Magnificat

Click to continue reading “Monteverdi’s Song of Mary and ‘Re-Animation’”

Claudio Monteverdi wrote in a letter in the 1630s that the goal of music was "to speak through singing”. In spending much of my life researching, promoting, and performing the "new music" of the 17th century with Magnificat, I have observed that this music is indeed characterized by an underlying, urgent impulse to "speak" the human experience through music. It is precisely the intensity of that impulse that continues to draw me and the musicians of Magnificat to music of this fascinating, unsettled, and dynamic period. [1] The 17th century was a period of pervasive upheaval, a century when the fundamental perceptions of the world in all realms of life were shaken. It was a time when alchemy and empirical science coexisted, a time when the exploration of new worlds and the investigation of the sky challenged traditional conceptions of the place of the earth in the universe, a time of religious ...

In anticipation of the imminent launch of Magnificat's new (and vastly improved website), we have made all our commercial recordings available for download - just click here. In addition to our two CDs of music by Chiara Margarota Cozzolani, released on Musica Omnia, we also have the Carissimi EP Vanitas Vanitatem, that was available at our concerts during the 2004-2005 season and our 1996 recording of Cavalieri's Rappresentatione di Anima e di Corpo, which has long been out of print. We will have other live tracks available as streaming audio on the website, which is planned for launch on July 7.

Magnificat has launched a Facebook Page and you are all encouraged to become "fans" (including all who already are!) The page currently has a discography, notice of upcoming events, and lots of other information about Magnificat. Soon we will have the capability to post mp3s and videos. Our page can be visited by clicking here. We are also on Twitter, so those of you who dwell in Twitterspace please follow us @MagnificatMusic. We are working to develop a discussion of Baroque music and culture in this new medium as a way of increasing interest in Magnificat and early music in general.

Georg Muffat was born on June 1 in 1653. A special day for Jubilate personnel manager, Magnificat violinist, Muffat expert and all around great guy David Wilson, who, in 2001, published a translation of texts from Florilegium Primum, Florilegium Secundum, and Auserlesene Instrumentalmusik together with very enlightening commentary on performance practice issues. Born in Savoy, Muffat studied with Lully in Paris in the 1660s and then studied law at Ingolstadt. According to the biographical blurb at Goldberg Magazine, he later traveled to Vienna but could not obtain an official appointment and subsequently appeared in Prague (1677), ultimately finding a position in Salzburg in the service of Archbishop Max Gandolf, a post he held for over ten years.He was given leave to travel in the 1680s and studied in Rome with Pasquini ; some of his compositions were performed in Corelli 's house. From 1690 until his death he was Kapellmeister to ...

On the weekend of October 16-18, 2009, Magnificat will join forces with The Carter Family Marionettes in a production first mounted in Seattle in 2007. Below is a review of that production from the Seattle Post Intelligencer. We look forward to working with the Stephen and Chris Carter and their troupe of wooden friends! Marionettes Make Fine Work of Italian Opera by Phillipa Kiraly (originally posted on April 22, 2007 at the Seattle Post Intelligencer) Kudos to the Northwest Puppet Center for doing it yet again: opera in miniature with all the trimmings. On Friday night, "The Liberation of Ruggiero from the Island of Alcina," by Francesca Caccini, opened at the center with five singers, four musicians, more than 30 puppets and a wave machine. "Ruggiero" was one of the earliest operas, written in 1625; the first written by a woman -- Caccini was a younger contemporary of composer Claudio Monteverdi; and the first ...

Click to continue reading “Puppets, Nuns, Melodies, and Masterpieces: Magnificat’s 18th Season Takes a Tour of Italy”

This review by Joshua Kosman was published in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 7, 2009. The thing about love, as most people learn sooner or later, is that it stubbornly refuses to be guided by the precepts of logic and rationality. A pretty smile, an enticing gaze, some shapely body part or other, and boom - there goes common sense. Not so in "Venere, Amore e Ragione" ("Venus, Cupid and Reason"), the comely little musical entertainment presented over the weekend by the early-music ensemble Magnificat. In Alessandro Scarlatti's serenata, probably first performed in Rome in 1706, Cupid throws off his blindfold, and amid great rejoicing by the pastoral crowds, embraces Reason as his mentor. Uh-huh. And you thought 19th century operas were unrealistic. The charms of this work, scored for three singers in the title roles and a complement of six instrumentalists, are slight but genuine. Compared with composers writing even 10 or ...

By the 17th century the term serenata had lost its original association with the custom of offering a musical tribute to a beloved woman. Already in the 16th century, compositions entitled serenata were composed to amuse a sophisticated, aristocratic audience to satirize the custom, especially as practiced by the lower classes. In mid 17th century Rome, the serenade became associated with magnificent events produced for civic or diplomatic occasions. At the same time, serenades were also written for more intimate environments. Manuscript scores and libretti survive for 22 cantatas for two or more voices by Scarlatti bear the term serenata. Like most of Scarlatti’s vocal chamber works, these serenatas were heard in highly exclusive, aristocratic circles. The precise circumstances of the first performance of Venere, Amore, e Ragione are unknown. Musicologist Thomas E. Griffin has suggested that the serenata is associated with Scarlatti’s induction in the Accademia dell'Arcadia in 1706. The libretto ...

On the weekend of April 3-5, Magnificat will concludes our 2009-2010 season with performances of Venere, Amore e Ragione, a delightful serenade by Alessandro Scarlatti that will feature three Jennifers: Jennifer Ellis Kampani, Jennifer Paulino and Jennifer Lane. Together with instrumentalists Rob Diggins, Jolianne von Einem, Vicki Gunn Pich, David Tayler, and Hanneke van Proosdij, they will perform a work that Scarlatti wrote during the years he spent in Rome at the turn of the 18th century. All three Jennifers are well known to Bay Area audiences. Jennifer Ellis Kampani, who with sing the role of Amore, first appeared with Magnificat in the role of “Jealousy” in our production of Il Capriccio in 1997. She enjoys an international career that has included appearances with the period instrument groups American Bach Soloists, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Santa Fe Pro Musica, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Opera Lafayette, Apollo's Fire, Musica Angelica, Magnificat, Washington Catherdral Choral ...

This review by Anna Carol Dudley appeared in the February 10, 2009 edition of San Francisco Classical Voice.Heinrich Schütz suggested that his Musikalische Exequien could be a substitute for a German mass. Warren Stewart has taken him at his word, incorporating the work into a full-length church service. Stewart’s Magnificat, complete with two organs, a continuo group, and eight singers (including a preacher and a deacon), performed the mass Saturday night at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley. The so-called audience served as congregation, joining in on some verses of the chorales.Nowadays, chorales are called hymns, and in American churches are usually sung in English. The congregation was invited to applaud at the end, but that increasingly happens routinely in American church services. And lo, nobody was turned away for not singing or not knowing German or not caring much for sermons. In fact, the congregation seemed to enjoy singing ...

For our performances in February, Magnificat will be joined by organist Davitt Moroney who will perform works by Froberger, Scheidt, and others. Magnificat worked with Davitt last summer in two memorable performances at the Berkeley Early Music Festival.Davitt was born in England in 1950. He studied organ, clavichord, and harpsichord with Susi Jeans, Kenneth Gilbert and Gustav Leonhardt. For over twenty years he was based in Paris, working primarily as a freelance recitalist in many countries. In 2001 he moved to California as a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is Professor of Music, University Organist, and Director of the University Baroque Ensemble. His scholarly career started with a study of the vocal music of Thomas Tallis and William Byrd for his doctoral thesis (UC Berkeley, 1980), and has ranged widely over repertoires from the Renaissance and Baroque periods, with particular attention to the music of Byrd, ...

It is always a pleasure to welcome German baritone Martin Hummel back for another Magnificat set. I first met Martin in 1980, when he was still a teenager. I had met his brother Cornelius (a very fine cellist) at the Aspen Music Festival, and ended up staying with his family in Würzburg over the Christmas vacation. I had gone to Germany to work with composer Karlheinz Stockhausen on a cello transcription of his work In Freundschaft (this was before my conversion to baroque cello!) I remember being charmed by Martin's voice as he sang christmas carols and folk song, accompanying himself on guitar.  Many years later I saw his name on a recording on Schütz's Weihnachtshistorie (the definitive recording of that work, by the way) and set about finding him. Martin sang the Evangelist role of the Weihnachtshistorie in Magnificat's first season in December of 1992. Two years later he returned ...

"This slight work consists of only three pieces... anyone liking this work of mine may find that it can be used to good effect as a substitute for a German Missa, and possibly for the Feast of the Purification..." Thus did Heinrich Schütz hope to give the three pieces he composed for the funeral of Prince Heinrich Reuss Posthumus a life beyond their specific commission. Magnificat's intention in our program is to realize Schütz's suggestion, and incorporate the three pieces known collectively as the Musikalische Exequien, along with music by Schütz’s musical colleagues, into a Lutheran Mass for the Feast of the Purification, following the liturgical practice of the Dresden Court Chapel of the mid-1630s. Shortly after the death of the prince in December 1635, Schütz received a commission from the widow to set the nearly two dozen scriptural verses and chorale strophes that the prince had ordered engraved on the copper ...

When St. Benedict established the first monastic order in Western Christendom in the sixth century A.D., he prescribed round-the-clock prayers for his monks consisting of eight separate services, one every three hours. These services, the primary texts of which were the Old Testament Psalms of David, comprised the Office Hours, and the most prominent became the evening Office, Vespers, from the Latin word for evening. All of these Offices were sung throughout to music commonly known as Gregorian Chant—a large repertoire of single-line melodies that dates back to the earliest years of the Catholic Church. At some unknown point in history it became a frequent practice to perform the Vespers service not only in monasteries and monastic churches, but also in public, so-called “secular” churches as well as in the private chapels of nobles and high clerics. Moreover, Vespers services came, in the 15th century, to be occasionally performed at ...

As we enter our 17th Season, Magnificat is pleased to welcome two new Board members. Nicholas Elsishans will be taking over for John Golenski as president and Shane Gasbarra has been installed as our new treasurer. Both joined the Board of Directors of Magnificat on July 19, 2008. Nicholas, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer at The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Executive Board member of Grace Cathedral of San Francisco . Nicholas assumes the position of President of the Board and brings to this position a long history of Board and Executive level leadership experience in major organizations throughout the Bay Area. Nicholas’ passion for the music of Magnificat stems from his own extensive training as a keyboard performer and scholar at the Juilliard School in New York and the University of Southern California in ...

Magnificat is proud to announce our 17th Season of concerts in the Bay Area, and invites you to explore the “new music” of the Early Baroque. Continuing its tradition of innovative programs and expressive interpretations that have made Magnificat a Bay Area treasure, this season’s programs feature music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Giovanni Antonio Rigatti, Heinrich Schütz, and Alessandro Scarlatti. The season begins on the weekend of October 3-5, 2008 with performances of two delightful divertissements by Charpentier (1643-1704) –“Les plaisirs de Versailles” and “La couronne de fleurs.” Unjustly over-shadowed by Lully during his lifetime, Charpentier is now recognized as one of the finest musicians of his time and Magnificat has become the premiere interpreter of Charpentier’s music in the Bay Area, exploring new gems from the composer’s notebooks almost every season. Both works on the program were composed for the ensemble of Mademoiselle de Guise, in whose household Charpentier lived and ...

Magnificat is pleased to announce that Dominique Pelletey has joined Magnificat's staff as managing director. Mr. Pelletey will coordinate all administrative aspects of the organization. Mr. Pelletey was born in France, and completed his studies cum laude in Holland. On graduating from the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, Mr. Pelletey embarked on a career that included international exhibitions, a nomination to the Dutch Prix de Rome and many publications. Parallel to his artistic work, he pursued work as museum curator/director. After two years as independent curator with one of Holland's leading artist run spaces W139, he was named both executive and artistic director of the organization. Under his leadership, a structure for the organization was created, bringing it to the attention of the main federal funding arm of the government, allowing the overall budget to double. In 1992 Mr. Pelletey co-founded and directed an arts space, protonICA Amsterdam, ...

Here's a peek at the "new look" for next season.

This review by Thomas Busse was published in San Francisco Classical Voice on April 15, 2008. The crack early-music ensemble Magnificat attempted the difficult challenge of performing a Baroque comic opera in concert over the weekend. The form is unlike serious opera or slighter genres such as intermezzos or serenatas, which readily lend themselves to unstaged presentation. Comic opera, with its typically recitative-heavy, slighter music, depends on stage action, comic timing, and the conveyance of complicated and farcical plots, much of which gets lost by singers in dress clothes standing in place. I am happy to report that Magnificat, under Warren Stewart’s direction, pulled off the challenge magnificently on Saturday in Berkeley’s St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. The evening’s dusted-off museum piece was Alessandro Stradella’s penultimate stage work, Il Trespolo Tutore, a charming work from 1679, for which modern performing material was prepared by Michael Burden for performance at New College, Oxford, in 2004, ...