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Harmonium, A Classical Choral Society March 18 and 19, 2000 Tristis est anima mea
Orlandus Lassus (1532-1594)
Three Motets
Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924)
Three Romantic Motets
INTERMISSION Cantata No. 21: Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis
Johann Sebastian Bach(1685-1750)
Second Part: Recitative and
Aria
Rebecca Harris, Nancy Lederer, Gabriel Schaff, Jonathan Dinklage, Ruth
Zumstein; violin.
The great Renaissance composer Orlandus Lassus composed a Maundy Thursday gem of a motet filled with text painting and subtle surprises in Tristis est anima mea. The motet starts with a sobbing motive, followed by a sustained, rising, suspensions ("sustinete hic") and an upward sweeping melisma pleads "keep watch with me." The circling of the mob is depicted by lines which circle up and down around themselves without really getting anywhere, while "vos fugam capietis" is a series of imitative "head motives." The sum total is an effective expression of Christ's suffering for our sins. My soul is sorrowful even unto
death.
Text painting is taken to an even more intense
level in Schein's Die mit tränen säen, a setting of Psalm
126, vs. 5-6. This psalm captures the theme of this whole
Those who sow in tears will reap
with shouts of joy!
The rising chromatic lines and dissonant suspensions of the weeping
sections contrast with the joyful leaps and triple rhythms of the joyous
parts. Schein, like Schütz,
Stanford, with Parry heralded an English musical Renaissance, and his settings of Communion services and Evening Canticles are still widely used in the Anglican Church today. He was teacher to many important composers including Vaughan Williams, Ireland, and Holst. The three a cappella motets Op. 38, or (Op. 51 in some sources) are filled with expressive part-writing. They were written as graces, to be sung "in Hall" at Trinity College, Cambridge where Stanford was Professor of Music. Beati quorum via
Justorum animae
Caelos ascendit hodie
Anton Bruckner's motets are short masterpieces by the devout Catholic Austrian church musician and orchestral composer. Os Justi, with its long expansive lines, clear counterpoint, and expressive suspensions is one of his best. The text is appropriate for All Saints celebrations: The just man shall expound to us
wise and worthy things,
Although Reger's organ music holds an important place in the repertoire, his vast output of orchestral and choral music, piano and chamber music is generally neglected outside of Germany. His unaccompanied motets are quite difficult, in the chromatic late romantic harmonic language of Wagner or early Schoenberg (such as Friede auf Erden). Reger's motet O Tod wie bitter bist du was completed in 1912. Reger wrote in a letter of the time "I have just finished the compilation of the text for a very sad motet for a five-voice a cappella choir. The words are taken from the Bible, and the composition will turn out a very sad work with a transfiguring conclusion, that is to say the conclusion is simply transfiguring death." Although written on five lines, with the divisi the work is really an eight-part (SSAATTBB) work. The source for the text is the Book of Jesus Sirach, the Jewish book of Wisdom, written about 190 B.C., which describes Death both as the spoiler of all joy and the benefactor of the sad, the weak, and the hopeless. Despite the dense, Wagnerian harmonies, the music also shows the influence of Bach, especially at the transfiguring second verse, the chorale-like comforting E major section. O death, how bitter it is to remember
you for a man
O death, your sentence is welcome
to a man in want
Bach's music was influential to Reger and Brahms, both organists. This motet, Lass dich nur nichts nicht dauren is also known as the Geistliches Lied (Op.30) (Spiritual Song) originally for organ and voices; performed here in a new arrangement in which string orchestra takes the part of the organ. This astoundingly lyrical and comforting work also shows Brahms' mastery of counterpoint--a double canon in ninths, tenor imitating the soprano, and bass the alto. This intellectual device yet remains subservient to the expressiveness of the music. Lass dich nur nichts nicht dauren
Paul Flemming (1609-1640), transl. John Floreen and Susan McAdoo
Why would you now have cares for
tomorrow?
So be in all your doings unswerving,
J. S. Bach's deep Lutheran faith led him to welcome
rather than fear death, and he expressed this in many of his works, none
more so than in Cantata 21: Ich
The opening Sinfonia of oboe and strings sets the mood of grief. The first chorus illustrates the contrast between the suffering of the soul (Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis) and the Lord's comfort (deine Trõstungen erquicken meine Seele) which is the theme of the entire cantata. The tempo changes, a characteristic of Bach's earlier cantatas, illustrate these changing moods. The soprano and tenor arias show a more "modern" style, with vivid sighing and weeping motives and concertante writing. The final chorus of the first half (Was betrübst du dich?) again turns from despair to hope. The second part begins with a not unusual baroque dialog between soprano
and bass representing bridegroom and bride, that is, Christ and the Soul.
The next
Bach scholar Alfred Durr wrote "Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis
is probably the most magnificent example of the cantatas of Bach's youthful
period, and at the
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