Magnificat

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...