Author: Avril Newton

Haydn’s St. Nicolas Mass

Haydn composed his St. Nicolas Mass in 1772 for his employer Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy I’s name’s day. This was not the normal practice, and the mass was composed under unusual circumstances.

There are some signs of turbulence under the surface at this time. It is of course so easy to draw false conclusions from a modern perspective, particularly since in Haydn’s time it was not usual for composers to give expression to their own personal feelings in their work. But in 1772 Haydn wrote some unusually dark works. Of the five symphonies he wrote that year, three are in a minor key. Given that out of his 104 symphonies only 10 are in minor keys, this would seem to be a significant concentration of dark moods. The St. Nicholas Mass, which is in the gentle key of G major, is not without its own particular dark swerves into the minor.

1772 was the year he composed his Farewell Symphony (in F sharp minor). It was customary for the whole Esterhazy court to migrate from its base in Eisenstadt to the Esterhazy palace in Hungary for the summer. Haydn and the leader of the orchestra could take their wives with them; sadly Haydn’s wife would probably have preferred remaining in Eisenstadt, or better still in Vienna. Meanwhile all the other musicians had to leave their wives and families at home in Eisenstadt. Frequently they didn’t return home until December, which caused frictions.

This particular year there was much unrest amongst the musicians because of this and Haydn famously staged a walk-out in the Farewell Symphony, leaving just the leader and Haydn himself playing the violin at the end. Prince Nikolaus took the hint and the court returned to Eisenstadt early.

Haydn quickly composed the St. Nicholas Mass in time for the prince’s name’s day. H.C. Robbins Landon makes the suggestion that the St Nicholas Mass may have been written as a ‘kind of surprise congratulation’ for the prince’s generosity. He must have been pleased: it is a present of great charm.

Mozart Vesperae de Confessore k.339

In 1780, when he composed his Vespers K339, Mozart was becoming increasingly frustrated with life in Salzburg, indeed, itching to escape from it. This is hardly surprising, given his fraught relationships with Archbishop Colloredo. They clearly detested one another. The Archbishop called Mozart, to his face, ‘ein Fetz’ – a nonentity; he also, for good liturgical reasons, put tight restrictions on the length and nature of Mozart’s settings, which must have been frustrating. Given that he also had a very controlling father, life in Salzburg must have been irksome.

1780 was also the year Emperor Joseph II ascended the Habsburg throne. To celebrate this, there was a ceremony held in March of the following year. The ceremony was held in Vienna, and Archbishop Colloredo was of course in attendance. He summoned Mozart to Vienna, housing him along with the other servants, which offended Mozart. What is more, Mozart had the opportunity to perform for the Emperor, for a fee equivalent to half his annual salary, and the Archbishop forbade this, since he wanted Mozart to play for his own concert. Mozart attempted to resign from the Archbishop’s services, but found himself summarily dismissed. The Archbishop’s deputy forcibly ejected him with, as Mozart put it, ‘a kick up the arse’.

Good liturgical reasons

Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II

The Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph II was a man of the Age of Reason.  He sought to bring about far-reaching church reforms in the German-speaking world. These are referred to as Josephinism, and they included making the church services more accessible to the layman, modelled on some of the ideas of the Protestant Reformation. There were to be hymns sung in German, musical settings should be as brief as the text allowed, and there should be no purely instrumental music. In the pursuit of brevity, to shorten the long text of the Creed, it became the practice to sing several lines of text simultaneously. 

There was some controversy over the appointment of Archbishop Colloredo. The local ‘favourite’ for the position was the conservative current Dean of the cathedral, but Colloredo was a keen advocate of Josephinism, so he was appointed over the Dean’s head. Altogether it proved something of a poisoned chalice.

Vivaldi’s Kyrie in G minor

Vivaldi’s Kyrie in G minor is written for double choir and orchestra, a favourite layout for Venetian composers since the 16th century.  The geography of St. Mark’s Cathedral allowed the placing of groups of musicians around the building to create the excitement of a new ‘music in the round’ – Venice became famous for this.  The Ospedale chapel is quite small which means the Kyrie could not have been performed there – the space has insufficient breadth to accommodate two orchestras and two choirs.  There is a canal next to the Ospedale which leads to the nearby church of San Lorenzo, a Benedictine monastery church with a spacious rectangular nave.  It is believed Vivaldi wrote this and his other polychoral works for the Benedictines.  Sadly their church was severely damaged during the Napoleonic Wars, and was only recently reopened – as an exhibition space.

 

Vivaldi’s Gloria

For most of his adult life, Vivaldi was employed by the Ospedale della Pietà (Hospital, or Hospice of Mercy), one of the orphanages for ‘orphans and abandoned children’ in Venice.  The boys were educated for a trade and the girls were trained to provide music for the church services and concerts to raise money.  The sheer virtuosity of Vivaldi’s playing, and that of some of his pupils, attracted numerous visitors from all over Europe, bringing generous donations.  He trained some of his best pupils to teach, which meant in later life he could absent himself for long periods as long as he kept supplying the Ospedale with new concertos fortnightly (they paid him 2 gold sequins a concerto).

Considering the Gloria is the most famous of Vivaldi’s sacred choral pieces, it is perhaps surprising there is so little known about its origins.  It was most likely composed for the Ospedale della Pietà.  Since the musical establishment had an almost entirely female staff (Vivaldi taught there in the presence of a chaperone), it will have been performed entirely by the ladies of the Ospedale, tenor and bass parts included.  They performed behind a metal grille to shield them from the public view.

 

Review of our May 2019 concert

TIME TO SMILE

The audience enjoyed a full-blown baroque treat from the Stour Singers at their concert on 11th May with Handel’s The Trumpet Shall Sound (Messiah) and Foundling Hospital Anthem, Monteverdi’s popular Beatus Vir from his late liturgical works, and a Vivaldi favourite, the Dixit Dominus.  It was an inspired programme choice of three baroque composers at their best.

Under the lively baton of Music Director, Richard Emms, and with the enthusiastic support of the youthful Queen’s Park Sinfonia who contributed a spring-like freshness to the scores, this concert with fully committed choir and soloists was a joy.  The choir’s accomplished accompanist Rachel Bird was busy on keyboard throughout the programme.

These works demand a lot of concentration and accurate timing from any choir, being considerably energetic pieces that also need a subtlety of expression and the Stour Singers rose to the occasion to give the audience a very strong performance.

The vivid opening piece The Trumpet Shall Sound was brightly exemplified by one of the Sinfonia’s excellent trumpeters and bass baritone Julian Debreuil.  The choral works were enriched with the professional interpretation of all the soloists.  Both Susanna Fairbairn, soprano, and Cathy Bell, mezzo soprano, sang with a lyrical and moving expressiveness and with voices beautifully tuned in those duo passages echoing each other or in the exciting runs in the Dixit Dominus.  The same must be said for Tom Raskin’s bright tenor sound and the vocal colour of Julian Debreuil’s bass baritone, who also shared some exciting duo passages.  As a quartet the soloists performed well.

The whole programme resounded with an intuitive sense of balance and shared feeling between choir, orchestra and soloists to produce one of the best concerts of so many.  Though musical content was sacred, this exhilarating performance with its considerable bounce simply made you smile.

Don’t miss this choir’s only other major public performance of the year at Christmas.

 

Tom Bone

Stratford Herald, 16 May 2019

 

Telemann’s Magnificat in C

Telemann composed his Magnificat in C around 1705, probably while he was still in Leipzig.

He had enrolled at Leipzig University to read Law, but was very active musically, becoming thoroughly embedded in the musical life of the city.  Indeed, he became so dominant a figure that he seriously trod on the toes of Johann Kuhnau, J.S. Bach’s predecessor at the Thomaskirche.

It was customary in Leipzig when performing the Magnificat as part of a service that congregational hymns would be inserted between movements.  In line with this tradition, in this performance there will be appropriate Christmas carols included for the audience to join in.

Review of our May 2018 concert

MUSIC … THE FOOD OF LOVE INDEED!

The Shipston Stour Singers under their creative musical director, Richard Emms, gave us a night out to remember at St. Edmund’s Church, Shipston on Stour on the 12th May.  They were beautifully accompanied by the talented  Queen’s Park Sinfonia chamber orchestra of young graduate musicians who, with professional skill, put their heart and soul into the performance. The choir’s own musically sensitive Rachel Bird was on keyboard.

Richard had chosen a challenging and exciting programme, in terms of contrast for both choir and audience, with the Rutter Magnificat followed by the Fauré Requiem:  a vividly joyous and celebratory work by Rutter and the all-time favourite Fauré with its core serenity and sublime tenderness.  Both these works required a great deal from the interwoven voices of the choir in terms of dynamic control and timing.  In my view and according to audience response they succeeded magnificently with a full bodied performance of the Magnificat, which one person described to me as the popping of champagne corks, bubbling with vivacity.  To follow this with the quietly controlled and sustained vocal demands of the Requiem was difficult but this generally mature choir managed to achieve that intrinsic sweetness and clarity of young voices the work really needs.

But neither work could have succeeded so well  without the lovely professional voices of the soloists, Soprano, Ruth Holton and last minute replacement baritone, Andrew Mayor.  Ruth, in a varied career has developed a huge repertoire ranging from music of the Middle Ages to the Contemporary.  Her voice has a ringing, bell-like clarity, a really pure sound with which she brought a gentle flow to Rutter’s Et misericordia  and in the Requiem’s Pie Jesu a spiritual purity which brought a lump to the throat.  And from my point of view I found the Italianesque operatic approach of Andrew Mayor to the Fauré distinctly appropriate and very moving.  He also brought a strength and richness to the Requiem’s Libera Me, in its supplication to the Lord to be delivered from everlasting death.

The two profoundly religious works are to my mind about love and one would assume it was an over-riding love of God in the world and for life which inspired both Rutter and Fauré and even perhaps, under the mystical power of music for one evening, the capacity audience at St. Edmund’s.

Maggie Goren

Haydn’s ‘Creation’

The Creation 

Josef Haydn (1732 – 1809)

by Joseph Haydn

First bilingual oratorio?

Haydn’s greatest hit….

 

 

The Handel Festival, Westminster Abbey

 

In 1791, during Haydn’s first triumphant visit to London, he attended the annual Handel Festival in Westminster Abbey.  The tradition at the time was to perform Handel’s oratorios with as many as 1,000 performers, and that year Israel in Egypt and Messiah made a huge impact on Haydn. He resolved to compose something similar himself, particularly inspired by the vivid musical pictures in Israel in Egypt.

Initially a suitable libretto did not materialise, but four years later, just as he was leaving London for home for the second time, he was given a libretto, The Creation of the World, based on Genesis as it appears in the King James Bible, and on Milton’s Paradise Lost.

When Haydn arrived back in Austria he had the libretto translated into German by that great musical connoisseur and pillar of Viennese society, Baron Gottfried van Swieten.  Then he got to work on what would be one of his final masterpieces.  It took him more than a year to complete and left him ill with exhaustion.  But at the first performance, before a private audience of the great and good, the listeners were so completely bowled over by the musical picture of the creation of Light that the performance had to stop while they recovered.  The Creation proved to be an instant huge success, too, with the wider public.

In fact, Haydn had decided to publish The Creation in both German and English, making it probably the first bilingual musical composition.  He also published and distributed it himself, with the aid of subscriptions, which proved to be very lucrative.  Also, he conducted many lavish charity performances raising huge sums for the Tonkünstlersocietät, a charity supporting widows and orphans of musicians, very much in the vein of his inspiration, Handel, in his support for the Foundling Hospital in London.