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Saturday, March 14, 2009 at 8 PM
Church of The Covenant, 67 Newbury St, Boston
Michael Driscoll, conductor
See press release for this concert.
Buy tickets.
Award-winning British composer Jonathan Dove imagines that Bach fell asleep during a long sermon and conjured a dream Mass from fragments of his own music. The result is a witty and reverent tapestry that makes perfect musical sense, a thoroughly modern work reverberant with echoes of the Baroque. Bach's own Cantata 161 is a gem from Weimar, a meditation on death and salvation marked by exceptional sound painting that concludes with a lushly harmonized chorale accompanied by flutes, strings and continuo. Handel's Dixit Dominus, written when he was just 22, is a thrilling tour de force that marked a breakthrough for the young composer, his “explosion into genius.”
 Frank Kelley |
 Susan Consoli |
 Deborah Rentz-Moore |
Concert tickets are $25, $35 and $45, with discounts available on selected seats for groups, students, seniors and WGBH members. For wheelchair-accessible seats or for further information, call 617-267-7442.
Hear the WHRB radio ad, featuring music from the Messe.
On NECN: Chorus pro Musica prepares for special concert. Interview with conductor Michael Driscoll and scenes from a rehearsal! (Broadcast 3/12/09)
Jonathan Dove was born on July 18, 1959, and lives and composes in England.
Jonathan Dove’s comic opera Flight was performed by the Boston Lyric Opera in April–May 2005, but other than that, his music has not been much heard in Boston. This performance will be a rare opportunity for Boston audiences to hear his work. “Not since Benjamin Britten has a British composer suceeded in writing operas which communicate with such clarity and coherence to their audience as those by Jonathan Dove.” (Gramophone, August 2008)
The Köthener Messe was written in 2002 for chorus, SATB soloists, recorders, harpsichord and strings. It was commissioned and first performed by Köthener Bach Festtage.
“The result, rather than a mere exercise in pastiche, is a typically Dovian and ingenious fusion of old and new. The poignant recorders in thirds from the middle movement of the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto introduce the Kyrie; figuration from Well-Tempered Clavier preludes and fugues goes wild in the Gloria; the Sixth Brandenburg and C major Prelude merge in the Sanctus. Meanwhile, the spacious string chords of Arvo Pärt and the running sequences of the American minimalists hover on the sidelines.”
“Dove’s compact Mass imagines Bach during his period as the Köthen court Kapellmeister, falling asleep during the drone of a church sermon and conjuring a dream Mass from fragments of his own instrumental music. Free of their usual moorings, motifs drift and find new companions. Snatches from the Brandenburgs meet relics from the first book of The Well-Tempered Klavier. Keys are mixed and transposed, phrases reiterated or left unfinished; yet from these shards and distortions Dove still weaves a tapestry that makes perfect musical sense. He also shapes a Mass both witty and reverent […] An enchanting work; I can imagine many more performances.”
“Dove's mass is a conceit: Bach dreams; floating in and out are various pieces—his 4th Brandenburg and an assembly of fragments from The Well-Tempered Klavier. The scoring is the same as Bach's Brandenburg but demands the niftiest of harpsichordists—in this case, David Gordon. Ghosts of Pärt, Fauré and Adams lurk, too, but this is an extremely clever and touching piece.”
Köthen (Anhalt) is a small town not far from Halle and Leipzig, where the 32-year-old J.S. Bach was hired in 1717 by the 23-year-old (and quite progressive) Prince Leopold to be music director of his court. Previoiusly Bach had been organist and chamber musician at the court at Weimar. There is a good description of his stay in Köthen on the bach-cantatas.com web site. Köthen still celebrates J.S. Bach's music with the Bach choir, founded in 1908, and in the “Bach Festival Days,” begun in 1935, for which Jonathan Dove wrote his Köthener Messe.
Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, Thuringia (in Germany) on March 31, 1685 and died in Leipzig on 28 July 1750.
This Cantata was composed towards the end of Bach's time in Weimar (prior to his move to Köthen). It is believed to have received its first performance on 27 September 1716.
The web site of Emmanuel Music has a good translation (by Pamela Dellal) and commentary (by Craig Smith) for this Cantata: “The Cantata BWV 161 is one of the great treasures of Bach's Weimar years. There is perhaps no other Weimar cantata that is more characteristic of the warmth and openness that characterizes all of the music from that period. ” The words are by Salomo Franck.
There is a good discussion of this Cantata at www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV161-D.htm, which includes this excerpt from the liner notes to the Schröder recording (on Telefunken LP), written by Christoph-Hellmut Mahling:
“The cantatas in which Bach deals with the group of subjects involving dying, death, life after death are particular gems. It would appear as though he had immersed himself more deeply in these works than in any others. Calmness and certainty of faith is noticeable here that is not clouded by the slightest fear. It is also this sphere that the cantata ‘Komm, du süße Todesstunde’ (Come, thou sweet hour of death) belongs. First performed in Weimar on the 6th October 1715 (11 years later to the day the cantata ‘Wer weiss, wie nahe mir mein Ende’ (who knows how near my end), BWV 27, was first heard in Leipzig), it was heard again, probably in unchanged form, in Leipzig on the 2nd February, i.e. the festival of the Purification of Mary, 1735. The text of the cantata is by Salomo Frank, who has linked it to the Gospel reading for this Sunday (Luke 7: 11-17: the raising of the youth of Nain) though without following this up any further.
“In the opening aria for alto voice, two flutes, organ and continuo, a deeply felt and fervent longing for death is expressed not only through the character of the instrumentation, but above all through the ‘sighing’ motif of the theme. First played on the flutes then taken up and repeated by the solo voice, it represents the basic element of the entire movement as it were. Longing for death and certainty is being able to meet it calmly is expressed even more calmly, as though objectified, by the introduction of the chorale ‘Herzlich tut mir verlangen nach einem sel'gen End’ (Heartily I long for a blessed end) at the moment when solo voice sings the word ‘Todesstunde’ (hour of death) for the second time. (It is played at the present recording not on the organ but on the oboe.) In the recitative that follows (tenor), disdain for the world and the peace that will be with Jesus (rocking semiquaver figures in the bass at the end) are illustrated altogether emphatically. Similar in its basic feeling and content to the first aria, though considerably more definite in its attitude through the omission of the flutes and the use of the strings only, the tenor aria once more asserts the longing for death. In the accompanied alto recitative that now follows, gentle sleep (descending quaver figure), reawakening (ascending semiquaver figure) and, in the bell-like stationary sound, the last hour are suggested in wonderful fashion. The knowledge that the moment of death depends not on man but alone on God’s will is expressed in a choral movement full of calm motion to which the two flutes impart a peculiar attractiveness through their figuration. In conclusion, the chorale already heard in the first aria is taken up again, its fourth verse now being sung by the choir while the two flutes in unison elaborate the chorale melody in a manner well known from Bach’s chorale preludes; this lets the work appear rounded off as one large musical entity.”
George Frideric Handel was born in Halle, Germany, on 23 February 1685 and died in London on 14 April 1759.
An online CD review by Johann David Heinichen has a great description of Dixit Dominus:
“Dixit Dominus is Handel’s explosion into genius, almost as if while in Rome at the age of 22 he decided to proclaim his brilliance to the world. Of course such a perspective is a post-modern wisdom of hindsight, and owes nothing to historical reality. But it is astonishing to hear Dixit Dominus and attempt to work out exactly where the phenomenal striking power of Handel’s music comes from. It is not evident in the few of Handel’s earliest works that have endured for posterity (many of the youthful works from Halle and Hamburg are lost). Dixit Dominus seems like a bolt out of the blue. Ranging from the opening ‘fire and brimstone’ of ‘Dixit’, the ravishing yet enigmatic ‘De torrente’, and the incrementing fireworks of the closing ‘Gloria’, this is the work of a fully fledged master bursting with determination to have his voice heard. It is not too skeptical to speculate that Handel was ruthlessly endeavouring to impress his Roman patrons by ‘knocking their socks off’.”
The Wikipedia article on Handel (b. 1685, the same year as J.S. Bach) has some background:
“In 1702, following his father’s wishes, Handel began the study of law at the University of Halle; however, he abandoned law for music, becoming the organist at the Protestant Cathedral. In 1704, he moved to Hamburg, accepting a position as violinist and harpsichordist in the orchestra of the opera house. His first two operas, Almira and Nero, were produced in 1705. Two other early operas, Daphne and Florindo, were produced in 1708.
“During 1706–09, Handel travelled to Italy at the invitation of Gian Gastone de’ Medici. During his visit to Hamburg, Medici had become acquainted with Handel. Handel also met Medici’s brother Ferdinando, who was a musician himself. While opera was temporarily banned at this time by the Pope, Handel found work as a composer of sacred music; the famous Dixit Dominus (1707) is from this era. He wrote many cantatas in operatic style for gatherings in the palace of Pietro Ottoboni (cardinal). Rodrigo, his first all-Italian opera,was produced in Florence in 1707.”
Michael Driscoll, making his debut concert appearance with Chorus pro Musica, prepared the chorus last year for their performance of Roger Ames’s Requiem for Our Time. He is Director of Choirs at Brookline High School and is Music Director of Saengerfest Men’s Chorus, a Boston-based community chorus of 65 singers that he has led on tours to Portugal, Vancouver, Canada and London, England. Michael has been Associate Conductor of The Masterworks Chorale under the direction of Steven Karidoyanes and was Assistant Conductor for four years under Allen Lannom. He has also directed the choirs at Emerson College and the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.
Michael received his Masters degree in Choral Conducting at the New England Conservatory, where he studied with Simon Carrington, a founding member and former co-director of the King’s Singers. He began conducting as an undergraduate at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), directing Simple Harmonic Motion, a 14-member male a cappella group, for three years. He was Assistant Director of the WPI Men's Glee Club for three years and directed the WPI Concert Choir for two years. He earned BS and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering at WPI and worked as a software development engineer for two years prior to beginning graduate studies in Choral Conducting at New England Conservatory in the Fall of 2001.
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