, the Pastor fido was never set as an opera during the seventeenth century and it was only in 1712 that a libretto based on the play was set by Händel.

Giovanni Battista Guarini (engraving above) was born into a prominent Veronese family of humanistic scholars in 1538 and, after studying in Padua, replaced his uncle as professor of rhetoric and poetics at the University in Ferrara in 1557. Ten years later he entered the service of the Este court in Ferrara and was elevated to the status of Cavaliere. He was employed as a diplomat, notably in the unsuccessful negotiations for obtaining the crown of Poland for Duke Alfonso of Ferrara. Except for occasional intervals when he was employed by the Dukes of Savoy and Mantua, he spent most of his time in the service of the Estensi in Ferrara, until the duke’s death in 1597. After Ferrara was absorbed under the control of the Vatican, Guarini frequented the courts of the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Duke of Urbino and spent his last years in Rome and Venice, where he was surrounded by admirers and enjoyed great fame as a poet. Guarini's domestic life, however, was stormy and unhappy. His daughter, Anna Guarini was murdered by her husband, Ercole Trotti, apparently in a jealous rage and with the assistance of one of the poet's own sons. His own conduct towards the latter was at times appalling and his whole career was embittered by quarrels and never-ending lawsuits with them and others.

The combined careers of politics and art was not as unusual in the sixteenth century as it is now, and Guarini wrote poetry throughout his time of service to Este family. However, it was only upon his friend and rival Tasso’s imprisonment on grounds of insanity in 1579 that his position as chief court poet for the Este family was secured. Between 1580 and 1584, he worked on his Pastor fido, but waited until December 1589 before publishing it. With his play, grounded in the tradition of pastoral drama and self consciously modeled on Tasso’s Aminta, Guarini intended to establish a new genre of theatre, the tragicomedy, which blended elements of comedy and tragedy. With its central theme of the power of love to transform the human soul, Guarini’s play expands considerably on Aminta and other pastoral dramas, adding complexities and sub-plots with convoluted poetic conceits and erudite references to Classical and contemporary literature.

As early as 1586 it was the subject of criticism from the professor of moral philosophy in Padua, Giason De Nores, who called it a “monstrous and disproportionate composition”. De Nores objected on both stylistic and moral grounds, in the first case relying on a narrow reading of Aristotle’s Poetics, and in the latter on the play’s excessive lyricism, metaphorical extravagance, and, above all, its explicitly lascivious content. He contended that the play’s mixture of tragedy and comedy destroyed any artistic unity and that its pastoral poetry about rude shepherds and their passions was without value for moral instruction.

Guarini, both intelligent and vain, was quick to enjoin in his own defense, publishing two treatises in response to De Nores and adding over 200 pages of annotations to the definitive edition of the play published in 1602. His spirited defense of the tragicomedy sounds quite modern and the history of drama from Shakespeare forward confirms the validity of his arguments. “Art observes that tragedy and comedy are composed of heterogeneous parts”, wrote Guarini, “and that therefore if an entire tragedy and an entire comedy should be mixed they would not be able to function…because they do not have a single intrinsic natural principle. But art, a most prudent imitator of nature, plays the part of the intrinsic principle, and while nature alters the parts after they are united, art alters them before they are joined in order that they may be able to exist together and, though mixed, produce a single form.” As for the complaint about rude shepherds, Guarini argued at length that art exists not to instruct but to purge – tragedy to purge pity and fear, tragicomedy to purge melancholy.

Despite its unrivalled popularity, the play was to receive very few actual productions. The first took place in Ferrara in 1595 or 1596, and it was staged 5 or 6 times in the decade following, most significantly in 1598 in Mantua, where Vincenzo Gonzaga had hoped for a production of the Pastor fido since 1584 and had actively pursued one since at least 1591. The performances in Mantua featured music by Giaches de Wert and Francesco Rovigo that had been written for an earlier production, and possibly music by Monteverdi as well, though there is no specific reference. These performances and a few others aside, the Pastor fido was destined to be a play more to be read than acted, due in no small part to its formidable length and its dense and florid poetic style.

Judging from the philosophical debates it created, the imitations and emulations it inspired, and its near universal familiarity, the profound influence of Guarini’s play on the European culture of the seventeenth century is undeniable. Since there is no complete musical setting of the play from the period, it seemed reasonable to assemble settings from various composers and present them in the order the texts appear in the play. So, Magnificat’s first set of concerts in the 2005-2006 season will feature settings of excerpts from the Pastor fido by a variety of composers including, in addition to Monteverdi, Sigismondo d’India, Alessandro Grandi, Tarquinio Merula, and Heinrich Schütz, who opened his first publication with the two part madrigal O Primavera, drawn from the third act of Guarini’s play. Almost all the settings of the Pastor fido are in the polyphonic madrigal style, though from Grandi, d’India, and Merula we do have monodic settings. The performances will be on the weekend of September 30-October 2.

(This article will appear in the September, 2005 edition of the San Francisco Early Music Society Newsletter. for more information about the Society, visit their website)
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Bibliography
There is a considerable body of literature about Guarini and his Pastor fido. For this article I drew from the following sources.

Hogan, Robert and Nickerson, Edward A. The Faithful Shepherd: A Translation of Battista Guarini's Il Pastor Fido by Dr. Thomas Sheridan. Newark, 1989.
Perella, Nicolas J. The Critical Fortune of Battista Guarini's "Il Pastor fido." Florence, 1973.
Staton, Walter F. and Simeone, William E. A Critical Edition of Sir Fanshawe's 1647 Translation of Giovanni Battista Guarini's "Il Pastor Fido". Oxford, 1964.
Tomlinson, Gary. Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance. Berkeley, 1987.
Weinberg, Bernard. A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance. 2 vols. Chicago, 1974.
Whitfield, J. H. Introduction to The Faithfull Shepherd translated by Richard Fanshawe. Edinburgh, 1976.

The Estensi

2005-08-06T20:01:00.000-07:00

Magnificat's first program this season features settings of texts drawn from Guarini's pastoral drama Il Pastor Fido. Like so many poets, artists, and muscians of the Italian Renaissance, Guarini benefitted from the patronage of the Este family of Ferrara. Both Guarini and his friend and rival Tasso had stormy relationships with the court that employed them and the intrigues within and battles outside the court doubtless caused misery for many, but from our vantage point several centuries hence we are indebted to them for the great works they supported.

The Estensi, a branch of the 10th-century dynasty of the Obertenghi, took their name from the township and castle of Este, near Padua. The founder of the family was the margrave Alberto Azzo II (died 1097), through whose son Folco I (died 1136?) descended the House of Este. The family first gained prominence as leaders of the Guelphs in the wars between the Guelphs and Ghibellines. The Estensi influence in Ferrara dates from the 13th century and by the middle of the 14th century their court there had become one of the most magnificent in all of Europe.

Alberto d’Este (1347-1393) began the transformation of the city, establishing the university there in the last year of his life. His son Niccolò (1383-1441), a great patron of music and the arts in general, built the castle that still dominates the city. During Niccolò's reign, Guillaume Dufay began his long association with the d'Este family.
Leonello (1407-1450), who succeeded Niccolò, was cultivated classical writings, philosophy, and history while Borso (1413-1471) was more interested in law and medicine and provided great support for the university. Isabella, the daughter of Ercole I (1431-1505) born in 1471, inherited her father’s passion for the arts and, after her marriage to the Marquis of Mantua, became one of his chief competitors in collecting art.

Under Ercole I, Ferrara became one of the political powers and cultural centers of Europe. Composers came to Ferrara from many parts of Europe, especially France and Flanders; Josquin Des Prez, Jacob Obrecht, and Antoine Brumel all served during his reign. His son Alfonso I (1476-1534) was also an important patron; his preference for instrumental music resulted in Ferrara becoming an important center of composition for the lute. He also was a patron of the poets Pietro Bembo and Ludovico Ariosto. After his marriage to the notorious Lucrezia Borgia, Alfonso I was excommunicated by Pope Julius II, and attacked the pontifical army in 1512 outside Ravenna. He got on better with later popes, but relations between Ferrara and the Vatican remained strained throughout the sixteenth century.

Alfonso I’s son Ercole II (1508-1559) married Renée, daughter of Louis XII of France. He joined the pope and France against Spain in 1556, but made a separate peace in 1558. He also was a patron of the arts, as was his brother, Ippolito II, Cardinal d'Este (1509–72), an able diplomat who led the pro-French party at the papal court. Ippolito built the celebrated Villa d'Este at Tivoli. Ippolito was responsible for bringing Palestrina to the Este court during the 1560s. Another son of Ercole II, Alfonso II married Lucrezia, daughter of grand-duke Cosimo I of Tuscany, then Barbara, sister of the emperor Maximilian II and finally Margherita Gonzaga, daughter of the duke of Mantua. He raised the glory of Ferrara to its highest point, and was the patron of Torquato Tasso and Giovanni Battista Guarini.

During the reign of Alfonso II, Ferrara developed a remarkable musical establishment. Composers such as Luzzasco Luzzaschi, Lodovico Agostini, and later Carlo Gesualdo, represented the avant-garde of the late Renaissance. The reign of Alfonso II also witnessed the famous concerto di donne — the three virtuoso female singers Laura Peverara, Livia d’Arco, and Anna Guarini, daughter of the poet. Alfonso II however had no legitimate male heir, and in 1597 Ferrara was claimed as a vacant fief by Pope Clement VIII, ending the Este family’s control of the city.

The Image on Magnificat's Website and Season Brochure

2005-08-05T11:33:00.000-07:00

The image used on the Magnificat Website and on the season brochure is taken from the frontispiece to the collected works of Jakob Böhme, published in Amsterdam in 1682. The orginal image is reproduced above. For the website the orginal type has been photo-shopped out and for the brochure only details were used.The brochure can be downloaded by clicking this link.
Jakob Böhme was born in 1575 in Altseidenberg, near Görlitz in eastern Germany. Following apprenticeship, he set up his own shop as a shoemaker in Görlitz, where he resided (except for a period of exile in Dresden) until his death on November 17, 1624. After a profound mystical experience at the age of twenty five (1600), while remaining active as a shoemaker and later a merchant, he embarked on a remarkable career of independent scholarship and writing. Though censured for heresy and silenced for seven years by his town council, he eventually produced some twenty nine books and tracts on philosophical theology, and gained a growing following among the nobility and professional classes of the day. (Source, where you can also find a discussion of his writings and philosophy.) A more extensive biography of Böhme can be found here. This is an excellent bibliography with lots of links, and a fabulous collection of engravings from his theosophical works can be found here.

In the publication the image is described as follows:

"Light & Darkness
At the intersection of light and the world of darkness, the human and the divine eye meet and merge in a visionary “looking-through,” which emerges “as a flash in the centre.”
The trumpet and the lily, the two ends of the pointer, herald the coming of the end of the world and the beginning of the age of the Holy Ghost. The seven circles are the qualities of nature, the days of the Creation and the spirits of God. The inner alphabet signifies “the revealed natural language,” which names all things sensually,” i.e., directly, according to their innermost quality. It was lost through Adam’s Fall from number 1, the divine unity."
J. Böhme, Theosophische Wercke, Amsterdam, 1682

Welcome to Magnificat's weblog.

2005-08-04T09:42:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Magnificat's weblog. I intend to use this weblog to post information about Magnificat programs - notes about the music we will be performing and about the individual musicians who will be performing it. Often in the process of preparing programs I find myself making connections and discoveries that I would like to share with the audiences that will be hearing the music. Only so much can make its way into program notes and pre-concert lectures, so I hope this weblog will give Magnificat's supporters and anyone interested in the music and culture of the seventeenth century a way to enrich their experience of our concerts and Baroque music in general. I suspect that sooner or later other topics will make their way into the discussions here but my intention is to focus on music. My first project will be a running commentary on Magnificat's preparation for our first set of concerts, which will be on the weekend of September 30-October 2.

For information and tickets please visit Magnificat's website (see link on the right) or call 415-979-4500. Thanks for visiting the Magnificat weblog.Comments can be made on specific posts or can be directed to me at info@magnificatbaroque.org. Thanks Again!