Volume8, Issue4

Baroque Record - 8.4 (May 2000)

Songs of anguish, songs of hope
Baroque Choral Guild presents 1999-2000 season finale

The Guild Chorus concludes its season with a concert of rarely-heard, inspirational works by Baroque giants Johann Sebastian Bach and Claudio Monteverdi. In keeping with the Guild's adventuresome spirit and educational mission, the chorus will also present songs of anguish and songs of hope by some lesser-known composers who deserve to be heard. To follow are "bits o' background" on the composers and descriptions of their works which the Guild chorus will perform.

Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611) set only Latin texts and wrote no secular music known to us today. He was critical of the music he did write, as evidenced by his countless revisions; hence the small number of his works and the consistent quality of inspiration and craftsmanship that they demonstrate.
The tragic settings of his motets O vos omnes, with its chains of dissonant suspensions and Vere languores nostros, with its subtle harmonies and syncopations, are imbued with Victoria's unique quality of mystical intensity.

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) is identified with the city of Venice, where he was appointed maestro di cappella at San Marco (1613) and enjoyed a long and prosperous career. He was ordained a priest at the age of 65 and appeared to retire, but five years later his composing took new life with the opening of Venice's first public opera house. At age 75, a year before his death, he composed L'incoronazione di Poppea.
Beatus vir is an example of the "seconda prattica," a term used by Monteverdi to describe the "new style" of the 17th century, in which solo instruments or voices were exploited. This work exhibits all the Venetian contrasts of rhythm, texture, dynamics, different voice groupings (men and women, solo, duets, tutti), plus virtuoso lines for two violins.

Gregorio Allegri (1582-1652) began his musical career as a boy chorister and studied composition with G.M. Nanino, a follower of Palestrina. He worked as singer/composer for the cathedrals in Ferno and Tivoli, then served as maestro di cappella at Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome. In 1629 he became a singer in the Papal Choir and composed a quantity of church music, only a few of which survive.
His Miserere, a setting of Psalm 51, has been traditionally sung by the Papal Choir during Holy Week ever since it was written. Its basic form is a 5-part chant, but Allegri has transformed it by interpolating ornamental passages for a 4-part solo choir, with notes soaring to a high C.

Antonio Lotti (1667-1740) studied in Venice with Legrenzi and sang in the chorus of San Marco. He was named primo maestro di cappella in 1736, a position he held until his death. He composed choral works, solo motets, oratorios, operas; and was highly regarded for skillfully bridging the Late Baroque to the Early Classical period.
In his setting of the Crucifixus text, Lotti uses overlapping vocal lines, repetitions, and expanding intervals to convey lamentation and inexorable grief.

Johann Sebastian Bach's (1685-1750) career is traced through his principal appointments. During his Weimar period (1708-1717) Bach wrote most of his important organ works and began studying the great masters of the Italian school. In Cùthen (1718-1723) he composed works almost exclusively for Prince Leopold's court, including the Brandenburgs and the Well-Tempered Clavier. Bach spent the last 27 years of his life in Leipzig. In his final ten years he composed the Goldberg Variations, the Musical Offering, and the Art of the Fugue, which have become exemplars of Baroque style.
Motet 5 Komm, Jesu komm (Come, Jesus, come) is the only one of Bach's motets that uses no passages from the Bible. The opening chorus is a poignant entreaty, an expression of longing for death. Instead of despair, the work moves the listener to peaceful resignation with a closing aria that glows with warmth and hope.
Cantata 131 Aus der Tiefen (Out of the depths) opens with a dirge-like chorus which does not descend into gloom but becomes an energetic plea for attention. Two aria duets express conflicting emotions, the lower voice singing in agitated impatience while the upper voice intones a steady reassurance. The cantata ends with a chorale that is a firm statement of faith.

Carl Heinrich Graun (1703/4-1759) served as Kapellmeister of the Berlin Opera. The favorite of King Frederick, Graun gave up a measure of independence. When Frederick imposed his musical tastes Graun complied, earning much criticism from peers. He exhibited more freedom of expression in his church music. For a century his passion Der Tod Jesu was regarded much as Handel's Messiah is today.

Führwahr er truk unsre krankheit (Surely He has borne our griefs) is a chorus from his unpublished second passion Ein Laemmlein geht, written around 1735, before Graun took up his post with the Berlin Opera. Anguish and sorrow are expressed by suspended notes in the vocal lines and the
throbbing orchestral accompaniment.

Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) graduated with honors from Queens' College, Cambridge. He became a professor of composition and orchestral playing at the Royal College of Music and conducted the London Bach Choir. Prolific as a composer in many musical forms, Stanford revitalized English church music and set new standards for choral music.

Beati quorum via is the third of Stanford's Three Motets, written in 1905. It exhibits the composer's melodic inventiveness and genius for capturing the mood of a text - word painting with pure, gently flowing, floating lines which suggest ambulant. "Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord."

Volume 8, Issue 4

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