Hail, Bright Cecilia!
A gala celebration of St. Cecilia's Day,
honoring the Patron Saint of Music and Musicians
Saturday, November 20, 1999 at 8:00 PM
Emmanuel Church
15 Newbury Street, Boston
George Frideric Handel
Ode for St. Cecilia's Day
Concerto Grosso in D, Op. 6, No. 5
Johann Sebastian Bach
Magnificat in D
Texts and Translations Performing Artists Review from The Boston Globe
Program Notes
Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, for most of us, represent the very acme of the High Baroque in inventiveness of melody, harmony and organization. Few composers before or since have been so thoroughly successful in almost every work they've written, or so thoroughly become part of the very "religion" of music listeners and performers. We enjoy a comfortable familiarity with these two composers. Performances of their music are pervasive, and contemporary scholarship continues to shed new light on their lives. It's safe to say that neither has been so popular among the music-loving public as they are now. That's bad, and that's good.
I suppose it's not really bad, actually. But performances of Bach and Handel in concert and broadcast are so common today that one can become almost "anesthetized" to the astonishing wealth of ingenious creativity that pervades their works. And there is so much to hear in this music!
Handel's second set of Concerti Grossi, his Opus 6, are widely regarded as among the very finest of all Baroque string concertos. Charles Cudworth, in his admirable notes for an Argo recording, thinks them the only real rivals to Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, but this omits those of Corelli and Vivaldi, which surely deserve the same consideration. Nonetheless, the Opus 6, composed in 1739 with the hand of a real master of the style, contains some of Handel's most immediately accessible and enjoyable music. The music heard in the Overture and Minuet was first used by the composer in a somewhat more simplified fashion a month earlier in his Ode for St. Cecilia's Day which closes our program tonight. But as usual with contrafacta in Handel, the changes from the original as heard again in the later Concerto are many and intriguing.
Tonight's performance of the D-major Concerto follows the Concertino/Ripieno format, in which solo Violin I, II and 'Cello form a trio ensemble which interweaves its instrumental lines among the tutti players.
The Bible tells us that when Mary first learned that she was to become Mother of the Saviour of the world, she burst into a spontaneous poem of praise. This verse is the source of the Magnificat text. Bach wrote his first setting of the Magnificat for his first Christmas in Leipzig in 1723. Its key is E-flat, it includes four Christmas interpolations, one of which has survived incomplete, within the traditional text. For another performance, thought to have been in 1730, Bach thoroughly revised the E-flat setting. He recast the work in D, omitted the Christmas texts, replaced recorders with flutes, and left only about 40 measures untouched, save for key changes. Bach's second thoughts polished, refined, and clearly improved the first setting. What resulted is one of Bach's most elegant and concise works, surely one of his most festive, replete with arias, ensembles, and choruses that are among his finest and most extrovert. Magnificat takes great joy in the Baroque affect of colorful word painting. Note such felicities as the kinetic power of the chorus Fecit potentiam (He hath shown strength), and the widely flung dispersit superbos (He hath scattered the proud), culminating with an extraordinary chord at surely one of the most dramatic moments in all of this great composer's work; the descending and ascending vocal lines, clearly reflective of the text in the tenor aria Deposuit (He hath put down) and exaltavit (raised up or exalted); the empty pizzicato close of the alto aria at et divites dimisit inanes (and the rich He hath sent away empty); and the reprise of music heard at the beginning of the work now serving as its close, set to the text sicut erat in principio (as it was in the beginning). The D-major Magnificat calls for a large Baroque orchestra with three trumpets, five-part chorus with sopranos divided and five vocal soloists. Few works rise to the heights of optimism and joy as this.
Least familiar of the works offered tonight is Handel's Ode for St. Cecilia's Day. Overshadowed by his great oratorios and operas, the Ode deserves a better lot, for it neatly combines in concise form all those elements which we admire in the composer's more familiar works. St. Cecilia, a Roman martyr whose name day has been celebrated since the 5th century, became the patron saint of music and musicians in the 14th or 15th century. Handel was moved to write two works with her inspiration, the 1739 Ode we'll hear tonight, and the earlier Alexander's Feast from 1736. Both have in common the verse of John Dryden, whose poetry was very highly regarded at the time, and still is. Like Messiah, the Ode was written at a feverish pace. All the work was done between September 15 and 24, 1739 -- only nine days. It received its premiere in London on St. Cecilia's Day November 22, 1739. Thus we hear it tonight on the occasion of its 260th anniversary.
This is a work for music lovers and musicians, by a music loving and knowing composer. The text deals extensively with the spiritual effect which music and specific instruments exert upon us as human beings, and this text has inspired some of Handel's most poignant and illustrative word painting. The tenor accompagnato which follows the French-style Overture and Minuet convincingly draws a picture of murmuring chaos in nature until Music makes its appearance. Hot, cold, moist, and dry leap about to their appointed tasks, and set the stage for Harmony, introduced and richly presented in the opening chorus. A striking aria for soprano and 'cello obbligato tells us of the passions music can raise and quell, with poignant and illustrative ascending and descending melodic lines. The tenor tells us of the martial effect of trumpets and drums. Flute, lute, violins, and what they and their music inspire in us all have their moments. The organ, embodiment of the Christian concept of Harmony and Cecilia's chosen instrument, invokes "holy love." And finally, in a superb finale, the soprano tells us of how on the Day of Judgement "...the TRUMPET shall be heard on high," with the chorus answering, adding "...and MUSIC shall untune the sky." The rising and falling arpeggios and scales in both chorus and orchestra eloquently illustrate the starry heavens, now incarnated as the dome of an enormous, all-encompassing, universe-wide cathedral, throughout which MUSIC eternally and joyously resounds.
Notes Copyright (c) 1999 by John W. Ehrlich
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