Magnificat

Magnificat’s 2009-2010 season opened with a somewhat irreverent production of Francesca Caccini’s La Liberazione di Ruggiero on the weekend on October 16-18, 2009. The production marked the return of The Carter Family Marionettes, with their troupe of wooden trouble-makers, to Magnificat’s series.

Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle expressed what many of the audience felt when he commented that “the Carters have wooden stand-ins not only for the main human characters but also for dragons and demons, birds and gamboling lambs, transformed trees and dancing sea horses, and the level of theatrical magic on display was enchanting.”

The principal manuscript source of Venus and Adonis in its original version is British Library, Add. MS 22100, a handsome presentation score-book copied by John Walter, organist of Eton College, who headed the work “A Masque for ye Entertainment of ye King”. Annotations in a different hand record the fact that Venus was sung by “Mrs Davys” and Cupid by Lady Mary Tudor. (Mary or Moll Davies was a former singing actress, who in 1667 had taken the part of Ariel in Dryden and Davenant’s radically revised version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and who had retired from the stage in the following year; she had also been one of the king’s mistresses, and Lady Mary Tudor was her natural daughter by the king – one of his numerous by-blows.)

For 300 years, the libretto for the earliest surviving opera in English, John Blow’s masterful setting of the classic tale of Venus and Adonis, has been assigned to the oeuvre of the remarkably prolific ‘Anonymous’. However, English Literature scholar James Winn has recently argued persuasively that the graceful and elegant re-casting of Ovid rife with parody and often gently sarcastic commentary on the manors of the court of Charles II, is in fact the work of Anne Kingsmill, later Finch, who was a maid in honor of the Duchess of York, Marie of Modena at the time when Blow’s ‘entertainment for the King’ was written and performed.

The programs on Magnificat’s 19th season reflect the confidence and imagination of this time from four different perspectives: the introduction of opera in England, the melding of “pop” music with the refined elegance of the French court, the virtuosity of four remarkable women, and satirical reflections on the human condition told through the characters of the commedia dell’arte.

A month has past since the Berkeley Festival, but the marvelous sounds of Vivaldi, Monteverdi, Cozzolani, Strozzi, and all the others remain fresh. The soaring melodies, bright colors and stinging dissonances in my head are accompanied by fond memories of the extraordinary atmosphere of the Festival, especially on the sunny Sunday afternoon when all the main stage ensembles joined together to celebrate the remarkable music of Seicento Venice.

The Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale in Bologna is like mecca for scholars of 17th century music. It houses the collection of the renowned 18th century composer, teacher and scholar Giovanni Battista Martini, known as ‘Padre Martini’. Most of his massive collection of music prints (estimated by Dr. Burney at over 17,000 volumes) was donated to the Civico Museo on his death.

The Berkeley Festival & Exhibition Finale will be a celebration of the extraordinary repertoire of music composed by Venetian composers for the elaboration of the office of Vespers during the century following the publication of Monteverdi’s monumental Vespro della Beata Vergine in 1610. The concert will feature works by 12 composers performed by Archetti, ARTEK, AVE, Magnificat, the Marion Verbruggen Trio, Music’s Re-creation, and ¡Sacabuche!

Magnificat will take part in what has become an impressive tradition, when we host the 88th History Carnival – due to be posted here on or around June 1. Each month since 2005, links to articles from the well-developed history blogosphere are gathered together and given some commentary for context.

The Berkeley Festival Finale program will be a celebration of the extraordinary repertoire of music composed by Venetian composers for the elaboration of the office of Vespers during the century following Monteverdi’s monumental Vespro della Beata Vergine in 1610. Though the music in Monteverdi’s collection was composed while he was in the service of the Duke of Mantua, it served to display his mastery of the sacred genres and contributed to his appointment in 1613 to the most prestigious musical position in Europe: maestro di cappella at the Basilica of St. Mark’s in Venice. Monteverdi’s colleagues at San Marco, and the illustrious series of musicians that followed him in the position of maestro, dedicated the finest fruits of their talent and skills to the ornamentation of the Vespers liturgy, the primary venue for elaborate sacred music throughout the 17th Century. This program will explore the ingenious ways that these composers adapted to the changing aesthetics in integrated the evolving compositional styles of the 17th Century in setting the ancient, unchanging texts that make up the Vespers liturgy.

All but one of the motets (O cæli cives from Salmi a Otto Voci, 1650) on Magnificat’s June 11 concert as part of the Berkeley Festival & Exhibition are drawn from Cozzolani’s second publication, Concerti sacri, a set of twenty concertos for 1 to 4 voices and a Mass Ordinary for four voices published in 1642. The volume was dedicated to the single most important patron of singers in northern Italy, Prince Matthias de’ Medici, a cadet whose military career had taken him from Florence to Milan in late winter 1640-1 and who mostly likely heard Cozzolani’s music during his stay in the city.

(Posted today in the San Francisco Classical Voice) “There’s no lack of ambition in this year’s festival. Artists’ Vocal Ensemble (AVE) will do Carlo Gesualdo’s mind-bending Tenebrae; New York’s ARTEK Ensemble sings the delicious Fifth Book of Madrigals by Monteverdi; and the culminating concert features a potpourri Vespers service with all the main-stage groups — 65 musicians! — performing together, coordinated by Warren Stewart, Magnificat’s artistic director. And that’s not to mention the more than 50 (that’s not a misprint) fringe concerts, ranging from the deeply silly to the deeply moving, in 15 different venues.”

Paul at the excellent BibliOdyssey blog, has a post with a series of fascinating prints depicting Bologna’s annual Festa della Porchetta – the Festival of the Suckling Pig, celebrated by the Bolognese for five centuries until the arrival of Napolean’s army in 1796. The tradition has apparently been revived in the last decade – including a shared roasted pig – to help spread peace in the city.

The blog has been quiet, but we’ve been hard at work. We’re close to launching the new Magnificat website – and this blog will a little re-designing as well. But that’s just part of what’s been going on. We’re preparing for the Berkeley Festival, our CD release party, and we’re hosting next month’s History Carnival.

Last weekend Magnificat completed our 18th season with three performances of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers in three beautiful venues for three large and appreciate audiences. We still have performances at the Berkeley Festival and a CD release party at Yoshi’s in June, but it is a good time to reflect on what has been Magnificat’s most successful and regarding season yet. Above all, we thank the musicians (full list below) who devoted so much love, devotion and talent to each of Magnificat’s projects this season.

Fielding a team of 10 extraordinary singers, Artistic Director Warren Stewart conducted Magnificat in a splendid performance of the 1610 Vespers, accompanied by four string players, organ and theorbo continuo, and six players of a variety of Renaissance winds: The Whole Noise and guests.

The following by Anna Carol Dudley was posted at San Francisco Classical Voice. Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco also reviewed the Grace Cathedral performance.

Claudio Monteverdi, already famous as a composer of secular music in the late 16th century, published a Mass and a vesper service in 1610. This year is the occasion for many celebrations of the 400th anniversary of that event. On Sunday afternoon, in Grace Cathedral, Magnificat celebrated. Fielding a team of 10 extraordinary singers, Artistic Director Warren Stewart conducted a splendid performance of the 1610 Vespers, accompanied by four string players, organ and theorbo continuo, and six players of a variety of Renaissance winds: The Whole Noise and guests.

Magnificat in Grace Cathedral

Five psalms were set for chorus, including a lovely double-chorus Nisi Domini (Unless the Lord build the house). Every psalm was bookended by antiphons sung unison by the men, led by celebrant Hugh Davies. Other numbers were for smaller ensembles and soloists.

Sopranos Jennifer Ellis Kampani and Jennifer Paulino sang the parts written for castratos, making nice work of the florid Pulchra es (You are beautiful) from the “Song of Solomon.” Also from the “Song of Solomon” is Nigra sum (I am a black but beautiful daughter), which Monteverdi set for tenor in spite of the text — perhaps preferring the heft of a tenor voice to a soprano sound, or perhaps writing for a particularly gifted tenor. The gifted Paul Elliott invested it with beautiful feeling. He has a masterful way with florid outbursts that are not simply vocal display but have expressive purpose.

Read the entire review

In his famous Vespers of 1610 Monteverdi embroiders the ‘rhythm of vespers’ and ‘recharges the batteries’ as the vespers moves from one multi-layered text to another.