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Sunday, June 26, 2005 |
| ARCHIVE • 2005 • SUN 19 • MON 20 • WED 22 • FRI 24 • SUN 26 |
| Saint Michael & All Angels Church, 4 p.m. Festival Finale Kendra Colton, soprano Alessandro Scarlatti
(1660-1725)
Soprano II is sung by Rebecca Caballero. George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)
Intermission Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
The first half of our 25th Festival Finale is inspired by Saint Cecilia, a very early Christian martyr who, since the 16th century, has been acknowledged (without any historical justification) as the patroness of music. For her appointed saint’s day in November, musicians through the centuries on the Continent and especially in England have composed and performed vocal and instrumental pieces in her honor and for their own musical pleasure.
An edition of this Magnificat was prepared from a microfilm of the never-published handwritten score and performed for the first time in America on the final concert of our 1992 Festival. After great demand, it was repeated here in 1994, and today receives another performance from a new edition. BACK
Various colorful solos and choruses describe the place of musical instruments in the grand scenario of life and human most exalted use of instruments, thanks to Saint Cecilia who often was pictured holding a portative, is that for the organ in praise of the Creator (hear it especially in the soprano aria, “But oh! what art can teach, what human voice can reach the sacred organ’s praise?”). Following the soloist’s glorious final phrase, “The trumpet shall be heard on high,” the trumpet sounds judgment day when, as the chorus tells us, “the dead shall live, the living die, and music shall untune the sky.” BACK
The oratorio designation hinges on the characters represented by the soloists: Mary, the mother of James, who wiped the feet of Jesus with her hair after anointing them with oil; Mary Magdalene; and Peter and John. The chorus represents no historical crowds, but rather the Christian community that exults in the joy of the Resurrection. BACK Notes by Burton Karson |
lessandro
Scarlatti, father of Domenico, the famous composer of harpsichord
sonatas, was born in Sicily and spent his active years in Rome and
Naples. His output includes about 80 operas, dozens of masses, motets,
oratorios and other sacred works, and over 600 secular cantatas
mostly on the subject of love. Magnificat, the Song of Mary
found in Luke 1, is essential to Evening Prayer or Vespers, and
composers throughout the centuries have lavished great efforts on
settings of this poignant canticle. Here Scarlatti employs the stile
concertato to splendid effect, writing dramatic contrasts among
the five soloists and between the soloists and the five-part choir.
The changes in meter and tempo give musical expression to the words,
and the overall drama of the piece reflects the Roman celebration
of Saint Cecilia’s Day 1720, for which Scarlatti composed
and conducted it.
andel,
like Purcell before him, seems to have been quite taken with the
English festivities for Saint Cecilia’s Day for which he composed
two odes: Alexander’s Feast of 1736 (performed in our Festivals
of 1985 and 1998) and the Ode for Saint Cecilia’s Day
of 1739 (performed here in 1983), both to texts by John Dryden.
This Saint Cecilia ode was produced by Handel himself at Lincoln’s
Inn Fields on 17 November 1739 and, because it was a financially
successful crowd-pleaser, was repeated several activities times
that same season. A benefit performance the next year was for the
Fund for Decayed Musicians!
ach’s
great Easter Oratorio has no narration of events in time,
the dramatic solo and solo ensemble recitatives, melodic arias and
splendid choruses being set to non-biblical texts. First performed
as a cantata for Easter of 1725 in Leipzig, it later was extended
into the Oratorium Festo Paschali for four soloists and choir, supported
by an orchestra of three trumpets, timpani, recorders, oboes, strings
and basso continuo (low strings, bassoon and organ). Bach, as was
his habit when hurried, borrowed some of the music from his secular
Shepherd Cantata, written earlier the same year for the birthday
of Duke Christian of Saxe-Weissenfels.
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