The Bach Elgar Choir, considered one 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, will probably 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 referred to 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 components 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 folks songs that had been translated and tailored into German by Hugo Conrat, a pal of Brahms’ in Vienna who was a composer, poet, and businessman. He tailored them into vernacular German primarily based 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 tough to grasp,” stated Alexander Cann, musical director in an announcement. “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 of the people, largely on account of an uncommon historical past as a composition, Martin’s Mass is taken into account to be probably the most important choral works to emerge from the fashionable 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 couple of events, together with throughout a lecture in Switzerland in 1946, the place he acknowledged, “By way of a type of instinctive modesty I’ve finished nothing to have these items carried out. It sufficed me solely to have written them (…)”.
In 1963, Hamburg primarily based choral conductor Franz Brunnert requested for a duplicate of the manuscript, saying it was “for examine functions”. Brunnert, nonetheless, 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 primarily based close to Martin’s dwelling within the Netherlands, and at that time, he agreed to have it revealed.
A part of his preliminary reluctance was on account of 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 favored. The work combines each conventional and fashionable components, 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 (apart 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 may very well be fascinated with it. […]
“… though I wrote the mass for a lot of voices, it’s music of an inward nature.”
Josef Rheinberger: Drei Geistliche Gesänge, Op.69
Josef Gabriel Rheinberger (1839 –1901) is greatest identified for his organ music, and his different compositions are hardly ever carried out. His Drei Geistliche Gesänge (Three Sacred Songs), opus 69, are melodic and lyrical. The Morgenlied (Die Sterne sind erblichen) — or Morning Track (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 track, Abendlied (Bleib bei uns) — or Night Track, Keep With Us — was composed within the type of a motet for six-part blended 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.
