Magnificat

In Bruce Haynes’ thought-provoking, persuasive, and thoroughly entertaining book “The End of Early Music“, he devotes a chapter to a comparison of Baroque Expression and Romantic Expression. Appropriately, Haynes begins his discussion with a quote from “La Musica” speaking in the prologue of Monteverdi’s Orfeo:

“With sweet accents I can make every restless heart peaceful and inflame the coolest minds, now with anger, now with love.”

In reading Haynes’ revealing discussion of Rhetoric, Declamation, and “Affekt”, as understood before the Enlightenment, I am struck anew that the goal of the musician in the performance of Baroque music is to engender emotions in the audience – not merely to “express” those emotions. The composer provides a blueprint, a menu, and the musicians and the audience share the experience. The performer of this music is  tasked not merely with transmitting nothing more and nothing less than what the artist-composer wrote on the page, as Toscanni would say, “Com’ è scritto”. Rather as C.P.E. Bach observed,

“[M]usicians cannot move others unless they themselves are moved; it is essential that musicians be able to put themselves in each Affection they wish to rouse in their audience, for it is in showing their own emotion that they awaken sympathy.”

At least for pre-Romantic music.

The notion of the performer as a transparent “vessel” through which the composer’s work is channeled to the audience strikes me as a thoroughly 19th century concept. Surely, the circumstances in which we perform are heavily influenced by 19th century aesthetics (the very notion of “aesthetics” as we normally think of it begins with Kant) and the audiences we perform for are, of course, neither 17th nor 19th century audiences, which creates a lot of other interesting issues, but with Baroque music at least, the goal would not seem to be to offer some idealized “work” as conceived by a composer for an audience to reflect on, admire, and contemplate – that’s what you do with a Beethoven symphony or a Strauss tone poem.

I am persuaded that in pre-Romantic music (what Haynes calls “Rhetorical” music – in contrast to “Romantic” and “Modern” styles), the obligation of the musician is to experience an emotion and, through skill and technique, cause the audience to experience the emotion as well. Of course, with the music that Magnificat performs, there’s a 3 or 4 century gap between our audiences and the original audiences and while some basic emotions transcend any specific era, the range and flavor of emotions of 21st century audiences and performers alike are necessarily radically different from those of the 17th. What strikes me as critical is intention and commitment. The moment in the narrative, the instrumentation of the aria, the flat six before the cadence and the ornamentation implied by that cadence – these are all road signs indicating an emotion or “affekt”, which the performer interprets and then “feels”. The success of the performance is in some way measured by the degree to which that affekt is communicated and felt by the audience participating in the collective experience.

The Romantic philosophers who were creating an “aesthetics of music” viewed this sort of approach as manipulative or artificial and rejected it. Instead, they held up the canonic masterpieces of the genius/composers – the “Classics” – as somehow outside of time – and the performers role was to transmit them – without getting in the way.  Earlier in his book, Haynes quotes E.T.A. Hoffman from 1810:

“The true artist lives only in that work which he has comprehended and now performs as the master intended it to be performed. He is above putting his own personality forward in any way, and all his endeavours are directed towards a single end, to call to life all the enchanting pictures and shapes the composer has sealed into his work with magic power.”

Haynes also quotes the New Grove dictionary article on expression, in which Roger Scruton, who encapsulate the Romantic view:

“…to describe a piece of music as expressive of melancholy is to give a reason for listening to it; to describe it as arousing or evoking melancholy is to give a reason for avoiding it.” (emphases mine)

By the 20th century, performers become necessary, but interchangeable, servants or staff (these days conveniently replaced by CD players) that presented the ineffable works of the composer for the contemplation of the listener. I’m not saying that audiences don’t have an emotional experience in a “Modern” performance – of course they do – but I do question how often the musicians and audiences are sharing the same emotional experience. We have all known performances in which that did happen and, on some level perhaps, those are the only ones that matter.

The Title of this article, quoted from Thomas More, is also drawn from Haynes’ book, which I recommend highly to all interested in music.

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 persecution and political conflict. And like tumultuous periods throughout history it was also a time that produced some of our most treasured art, architecture, poetry, and music. I would argue that beyond a mere curiosity about the origins of our current musical universe, the music of the this period has a special resonance for us today because we also are living through a ‘paradigm shift’ comparable to the crises of the 17th century, with all the attendant upheaval characteristic of such times.

Early in the century, Monteverdi wrote that he intended to publish a treatise describing the ‘secunda pratica’ or ‘second practice,’ the new compositional attitude that he and his colleagues had adopted. Drawing on Plato, he said that his book would be laid out in three parts and would begin with a chapter on oration. How appropriate that a manifesto of the new music of the 17th century should give such prominence to the rhetorical art, given the dominant motivation that the communication of words and the emotions they express provided composers of the period. Through the experiments that led to the creation of the genres of opera, oratorio, sonata, and cantata, composers sought to integrate drama and music into new compositional approaches that reflected the immediacy and engagement so essential to the art of oratory.

Perhaps because the fruits of these experiments remain fundamental to musical perception three centuries later, they take on a special significance for us. The basic elements of what we now call “common practice” tonality, the dominance of the keyboard as the basis of musical conception, the emergence of institutions like orchestras and opera companies and the appearance of professional virtuoso performers – the very notion that the purpose of music was to move the passions and communicate emotions – all took shape in the 17th century. Read more…

I have just received my copy of Suzanne Cusick’s very impressive monograph “Francesca Caccini at the Medici Court: Music and the Circulation of Power“. Quite apart from it’s relevance to Magnificat’s production of Caccini’s opera La Liberazione di Ruggiero next Fall, the book promises to offer fascinating insights into the role of music in Italian society and the experience of a woman navigating the politics of a North Italian court.

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. Read more…

“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 coffin in which he was interred. Not only the choice of texts but also their order was prescribed, presenting Schütz with the formidable task of devising a coherent musical structure from an disparate array of texts. His ingenious solution to the architectural and musical problems was to manipulate the texts into “the form of a German Burial Mass”, parsing them so as to paraphrase the Kyrie and Gloria. Thus resulted one of his finest masterpieces, the vocal concerto for six voices and continuo Nakket bin ich von Mutterleibe kommen (SWV 279). Schütz also provided two motets for the funeral service, one a setting of the verses from Psalm 73 which served as the sermon text, Herr, wenn ich nur dich habe (SWV 280), the other a setting of the Canticle of Simeon, Herr, nun leßestu deinen Deiner in Friede fahren (SWV 281), which the prince wished to have sung during the interment of his coffin. The three works were later published together in an elegant edition as the Musikalische Exequien.
Read more…

Giovanni Antonio Rigatti is a name that until recent times was virtually unknown to music history. Living in Venice in the first half of the 17th-century, he has been overshadowed by his famous contemporaries, the chapel masters and vice chapel masters of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice: Claudio Monteverdi, Alessandro Grandi, Giovanni Rovetta and Francesco Cavalli. Thanks to the research and publications of an international coterie of scholars, Jerome Roche (England), Linda Maria Koldau (Germany), Metoda Kokole (Slovenia) and Gianluca Viglizzo (Italy), both the biography and music of this fascinating composer of the mid-17th century are at long last coming to light. I am especially grateful to Gianluca Viglizzo for sharing with me his as-yet-unpublished article on Rigatti containing new biographical data. Much of the information below is derived from this article and an earlier one by the late Jerome Roche.

Baptized on October 15, 1613 in the Church of San Severo in Venice, Rigatti became a boy singer in the chapel of St. Mark’s under Monteverdi’s direction on September 25, 1621. As with many such boy choristers, his early training led to a musical career as a singer, organist and composer. It is unknown how long he remained at St. Mark’s, but he must have been composing from at least his late teenage years, for his first book of motets for 2, 3 and 4 voices and ripieno choir was published in 1634, and the dedication of his first published collection of madrigals for 2, 3 and 4 voices, issued in 1636, refers to pieces composed “in the spring of my youth.” Also in his teenage years he entered the Patriarchal Seminary in Venice, finally attaining the rank of deacon in 1637. Even before becoming a deacon, Rigatti served for eighteen months (1635-1637) as chapel master at the cathedral in Udine in the Friuli region north of Venice, being cited at his installation as “one of the best musicians of Venice,” certainly a distinction for someone barely 22 years old! Read more…

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 least partly in polyphony rather than exclusively Gregorian Chant. The 15th century was a period of rapid expansion in the quantity of polyphony used in the central public service of the Catholic Church, the Mass, and by the end of the century, polyphony had become more prominent in Vespers services as well. Read more…

In Charpentier’s delightful divertissement Les plaisirs de Versailles, Comus, the “God of Feasting” seeks to calm a dispute between the haughty diva Music and the loquacious Conversation by offering the delights of marzipan, fine wine, and above all, Chocolate. Music is aghast, but Conversation is quite eager to sample the delicacy.

Comus: Let your disputes not cause commotion here! Let us play. To both of you beauties I shall give chocolates.

La Musique: Chocolate! God forbid that he give any to this chatterbox. As for me, I tell you, I do not wish to taste any. She would never cease her hot-air chatter.

La Conversation: Chocolate is good, dear Comus. By your influence I long to taste a little.

La Musique: No, Comus!

La Conversation: Comus, to listen to her is to waste good time. Chocolate!

Music’s concern about the effect of chocolate on the “babbling divitnity” Conversation, is understandable to anyone who has spent Halloweeen in the company of a 5-year-old.

Columbus brought cacao to Europe when he returned in 1502, but it was not until the 1615 wedding of Louis XIII to Anne of Austria (the daughter of Phillip II of Spain) that the French court discovered the strange brew known for its revitalizing and aphrodisiacal properties and declared chocolate as the drink of the French court. In France, as elsewhere in Europe, chocolate was met with skepticism and was considered a “barbarous product and noxious drug”. As with coffee, not everyone was eager to accept the mysterious new drink.

Initially, Chocolate was seen as having largely medicinal properties. In the first official statement about chocolate is made by Bonavontura Di Aragon, brother of Cardinal Richelieu, described the use of chocolate as stimulating the healthy functioning of the spleen and other digestive functions. 1659
Louis XIV gives the chocolate monopolies of the Paris chocolate drink trade and the French Royal Court to David Chaillou, a baker who made costly biscuits and cakes with chocolate—France’s first “chocolatier.”

“Monday or Tuesday, I will put on stage the third opera, also mine, which is for amusement, because it is a comic opera, but most beautiful, and it is called Il Trespolo; and because here they delight in comic things, I believe it will be an infallible hit.”

So Alessandro Stradella described his opera Il Tespolo Tutore in a letter to one of his patrons in 1679 before performances at the Teatro Falcone in Genoa. Featuring the bumbling character Trespolo from the popular stories of Ricciardi, Stradella’s opera is indeed “ridicola” bordering on slapstick and replete with vulgar language, cross dressing, and sexual innuendo – as popular in the early days of comic opera as today.

Il Dottore

The main character, and the butt of endless jokes, is the foolish tutor Trespolo, a character modelled on the commedia figure of Il Dottore. “Trespolo” is not a real name – it’s rough meaning is “tripod” – and it was used at the time to mean something rickety that can barely stand up – an apt description of the main protagonist. The remainder of the cast includes Trespolo’s ward Artemisia (Catherine Webster) who is in love with him but too shy to tell him, Nino (José Lemos) who is in love with her and later goes mad, Ciro (Jennifer Ellis-Kampani) his initially crazy brother who also loves Artemisia, Simona (Paul Elliott) their old, foolish nurse, and Despina (Laura Heimes), her shrewd daughter. The instrumental ensemble, typically small as in all of Stradella’s operas, consists of two violins (Rob Diggins and Jolianne von Einem), violoncello (me), theorbo (David Tayler), and harpsichord (Katherine Heater).

Comic opera was still relatively new to Italy at the end of the 1670s. Stradella had composed a comic prologue for O di Cocito oscure deità in 1668, which then traveled with Jacopo Melani’s Il Girello, which Magnificat performed in 1998. He had also composed other comic prologues and intermezzi for the Teatro Tordinona in Rome in the early 70s, so he was quite familiar with the emerging genre of comic opera by the time he wrote Il Trespolo.

Amid the silliness, there are several moments of more serious music, when characters express emotions of despair and rejection over love unrequited. Indeed Villifranchi’s alternate tile for Il Trespolo “Amore è veleno e medicina degl’intelletti” – roughly “Love as medicine and poison for the intellect” – suggests a far more profound subtext within the general inanity of mistaken identity and mis-delivered love letters. Nino’s despair at Artemisia’s rejection provides an opportunity for two mad scenes, which had become a staple of Italian drama by the last quarter of the 17th century. Stradella had already composed such scenes for his earlier opera La forza dell’ amor paterno. The mad scenes were not derived from Ricciardi’s original, but were inserted by the librettist Villifranchi, no doubt to the delight of the Genoese audiences.

The success of Il Trespolo is evidenced by the interest shown by several noblemen in a repeat performance, though it is unclear if any of these proposals came to fruition. In any case Stradella completed only one more opera before his untimely death in 1682.

The following Synopsis was prepared by Dr. Michael Burden of New College Oxford and is reposted here with permission of the author.

The story centres on Signor Trespolo’s attempts to find a husband for his ward, Artemisia; if she is satisfied, then they will both inherit money under her father’s will.

At the beginning of Act I, Simona is trying to get Despina to agree to a marriage with Trespolo, saying that a husband is like medicine, but Despina says that Trespolo is like a hairy bear, and has no brain. Simona welcomes Nino, who has been away, business unspecified. He inquires the reason for the argument, and, when told that Despina does not want to get married, says that that is only natural, since she is young. Nino then mentions his brother Ciro, who has been driven crazy by love. He sends Simona away with the comment that he will find a way to marry off Despina without shouting. With Simona out of the way, Nino wants to know if Artemisia has ‘relaxed’? Nino is deeply in love with Artemisia who refuses to marry him. Despina says, well, if Artemisia won’t marry him, she won’t, and why is Nino wasting his time on it? Nino asks Despina to be Artemisia’s ‘tutor in love’; she agrees. But as he leaves, Despina tells us that it is Nino she really wants to marry. Artemisia arrives, repressed by her love for Trespolo; she lies down and sleeps. Ciro, quite mad from love, now enters and in his madness, lies down to sleep along side her. Trespolo finds them both asleep. He wakes them, and when the raving Ciro tells them that his name means dog in Persian, Artemisia orders him to leave. Trespolo then broaches the subject of Artemisia’s marriage;the subject is important to him, because under her father’s will, he has to give his permission for the nuptials, but Artemisia has to be satisfied; if she is, then he benefits financially. However, Artemisia will only agree to marry someone she loves, but finds it impossible to utter the name of the one she wishes for her husband, so she passes him a cryptic note before going into the house. Trespolo cannot understand the note at all; it says ‘the one who is here’, and he, Trespolo, is the only one there! However, at that moment, Ciro, the ‘crazy one’, arrives on the scene, and Trespolo leaps to the conclusion that it is Ciro who Artemisia loves. Trespolo is shocked that Artemisia’s beautiful face should be wasted on someone like him. Trespolo asks Ciro if he has thought marrying Artemisia; he is delighted at the idea. Artemisia does not come out to them, so they knock on the door. Trespolo tells Artemisia that he is there with her ‘husband’. When Artemisia realises that it is Ciro who Trespolo means, she is appalled; she rejects him, and departs, followed by Trespolo, leaving Ciro disappointed. In desperation to get her message across, Artemisia now dictates Trespolo a note which repeatedly says ‘It’s you’; he still does not get the message, and when Nino arrives declaring his love, Artemisia makes her escape. Her flight misleads Trespolo; he decides that it is Nino with whom Artemisia is in love, and hands him Artemisia’s note.

Act II starts with Simona trying to teach Ciro proper behaviour and how to court a lady; she persuades him that Artemisia will love him if he makes himself attractive. Trespolo is still in love with Despina; she, however, sarcastically rejects him. They revert to discussing Nino and Artemisia. Despina has brought an open note from Nino to Artemisia (this is a reply to the love letter Artemisia wrote to Trespolo, but which he mistakenly gave to Nino at the end of Act 1). They both criticise the grammar (Nino is clearly a vulgarian) but Trespolo has no glasses and cannot see the text clearly; he reads that Despina has embraced Nino, and bursts into a jealous rage. When Despina gets hold of the letter, it says something quite different, of course. Trespolo apologises, and asks Despina to tell Nino that he now awaits him. As she leaves, Trespolo inquires after Simona; Despina tells him that he is teaching ‘seriousness’ to the crazy one. When Nino appears, Trespolo says he has Nino’s reply to Artemisia’s note, but can’t understand it. Trespolo states that, as he understands it, Nino wants to marry Artemisia. However, as she is Trespolo’s ward, his consent is required for the wedding, and Trespolo will only give it if Nino ‘gives’ him his true love, Despina. Artemisia overhears Trespolo speaking of another love, and hears the discussion on the exchange of ‘wives to be’. She withdraws in shock and distress. Trespolo, knocking on the window, gives Artemisia Nino’s reply. Nino makes love to her, but Artemisia rejects him and tears up the note; she is a lady, and will not be bought as though she were merchandise; she retreats into the house. Nino muses: what has he done to have the fates work against him so? Ciro enters; neither appear to see each other. Both sing of Artemisia, Nino dwelling resentfully on her rejection of his love for her, swearing to hate her, while Ciro sings of her beauty, but how he must say goodbye for a while. [Interval] Artemisia is still unable to utter the name of her beloved; she tells him that the one she loves is the same height as Trespolo, and that he has three syllables to his name. Trespolo agrees to look at a picture of him; she comes back with a mirror, and then leaves to spare her blushes! Trespolo, looking into it, cannot work out of whom the ‘picture’ is, but at that moment, Simona arrives on the scene, and as her image is reflected briefly in the mirror, Trespolo decides that it must be Simona that Artemisia loves. But, he muses, although the number syllables is right – Si-mo-na – why would one woman want to marry another? But it will have to happen, otherwise he will not get Despina; Artemisia must be satisfied.

As Act III opens, Trespolo cannot understand why Simona does not want to marry Artemisia. Simona eventually agrees, scheming to put Ciro in her place. Artemisia arrives, to be greeted by Simona; she tells Artemisia that Trespolo has told her to spare Artemisia’s blushes; he KNOWS – but about Artemisia’s supposed desire for Simona. Believing that Trespolo has AT LAST realised that her love is for him, Artemisia gives Simona a ring for him as a token of affection, and asks her to return with him; she disappears into the house. Simona muses that she never thought she would have to take a wife in her old age, but sees Artemisia’s sterling qualities. Ciro arrives, mad with love; he concludes that love is our medicine, and not our poison. Nino enters, also mad with love. Despina has been talking to Simona; and has discovered the plot to marry her to Trespolo. Trespolo is attempting to persuade Despina to marry him clandestinely; Despina agrees, reluctantly, to meet him there at two o’clock. Simona tells Trespolo that she finds Artemisia so beautiful that she wants to marry her herself, and produces the ring that Artemisia gave her. Ciro arrives in time to overhear the end of the conversation, which arrouses his curiosity. Now sane, he does not know whether to feel sorriest for himself, or his brother, Nino. Despina tells Ciro of the secret plan for her to go to Trespolo at 2am. Ciro is mystified; why all the secrecy? Despina replies that Artemisia does not want them to marry. Artemisia enters to find Trespolo alone; where is Simona, she asks? Artemisia speaks of her love for Trespolo, but is very tired; Trespolo is fed up with waiting, and they go to dinner. Nino and Ciro sing of love; Nino is now completely mad, Ciro now completely sane. Ciro realises that Nino is beyond help, and concentrates on his quest to protect Despina from Trespolo’s advances. Nino sings to himself of the hell of love; he is still obsessed with Artemisia. Artemisia and Trespolo are disturbed by Ciro, banging about; however, they cannot see who it is. Ciro tells Artemisia the truth about Trespolo and his pursuit of Despina; she sees that Trespolo has misled her. In her fury at these revelations, Artemisia accidentally puts out Trespolo’s candle, and he sneaks out to re-light it. In the darkness, Artemisia does not notice that he has left, and continues talking of love as if to Trespolo, but it is Ciro who hears her, and when, much to Artemisia’s surprise, the voice in the dark says that he wants to marry her, she agrees at once. Simona is very confused; Nino is crazy, Ciro is sane, and Despina is not married! She will just have to stay at home and spin. To be loved, you need to be young; but the appetite grows when your teeth fall out. Ciro tells the noisy Trespolo to keep quiet; Artemisia is now his wife. Trespolo is shocked; surely people should not choose their own husbands? Ciro says Artemisia offered to marry him, and he knew a good thing when he saw it! Simona comments that if Artemisia is Ciro’s wife, then she will have a bisexual wife. Artemisia says that her school-girl love for her tutor will now be silent, and she will let her heart change its destiny; thus honour and virtue will be satisfied. Simona reports that Nino is now completely mad; Ciro, recognising that it is only man’s ordered thoughts that separate him from animals, moralises that it is love that is able to make men crazy or wise.

by Samuel Dwinell

January of 1679 saw the premiere of Alessandro Stradella’s Il Trespolo tutore in the Teatro Falcone in Genoa, a city well suited to the plot of this opera; as Stradella himself noted, the Genoese had a penchant for ‘comic things’. By the time he wrote Trespolo, the recent genre of Italian comic opera was becoming well established, and Stradella had already written comic prologues and intermezzos for the Teatro Tordinona. However, with this opera, Stradella invented the operatic buffo bass (something which would become a defining characteristic of later comic opera), and placed him in the title role as Trespolo, the foolish guardian.

The libretto is Giovanni Cosimo Villifranchi’s reworking of a popular comic play by Giovanni Battista Ricciardi. With just the same emphasis on intrigue, misunderstandings, and farce as Villifranchi’s adaptation, Ricciardi’s play contains a light comedy, often bordering on slap-stick in a language which resembles the everyday, colloquial Italian suitable to the narrative. Yet more serious moments punctuate the opera’s comedy in a way so indicative of Stradella’s expert handling of text, music, and plot.

If the colourful nature of the plot tends in places towards the absurd, it is positively mundane in comparison with Stradella’s extraordinary life, particularly as he lived it in the 1670s. He indulged himself in the carefree life of the leisured classes, spending his time as he pleased and frequently moving around Italy. But while on a sojourn in Rome in 1677, he incurred the wrath of Cardinal Alderan Cibo, and was forced to flee to Venice. Here, in his new position of musical pedagogue to the mistress of Alvise Contarini, a powerful nobleman, he became more amorous towards his pupil than his aristocratic employer found appropriate. Much to the anger of the Contarini family, the couple fled to Turin as fugitives pursued by a 40-strong band of men headed by Alvise Contarini himself hoping to capture the girl and to kill Stradella. Thankfully for us, their efforts were unsuccessful, but Contraini did not give up. He sent two more would-be assassins to the composer’s hiding place, but again the attempts on his life led only to more cunning on Stradella’s part. Unlike any self-respecting action-movie hero, he fled Turin without the girl and ended up in Genoa, just in time to oversee the production of his new opera, Il Trespolo tutore.

See Synopsis here

H. Wiley Hitchcock was instrumental in the “re-discovery” of Marc-Antoine Charpentier in the 20th Century. We are indebted to the seminal research he undertook to resurrect this almost forgotten master, whose music has delighted and moved audiences and who has now assumed a rightful place as one of the greatest composers in the history of music. His obituary was released today by Conservatory of Music of Brooklyn College (CUNY).

The Conservatory of Music of Brooklyn College (CUNY) deeply regrets to announce that Distinguished Professor emeritus H. Wiley Hitchcock, 84, passed away in the early morning of December 5, 2007, after a lengthy illness. He was born September 28, 1923, in Detroit, MI. After attending Dartmouth (A.B., 1944) and University of Michigan (M.M. 1948, Ph.D. 1954) – studying in 1949 at the Conservatoire Américain (under Nadia Boulanger) – and after teaching at the University of Michigan, N.Y.U., and Hunter College, Professor Hitchcock came to Brooklyn College in 1971 where he was the founding director of the college’s Institute for Studies in American Music (ISAM). Wiley was brilliant, a true man of letters, a model musicologist with multifaceted interests, impeccable standards, and path-breaking publications. His highly esteemed work in American music studies (New Grove Dictionary of American Music; his Prentice-Hall textbook series that included his Music in the United States; studies on Charles Ives, etc. etc.) was built upon his excellent contributions to the fields of French and Italian Baroque music (M.-A. Charpentier, G. Caccini, et al.).

He was a staunch advocate for American music of all kinds. In 1990-92 he served as elected president of the American Musicological Society, and the number of distinguished projects and boards on which he served seems endless. Wiley was a respected colleague at the Conservatory as well as at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Doctoral Program in Music, where he became a helpful and encouraging mentor and friend to many newly minted Ph.D.’s in music. Those of us who knew Wiley personally always relished the notes or letters he sent us or the newsy gossip he might share.

For an interview that Wiley gave Frank J. Oteri in November 2002 and recalls for us his special style and wit, see: http://newmusicbox.org/44/interview_hitchcock.pdf

The Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College hopes to rename ISAM as the Hitchcock Institute for Studies in American Music, in Professor Hitchcock’s memory.

Wiley is survived by his wife Janet and a daughter and son, Susan and Hugh, from his first marriage, as well as two grandchildren. There will be a memorial service at a later date to be announced by the family.

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 earliest surviving collection of Christmas pastorals in Italy was written by Francesco Fiamengo for the Christmas Eve celebrations at Messina and published in 1637.

Already in the Fiamengo collection many of the basic stylistic elements that are found in the pastorale compositions of Scarlatti and Corelli were already present. Typically in a slow and lilting 6/8 or 12/8 “siciliana” meter, pastorale compositions frequently utilized drones and parallel intervals in imitation of rustic instruments like bagpipes and the hurdy-gurdy. Such features are prominent in the music of shepherds who have played shawns and bagpipes in Italian towns as part of Christmas festivities since the 19th century at least, but it is unclear whether this was in imitation of the conventions of art music or the other way around.

The popularity of Corelli’s “Christmas Concerto” led to innumerable imitations and echoes of this work can be heard in the “Pifa” from Handel’s Messiah, in the second part of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and into the 19th and 20th centuries.

Few musicians of the seventeenth century enjoyed the exalted status bestowed on Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713). He was called the ‘new Orpheus of Our Times’ and the ‘divine Arc Angelo’, a clever pun on his Christian name and the Italian word for a bow (arco). The Englishman musician and writer Roger North described Corelli’s music as ‘transcendant’, ‘immortal’ and ‘the bread of life’ to musicians. Renowned as a virtuoso performer, an influential composer, and sought-after teacher, Corelli commanded respect and praise throughout Europe at the turn of the 18th century.

The fifth child born to a prosperous family of landowners in Fusignano; Corelli’s first musical study was probably with the local clergy, then in nearby Lugo and Faenza, and finally in Bologna, where he went in 1666. In Bologna he studied with Giovanni Benvenuti and Leonardo Brugnoli, the former representing the disciplined style of the Accademia filarmonica (to which Corelli was admitted in 1670), the latter a virtuoso violinist. Read more…

Alessandro Scarlatti was born into poverty in famine-stricken Sicily in 1660 and it has been suggested that his humble origins made his a compulsive worker and contributed to his prolific and varied output. While his reputation as the founder of the Neapolitan school of 18th century opera may be somewhat over-stated, his works in the genre are highly skilled and original, and marked by innovations in orchestration, strong dramatic characterization and, above all, an unfailing melodic sense.

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. Read more…

by Frederick K. Gable

St. Gertrude’s Chapel (shown in a 1830 engraving at right) was built in the late fourteenth century by the Bruderschaft of St. Gertrude, listed in 1356 as one of eighteen charitable fraternities associated with the Jakobikirche in Hamburg. Like similar orders throughout Europe, the fraternity promoted good works through financial support of the church and participation in its religious activities. Members could thereby improve their reputation in the city and increase their chances of gaining salvation. St. Gertrude’s Fraternity was chiefly devoted to caring for the poor and the sick, especially persons afflicted with leprosy. The chapel land was originally known as “der wüste Kirchof” (the desolate churchyard) and “platea leprosorum” (place of the lepers).

In 1391 the fraternity began construction of the chapel, probably assisted by a guild of masons known as the “Mauerleute.” Its first stage was an octagonal Gothic-domed structure, twenty-five feet on a side, completed in 1399. This octagonal shape resembled other burial buildings and pilgrimage chapels fashionable in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in Northern Europe often named for St. George or St. Gertrude of Nivelles, a seventh century abbess. Since the chapel stood within the parish of the Jacobikirche, regular masses in addition to funerals were conducted there by the priests of that church until the Reformation. Read more…

Magnificat’s first concerts feature music by composers that are obscure even by Magnificat standards. The four composers whose polyphonic works are featured on the program are hardly household names, but each was a significant composer during his lifetime. The compositions on the Magnificat program demonstrate that the high regard of their contemporaries was well deserved.

Pierre Bonhomme (Latinized Bonomius) was a Flemish composer who lived most of his life in Liège. In addition to several published volumes, his works appear in many manuscripts and his elegant contrapuntal writing seems to have been much admired. The Motet In nomine Jesu appears in a collection published in Frankfurt in 1603 and was dedicated to Ferdinand of Bavaria. Bonhomme’s style most closely resembles the Roman compostions of Soriano and the Nanino brothers, whom he may have encountered during the time he spent in Rome in the early 1590s. Read more…

by Frederick K. Gable

On the weekend of October 26-28, Magnificat will open our 2007-2008 season with a recreation of the service marking the re-dedication of St. Gertrude’s Chapel in Hamburg. Professor Gable has very kindly provided these notes revised from the booklet for the CD recording “Gertrudenmusik Hamburg 1607” Intim Musik, Lerum, Sweden: IMCD 071.

On Thursday morning, April 16, 1607, many professional musicians of Hamburg participated in a festival service dedicating for the third time the newly re-furnished St. Gertrude’s Chapel. The music was so splendid that Lucas van Cöllen, the Chief Pastor of the nearby St. James’s Church (Jacobikirche), described its performance in the published version of his sermon (reproduced following this commentary). This detailed account, supplemented by information from musical, pictorial, liturgical, and theological sources, makes possible a reconstruction of the full liturgical context. The service includes impressive double-choir works by Bonhomme, Lassus and Hieronymus Praetorius, a triple-choir motet by Jacob Handl, and the magnificent German Te Deum setting for four choirs of instruments and voices also by Praetorius. A complete edition of the service, along with an extensive introduction, is available in Dedication Service for St. Gertrude’s Chapel, Hamburg, 1607, edited by Frederick K. Gable, in vol. 91 of Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era (Madison: A-R Editions, 1998). Read more…

Some years after Stradella’s murder, Pierre Bourdelot and Pierre Bonnet-Bourdelot included an account of the event in their Histoire de la Musique. Published in Paris in 1715, theirs was the first history of music in French and therefore it attracted quite a bit of attention, with the result that news of the composer –‘the most excellent musician in all of Italy around the year 1670’– was circulated throughout Europe.

However, their fascinating tale of romance, wherein Stradella ran off with the mistress of a Venetian nobleman, who then had the lovers pursued from one city to another by a band of assassins, was not all true. Certainly false was the scene where the thugs were restrained from carrying out the murder because of the beauty of Stradella’s music, obliging the Venetian to hire other assassins to carry out the deed. Since the real facts were not generally known, and the fabricated story too exciting to resist, it was repeated and embellished in the succeeding centuries in novels, operas, poems and scholarly texts of music history: thus was born the ‘Stradella legend’. Only recently has enough research been accomplished to be able finally to say who the ‘real’ Stradella was and what music he actually composed. Read more…

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. Read more…