Every musician searches for masterpieces to bring to the stage. For two decades, Magnificat has been in pursuit of such creations to please Bay Area audiences. Luckily, it has narrowed its focus to the 17th century, a time bursting with dynamic composers and emotional works. “It’s a tribute to the audience in the Bay Area that a group could focus on repertoire from the 17th century and be successful and have a following,” explains Artistic Director Warren Stewart. “That’s a joint effort between Magnificat and the audience.” Stewart, an accomplished cellist, has dedicated the last 20 years of his career to early music. His love of Baroque music is evident in the dynamic programming presented by the group each season. “It’s a fascinating time and period of music. Lots of things were changing, new rules were being written, and new kinds of music were being invented. I think it’s really fascinating to have the opportunity to explore that remarkable music and share it with the audience.“

Stewart had the great responsibility of crafting Magnificat’s 20th season. “I tried to choose composers and specific pieces that were somehow representative of what we’ve done. They are very influential composers, and they’ve shaped our style and approach to interpretation. The four composers who were featured this season were the four towering figures of the century, and represent four of the major centers where music was being created.” Although many new pieces were presented during the current season, it has been very reminiscent of the group’s first season.

“I didn’t do this on purpose, but I went through and thought about what would be emblematic or representative pieces from the century and I ended up with the same four composers that we featured in our first season, back in ’92–’93.”

This month will conclude the anniversary season with Monteverdi’s Eighth Book of Madrigals. “It is a remarkable collection of music. In a way, it is a retrospective that Monteverdi did very late in his life, that covers about 30 years worth of music. It’s transitional in the sense that they are still called madrigals, but a madrigal is very different from what the madrigal was when he first started writing them in the 1590s.” The collection is subtitled “Madrigals of War and Love.” The book is split with the first half covering poems of war, while the second explores the theme of love. “The conceit throughout is that the warrior is lover and lover is warrior, so in a way they are all about love,” Stewart remarks. “The themes that are addressed in the poetry and the way he represents them in the music are somewhat different from half to half. There are many different styles of composition represented in the book, and I tried to represent all of them, to some degree or another. The guiding principle was that kind of variety, together with the unity the composer already provides.”

Although the season is coming to a close, Stewart looks forward to many seasons of exploration. “There’s no shortage of wonderful music from the century before Bach and Handel that we want to explore. There are another 20 seasons worth of music to do.”

Working with Charpentier scholar John Powell, Magnificat opened the season with a program of music the composer had written for the Parisian theatre. In our first season we had presented incidental music that Charpentier had written mostly from plays by Moliére also based on Powell’s work. For this program music we selected music from three plays written in the 1670s: Circé, Les fous divertissements and La Pierre philosophale.

When, in 1673, Charpentier became the principal composer to the King’s Troupe (Troupe du Roy), he became involved in the ongoing struggle between the company’s director and chief playwright, Jean-Baptiste Molière, and the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully.  Throughout the 1660s, Molière and Lully had worked closely in providing for the king’s entertainment a series of multi-generic experiments that combined theater, ballet, vocal numbers, choruses, and machine effects.  But by the spring of 1672 Lully had decided that his own future lay in opera.  Having witnessed the successes of Perrin and Cambert with pastoral opera, Lully set about obtaining the royal opera privilege and, thereafter, a series of draconian decrees designed to protect his monopoly and reduce his musical competition. Molière soon found another musical colleague in Charpentier, recently returned from Rome and his studies with Giacomo Carissimi.  The revivals of earlier collaborations with Lully (La Comtesse d’Escarbagnas, Le Mariage forcé) with new music by Charpentier led to a full-scale comedy-ballet, Le Malade imaginaire.  This devastating musical satire would be the playwright’s last work—for during its fourth performance Molière, playing the leading role of the hypochondriac Argan, fell ill during the finale and died at his home shortly thereafter.  Thereafter, musical life in Parisian theater was a struggle to survive in the face of Lully’s active opposition.

In his review for the San Francisco Classical Voice, Joseph Sargent wrote that “Magnificat’s artistic director Warren Stewart elicited a finely crafted performance, the precision and musical expression outstanding… a quartet of vocalists gave Charpentier’s music a nuanced, sensitive reading … from the opening overture to the final chorus, the instrumental consort was impressive in its precision. The seven-member band of winds, strings and continuo displayed tight ensemble work throughout the program, with impeccable attacks, perfect intonation and precise phrasing.”

In November of 2002, Magnificat hosted a conference on women and music in 17th Century. The conference was held at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and included papers read by four scholars whose work has illuminated our understanding of the emerging role of women as musicians and composers.The conference opened with Reflections and New Findings on Cozzolani’s Music., by Robert Kendrick of the University of Chicago and was followed by Poems for Nuns: Models of Sanctity and Religious Practice in Serafino Razzi’s Legends by Gabrielle Zarri of the University of Florence, Italy. After a discussion the conference continued with Washington University professor Craig Monson’s paper  Putting the Convent Musicians of Italy in Their Place, which included some of the material found in his 2010 book Nuns Behaving Badly. In the afternoon two more papers were given: Ann Matter of the University of Pennsylvania spoke about the rich tradition of Christian allegorical and spiritual language in the dialogues of Cozzolani and other nun composers in her paper Sacred Dialogues in 17th Century Italian Women Composers’ Spirituality and Colleen Reardon of Binghamton University read Persuasions: or You Can Catch More Nuns With Music, about the custom of constraining a young woman to enter the convent against  her will was both roundly denounced and widely practiced throughout  early modern Italy.  The conference included two programs performed by Magnificat, a vespers with music by Cozzolani in the choir of Grace Cathedral and a mixed program of motets by several women composers at Trinity Episcopal Church.

In December, Magnificat once again benefitted from the musicological research of another scholar, working from editions of Stradella’s two Christmas Cantatas prepared by  Eleanor F. McCrickard of the University of North Carolina.  Details about the two Christmas cantatas are scanty.  It is not known for whom they were composed, where they were first performed, or who the poets were.  One would like to think they were a part of the sixty-five-year tradition of music in the papal chamber in Rome from 1676-1740 for which a composer was invited to provide a cantata on the Christmas subject for a performance on Christmas Eve.  No proof exists, however, that either of them was used.  Other evidence—handwriting, paper, style—indicates that Si apra al riso ogni labro was for Modena and Ah! troppo è ver, for Rome with composition in the1670s, Si apra being the earlier of the two.  The subject in each work is treated in a different manner, from the somewhat pensive Si apra al riso ogni labro to the dramatic Ah! troppo è ver. Magnificat also performed one of Stradella’s instrumental sonatas on the program.

Magnificat next turned to the music of another remarkable woman from the 17th Century, Isabella Leonarda, an Urseline  nun and prolific composer who lived in a convent in Novarra during the second half of the century. The program was built on liturgy for the Feast of Purification and featured settings of four psalms and the Magnificat by Isabella as well as several of her instrumental sonatas. Kerry McCarthy, writing for the San Francisco Classical Voice noted that “the rapport and energy among the musicians was evident throughout the evening.” Two recordings from this concert are available on Magnificat’s music page, with Catherine Webster featured in Isabella’s setting of Lætatus sum and Rob Diggins in her extraordinary solo violin sonata.

In March Magnificat was presented by the Music Before 1800 series in New York. The concert took place at Corpus Christi Church near Columbia University and the program, like the recording Vespro della Beata Vergine, was built around Second Vespers for the Feast of the Annunciation. The excellent acoustics of Corpus Christi and the very warm audience contributed to a very successful East Coast debut for Magnificat.

Magnificat’s season concluded with a revival of Buxtehude’s cantata cycle Membra Jesu nostri. As in our 1996 performances, Buxtehude’s setting of the Medieval poem Salve mundi salutare were interwoven with Johann Georg Ebeling’s setting of Paul Gerhadt’s German translation of the text. In the program notes artistic director Warren Stewart wrote “In Buxtehude’s cantatas and the chorales of Ebeling we are presented with something quite outrageous — the image of a lover embracing a broken and disfigured body, compassionately desiring to examine its wounds. To our modern sensibility it is shocking and revolting, or at the very least in questionable taste. Today we hide our wounded in institutions, and we are required, in the interest of productivity, to conceal our own wounds.” Commenting on the performance, the San Francisco Calssical Voice observed that “each of the five voices was lovely in its own right, but when they sang together, the resulting alchemy made the group a real pleasure to listen to.”

Over the course of the season Warren Stewart directed ensembles that included Elizabeth Anker, Peter Becker, Meg Bragle,Louise Carslake, Maria Caswell, Hugh Davies, Rob Diggins, John Dornenburg, Jolianne von Einem, Suzanne Elder Wallace, Jennifer Ellis, Ruth Escher, Andrea Fullington, Julie Jeffrey, Rita Lilly, Anthony Martin, Stephen Ng, Hanneke van Proosdij, Elisabeth Reed, Deborah Rentz-Moore, David Tayler, Catherine Webster, Scott Whitaker, David Wilson and Ondine Young.

In 1638, Claudio Monteverdi, the seventy-one year-old music director of the ducal church of St. Mark’s in Venice, published his Eighth Book of Madrigals, the final collection of his secular music to be issued in his lifetime. He had last published a set of secular compositions in 1619, so the Eighth Book has a retrospective character, bringing together music written as early as 1608, and including one large work from 1624 and a variety of other compositions whose origins are unknown but which probably span the entire period 1619-1638. This unusually large collection was dedicated to Ferdinand III, the newly crowned Hapsburg Emperor in Vienna, whose mother was a member of the ducal family of the Gonazagas, former rulers of Mantua in northern Italy, where the early part of Monteverdi’s career had unfolded and to which he was still connected by various threads.

Monteverdi subtitled the Eighth Book Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi con alcuni opuscoli in genere rappresentativo(“Madrigals of war and love with some pieces in the theatrical style”), and the texts repeatedly expound the interlocking themes of love and war– the warrior as lover, the lover as warrior and the war between the sexes. The relationship between love and war had been a common Italian poetic conceit ever since the time of Petrarch in the 14^th century, and had been given additional impetus by its prominence in Torquato Tasso’s late 16^th century epic poem, Gerusalemme Liberata. The notion of lover as warrior was also central to the Neapolitan poet Giambattista Marino, who exerted a significant influence on Italian literature and aesthetics of the 17^th century and whose poetry was set many times by Monteverdi.

The texts of several of the madrigals has been adapted to make specific reference to Ferdinand and to the Empire (River Nymphs of the Istrus, i.e. Danube; the ladies of the Germano Impero, etc.) but the overall theme of the collection was influenced by the role of the Hapsburg’s in the ongoing conflict now known as The Thirty Years War. The younger Ferdinand’s interest in the arts and music (he was a reasonably good composer himself and a patron of Froberger, Valentini, and of course Monteverdi.) Shortly before his accession to the throne, Ferdinand, together with his Spanish cousin, also a Ferdinand, were credited with capture of Donauwörth and Regensburg, and the defeat the Swedes and their Protestant allies at the Battle of Nördlingen. As head of the peace party at court, he helped negotiate the Peace of Prague in 1635 that was thought, sadly incorrectly, to be the end of the dreadful conflict. These events may have contributed to the triumphalism that permeates the Eighth Book and the sense that glorious military victories would lead to leisure and more amorous pursuits.

Monteverdi affixed an explanatory preface to the Eighth Book, a theoretically important, though sometimes confusing account of what he had tried to achieve in this music. The composer describes three emotional levels, which he also calls styles. Two of these, the “soft” style (stile molle) for languishing and sorrowful emotions, and the “tempered” style (stile temperato) for emotionally neutral recitations, he says had long been in use. But the third style, the “agitated” style, (stile concitato), Monteverdi claims to have invented himself. The musical depiction of this style consists of very rapid reiterations of the same pitch on string instruments, like a modern measured tremolo, and equally rapid reiterations of the supporting chord in the harpsichord or other continuo instrument. Such repeated notes and repeated chords had, in fact, been frequently used in compositions depicting battles for nearly a century, but for Monteverdi the stile concitato meant more than merely a musical metaphor for the rapid physical activity of fighting. It was also a specific emotional style–a musical means for interpreting the emotional agitation of the protagonists and conveying that agitation to the audience.  The stile concitato, therefore, serves both a pictorial and a psychological function in Monteverdi’s music.

Magnificat’s program will follow the structure and order of Monteverdi’s publication, the selections in the first half are drawn from the Canti Guerrieri, or Songs of War and the second from the Canti Amorosi, or Songs of Love. The two halves open, like the two parts of the collection, with sonnets announcing, respectively, the themes of war and love. While the sonnet Altri canti di Marte was a pre-existing poem from Marino’s Rime (1602), it’s parallel in the first half, Altri canti d’Amor, seems to have been newly written for this collection and is clearly an imitation of Marino’s sonnet. After the two quatrains of Altri canti d’Amor that contrast themes of love and of Mars, the text of the sestet praises the dedicatee Ferdinand III. In addition to the usual pair of violins, Monteverdi introduces a quartet of viols when the text addresses the new Emperor and extols his lofty valor. This may have been a specific allusion to the large string ensembles favored by Viennese court composers of the time as the viola da gamba had gone out of fashion in Italy by the time Monteverdi was assembling his Eighth Book.

Altri canti d’Amor is followed, as in Monteverdi’s publication, by the most complex and sophisticated of Monteverdi’s large-scale madrigals from the Eighth Book,Hor che’l ciel e la terra. This madrigal sets, in two parts, the entirety of Petrarch’s 164th poem from the Canzoniere, a sonnet replete with Petrarchan contrasts and oxymorons. But Petrarch’s contrasts, as described by Pietro Bembo in the Prose della volgar lingua, are brought into harmony and smoothed over by mellifluous sounds and varied, rolling rhythms of his highly refined poetic style. This is easily seen in Petrarch’s fifth and sixth lines, where the most abrupt semantic juxtapositions are couched in an elegantly structured and alliterative sentence that draws attention away from the contrasts toward their union in a highly stylized and carefully crafted poetic conception. Resemblances of rhyme, of rhythm, of line lengths and stanzaic structure, and especially resemblances of sonority all serve to overcome the semantic contrasts. While earlier settings of this sonnet, notably Arcadelt’s famous account, emphasize this harmony and integration of oppositions, Monteverdi’s seizes upon the contrasts as the means for creating rhetorical statements and musical icons that can serve as the constructive basis for his composition. Indeed, contrasts as a means of expressing rhetoric and emotion permeate the entire collection and call to mind Monteverdi’s observation in the publication’s preface “that it is contraries that deeply affect our mind, the goal of the effect that good music ought to have.”

Two warrior-themed madrigals follow. The first, Se vittorie si belle, has been identified by John Whenham as the work of Fulvio Testi, a diplomat and poet in the Estense court in Modena and a literary follower of Marino. It was most likely written in the 1620s. The second warlike madrigal, Ogni amante e guerrier, was likely written specifically for inclusion in the Eighth Book with its topical references to Ferdinand. Notably for the extended bass solo in it’s second part featuring the repeated notes associated by the composer with the “agitated” style, Ogni amante e guerrier sets a slightly modified text by Ottavio Rinuccini. A similar musical depiction of warfare is found in the sonata La Gran Battaglia by the Modenese composer Marco Uccellini will separate the two madrigals in Magnificat’s program.

Altri canti di Marte, he sonnet that opens the second part of the Eighth Book and introduces the Canti Amorosi, clearly served as the model for it’s counterpart in the first half and is in some ways a mirror image, establishing first the themes of war that will be left to others before turning to more amorous matters. Here instead of Ferdinand, the poem addresses Love’s “warrior maiden” (guerriera) who has wounded the poet not with the weapons of war, but with her glances and soft tresses. Two lighter madrigals will follow, the five voice Dolcissimo usignuolo and the pastoral trio Perché te’n fuggi, o Fillide.

For the Lamento della Ninfa, one of the most passionate and moving works in the collection, Monteverdi again turned to Rinuccini. The poem, Non havea Febo ancora, published a year after the poet’s death in 1621, echoes the famous Lament of Arianna from the lost 1608 opera for which Rinuccini was the librettist, and Monteverdi chooses the same descending fourth ostinato figure for his setting of this lament. Massimo Ossi has shown the poem to be in the ‘strophic canzonetta’ form associated with Gabrielo Chiabrera, with stanzas composed of four alternating seven and six syllables lines followed by a rhymed couplet refrain. However, in contrast to Chiabrera’s convivial and amatory verse, Rinuccini’s canzonetta is a dramatic narrative, set as a dialogue between a forsaken nymph and a trio of observers. Monteverdi modifies Rinuccini’s poem considerably: the words of the nymph are set apart, framed by trios for male voices, and the refrain, rather than occurring after each stanza, is used to punctuate and comment on the nymph’s plaint. Monteverdi also provides performance directions with respect to tempo: the opening and closing trios are to be sung according to the beat of the hand, i.e., in a steady tempo, while the lament itself is to be sung ‘according to the affections of the soul and not to the beat of the hand,’ suggesting that the tempo and pacing of the lament are to follow the rhetorical and emotional nuances of the nymph’s complaint.

Rinuccini originally wrote Volgendo il ciel, a pair of sonnets, one tailed, one regular, in honor of Henri IV of France. In the first sonnet­–it’s text modified for its new dedicatee and sung by a tenor with instrumental ritornelli–the poet sings of the new era of peace that will accompany the new Emperor and calling on the nymphs of the Danube to join their nimble feet in dance. The second sonnet, set a galliard-like ballo for five voices with violins, repeats the final four lines of the first as its first quatrain and continues in the same spirit, extolling the beauty of nature and their reflection in the exalted honor of the Emperor. Between the quatrains and sestet, Monteverdi suggests that “a canario, passo o mezzo or some other balletto” be performed and we will oblige with the Balletto Primo of Biagio Marini, a virtuoso violinist and composer who worked in Venice as well as many other courts in Europe over the course of his long career.

His most historically noteworthy work though was Euridice, his re-telling of the Orpheus legend that was set by both Peri and Giulio Caccini in 1600 that are considered the first operas. No less important was his libretto for Monteverdi’s second opera, Arianna. The score for Arianna has not survived save for Arianna’s lament, which was published independently and became one of the best known and most often imitated works of the century. Rinuccini may have also been involved with Striggio’s libretto for Monteverdi’s first opera L’Orfeo.

During his lifetime, Rinunccini was highly regarded, as his prominence in Monteverdi’s eighth book of madrigals alongside Petrarch, Tasso, Guarini and Marino attests.  But, as Iain Fenlon has observed, “were it not for his poetry set to music by Peri, Caccini and, particularly, Monteverdi, Rinuccini would have remained a minor Florentine poet of the late Cinquecento unlikely to be known outside a circle of specialists among historians of Italian literature. As it is the fact that he provided texts for the first Florentine attempts in the new genre of opera ensures him a worthy place in the history of music.”

In the early days of opera, the librettist enjoyed at least equal credit with the composer for the creation of the new art form, and the significance of Rinunccini’s is reflected in Filippo Vitali’s preface to his Aretusa of 1620:

“This manner of singing can rightly be called novel, for it was born not so long ago in Florence as the noble brainchild of Sig. Ottavio Rinuccini. He, being especially favored by the Muses, and endowed with a unique talent in the expression of the emotions, wished to use song to increase the power of his poems and yet not allow the song to diminish this power. And trying, with Sig. Jacopo Corsi, a great connoisseur of music, to see what could be done to ensure not only that the music does not prevent one from catching the words, but more, that it helps bring out more clearly their meaning and their representative intent, he asked Sig. Jacopo Peri and Sig. Giulio Caccini, excellent masters in the art of song and counterpoint, to come to his aid. They debated to such good effect that they became convinced they had found the way to bring it off -and they were not mistaken.”

While in his dedicatory preface to the published libretto of Euridice and elsewhere, Rinuccini claimed to be reviving ancient dramatic poetry for his drammi in musica.

It has been the opinion of many that the ancient Greeks and Romans, in representing their tragedies upon the stage, sang them throughout. But until now this noble manner of recitation has been neither revived nor (to my knowledge) even attempted by anyone, and I used to believe that this was due to the imperfection of the modern music, by far inferior to the ancient. But the opinion thus formed was wholly driven from my mind by Messer Jacopo Peri, who, hearing of the intention of Signor Jacopo Corsi and myself, set to music with so much grace the fable of Dafne (which I had written solely to make a simple trial of what the music of our age could do) that it gave pleasure beyond belief to the the few who heard it.

While his libretti reflect Classical structures and themes, as a poet, Rinuccini adopts traditional models derived from Petrarch, as well as contemporary authors such as the Mannerist Gabriele Fiamma and Torquato Tasso and the pastorale poetry popular at the turn of the 17^th century. In her article surveying Rinuccini’s Mascherate and their relationship to the operatic libretto, Francesca Chiarelli remarks on the poet’s “harmonious flow of the syntax into the metric frame; the ordering of words that preserves their logical function; the sense of musicality that permeates his verse are all proof of Rinuccini’s craftsmanship, if not of true poetry.” After his death in 1621, fellow poet and librettist Gabielo Chiabrera praised  Rinuccini’s “sonorous versification” and noted his many followers and, indeed, many of Rinuccini’s solutions to the problems of writing dramatic narrative to be set to music, notably his use of unrhymed versi sciolti for recitative and more structured, strophic verse for arias, established important principles for later libretti.

Magnificat will perform three works with texts by Rinuccini at the Bloomington Early Music Festival on September 10 2011 and on our series on the weekend of February 17-19 2012: Volgendo il ciel, the Lamento della Ninfa and Il Ballo delle Ingrate.

Everything but the sermon.

Other than that, it’s the full package this weekend as the Magnificat Baroque Ensemble re-creates Christmas Vespers at the Dresden Court Chapel circa 1660. Friday’s rendering in Palo Alto was a gleeful holiday present for early-music lovers, unleashing sounds of sackbut and curtal (distant relatives of trombone and bassoon), while bringing forth German composer Heinrich Schütz’s “Christmas Story,” a setting of the Gospel narrative.

Schütz’s wondrous piece — quasi-operatic — was the centerpiece not only of the court’s service back in 1660; it also was the centerpiece of a 1992 program by Magnificat, during its inaugural season in the Bay Area. And just as Warren Stewart, the group’s artistic director, conducted the performance in 1992, he led it Friday. He was surrounded onstage at First United Methodist Church by 13 instrumentalists and eight singers, including bright-voiced German tenor Martin Hummel, passionately singing the role of the Evangelist, as he did in 1992.

The program — which repeats at other venues through Sunday — is a neat alternative to the many performances of Handel’s “Messiah” that crop up at this time of year. With help from the Whole Noyse instrumental ensemble (purveyors of sackbuts, etc.) and the Sex Chordae Consort of Viols (violas da gamba of assorted sizes), Magnificat is adding much needed variety to the musical holiday season. (Now in its 20th season, it also is honoring the 35th anniversary of the San Francisco Early Music Society, which co-produced the 1992 program.)

Friday’s performance wasn’t immaculate. But it was vivacious, filled with the many colors and tangy flavors of Schütz’s scoring of “Weihnachtshistorie,” (“Christmas Story”), which had its “premiere” in Dresden around 1660. One could follow the lively flow and sway of the piece just by watching Stewart’s body language; clearly, this program is a labor of love for the group’s director, who moved not long ago to Berlin, Germany, and flies in for Magnificat’s programs.

This one began with a processional chant — a medieval hymn — that led to a setting of Psalm 122 by Vincenzo Albrici, filled with hopping syncopations. Stewart, who transcribed this charming piece for what probably was its first performance in centuries, explained in a pre-concert talk that Italian music became commonplace in Dresden, where Schütz was court composer from 1617 until his death in 1672. The court was a musically open-minded place where the ensemble came to feature many Italian Catholic and German Lutheran musicians.

Friday in Palo Alto, as in Dresden long ago, the Psalm gave way to Schütz’s “Christmas Story,” based on the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Like an opera, it assigns singers to the various roles: the Angel, the Shepherds, the High Priests, identifying each character or group with specific instrumental combinations. The sackbuts usher in the high priests. The cornett (an early wind instrument, blown like a trumpet) accompanies pronouncements by Herod, whose parts were richly sung by bass Peter Becker.

Soprano Andrew Rader brought much urgency to the role of the Angel. But the night’s consistent standout was Hummel, singing the Evangelist’s narrative in operatic recitative style and imparting lovely interpretive touches throughout. As an example, with each mention of Mary’s name, he dramatically slowed the music to bring out its ethereal qualities, allowing it to open like a flower.

Organist Katherine Heater made similar contributions: When Hummel sang of gold and frankincense, she made a point of playing golden tones, high on the keyboard. And then there is the composer, of course, who dapples the score with wondrous touches. As the Evangelist sings of “lamentations and weeping, and great mourning,” the music moves downward in half steps, an ageless lament.

After the concluding chorus to “Christmas Story” — a swaying dance in triple time — Friday’s quasi-service moved on to a lively Reformation chorale, followed by additional settings of service music by Schütz.

Next, Pier Francesco Cavalli’s setting of the Magnificat energized the ensemble with its almost lush word painting and dancing rhythmic motion. And the night concluded with the Benedicamus Domino, elaborately harmonized by Samuel Scheidt.

The San Francisco Early Music Society and Warren Stewart’s Magnificat combined forces this season to reconstruct a Christmas Vespers service, as it would have been given in the Dresden Court Chapel of 1660.  This production was given its San Francisco performance last night at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church.  The Lesson for such a service would have been an account of the Nativity from one of the Gospels.  Music for the service would have been the responsibility of the Kapellmeister to the Elector of Saxony, at that time Johann Georg I.  That Kapellmeister in 1660 was Heinrich Schütz.

Thus, the major work at last night’s performance was a setting of Nativity texts in what was probably one of the earliest forms of oratorio.  This involved music for both a chorus and soloists, with the soloists corresponding to the characters of the narrative along with an “Evangelist” narrator, with instrumental accompaniment.  For the libretto for this narrative, Schütz drew upon two of the Gospels:  Luke (primarily the first 21 verses of the second chapter) and Matthew (the first 23 verses of the second chapter).  In addition to the Evangelist, the characters consisted of an angel, the shepherds in the field, the three wise men, Herod, and his high priests.

The musical resources included eight male vocalists sharing the dramatic roles and singing as a chorus.  The evangelist was sung by the baritone Martin Hummel.  The other vocalists included two sopranos (Andrew Rader and Dominic Lim), two altos (Clifton Massey and Christopher LeCluyse), one tenor (Daniel Hutchings), and two basses (Hugh Davies and Peter Becker).  For instrumentalists Magnificat provided two violinists (Carla Moore and Anthony Martin) and theorbo (John Lenti) and organ (Katherine Heater) for continuo.  They were joined by the wind players of The Whole Noyse:  Steve Escher and Alexandra Opsahl playing both cornett and recorder, Richard Van Hessel and Sandford Stadtfeld on sackbut, and Herbert Myers on curtal (an early form of bassoon, which sometimes contributed to the continuo).  The remaining string parts were taken by members of The Sex Chordæ Consort of Viols, including gamba (Julie Jeffrey and David Morris), violone (Farley Pearce), and bass viol (John Dornenburg) contributing to the continuo.

This made for quite a production, all conducted by Stewart.  Perhaps because this month began with the rich polyphonic counterpoint of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 232 mass setting in B minor, as performed by Philharmonia Baroque, what was most striking about Schütz’ setting was a similar sophistication of counterpoint.  Thus, regardless of one’s religious reactions, this concert offered a valuable perspective on contrapuntal composition.  Schütz acquired much of his skill from his studies in Venice with Giovanni Gabrieli and was then able to exercise his talents in Saxony.  Bach would have been well aware of Schütz’ impact on German liturgical music in the preceding century.  Others may have called Bach old-fashioned;  but he more likely saw himself continuing the tradition established by Schütz a century earlier and passed down to him by members of his own family.  Stewart realized this contrapuntal sophistication through his balance of vocal and instrumental resources with stunning effect, taking a story that just about everyone has committed to memory and delivering it with a freshness that belied its seventeenth-century origins.

Equally impressive was the performance of the Magnificat canticle that concluded the Vespers service.  This was a setting of the Latin text by Francesco Cavalli taken from hisMusiche sacre collection published in 1656.  While Schütz did not study with Cavalli, this selection provided an excellent sample of the contrapuntal composition style for voices and instruments that would have influenced Schütz while he was in Venice and would have received more directly from Gabrieli.  In this case, however, the counterpoint was interrupted by the interpolation of three German hymns, “Wir Christenleut,” “Lobt Gott, ihr Christen all zugleich,” and “In dulci jubilo,” all sung without harmonization or instrumental accompaniment.

These two compositions were the high points of the full service (which lasted about 90 minutes).  Other portions of the liturgy involved settings by Hans Leo Hassler, Johann Christoph Demantius, Vincenzo Albrici, and Samuel Scheidt, as well as hymns sung without harmonization.  The effect of the whole was an appreciation for the role that music could play in bringing the mind to devotional rituals usually dismissed as routine and thus a corresponding appreciation for the impact of an excellent Kapellmeister, such as Schütz or Bach.

A week of Cozzolani recordings in August preceded the regular season, which began in September with a program devoted to an excellent but under-performed composer, Johann Hermann Schein, one of Bach’s predecessors as cantor at Thomas Kirche in Leipzig. Already in Magnificat’s first season, Magnificat had included Schein’s striking setting of the Vater unser as part of our December concerts and individual works by the composer had made their way into program on other occasions. The release of a recording of Schein’s Banchetto Musicale in 2000 by the Sex Chordæ Consort of Viols led to plans for a joint program of the composer’s consort music and vocal works.

Instrumental works included three of the suites from Banchetto musicale(1617) and two Intradas from Venus Kräntzlein (1609.) The bulk of the vocal works were drawn from Schein’s motet collection Opella nova (1628,) with secular lieder from Diletto pastorali (1624) and Musica boscareccia (1628.) One of the joys of Magnificat has been programs like these when we have had the opportunity to explore music that is seldom if ever performed and give our audiences the rare chance to hear it.

In December, Magnificat marked the tenth anniversary season with a revival of Schütz’s Weihnachtshistorie, or Christmas Story, which, of course is filling the same celebratory role in our 20th anniversary season this year. It was a pleasure to welcome Martin Hummel back in the role of the Evangelist and to work once again with the early wind ensemble The Whole Noyse. The program was nearly identical to the program in 1992, with a psalm and Magnificat by Schütz and works from Schütz’s colleagues filling in the other parts of the liturgy.

Coinciding with the first of the Schütz’s performances was the release of Magnificat’s first recordings of Cozzolani’s music, Vespro della Beata Vergine. Another week of recordings in January ended with our next series concert which featured Cozzolani’s setting of the Mass ordinary that concludes her 1642 collection Concerti sacri. The program was built around the liturgy for the Feast of Purification and included the motets O Maria tu dulcis, Tu dulcis, o bone Iesu, O quam bonum, o quam iocundum, O dulcis Iesu, and Psallite superi.

Magnificat’s regular season ended with a selection of madrigals from Monteverdi’s Eight Book, published in 1619. Nine of Monteverdi’s madrigals were performed along with two instrumental works by Monteverdi’s colleague in Mantua Salamone Rossi. The program, and the regular season, ended with the ballo Tirsi e Clori, which had been featured in Magnificat’s first program in 1992.

But the season wasn’t really over, later in April, Magnificat performed another program of music by Cozzolani in two very different venues. The first was at the Carmel Mission in a concert presented by the Carmel Bach Festival, and the second was a self-produced concert at St. Vincent’s Catholic Church in Petaluma. The program was built around the vespers liturgy for the feast of Cozzolani’s convent’s patron saint, St. Radegonda.

Cozzolani at the Berkeley Festival 2002

Magnificat’s final performance of the season occurred at the Berkeley Festival and Exhibition and also coincided with the release of our second Cozzolani CD, Messa Paschale, which showcased the mass we had performed in February. For the Festival, Magnificat performed a program built around the liturgy for the Feast of Corpus Christi.

During the course of the season, Artistic Director Warren Stewart led ensembles that included Elizabeth Anker, Peter Becker, Edward Betts, Meg Bragle, Hugh Davies, Rob Diggins, John Dornenburg, Jolianne von Einem, Suzanne Elder-Wallace , Jennifer Ellis, Ruth and Steve Escher, Ken Fitch, Andrea Fullington, Richard Van Hessel, Martin Hummel, Yayoi Isaacson, Julie Jeffrey, Joyce Johnson-Hamilton, Linda Liebschutz, Matthias Maute, Marc Molomot, Herb Myers, Hanneke van Proosdij, Deborah Rentz-Moore, Katherine Shao, Sandy Stadtfeld, David Tayler, Lynn Tetenbaum, Catherine Webster, Scott Whitaker, and David Wilson.

Significantly, the Elector’s son, who would become Johann Georg II, created his own musical ensemble, parallel to his father’s, that reflected his musical tastes – and those those tastes were decidedly Italianate. Johann Georg II was strongly influenced in his musical tastes by his father’s Kappelmeister, particularly after Schütz’s visit to Venice in 1629. Already in the 1640s, he had begun recruiting Italian musicians for his nascent ensemble – often unscrupulously luring them away from other German courts creating some political difficulties for his father. He also sent agents to Venice, Rome and other Italian cities to scout out potential talent.

For the first years of the 1650s, the two ensembles co-existed but after the death of Johann Georg I in 1655 they were merged and formed, with as many as 50 musicians, the most elaborate musical ensemble in Northern Europe. Though he was still listed as one of the Kappelmeisteren of the merged ensemble, Schütz essentially retired at this time and the duties of leading and composing for the ensemble passed to a series of Italians: Giovanni Bontempi, Vincenzo Albrici, Giuseppe Peranda, and later Carlo Pallavicino and Sebastian Cherici.

Unlike other rulers of Lutheran states in Germany that imported musicians from Catholic Italy, Johann Georg II did not require Italian musicians to convert to Lutheranism a condition of employment. He also turned a blind eye to their attendance at the celebration of Mass at the residences of diplomats from Paris and Vienna, which was forbidden by law in Saxony. This contributed to doubts about the Prince’s commitment to the Reformed Church and speculation about the possibility of his conversion to Catholicism – speculation that proved to be baseless. The Prince was well aware of the social and political upheaval his conversion would cause and while there was encouragement from some of his Catholic allies, it seems to have never been serious option for him. He just wanted to hear the best musicians at Vespers and Mass and to his taste the best musicians were to be found in Italy.

The roster of musicians, especially singers, was also dominated by Italians, who were all paid three or four times as much as the German musicians – for far less work. Generally the Italians were required for Sundays, Feasts like Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and for special events – all situations calling for complex, figural music. Generally, these were services in which the Elector was in attendance. But morning and evening services took place every day in the chapel and the German musicians were required to provide the more humble music required at these services.

Needless to say this led to some hard feelings, most notably the departure of Christoph Bernhard, a noted pupil of Schütz, who labored as Vice-Kappelmeister in charge of the daily services for years. In 1663, when Albrici left Dresden to serve at the court of King Charles II in London, the Elector once again passed over Bernhard, despite his seniority, his demonstrated ability to write in the Italian style, and his long history at court and appointed Peranda as Kappelmaister. The disappointed Bernhard sought a position elsewhere and was appointed cantor in Hamburg, though he eventually returned to Dresden later in the decade.

When Johann Georg died in 1680, his son and successor Johann Georg III wasted little time in disassembling his father’s opulent – and extremely expensive – ensemble. All debts and obligations to the Italian musicians were settled and they were released from service. Bernhard was finally elevated to the status of Kappelmeister but now with only a shell of the previous magnificent ensemble. A large part of the court repertoire – the music composed by the Italians that could no longer be performed with the reduced ensemble – was given to the city music ensemble in the Saxon town of Schneeberg. No trace of this music survives today and the only examples of the repertoire of the court under Johann Georg II that do survive are various manuscript copies, notably those made by organist Gustav Düben and preserved in the library at Uppsala University in Sweden. It is from this collection that we have both Schütz’s Christmas Story and Albrici’s setting of the psalm Lætatus sum, which Magnificat will perform next week.

In what has become a decennial tradition, Magnificat will perform Schütz’s Weihnachtshistorie (Christmas Story) in the context of a Christmas Vespers from the Electoral Court Chapel of Saxony in Dresden. Schütz’s masterpiece served as the Gospel reading in the Dresden liturgy and in 1992 and 2001, settings of the remaining texts in the liturgy (the psalm, Magnificat, Vater unser, etc.) were drawn from other works by Schütz and colleagues from earlier in his carrier in Dresden, namely Michael Praetorius, Johann Hermann Schein, and Samuel Scheidt – all music from the first half of the 17th Century. For this season’s incarnation of Christmas Vespers ina co-production with the San Francisco Early Music Society, Magnificat will focus on the music in fashion in Dresden in 1660, when Schütz wrote the Weihnachtshistorie. In creating this program, we have been fortunate to have the assistance of Magnificat Artistic Advisory Board member Mary Frandsen, professor of musicology at Notre Dame University, whose 2006 book Crossing Confessional Boundaries, explored musical patronage in Dresden under Johann Georg II.

Fresh from his studies in Venice with Giovanni Gabrieli, Heinrich Schütz was named  Kappelmeister to the Elector of Saxony in Dresden in 1617, the year in which the centennial of the Protestant Reformation was celebrated throughout Lutheran Germany. By the time he wrote the central work on our program published in 1664 as Historia, der freuden- und Gnadenreichen Geburth Gottes und Marien Sohnes Jesu Christi, Unsers Einigen Mitlers Erlösers und Seligmachers, commonly referred to as Weihnachtshistorie, or Christmas Story, Schütz was one of the few members of his generation surviving to remember those celebrations.

Saxony, along with the rest of northern Europe, was finally beginning to recover from the economic and social devastation of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648).  As always resources had been devoted to weapons instead of people and for many years during the war musicians in the court musical ensemble were paid only occasionally.  In a letter written in 1651, Schütz described “the very great lamentation, distress, and wailing of the entire company of poor, deserted relatives of the singers and instrumentalists, who live in such misery that it would move even a stone in the earth to pity.”

The situation changed significantly in the 1650s, particularly with the ascent of Johann Georg II in 1656. While there was some concern among church authorities about his allegiance to the Lutheran confession, Johann Georg II was quite devoted to spiritual matters and to the support of the arts, and the new Elector lavished huge sums from the court treasury on an opulent musical ensemble. Some of the finest Italian singers were appointed and the instrumental ensemble was expanded to become one of the finest musical establishments in Europe.

It was with this magnificent ensemble in mind that Schütz composed his setting of the Christmas narrative, based on the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The trend toward the dramatization of Vespers readings was already under way by the time Schütz wrote theChristmas Story, as for example in a similar work composed in the 1650s by his colleague Peranda, but Schütz was the first to use such a diverse orchestra to depict the characters in the story. The use of operatic recitative style for the Evangelist’s narrative was also innovative and reflected a theological trend toward the personalization of liturgy in an effort to communicate directly to the emotions of the congregation.

In developing a liturgy for the reformed church, Luther and his followers retained the Matins and Vespers services from the daily Divine Office of the pre-Reformation church, adapting their content to suit the new theology. The basic structure of Vespers remained in an abbreviated form, along with many of the Gregorian melodies and recitation formulæ, but the congregation was involved directly through the singing of chorales and the use of German along with Latin. The inclusion of chorales, the addition of a sermon, and the expansion of the lesson to include large sections of scripture recited in German served to shift the emphasis of the Vespers service away from prayer and meditation and toward the education and spiritual edification of the congregation.

Though Luther established a basic structure of worship, the details of liturgy and ritual were left largely to the discretion  of local authority. Upon his ascension to the Electorate in 1656, Johann Georg II established a revised liturgy for the Dresden Court Chapel and this, together with diary entries from the court secretaries has provided considerable detail in determining the structure of worship in Dresden and the specific entry for Christmas 1660 has provided the framework and many of the musical elements of Magnificat’s program.

The season officially opened in September with a program devoted to settings of texts from the Song of Songs, a rich source for composers throughout the 17th century. While Magnificat’s program most often are focused on a single composer, style, or historical event, this program, entitled “Sonnet vox tua in auribus meis,” featured settings in a variety of genres and from several composers. After an opening motet from Palestrina’s fourth book of motets for 5 voices, the program was divided into four “chapters,” each beginning with one of the four “seasons” of Charpentier’s soprano duet Quatour anni tempestes.

The “Spring” set included Monteverdi’s Nigra sum from the 1610 Vespers and a five voice motet by Orfeo Vecchi. “Summer” featured Grandi’s alto motet Quam pulchra es and another motet from Palestrina, Descendi in hortum nucum. Monteverdi’s motet O quam pulchra opened the second half of the program followed by “Autumn” and a setting of Vulnerasti cor meum by Alba Tressina and Schütz’s Ego dormio. “Winter” included Carissimi’s Anima-Corpo dialogue Tolle sponsa and a remarkable dialogue by Domenico Mazzochi. The program cover featured the altar artwork from St. Gregory Nyssen Episcopal church in San Francisco.

The December concerts explored an almost completely forgotten repertoire. Beginning in the 1670s the Vatican began commissioning a new musical work each year to be performed between vespers and the Christmas Eve feast.  The tradition continued well into the 18^th century, with many eminent composers receiving the commissions including both Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, Porpora, Gasparini, and Caldara. Only two of the twenty four cantatas written before 1700 have survived and the music for both was written by Giuseppe Pacieri. Born in Trevi near Perugia, Pacieri took holy orders before succeeding Francesco Cardarelli as organist of the Santa Casa in Loreto in 1670, where he remained until 1679.  He entered the service of Cardinal Cibo in Rome by 1682, and it is most likely this connection that brought him six Cristmas Eve commissions. Il Trionfo dell’ Amor Divino was written for Christmas Eve in 1687 and was performed again in 1692 at St. Ursula in Vienna and it is thanks to this second performance that the work survives, since the only extant score is to be found in Vienna. The elegantly bound manuscript produced as a presentation copy to accompany the performance was used as the basis for Magnificat’s performing edition in what was certainly a modern premiere.

Il Triojnfo dell’ Amor Divino is an allegorical discussion of the significance of Christ’s birth, with singers representing Divine Love, Faith, Humanity, Idolatry, and Hell.  Divine Love reassures Humanity that with the aid of her trusted friend Faith, she will withstand the tyranny of the infidel and eternal damnation. Stylistically, Pacieri’s cantata falls somewhere between the Roman style of Marazzoli and the Neapolitan operatic style of Scarlatti.

The second week of Cozzolani recordings took place in January of 2001, coordinated with the repertoire for concerts in February. The remaining psalms and the second Magnificat from the composer’s 1650 collection Salmi a Otto voci concertati were included in a program built around Vespers for the Feast of Purification.

The program for the February concerts featured artwork by Ronald Chase that would be used for the first two Cozzolani releases. After trying out several ideas with Ronald in his studio, I noticed several framed flowers on on his wall. At first I assumed that they were paintings and was surprised to find out that they were in fact photographs that had been manipulated with a thoroughly “historical” device – a “xerox” machine! The works are described in this article and a gallery of Ronald’s flowers can be viewed here.

The season ended with two divertissements by Marc-Antoine Charpentier: Actéon and Les Arts florissants,  written during the 1680s, while Charpentier was employed in the household of Marie de Lorraine, called Mademoiselle de Guise. Both works fit into the loosely-defined genre of the divertissement, a term used in 17th Century France to refer to a wide range of musical works, from interludes in comedie-ballets and tragedie-lyriques, as well as entertainments that resembled the English masque. Some divertissements, like Actéon, were short independent operas on mythological subjects. Others, like Les Arts Florissants relate more specifically to the pastorale, originally a literary genre that, over the course of the 17^th century began to incorporate music and ballet in the manner of opera.

The brochure for the season featured the image for the Star from a 17th Century Tarot deck. This deck also provided the “cats” found on many Magnificat brochures and programs.

Over the course of the season, Artistic Director Warren Stewart led ensembles that included Elizabeth Anker, Peter Becker, Meg Bragle, Louise Carslake, Elijah Kenn Chester, Karen Clark, Rob Diggins, John Dornenburg, Jennifer Ellis, Ruth Escher, Ken Fitch, Andrea Fullington, Julie Jeffrey, Jennifer Lane, Karen Marie Marmor, Mathias Maute, Marc Molomot, Judith Nelson, Deborah Rentz-Moore, Jörg-Michael Schwartz, Katherine Shao, Mary Springfels, David Tayler, Hanneke van Proosdij, Jolianne von Einem, Suzanne Elder Wallace, Catherine Webster, Scott Whitaker, and David Wilson.