This weekend, Magnificat will perform three concerts that will feature music by two of the most respected and influential composers at the turn of the 18th century: Alessandro Scarlatti and Arcangelo Corelli. The program will feature soprano Catherine Webster and focus on the intersection of the rich tradition of “pastoral” music and settings of the Christmas story.
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. ...
The pastoral tradition in music has had a long and distinguished history dating back to ancient times. The transfer of music styles associated with pastoral themes to settings of Christmas texts was quite natural. Not only the bucolic setting of the Angel’s announcement of the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, but more generally the image of Christ as the good shepherd.
Composers of the 17th century developed a vocabulary of instrumental motifs associated with music depicted the Christmas story, with reference from Castaldo as early as 1616. Similar pastoral topoi in settings of Christmas texts can be seen around the same time or earlier in German sacred songs and the Spannish villancico. Castaldo was one of several writers who claimed that the custom a associating pastoral literary traditions with Christmas originated with St. Cajetan of Thiene after a vision he had on Christmas Eve in 1517. The ...
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 ...
On the weekend of December 9-11, Magnificat will revive one of our most beloved programs that features the Pastorale sur la naissance de Nostre Seigneur of Marc-Antoine Charpentier together with traditional French noels, or Christmas carols from the period. This program was performed by Magnificat as part of our 1993-1994 season and again in 1997 on the San Francisco Early Music Society concert series.
Like many, I first encountered the music of Charpentier in the delightful Midnight Mass, a work that uses the tunes associated with many popular noels in setting the text of the Mass ordinary. Charming as this piece is, it gives only a faint glimpse of the range and profundity of Charpentier’s compositional skills. Nevertheless, in making reference to the infectious melodies, it captures the earthy flavor of these tunes, which were known and loved by Frenchmen of all classes.
Charpentier’s Pastorale is once removed from the noels, borrowing ...
