Scarlatti and Corelli knew each other well, each having benefited from the patronage of the exiled Queen Christina of Sweden in the 1680s. They were inducted together into the Arcadian Academy in 1706. Corelli had lead orchestras for productions of Scarlatti’s operas and Scarlatti was influenced by the violinist’s virtuoso performances and the crisp, clear tonal language of his sonatas and concerti.

Webster will sing three cantatas by Scarlatti, two specifically associated with Christmas and one from the pastoral tradition that touches on themes on longing and darkness that resonate with the Advent season. Though Scarlatti wrote operas and oratorios, it is in his more intimate works of vocal chamber music that his most perfectly realized and imaginative music is to be found, as he excelled in the art of the soliloquy, in detailed imagery, and in dialogue between voice and instruments.

In addition to the vocal music, Magnificat will perform three instrumental works, including two concerti grossi performed as sonatas “a quattro” – that is, as chamber music rather than with a full orchestra. Violinist Rob Diggins will be featured in the first of Corelli’s magnificent collection of violin sonatas.

The program can be heard on Friday December 7 at 8:00 p.m. at First Lutheran Church, Homer and Webster in Palo Alto; Saturday December 8 at 8:00 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bancroft and Ellsworth in Berkeley; and Sunday December 9 at 4:00 p.m. at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, 111 O’Farrell in San Francisco. Pre-concert lectures begin 45 minutes before each performance and are open to all ticket-holders. For tickets or more information please call 800-853-8155 or visit www.magnificatbaroque.org.

It is in the genre of works for voice and instruments, like those featured in Magnificat’s December concerts, that Scarlatti’s most perfectly realized and imaginative music is to be found, as he excelled in the art of the soliloquy, in detailed imagery, and in dialogue between voice and instruments. These works represent the most refined and intellectual type of chamber music at the turn of the 18th century and it is unfortunate that most of Scarlatti hundreds of cantatas have remained in manuscript, though many have recently become available in modern editions through the work of The Scarlatti Project.

As a boy of 12, Scarlatti had the good fortune of moving to Rome where he most likely studied with Iacomo Carissimi. He married in 1678 and later that year was appointed maestro di capella of San Giacomo degli Incurabili. The composer’s career was established in Rome with the acclaimed production of his second opera Gli equivoce nel sembiante at the Collegio Clementino in 1679, after which he was appointed maestro di capella to the exiled Queen Christina of Sweden.

After several successful operas in Rome, Scarlatti was appointed in 1684 as maestro di cappella at the vice-regal court of Naples, at the same time as his brother Francesco was made first violinist. It was alleged that they owed their appointments to the intrigues of one of their sisters, who were both opera singers, with two court officials, who were dismissed. During his nearly two decades in Naples, Scarlatti wrote a steady output of operas, typically two each year and his reputation grew as many of these operas were performed elsewhere in Italy.

While resident in Naples Scarlatti occasionally returned to Rome to supervise carnival performances of new operas, contributions to pasticci and cantatas at the Palazzo Doria Pamphili and the Villa Medicea (at nearby Pratolino), as well as oratorios at Ss. Crocifisso, the Palazzo Apostolico and the Collegio Clementino. Astonishingly, he also produced at least ten serenatas, nine oratorios, and sixty-five cantatas for Naples. He continued to enjoy patronage from Roman nobility as well as Ferdinand di Medici of Florence, to whom he turned when changes in the political situation in Naples and the financial insecurity that resulted caused Scarlatti to look elsewhere for work.

With the death of Charles II in 1700, the political tension that had been brewing was ignited into what would become known as the Wars of the Spanish Succession, and consequent undermining of the privileged status that many his noble patrons in Naples (a contested Spanish territory) had enjoyed, Scarlatti began looking in earnest for employment elsewhere. He was especially eager to find a position for his talented teenage son Domenico, with whom he traveled first to Florence after obtaining his release from his engagement in Naples. After a brief there, he accepted a position as assistant to Antonio Foggia, the music director of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.

While the role of church musician suited Scarlatti poorly and the papal ban on operas restricted what had been his primary musical focus, the composer’s second tenure in Rome proved to be very important. He had the chance to work together with great instrumental virtuosi including the violinist Corelli, the violoncellist Franceschino, and harpsichordists like Pasquini and Gasparini.

With the production of operas limited to occasional private performances staged by noblemen, Scarlatti turned his attention to the genres of the cantata and serenata. In 1706 he was elected, along with Pasquini and Corelli, to the Accademia dell’Arcadia, which encouraged a lively and sophisticated audience for chamber music, and, along with the enlightened “conversazioni” of patrons like the Cardinals Ottoboni and Pamphili, gave Scarlatti the opportunity to compose many of his finest cantatas. The cantatas Magnificat will perform in December most likely date from this period.

In Rome Scarlatti also witnessed the many musical triumphs of the young German composer Georg Friedrich Handel, who was to co-opt so many of Scarlatti’s tunes later in his successful career. It may be no coincidence that around this time Scarlatti again began looking elsewhere for employment first in Venice, with a new opera, and later in Urbino followed, where he composed a number of chamber duets on pastoral themes. Towards the end of 1708 he accepted the Austrian Viceroy’s invitation to return to his position in Naples, taking the place of Francesco Mancini, who had served in Scarlatti’s prolonged absence.

Scarlatti remained in Naples for the rest of his life, but maintained close contacts with his Roman patrons and made several visits there, some of them of long duration. In 1716 he received the honor of a knighthood from Pope Clement XI. His final opera, La Griselda, was written for Rome in 1721, and he seems to have spent his last years in Naples in semi-retirement until his death in 1725.

Dietrich Buxtehude

Dietrich Buxtehude was born in 1637 in what is now Denmark. At the age of 20 he was appointed organist at St. Mary’s Church in Helsingør, where his father had earlier worked and in 1660, he took a position at another St. Mary’s Church, this time in Halsingborg. For the last forty years of his life he worked in Lübeck, where he was organist at yet another St. Mary’s Church.

Buxtehude’s fame as an organist during his lifetime was considerable and for the first two centuries after his death, knowledge of Buxtehude’s works was limited almost entirely to his organ works. When the composer was “rediscovered” in the mid-nineteenth century, and his organ works were republished as an example of the style current before J.S. Bach. Interest in his vocal and chamber music works, however, has grown since the discovery of a significant collection of his works in the university library in Uppsala Sweden. The works on our program were part of this collection.

Our program includes seven cantatas whose central themes involve the expectation of the arrival of the divine beloved. The texts include mystical devotional poems, Lutheran chorales, and sctipture. The affective range of Buxtehude’s music for Advent and Christmas reflects the emotional richness of the season, from joyous anticipation to somber self-examination and spiritual preparation. The Advent season corresponds with the winter solstice, and the play, or battle, of light and dark in the world and in our own natures. However, there is also a profound tenderness to be heard, and wistful yearning for the future and eternally present miracle: “Eia, wärn wir da!” Oh, that we were there.

Advent music had a special place in the cultural life of Lübeck during Buxtehude’s tenure there through the institution of Abendmusik: an annual series of concerts, taking place on the four Sundays pf Advent. The Abendmusik featured musical-theatrical productions, performances of sacred operas or drammæ per musica. Buxtehude functioned as impresario, composer, artistic director, performer, and often as venture capitalist as well, for these events. Although he inherited the tradition with his post at St. Mary’s, Buxtehude developed the elaborate events that became a source of great civic pride in Lübeck and was often mentioned in 17th century guidebooks for visitors to the city. One of the most tantalizing lacunæ in the history of music in the 17th century is the loss of music from the Lübeck Abendmusik; although printed libretti survive, no complete scores or parts for corresponding music have come down to us. It is possible that some of the cantatas on our program may have been incorporated into the Abendmusik productions, though it is just as likely that these cantatas were intended for devotional services in court or private situations.

The cantatas are built up of contrasting sections. To this end the composer employs a range of textures and styles, from fugal writing to free monody, including choruses, ariosos, recitative-like sections, and arias; combining these musical elements to create beautifully expressive structures. Two of the cantatas on our program are through-composed: Fallax mundus and Mein Herz ist bereit. Although the sectional construction of these cantatasplaces them squarely in the seventeenth century, one is aware of beginnings of the polarity of recitative and aria that would dominate the next century. In Fürchtet euch nicht, a duet for bass and soprano, an opening concerto frames three strophes of an aria set off by instrumental ritornelli. Wie sol lich dich empfangen is a set of variations, each section based on the same harmonic progression.

Tremendous imagination and variety in the instrumental writing is characteristic of Buxtehude’s cantatas. The ritornelli serve to articulate sections of text and provide harmonic transitions, but they also reflect and amplify the affect of the text, and sometimes they offer an interval of wordless response. Several of the cantatas open with an independent sonata, each crafted to anticipate the affect of the text setting that follows.

Buxtehude’s only major publications during his lifetime were collections of chamber music. Two prints survive from the 1690s each of which contain seven sonatas for violin, viola da gamba, and continuo. The sonata on the first half of the program is drawn from the first of these collections, published in 1694. These sonatas owe more to the tradition of improvisatory virtuoso music of mid century Germany than to the Corelli trio sonatas that had become the model across Europe by the end of the century. Seven other sonatas survive in manuscript, including the Sonata in C for two violins, viola da gamba, and continuo on the second half of our program.