November 20-22, 2009
Program Notes by Sanford Dole
To kick off Bay Choral Guild’s 31st season of choral concerts in the
Bay Area, I am delighted to return to our roots with music of the Baroque
era and also to encore a work that the chorus presented 30 years ago in its
very first season, Handel’s Dixit Dominus. Our organization has
evolved and changed with the times, and as we focused closer to our home
base in Palo Alto in the last few years and weathered a downturn in the
economy, we reduced the number of concerts with orchestra. Now, thanks to a
large gift in honor of his parents from chorister Steve Kispersky, as well
as a generous grant from Arts Council Silicon Valley, we are once again
able to present this incomparable music with an ensemble of period
instruments and with renowned soloists. What better way to celebrate my
tenth season as artistic director!
Alessandro Scarlatti was the “father” of Neapolitan opera,
writing 115 operas in all and broadening the scope of the earlier Venetian
opera. He was also the father of the famous keyboard virtuoso and composer
Domenico Scarlatti. Scarlatti tried twice to move from Naples to Rome to
capitalize on his growing fame. The first time, a conservative crackdown
had just closed all the opera houses, and he redirected his talents to
cantatas and oratorios. His patrons in Rome welcomed Scarlatti back in
1718, and in a burst of creativity over the next three years before
retiring again to Naples, he composed several ambitious operas, three
masses, and various oratorios and cantatas to cap a long and prolific
career.
Scarlatti’s Messa di S. Cecilia was first performed in 1720 on
November 22, the feast day of the patron saint of music. Not so
coincidentally, St. Cecilia’s Day is also the date of our Palo Alto
performance. The mass is generally considered to be the greatest
masterpiece of Scarlatti’s sacred music and is also significant as
one of the earliest examples of the missa solemnis, a form which
Bach’s monumental Mass in B minor would later take to even greater
heights. A basic mass consists of five movements: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo,
Sanctus and Agnus Dei. The Messa di S. Cecilia divides the Kyrie into three
contrasting movements, the Gloria into six movements, and the Credo into
five, with several of those movements being further subdivided. Scarlatti
sets every text in intricate detail and brilliantly fuses the new vocal and
instrumental techniques he mastered in his operas and cantatas with the
traditional strict counterpoint of sacred music. The “Cum sancto
Spiritu” and “Et vitam venturi” end the Gloria and Credo,
respectively, with especially grand fugues.
Living a whole century before Scarlatti, Claudio Monteverdi was a
revolutionary who changed the course of musical history, particularly
through his groundbreaking madrigals and the opera L’Orfeo, which
revealed the potential of the then-novel genre. A long tenure as maestro di
cappella at St. Mark’s in Venice gave Monteverdi the opportunity to
compose a series of wonderful sacred pieces that spread his fame throughout
Europe. Over time, he abandoned the grandiose cori spezzati, or separated
choirs, with large instrumental accompaniments of his predecessors Andrea
and Giovanni Gabrieli in favor of a more intimate approach that borrowed
some techniques from his secular madrigals.
Monteverdi published Beatus vir in a large collection of sacred works in
1641 toward the end of his life, but scholars believe he composed it a
decade or so earlier, at the height of his career. The dramatic contrast
between vocal duets or trios and the weight of the full six-part chorus in
this setting of Psalm 112 is a superb example of Monteverdi’s stile
concertato. The instrumental forces are the usual basso continuo, violas or
trombones to double some voices, and two violins with duets like those of
the singers.
The Dixit Dominus of George Frideric Handel, like the Messa di S. Cecilia and Beatus vir, was composed in Italy, but unlike them, it is the work of a
young man. Born in 1685 in Halle, Germany, Handel was educated both there
and in Hamburg. His musical abilities at 21 greatly impressed Prince
Ferdinando de’ Medici, son and heir of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and
Handel began to journey annually to Florence and Rome. It was in Rome in
the spring of 1707 that he wrote his most ambitious works in Latin, the
psalm settings Dixit Dominus, Laudati pueri, and Nisi Dominus.
There is something quite intoxicating about the virtuosity of the long
melismatic riffs that bubble over in the Dixit Dominus. Add to that the
exquisite melodies in the solo movements and such inventive surprises as
the careening “Tu es sacerdos” or the violent stabs in
“Conquassabit,” and you have a work that is utterly unique and
truly memorable. I couldn’t agree more with the enthusiam of
Handelian musicologist David Vickers, who writes:
Dixit Dominus is Handel’s explosion into genius, almost as if
while in Rome at the age of 22, he decided to proclaim his brilliance to
the world. Ranging from the opening fire and brimstone of
‘Dixit,’ the ravishing yet enigmatic ‘De torrente,’
and the incrementing fireworks of the closing ‘Gloria,’ this is
the work of a fully-fledged master ruthlessly endeavouring to impress his
Roman patrons by ‘knocking their socks off.’
I must also share a reply I got from soloist Elspeth Franks: “I am
more excited than you can possibly guess at being asked to sing these
concerts with you! Dixit Dominus is my absolute favorite piece in the whole
world!” If the music is new to you, prepare to be impressed. |
