Who'd have thought it possible? New organs at St Philip Presbyterian and the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Houston have drawn capacity crowds to dedicatory recitals and other events this year, and people are coming back in droves for more! Last night's crowd at the Co-Cathedral, for a recital by Philippe Lefebvre from Paris, was nearly as big as that for David Higg's program a few weeks ago, and the recent Concert for Peace at St Philip had its largest crowd ever this fall, too.
Remembering back to the thirteen (or was it more?) times that Clyde Holloway had to play the opening recital on the big Fisk/Rosales at Rice, I guess there is considerable interest here in the organ. It just takes an amazing new instrument to bring people out of the woodwork. Churches and music schools take note: this is an excellent way to get people excited about your programs!
And to that end, the next opportunity to hear the new Fritts organ at St Philip: Friday, Nov 19, with Prof. Martin Jean from Yale University at the console. Details: Music at St Philip
And the next recital on the new Pasi organ at the Co-Cathedral: my UH colleague Robert Bates on Dec 7. Details: Opus XIX
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Monteverdi Vespers on Nov 13
Looking forward to a couple of performances of Claudio Monteverdi's magnificent 1610 Vespers very soon: on Nov 13 in Houston and Nov 14 in Dallas, with Ars Lyrica, the Orpheus Chamber Singers, and the Whole Noyse. Here are notes on that upcoming program, hot off the press.
NOTES ON THE VESPERS
Though published relatively early in his career, Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine is his most spectacular sacred work. Part of a larger 1610 Venice publication (dedicated to the Virgin Mary) that begins with a Mass setting, the 1610 Vespers, as it has come to be known, comprises far more than one actually needs for Vespers, prompting all manner of speculation as to the composer’s intent and the origins of this collection. Its contents—big psalm settings, smaller-scale motets, a lavishly scored sacred concerto, and two differently scored settings of the Magnificat—certainly cover all the standard parts of the Vespers liturgy, but whether they were meant to be performed as a whole is doubtful.
Like Bach’s equally monumental Mass in B Minor, Monteverdi’s Mass and Vespers are less solitary works than compilations of various items. Their publication may have served as a kind of musical calling card: by 1610 Monteverdi was no longer satisfied with the terms of his employment in Mantua, and the publication of a Mass and Vespers in Venice may well have led to his eventual position at St. Mark’s Basilica in that city. In any case, the sheer range of musical styles in the Vespers, from grandiose psalm settings to intimate motets, is striking, as is Monteverdi’s practical ingenuity: in the print he provides directions for performing the various movements either with groups of string and wind instruments or with organ alone. Most modern performances (like ours) give the score its full due with a rich panoply of instrumental color.
The 1610 Mass and Vespers summarize the shifting sands of musical style in the early seventeenth century: the Mass is set contrapuntally, in the style of a Palestrina, while the Vespers combines mostly prima prattica psalms with more modern seconda prattica motets. Within the psalm settings one finds a variety of compositional techniques, from the venerable block chordal style of psalm recitation (falsobordone) in “Dixit Dominus,” to various contrapuntal treatments of a slow-moving cantus firmus in the “Magnificat a 7” and elsewhere, even variations on the Romanesca (a secular ground bass) in “Laetatus sum.” The motets are by no means impoverished by their leaner scoring; their reduced forces permit greater vocal display, from the delicate intertwining of two sopranos in “Pulchra es” to the exuberant flights of fancy for three tenors in “Duo seraphim.” These latter movements especially have much in common with the theatrical music of this era: Monteverdi’s own Orfeo, for example, whose ardent song is not so different from these love songs to the Virgin Mary.
Of all the great monuments of music literature, the 1610 Vespers is one of the least familiar, perhaps because of the exotic performing forces the “full dress” version requires. Once one locates the necessary cornetts, sackbuts, theorbos, agile tenors, low basses, and altos with seemingly endless lungs, there are still many issues to consider: Should the piece be given in a liturgical context? Should the “Lauda Jerusalem” and “Magnificat” movements be transposed downward by as much as a fourth? Should instruments double the vocal lines and, if so, where? How much embellishment should one apply to the individual parts? Did the composer intend a performance of the various movements in the published order of the partbooks? Attempting to steer a course somewhere between the latest musicological findings and practical reality, ours is a concert performance of the whole work (without interpolated plainsong antiphons) in the order of the 1610 partbooks, with transposed “Lauda” and “Magnificat” movements, and occasional doublings of the parts and embellished solo lines. ©Matthew Dirst
NOTES ON THE VESPERS
Though published relatively early in his career, Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine is his most spectacular sacred work. Part of a larger 1610 Venice publication (dedicated to the Virgin Mary) that begins with a Mass setting, the 1610 Vespers, as it has come to be known, comprises far more than one actually needs for Vespers, prompting all manner of speculation as to the composer’s intent and the origins of this collection. Its contents—big psalm settings, smaller-scale motets, a lavishly scored sacred concerto, and two differently scored settings of the Magnificat—certainly cover all the standard parts of the Vespers liturgy, but whether they were meant to be performed as a whole is doubtful.
Like Bach’s equally monumental Mass in B Minor, Monteverdi’s Mass and Vespers are less solitary works than compilations of various items. Their publication may have served as a kind of musical calling card: by 1610 Monteverdi was no longer satisfied with the terms of his employment in Mantua, and the publication of a Mass and Vespers in Venice may well have led to his eventual position at St. Mark’s Basilica in that city. In any case, the sheer range of musical styles in the Vespers, from grandiose psalm settings to intimate motets, is striking, as is Monteverdi’s practical ingenuity: in the print he provides directions for performing the various movements either with groups of string and wind instruments or with organ alone. Most modern performances (like ours) give the score its full due with a rich panoply of instrumental color.
The 1610 Mass and Vespers summarize the shifting sands of musical style in the early seventeenth century: the Mass is set contrapuntally, in the style of a Palestrina, while the Vespers combines mostly prima prattica psalms with more modern seconda prattica motets. Within the psalm settings one finds a variety of compositional techniques, from the venerable block chordal style of psalm recitation (falsobordone) in “Dixit Dominus,” to various contrapuntal treatments of a slow-moving cantus firmus in the “Magnificat a 7” and elsewhere, even variations on the Romanesca (a secular ground bass) in “Laetatus sum.” The motets are by no means impoverished by their leaner scoring; their reduced forces permit greater vocal display, from the delicate intertwining of two sopranos in “Pulchra es” to the exuberant flights of fancy for three tenors in “Duo seraphim.” These latter movements especially have much in common with the theatrical music of this era: Monteverdi’s own Orfeo, for example, whose ardent song is not so different from these love songs to the Virgin Mary.
Of all the great monuments of music literature, the 1610 Vespers is one of the least familiar, perhaps because of the exotic performing forces the “full dress” version requires. Once one locates the necessary cornetts, sackbuts, theorbos, agile tenors, low basses, and altos with seemingly endless lungs, there are still many issues to consider: Should the piece be given in a liturgical context? Should the “Lauda Jerusalem” and “Magnificat” movements be transposed downward by as much as a fourth? Should instruments double the vocal lines and, if so, where? How much embellishment should one apply to the individual parts? Did the composer intend a performance of the various movements in the published order of the partbooks? Attempting to steer a course somewhere between the latest musicological findings and practical reality, ours is a concert performance of the whole work (without interpolated plainsong antiphons) in the order of the 1610 partbooks, with transposed “Lauda” and “Magnificat” movements, and occasional doublings of the parts and embellished solo lines. ©Matthew Dirst
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Scandalous opera: next Friday at Zilkha Hall!
PROGRAM NOTES AND SYNOPSIS for "LA DIRINDINA"
A Scarlatti opera usually means a work by Alessandro, the Neapolitan master of both opera and oratorio and father of Domenico, whose strikingly original sonatas continue to fascinate, regardless of medium. But the younger Scarlatti, following in his father’s footsteps, composed some fourteen stage works during his youth, only a few of which survive. Leaving his native Italy in 1719, Domenico Scarlatti spent the rest of his life in Portugal and Spain, where he served as music master to Princess Maria Barbara and composed more than 500 keyboard sonatas. To opera — the genre that defined Italian music for generations — he never returned, despite keen dramatic instincts and the lure of great fame.
La Dirindina is, technically speaking, an intermezzo — or, as its original subtitle announces, a “musical farce” — and like all works in this subgenre, it’s both comic and compact. Intermezzi typically feature a pretty young girl, a father figure (which could be an uncle, teacher, or guardian), and some kind of love interest. Designed to lighten the mood of a full-length Italian opera, at whose intermissions its two parts were heard, the intermezzo gave companies the opportunity to cut loose and poke fun at not only stock character types but the entire edifice of serious opera. Strongly satirical works like La Dirindina became more common later in the eighteenth century, after Domenico Scarlatti had abandoned the opera house for more stable employment.
Set to a libretto by Girolamo Gigli, La Dirindina was intended to serve as a companion piece to Scarlatti’s Ambleto, a three-act opera seria, at its Roman première in 1715. The censors intervened, however, banning La Dirindina from the stage on account of its racy libretto — with the collusion, it seems, of the original cast, who feared they would look ridiculous. Not to be outmaneuvered, Gigli got his naughty little satire published elsewhere, and it quickly became a “must-have” among the cognoscenti.
The story concerns a wily but gifted young singer, Dirindina, and her teacher Don Carissimo, whose interest in his pupil is more than a little untoward. As the curtain goes up, a singing lesson is underway, and it is clear that neither student nor teacher are much interested in the day’s lesson plan. Dirindina’s independent spirit and her ability to sing (when she wants to) annoy Don Carissimo, who is further vexed by the appearance of Liscione, a famous castrato who brings some surprising news: the Milan theater wants to engage Dirindina as its prima donna. Don Carissimo flies into a rage, stammering his way through a highly amusing (and forward-looking) aria, only to see that his pretty pupil is now flirting openly with the castrato. An obligatory ensemble, with Dirindina and Liscione in musical and dramatic opposition to Don Carissimo, brings Part I to a close.
Part II opens with the unctuous Liscione plying Dirindina with a little minuet, which manages simultaneously to flatter the young singer’s ego while lampooning the fashionable but shamelessly sentimental manners of the aristocracy. Dirindina responds with perhaps the oddest aria in the work, full of syncopations and serpentine melodies that cheekily invoke various bodily fluids, with which she promises to seduce the Milanese public. The ensuing “play within a play,” a mock enactment of the tragic Dido’s rejection of the feckless Aeneas, is witnessed by Don Carissimo, who fails to get the joke and thinks that his ward is not only with child but ready to commit suicide. As with all good comedies, the joke’s on him: the finale is both outrageous and touching, as the capon and the hen are joined in hand by a thoroughly deceived old man.
The two concertos on this evening’s program come from a set of twelve arrangements made by English organist and composer Charles Avison from Scarlatti keyboard sonatas. Published in 1743, these concerti fed the craze for such works, launched by Geminiani’s arrangements of Corelli sonatas just a few years before, and helped to popularize Scarlatti’s music in England. Scored for two concertino (solo) plus two ripieno (tutti) violins plus viola, cello and continuo, these concerti respect the content of the original sonatas while adapting them idiomatically to string instruments. © Matthew Dirst
A Scarlatti opera usually means a work by Alessandro, the Neapolitan master of both opera and oratorio and father of Domenico, whose strikingly original sonatas continue to fascinate, regardless of medium. But the younger Scarlatti, following in his father’s footsteps, composed some fourteen stage works during his youth, only a few of which survive. Leaving his native Italy in 1719, Domenico Scarlatti spent the rest of his life in Portugal and Spain, where he served as music master to Princess Maria Barbara and composed more than 500 keyboard sonatas. To opera — the genre that defined Italian music for generations — he never returned, despite keen dramatic instincts and the lure of great fame.
La Dirindina is, technically speaking, an intermezzo — or, as its original subtitle announces, a “musical farce” — and like all works in this subgenre, it’s both comic and compact. Intermezzi typically feature a pretty young girl, a father figure (which could be an uncle, teacher, or guardian), and some kind of love interest. Designed to lighten the mood of a full-length Italian opera, at whose intermissions its two parts were heard, the intermezzo gave companies the opportunity to cut loose and poke fun at not only stock character types but the entire edifice of serious opera. Strongly satirical works like La Dirindina became more common later in the eighteenth century, after Domenico Scarlatti had abandoned the opera house for more stable employment.
Set to a libretto by Girolamo Gigli, La Dirindina was intended to serve as a companion piece to Scarlatti’s Ambleto, a three-act opera seria, at its Roman première in 1715. The censors intervened, however, banning La Dirindina from the stage on account of its racy libretto — with the collusion, it seems, of the original cast, who feared they would look ridiculous. Not to be outmaneuvered, Gigli got his naughty little satire published elsewhere, and it quickly became a “must-have” among the cognoscenti.
The story concerns a wily but gifted young singer, Dirindina, and her teacher Don Carissimo, whose interest in his pupil is more than a little untoward. As the curtain goes up, a singing lesson is underway, and it is clear that neither student nor teacher are much interested in the day’s lesson plan. Dirindina’s independent spirit and her ability to sing (when she wants to) annoy Don Carissimo, who is further vexed by the appearance of Liscione, a famous castrato who brings some surprising news: the Milan theater wants to engage Dirindina as its prima donna. Don Carissimo flies into a rage, stammering his way through a highly amusing (and forward-looking) aria, only to see that his pretty pupil is now flirting openly with the castrato. An obligatory ensemble, with Dirindina and Liscione in musical and dramatic opposition to Don Carissimo, brings Part I to a close.
Part II opens with the unctuous Liscione plying Dirindina with a little minuet, which manages simultaneously to flatter the young singer’s ego while lampooning the fashionable but shamelessly sentimental manners of the aristocracy. Dirindina responds with perhaps the oddest aria in the work, full of syncopations and serpentine melodies that cheekily invoke various bodily fluids, with which she promises to seduce the Milanese public. The ensuing “play within a play,” a mock enactment of the tragic Dido’s rejection of the feckless Aeneas, is witnessed by Don Carissimo, who fails to get the joke and thinks that his ward is not only with child but ready to commit suicide. As with all good comedies, the joke’s on him: the finale is both outrageous and touching, as the capon and the hen are joined in hand by a thoroughly deceived old man.
The two concertos on this evening’s program come from a set of twelve arrangements made by English organist and composer Charles Avison from Scarlatti keyboard sonatas. Published in 1743, these concerti fed the craze for such works, launched by Geminiani’s arrangements of Corelli sonatas just a few years before, and helped to popularize Scarlatti’s music in England. Scored for two concertino (solo) plus two ripieno (tutti) violins plus viola, cello and continuo, these concerti respect the content of the original sonatas while adapting them idiomatically to string instruments. © Matthew Dirst
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Sneak Preview Party on Sept 12
Join Ars Lyrica on Sunday, September 12th between 3-5 pm at Frank's Chop House (on Westheimer near Wesleyan) for a "sneak preview" of the 2010-11 season. Enjoy samplings of food and wine and a taste of what’s in store for the upcoming season, including artist performances and special promotions. Celebrate the release of Ars Lyrica's recording of J. A. Hasse's "Marc Antonio e Cleopatra" on the Dorian label and yours truly's recording of harpsichord works by François and Armand-Louis Couperin on the Centaur label. Both these recordings are now available from Ars Lyrica or online or in record stores worldwide.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Hasse CD on Dorian
I'm delighted to announce that Dorian-Sono Luminus has picked up Ars Lyrica's next CD recording: the world première of Johann Adolf Hasse's "Marc Antonio e Cleopatra," featuring the fabulous duo of mezzo Jamie Barton and soprano Ava Pine, with yours truly and the Ars Lyrica ensemble. The record is due out soon -- in August, so stay tuned for information on the release party. We recorded this piece, Hasse's first significant work in Italy, over the New Year's holiday this past season, and performed it on New Year's Eve 2009 at Zilkha Hall. I'm very pleased with how it turned out and am delighted we can share it with you soon!
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Notes for "Roman Holiday"
Here are my notes for the upcoming Ars Lyrica "Roman Holiday" program, featuring Handel's delightful "Clori, Tirsi e Fileno" and three of my favorite singers. Ticket info at Ars Lyrica
Handel composed Clori, Tirsi e Fileno in Rome the fall of 1707, probably for the Marchese Francesco Maria Ruspoli, in whose household the young composer served for a few years while perfecting his skill with opera and cantata in the land that produced those genres. With its full orchestral scoring and two parts, each containing more than a dozen “numbers,” Clori is the longest and most sumptuous of Handel’s Italian cantatas. One might call it a chamber opera, though “opera” for Handel implied three full acts, numerous characters and competing story lines. Italian cantatas, on the other hand, were usually solo vehicles on pastoral or amorous texts, and rarely involved more than just one voice and continuo players.
Clori, Tirsi e Fileno stands somewhere between these two generic poles. Its familiar pastoral characters include the beautiful nymph Clori and two love-struck shepherds, Tirsi and Fileno. The same characters appear in countless other Italian cantata libretti from this time (and innumerable paintings), most of which make us understand — with barely concealed winks and nods — that Clori permitted certain pleasures before she withheld them. With Clori, Tirsi e Fileno Handel and his anonymous librettist transformed such stock situations into a more dramatic kind of piece, with an overture and at least three distinct scenes. Such extended works were highly valued by Roman connoisseurs especially: various popes were forever banning opera and closing public theaters, leaving wealthy Roman patrons to take upon themselves the commissioning of all manner of operatic substitutes. The polite pastoral garb of Clori, Tirsi e Fileno surely fooled no one at its première in Ruspoli’s palace: this is a tale of love, lust, and betrayal, entirely in keeping with the norms of the Baroque opera house — and Roman society from its founding onwards.
Tirsi sets the stage at the beginning of Part I with healthy amounts of both self pity and denial: he realizes Clori is unfaithful, but his passion for her remains. Once Tirsi has made his misery plain, he hides, just as Clori enters with Fileno, whose heart is just as battered. Responding to Fileno’s complaint that she loves another, Clori announces that her pity has turned to love. The onstage lovers rejoice as Tirsi slinks off unnoticed, muttering curses under his breath.
Part II opens with Clori in pursuit of a jilted and angry Tirsi, who understandably wants nothing further to do with such a fickle woman. After much bickering, Tirsi relents, accepting Clori’s explanation that she was simply playing a joke on Fileno. As Clori leaves, Fileno reappears and the two men realize they’ve both been duped by a woman they find hopelessly irresistible.
In the original duet ending for the work, Tirsi and Fileno foreswear women and affirm the ostensibly more durable nature of male companionship. In the trio Handel wrote for a subsequent performance in Naples (where the oblique allusion to same-sex love might have caused a stir), Clori returns to join Tirsi and Fileno, all cheerfully observing that “to live and not to love…is not possible.” Since both endings offer undeniable musical charms, we thought it desirable to offer both. And thankfully, neither the imperfect sentiment of the duet nor that of the trio will get Handel in trouble today! © Matthew Dirst
Handel composed Clori, Tirsi e Fileno in Rome the fall of 1707, probably for the Marchese Francesco Maria Ruspoli, in whose household the young composer served for a few years while perfecting his skill with opera and cantata in the land that produced those genres. With its full orchestral scoring and two parts, each containing more than a dozen “numbers,” Clori is the longest and most sumptuous of Handel’s Italian cantatas. One might call it a chamber opera, though “opera” for Handel implied three full acts, numerous characters and competing story lines. Italian cantatas, on the other hand, were usually solo vehicles on pastoral or amorous texts, and rarely involved more than just one voice and continuo players.
Clori, Tirsi e Fileno stands somewhere between these two generic poles. Its familiar pastoral characters include the beautiful nymph Clori and two love-struck shepherds, Tirsi and Fileno. The same characters appear in countless other Italian cantata libretti from this time (and innumerable paintings), most of which make us understand — with barely concealed winks and nods — that Clori permitted certain pleasures before she withheld them. With Clori, Tirsi e Fileno Handel and his anonymous librettist transformed such stock situations into a more dramatic kind of piece, with an overture and at least three distinct scenes. Such extended works were highly valued by Roman connoisseurs especially: various popes were forever banning opera and closing public theaters, leaving wealthy Roman patrons to take upon themselves the commissioning of all manner of operatic substitutes. The polite pastoral garb of Clori, Tirsi e Fileno surely fooled no one at its première in Ruspoli’s palace: this is a tale of love, lust, and betrayal, entirely in keeping with the norms of the Baroque opera house — and Roman society from its founding onwards.
Tirsi sets the stage at the beginning of Part I with healthy amounts of both self pity and denial: he realizes Clori is unfaithful, but his passion for her remains. Once Tirsi has made his misery plain, he hides, just as Clori enters with Fileno, whose heart is just as battered. Responding to Fileno’s complaint that she loves another, Clori announces that her pity has turned to love. The onstage lovers rejoice as Tirsi slinks off unnoticed, muttering curses under his breath.
Part II opens with Clori in pursuit of a jilted and angry Tirsi, who understandably wants nothing further to do with such a fickle woman. After much bickering, Tirsi relents, accepting Clori’s explanation that she was simply playing a joke on Fileno. As Clori leaves, Fileno reappears and the two men realize they’ve both been duped by a woman they find hopelessly irresistible.
In the original duet ending for the work, Tirsi and Fileno foreswear women and affirm the ostensibly more durable nature of male companionship. In the trio Handel wrote for a subsequent performance in Naples (where the oblique allusion to same-sex love might have caused a stir), Clori returns to join Tirsi and Fileno, all cheerfully observing that “to live and not to love…is not possible.” Since both endings offer undeniable musical charms, we thought it desirable to offer both. And thankfully, neither the imperfect sentiment of the duet nor that of the trio will get Handel in trouble today! © Matthew Dirst
Monday, April 5, 2010
St Philip Dedication Events
Inaugural recital (by yours truly) on Saturday, April 17 at 7 pm, featuring works by François and Louis Couperin, Eustache du Caurroy, J. P. Sweelinck, J. S. Bach, Herbert Howells, Rudolf Maros, and Olivier Messiaen. Dedication service on Sunday, April 18 at 11 am, featuring Benjamin Britten's "Rejoice in the Lamb" with the St Philip Choir.
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