CONCERT PROGRAM  NOTES – December 2014

Welcome to the 30th anniversary season of Portsmouth Women’s Chorus/Portsmouth Pro Musica!

Following are the details of the pieces we performed for our 30th Anniversary Christmas Concert on Friday, Dec. 12th and Sunday, Dec. 14th, 2014.

Two Baroque masterpieces composed within a year of each other, one in Venice, the other in Leipzig, form the cornerstones of our program.   We are thrilled to be joined by members of the Sandpipers, the future generation of choral singers, as well as by talented local orchestra players.

Alma Redemptoris Mater (“Loving Mother of our Saviour”) is one of the four Marian antiphons sung during Vespers in the season of Advent.   Palestrina’s straight-forward setting evokes awe in this tribute to the Virgin Mary.   A second devotional motet to Mary comes from the Russian Orthodox tradition:  Ave Maria (“Bogorodyeetse Dyevo”), the sixth movement of Rachmaninoff’s epic All-Night Vigil (Moscow, 1915).  This stunning masterpiece of liturgical music based on traditional chant  was composed two years before religious music would be condemned by the Soviet government.   Like all the prayer settings in the Vigil, Ave Maria is scored for unaccompanied mixed chorus with extensive doubling of voice parts to achieve the desired sonority.

It is appropriate for members of the Sandpipers to be performing part of Antonio Vivaldi’s Magnificat.  Vivaldi served over 36 years as violinist and concertmaster at the orphanage in Venice for young girls (1713-69) known as the Ospedale della Pieta.   He composed  two versions of the Magnificat in 1732. (We are performing the first version with more choral writing, the second one being for solo voices at the Pieta).  The text of Magnificat (Luke 1: 46-55) is a Biblical canticle (or song) of joy and hope.  Following a visit by the angel Gabriel, Mary learns that she will give birth to Jesus.    She sings to her cousin Elizabeth who has also become pregnant after years of infertility.   This hymn to the power of the Holy speaks of exalting the humble, feeding the hungry and deposing the proud.   In this story, Mary connects the heritage of ancient Israel and the emerging Christian community when the Gospel of Luke was written.

There is a remarkable story about Vivaldi’s career at the Pieta.  Since the Middle Ages, Venice had developed several charitable institutions.   One of these was the Pieta, established in the 14thc. as a convent school for abandoned illegitimate daughters of the nobility.  (The original building can be seen today).    Born in Venice in 1678 and trained as a young priest, at age 17 Vivaldi was hired as violin teacher at the Pieta.  A total of 140 young women studied oboe, cello and violin under Vivaldi’s tutelage and played his concertos.   The girls also sang operas and sacred compositions for the public that Vivaldi had composed for them.  When the opera houses were closed during Lent, tourists attended concerts at the Pieta where the young women’s voices soared, taking full advantage of the live acoustics.  Vivaldi had transformed a convent into a mini-conservatory!

(On a side note, one of the puzzles that has stumped musicologists is this one:   if Vivaldi wrote Magnificat and Dixit Dominus – which PPM performed Dec. 2011- for four-part mixed voices, who sang the tenor and bass parts?  It was long thought that adult male singers were brought in from the city.   According to a 2011 documentary “Vivaldi’s Women” it is now believed there were some young women who had a very low vocal range and that at least one could sing the bass part at pitch!)

What is the legacy of J.S. Bach’s cantatas?   We know that Bach was the greatest organist in Europe in his day and that he possessed a supreme musical intellect.  And, despite a reputation of being quarrelsome and not always getting along with his students or the Church Council, Bach made a comfortable living.

Bach’s last career appointment as a Lutheran church musician was in Leipzig (1723-34) as Cantor of St. Thomas School.  (During the Protestant Reformation, the former monastery had become a school in 1543.   One of the major reforms of Martin Luther during that time was to elevate the role of music in the services, introducing congregational hymn singing).  The appointment of cantor (music director) of St. Thomas school held prestige.  Bach was in charge of the musical education of forty pupils, overseeing daily singing and instrumental instruction on clavier, organ and violin; in turn, the scholars of Thomasschule were required to supply music every Sunday to four city churches.   One of Bach’s projects as Cantor was to compose and perform a new cantata for every Sunday and feast day of the church year   Over 300 cantatas were composed, with about one-third missing today.

A cantata is generally an extensive composition for chorus, soloists and orchestra which uses sacred texts.   In Cantata #140 “Wachet auf” (1731), a “chorale cantata,” the hymn-tune is heard in some variation throughout each movement.  The familiar chorale tune was composed by Phillip Nicolai and set by Bach.  The subject of Cantata #140 is the parable of the ten wise and foolish virgins and their entrance into the kingdom of  heaven (Matthew 25: 1-13)  Within decades of Christ’s death, there was talk of a Second Coming within the early Church.   Using the allegory of a wedding, Christ (as bridegroom) was delayed, and the maidens had to wait.   In waiting, the five foolish ones lost their lamp oil (representative of their faith),  and the lights went out –  an admonition to the church not to lose its faith.   The five wise maidens were admitted to meet Christ.

The first movement #1 introduces the grand processional of the wise and foolish virgins.    We hear the chorus pleading to Jerusalem to wake up, hear the voices of the watchmen,  take your lamps and go meet the bridegroom.

The sopranos sing the chorale melody in long note values as the lower voices sing counterpoint, making this movement  musically complex.  In #4 the Watchmen’s Song, sung in unison by tenors and basses,  there is again a march to prepare for the marriage feast between Christ and his Church.   (Such lamplight processionals occurred in ancient Palestinian villages in Jesus’ day).    One hears the harmonic intensity in the Bass recitative  #5 as the bridegroom beckons his bride to join him in union.  This is followed by the long joyous soprano/bass love duet #6 “Mein freund ist mein.”    It uses language of rapture from the Song of Songs but with a definite Christian intent.  The cantata closes with the “Wachet auf” chorale tune which would have been sung by the congregation in the Lutheran service.

PSF