Our 2009-2010 season will conclude with Felix Mendelssohnn's St. Paul, op. 36., with a full orchestra and professional soloists. The concert will take place 3:00 PM June 13, 2009, at John M. Greene Hall, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
About Mendelssohn's Paulus:
Mendelssohn was commissioned to write Paulus in 1831, when he was only 22. A child prodigy who was favorably compared to Mozart, by this time he was one of the most respected composers, conductors and pianists in Europe. So influential was he that his production of J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion in 1829 is considered the single most important event in recovering Bach's music from obscurity.
Mendelssohn took the Paulus commission very seriously. The oratorio is one of the most difficult of forms, and was by 1831 somewhat out of fashion. Mendelssohn travelled Europe studying and performing the works of other great composers, and prepared and conducted editions of Handel's Israel in Egypt, Messiah, Judas Maccabeus and Solomon. This began a German Handel revival that was nearly as culturally significant as Mendelssohn's rediscovery of Bach.
Paulus premiered on May 22, 1836 at the Lower Rhine Music Festival in Düsseldorf, with a chorus of 356 singers and an orchestra of 172 players. An instant success, it soon reached unprecedented international popularity. Performances followed in England, Switzerland, Denmark, Holland, Poland, Russia and the United States (New York in 1838 and Baltimore in 1839). Robert Schumann praised it as a “jewel of the present,” commenting on the “indelible color of instrumentation” and the “masterful playing with all the forms of the art of composition.” Richard Wagner described it “a work which is witness to the highest bloom of art.” It became an important influence on the compositions of Wagner, Brahms and other 19th century luminaries. At once contemporary and historically informed, Paulus synthesized the Viennese classical style of Mozart, the religious oratorios of Bach and the concert oratorios of Handel.
Sadly, due in part to the efforts of Wagner to aggrandize himself at Mendelssohn's expense, in part to changes in fashion, Paulus fell into obscurity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the past two hundred years, no other choral work of such significance has been so quickly forgotten. We are honored to provide an opportunity to experience this important work.
Our 2009-10 season begins with J.S. Bach's sublime Magnificat, BWV 243. The concert will take place at 3:00 PM November 22nd in Abbey Chapel at Mount Holyoke College, and feature professional orchestra and soloists.
- For directions to Mount Holyoke from the college site, click here. For Google maps directions to Abbey Chapel, click here. Abbey Chapel is attached to Mary Lyon Hall. There are several parking lots across 116, both next to Gaylord Memorial Library and off of Jewett Ln.
- Tickets are $15 general admission, $10/seniors & students.
- Tickets are available at State Street Fruit & Broadside Books, Northampton; A.J. Hastings, Amherst; Cooper's Corner, Florence; Odyssey Books, South Hadley; and at the door on the day of the concert.
- Please bring a non-perishable food item to benefit the Food Bank of Western MA.
About the Bach Magnificat, BWV 243:
The initial version of Magnificat was written in 1723, the first year of Bach's tenure as Kantor of St. Thomas and Leipzig Town Music Director. Famously, Bach was not the first choice for the position. The town council initially approached Georg Philipp Telemann, and then Christoph Graupner, each of whom were prolific composers of church choral music, at which Bach was at the time relatively inexperienced. Perhaps we ought be grateful to the Leipzig town fathers; after Bach was hired as the third choice, he responded to the slight with a tremendous burst of creativity.
The Magnificat of 1723 was a work in E flat major, and was intended for performance during the Christmas season. Ten years later, Bach transposed the work to D major (an easier key for trumpets of the time), and removed and revised those parts specifically relating to Christmas. For the Hampshire Choral Society production, Allan Taylor intends to restore several of these movements; even those singers familiar with Magnificat should find these sections fresh and exciting.
The other Bach work we'll perform is an excerpt from one of Bach's Missae brevis, or "Lutheran Masses;" the Kyrie from his G minor Mass of 1735. A so called "parody" mass, as it often echoes earlier cantatas, the G minor's Kyrie is derived from BWV 102, "Herr, deine Augen sehen nach dem Glauben! (Lord, Thine eyes look towards the Faith!)" It is a particularly lively and inventive movement, and should be quite a bit of fun.
Our 2008-2009 season concluded with G.F. Handel's Messiah, HWV 56., with a full orchestra and professional soloists. The concert took place 3:00 PM June 14, 2009, at John M. Greene Hall, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
About Handel's Messiah:
One of the world's greatest and most enduring oratorios, Messiah, was as popular and controversial in Handel's time as in ours. Handel composed it in the summer of 1741 in a twenty-four day burst of creativity of which he wrote: "I did think I did see all Heaven before me and the great God himself." Not originally considered a Christmas piece, it was premiered in Dublin on April 13, 1742. The score went through many variations: Handel adapted, rearranged, and edited it for various ensembles until his death in 1759.
While in recent years it is often performed by smaller ensembles, not long after its composition it became popular with much larger choruses. In May 1774, for example, 500 singers and instrumentalists performed Messiah in honor of the 90th anniversary of Handel's birth (they were a year early.) By 1791 a production was staged with 1,000 performers. The 155 voices of the Hampshire Choral Society seem a nimble group by comparison, and our conductor Allan Taylor has worked hard to make sure we remain so; but we offered a taste of this power and spectacle in celebration of the 250th anniversary of Handel's death.
Our 2008-2009 year began with Mozart's Solemn Vespers for the Feast of a Confessor, K 339. The concert took place 4:00 PM November 23rd in Abbey Chapel at Mount Holyoke College, and featured professional orchestra and soloists.
About Mozart's Solemn Vespers for the Feast of a Confessor:
Mozart wrote the Solemn Vespers in 1780; it was commissioned for the Salzburg Cathedral in which he was baptised, and was one of the final works he wrote before he moved to Vienna. A product of his full maturity, the Vespers was considered by Craig Smith, the founder of the Emmanuel Music Series, to be Mozart's greatest complete sacred work, a product of the same genius that produced the unfinished masterpieces the Mass in C Minor and the Requiem.
At 3:00 PM on June 15, 2008, at John M. Greene Hall, Smith College, Northampton, the Hampshire Choral Society performed Bach's choral masterwork, the Mass in B minor.
The 160 voices of the chorus were accompanied by a professional orchestra, and soloists Sudie Marcuse, soprano; Mary Brown Bonacci, mezzo-soprano; Allen Combs, tenor; and Steve Curylo, bass. Our capacity audience numbered at least 750, and, we're happy to report, burst into a thunderous standing ovation at the concert's end. Conductor Allan Taylor twice returned to the stage to acknowledge applause.
A few tracks from the dress rehearsal, recorded by a chorister, may be found here. A professional recording of the entire concert will be available soon - an order form may be downloaded here.
About Bach's Mass in B minor:
In 1745, the influential critic Johann Adolph Scheibe complained that J.S. Bach was not in the first rank of German composers. Bach's music might be truly great "if he had more amenity, if he did not take away the natural element in his pieces by giving them a turgid and confused style, and if he did not darken their beauty by an excess of art."
Perhaps in response, Bach wrote his two final and most intricate works - The Art of the Fugue, and the B-minor Mass. Completed in 1749, the year before his untimely death at the age of 65, Bach intended each to establish his legacy, defend his techniques, and instruct his successors.
He was successful; as musicologist Christoph Wolf writes "Like no other work of Bach's, the B-minor Mass represents a summary of his writing for voice, not only in its variety of styles, compositional devices, and range of sonorities, but also in its high level of technical polish. The Mass offers a full panoply of the art of musical composition, with a breadth and depth betraying not only theoretical perspicacity but also a comprehensive grasp of music history, particularly in its use of old and new styles."
Yet the B-minor is so fiercely difficult and unconventional that it was not performed in its entirety until over 100 years after Bach's death, and not in the United States until 1900.
On Sunday, November 18th at 3:00 PM, the Hampshire Choral Society performed a program featuring Gabriel Fauré's Requiem in D minor, with professional orchestra, Jennifer Tyo, soprano, and Jack Tozzi, bass. The concert took place before a large and enthusiastic audience at Abbey Chapel in South Hadley.
The program also included seasonal works performed by the Hampshire Young People's Chorus, K.C. Conlan, conductor.
About Fauré's Requiem in D minor:
The 20th Century American Composer Aaron Copland once referred to Gabriel Fauré as the "French Brahms." Like Brahms, Fauré practiced a restrained Romanticism; his sublety and appreciation of form were more akin to Baroque and Classical composers than the late Romantics. Fauré's Requiem in D minor, Op. 48 is a perfect example - unlike the compositions of Wagner or Berlioz, it seldom asks musicians to rise above a mezzoforte. Fauré once emphatically wrote of it "altogether it is as GENTLE as I am myself!!"
This gentleness gives the entire work a rare combination of profundity and peacefulness. As Fauré also wrote, "It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience."
In keeping with the restrained quality of this work, Fauré originally scored it for chamber orchestra. Unfortunately, this became eclipsed by a version for full orchestra, most likely composed by one of Fauré's students. John Rutter rediscovered Fauré's manuscript for the chamber orchestra in the early 1980s. Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor, this is the version the Hampshire Choral Society performed.
On Sunday, June 17th at 3:00 PM, the Hampshire Choral Society performed Joseph Haydn's The Seasons, with professional orchestra. The concert took place at John M. Greene Hall, on Elm Street, Northampton before a very appreciative audience. Recordings are available
Soloists:
Joanne Scattergood, soprano (Hanne)
Marc Winer, tenor (Lukas)
Peter Shea, baritone (Simon)
About The Seasons:
In 1790 Joseph Haydn was invited to England to compose a series of symphonies, a form for which he was justifiably internationally famous. While in London, Haydn was exposed to the oratorios of Handel. They made quite an impression on him, and inspired him to compose The Creation, a work on which he labored from 1796-8, using the libretto of Baron Gottfried van Swieten, a minor Austrian noble.
The Creation was a tremendous artistic and commercial success, and in early 1799 Haydn began work on a sequel, again employing the talents of van Swieten. Together they conceived of not just one, but two additional works - a second oratorio to celebrate the life of created beings, and a final work about the last judgment. For the former, van Swieten translated sections of The Seasons, a very popular contemporary English poem by James Thomson. Thompson's poem is in the pastoral tradition, celebrating simple peasant virtues and pleasures in harmony with nature's yearly cycle.
Unfortunately, it is generally agreed that van Swieten's adaptation in not one of his finest. Indeed, Haydn became very frustrated with the libretto, calling it "French trash" to his friends, and remarking that, while he was an industrious man, he had never before composed a chorus in praise of industry. Haydn was also rather unhappy to be required to tone paint in the style of croaking frogs. But tone paint he did - not only frogs, but a sunrise, thunderstorms, the fall of a bird shot by hunters, and a plowman whistling a theme from Haydn's own Surprise Symphony. Indeed, the richness of the work almost reminds one of the Flemish Masters - Pieter Bruegel's "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," for example - so packed is it with whimsy and cunning detail.
Word of Haydn's displeasure got back to van Swieten, and the two of them fell out; the third oratorio was never begun. But hints of what it might have been are found in The Seasons' stirring conclusion, in text that prefigures the last judgment and was original to van Swieten:
Who shall enjoy eternal peace?
He who protected the innocent.
Behold the dawn of that great morning.
Behold, the light shines.
This proved to be foreshadowing. Van Swieten died not long after he wrote these words, and The Seasons was one of Haydn's last major works.
The Seasons is not performed nearly so often as The Creation, possibly in part because it is a bit intimidating. It is a monumental work, with extensive choruses and full orchestra.
However, it is a work of genius, and an influential one; Beethoven, for example, borrowed motifs from it for both the third and fourth movements of his Pastoral Symphony.
This January, the Hampshire Choral Society performed the Mozart Requiem, as completed by his pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayer. It was an intense experience, with only five rehearsals culminating in a capacity crowd on January 28th, 3 PM, at Northampton High School.
Allan Taylor, the orchestra and soloists all volunteered their time, and did a magnificent job. We owe them our thanks. Thanks also to State Street Fruit and Broadside Books in Northampton; A.J. Hastings in Amherst; and Cooper's Corner in Florence for selling tickets for us. All proceeds from our concert will benefit a very worthy cause: the Cancer Connection, a not-for-profit drop-in center located at the Silk Mill in Florence, MA that offers support services to cancer survivors. We encourage you to visit www.cancer-connection.com to learn more.
On November 19th at 3 PM, in honor of the 250th anniversary of his birth, we performed Mozart's Mass in C,
K. 139, otherwise known as the Waisenhaus Messe. This is Mozart's earliest large-scale ("solemnis") setting, which we performed with a 15-piece orchestra, including trumpets and timpani. In Allan's words, "Mozart wrote lots of Masses in C, but this one is hardly ever done...it's full of energy and wit, and will be lots of fun."
K 139 is known as the Waisenhausmesse (Orphanage Mass) because it was written for the consecration of the chapel of an orphanage. So beautiful and developed a work is it that there was once a great deal of controversy regarding its date of composition. Scholarly consensus has come to the somewhat grudging conclusion that it was composed in 1768, when Mozart was but 13. It is a reflection of Mozart's genius that his creative output when barely a teenager rivals the works of most other composers at their heights.
The concert took place at Smith College's J.M. Greene Hall, Elm St., Northampton.
The Hampshire Choral Society performed the Bach St. John Passion at 3:00 PM on June 11th, 2006, John M. Greene Hall, Smith College, Northampton, MA, before an enthusiastic and receptive audience.
On May 7th, 2006, HCS joined the Pioneer Valley Symphony to perform the Brahms German Requiem at the Fine Arts Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
The performance was an artistic success. According to the Daily Hampshire Gazette, "from the first movement of the seven-part piece, Selig sind, die da Leid tragen (Blessed are they that mourn), the 250 vocalists showed their ability to react to the shape of the orchestra's sound with a sensitive opening that introduced the work's main themes. In particular, during the movement's feathery middle section, as the flutes and clarinets weaved among the vocal voicings, the chorus hovered with deft balance. As the piece built and the full orchestra rose in volume, the chorus unleashed its breadth alongside, setting the tone for the remainder of the monumental work." Read the remainder of the review here.