Volume8, Issue2

Baroquen Record - 8.2 (November 1999)

G...L...O...R...I-I-I-I-I-A
An anniversary and a new season
By Mitchell Covington

        Baroque Choral Guild invites you to celebrate our twentieth anniversary and the beginning of our twenty-first season by attending our festive concert of Glorias on December 11 or 12. We have selected several superb Gloria settings from some of the most important composers of the Baroque and Renaissance periods. The concert will span a wide range of styles and forms from Gregorian chant to renaissance polyphony to our featured works from high baroque masters Monteverdi, Vivaldi, and J.S. Bach.
        We will greet you with a cappella Glorias in chant, round, and canon; surround you with the haunting lines of the Gloria movement from Tomás Luis de Victoria's Missa O quam gloriosum; then take the stage with Jubilate Orchestra for a glorious baroque musical celebration.

Composed for special occasion

Although not for an anniversary, Claudio Monteverdi's "Gloria for Seven Voices" was composed for a very special occasion. In the winter of 1630-31, the city of Venice suffered a disastrous attack of the plague which carried off one third of the Venetian population. After the plague's end, the Gloria was composed for a general service of thanksgiving held at the basilica of San Marco in November, 1631.
Befitting the occasion for which it was composed, Monteverdi's Gloria is a vibrant and powerful work. It is also a work of great dramatic breadth, exemplifying the concertato style, of which Monteverdi was a chief developer. Contrasts of tempo, texture and performing forces abound as Monteverdi takes full advantage of the emotional gamut inherent in the Gloria text.

Flowering of the Italian baroque

By 1708 Venice had gradually recovered from the ravages of the plague and the Italian baroque had come into full flower. This was the year that Antonio Vivaldi first presented his Gloria in D at the Ospedale della Pietö, one of four Venetian institutions devoted to the care and musical training of orphaned girls. Under Vivaldi's artistic leadership and influence, the services at the Pietö became a major focal point in the social calendar of Venetian nobility and foreign visitors.
Vivaldi's Gloria follows the form of the baroque "Cantata Mass" with 7 separate, self-contained movements, each portraying a unique "affection" or mood. It is an eclectic, cosmopolitan work that is a compendium of baroque compositional practice. Overshadowing every movement, however, is the presence of Vivaldi's unique musical personality which is primarily responsible for the great popularity that this work enjoys today.

Latin for Lutherans

J.S. Bach's Cantata 191 Gloria in excelsis Deo was first performed at Christmas time in Leipzig sometime after 1740. It was not unusual to hear music with Latin text in the Lutheran church during Bach's time. This festive cantata is significant, however, because it is the only known example of this characteristically post-Reformation musical form which Bach composed on a Latin text.

Because of the incredible workload which he carried during his time in Leipzig and his amazing production of new music, Bach, like many of his contemporaries, often borrowed material from his earlier compositions. The choral movements of this cantata were lifted out of an earlier Missa which he presented in 1733 to the new Elector Friedrich August II, with the hopes of obtaining a title at the court in Dresden. This Missa would later form the opening portion of Bach's B minor Mass, the culminating choral masterpiece of his vast output of sacred music.
We hope that you will join us for a glorious evening of music for chorus and period instruments: A tribute to our 20 years of great concerts and the inauguration of our new Excelsior! season.

Volume 8, Issue 2

Baroque Choral Guild, 953 Industrial Ave. Ste 118, Palo Alto CA 94303, 650.424.1410