The Bach Elgar Choir, one in every of Canada’s longest-running performing arts organizations, will spherical out their 119th season with a live performance that brings collectively Brahms, Frank Martin, and Josef Rheinberger. Alongside Brahms’ Zigeunerlieder and Rheinberger s Drei Geistliche Gesänge, it will likely be the primary time that the Choir will carry out Martin’s a cappella Mass for Double Choir.
Coincidentally, the works by Brahms and Martin share the truth that the composers had been considerably sad about their first public performances.
The Program
Johannes Brahms: Zigeunerlieder (Roma songs), Op. 103
Brahms composed the primary set of 11 items now generally known as his Zigeunerlieder (Op. 103) throughout 1887 and 1888. Initially written for 4 singers or an SATB choir, he additionally developed his personal association for solo voice and piano. In them, Brahms introduced collectively parts of two of his most profitable works, the Hungarian Dances, and his Liebeslieder Walzer, creating dance songs for vocal quartet and piano.
The texts are drawn from Hungarian people songs that had been translated and tailored into German by Hugo Conrat, a good friend of Brahms’ in Vienna who was a composer, poet, and businessman. He tailored them into vernacular German based mostly on an preliminary translation by the Conrat household nurse, who occurred to be Hungarian.
Op. 103 premiered in October 1888 in Berlin, and regardless of its public success, Brahms was considerably sad that the music, which he had conceived of for dwelling use solely with a quartet of soloists, had been carried out in a live performance corridor.
Frank Martin: Mass for Double Choir
“The Mass is a piece of profound magnificence and troublesome to grasp,” mentioned Alexander Cann, musical director in a press release. “However with the choir’s expertise, talent and dedication, we’re assured that our efficiency will resonate deeply with our viewers.”
Whereas it’s not well-known to most people, largely attributable to an uncommon historical past as a composition, Martin’s Mass is taken into account to be some of the vital choral works to emerge from the trendy period of Western music.
Frank Martin composed his Mass for Double Choir between 1922 and 1926, nevertheless it was not meant for public efficiency. It was meant as his personal tribute to God.
Nonetheless, the composer talked about the manuscript publicly on a number of events, together with throughout a lecture in Switzerland in 1946, the place he said, “By way of a type of instinctive modesty I’ve carried out nothing to have these items carried out. It sufficed me solely to have written them (…)”.
In 1963, Hamburg based mostly choral conductor Franz Brunnert requested for a duplicate of the manuscript, saying it was “for research functions”. Brunnert, nevertheless, wasn’t solely forthright with the composer, and he carried out in along with his Bugenhagen Choir. Different performances adopted, and it was sung by the NCRV Vocal Ensemble in 1970. The Vocal Ensemble was based mostly close to Martin’s dwelling within the Netherlands, and at that time, he agreed to have it printed.
A part of his preliminary reluctance was attributable to humility, and concern that his private method wouldn’t go over in a public setting, together with ambiguities about his personal spiritual emotions.
As an uncommissioned work, he had the liberty to method it as he preferred. The work combines each conventional and fashionable parts, with Early Music influences. He was impressed by J.S. Bach, and polyphonic Renaissance traditions, and by fashionable experimentation with harmonies.
Within the composer’s personal notes, he writes,
“This mass, composed in 1922 (aside from the Agnus Dei which dates from 1926), was a piece of my very own free will, with out fee or remuneration. Certainly at the moment I knew of no choral conductor who could possibly be fascinated by it. […]
“… despite the fact that I wrote the mass for numerous voices, it’s music of an inward nature.”
Josef Rheinberger: Drei Geistliche Gesänge, Op.69
Josef Gabriel Rheinberger (1839 –1901) is finest recognized for his organ music, and his different compositions are not often carried out. His Drei Geistliche Gesänge (Three Sacred Songs), opus 69, are melodic and lyrical. The Morgenlied (Die Sterne sind erblichen) — or Morning Music (the Stars Have Pale) — is pastoral in temper, utilizing textual content kind a poem by August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, (who additionally wrote the German nationwide anthem).
Hymne (Dein sind die Himmel) — or Yours are the Heavens — was written as an offertory for the Christmas Mass. The third music, Abendlied (Bleib bei uns) — or Night Music, Keep With Us — was composed within the type of a motet for six-part combined choir.
The primary of the Gesänge premiered on March 9, 1855, about two weeks earlier than Rheinberger’s sixteenth birthday.
- Fid extra particulars and tickets to the Could 31 efficiency at Hamilton’s Melrose United Church [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is the Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. Beforehand, she was a contract author with a specialty in tradition and journey for 3 many years, and a artistic writing teacher for Ontariolearn.