Magnificat

The blog has been quiet, but we've been hard at work. We're close to launching the new Magnificat website - and this blog is being re-designed as part of the "upgrade". But that's just part of what's been going on. It's less than a month now til our performances at the Berkeley Festival and Exhibition. The festival is shaping up to be a fascinating event - in addition to the seven 'main stage concerts and the EMA conference and exhibition there will be 50 fringe concerts during the week! Many (most) of these concerts include dear friends of Magnificat and it Read More...

Last weekend Magnificat completed our 18th season with three performances of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers in three beautiful venues for three large and appreciate audiences. We still have performances at the Berkeley Festival and a CD release party at Yoshi’s in June, but it is a good time to reflect on what has been Magnificat’s most successful and regarding season yet. Above all, we thank the musicians (full list below) who devoted so much love, devotion and talent to each of Magnificat’s projects this season.

Fielding a team of 10 extraordinary singers, Artistic Director Warren Stewart conducted Magnificat in a splendid performance of the 1610 Vespers, accompanied by four string players, organ and theorbo continuo, and six players of a variety of Renaissance winds: The Whole Noise and guests.

In his famous Vespers of 1610 Monteverdi embroiders the ‘rhythm of vespers’ and ‘recharges the batteries’ as the vespers moves from one multi-layered text to another.

Nika Korniyenko took some photos from our performance of Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers yesterday evening at the beautiful St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park. Two more performances - tonight at St. Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley and tomorrow afternoon at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Both concerts are selling well but tickets are still available.

The collection, the Salmi a otto voci concertati… which has been recorded in its entirety by Magnificat for Musica Omnia was Cozzolani’s fourth published in the short span of ten years (1640-50; one publication survives complete, one incompletely, and the first seems completely lost).

The treatment of the cantus firmus in the hymn Ave maris stella is quite different from its use in the psalms and the Magnificats.

Qui dat nivem sicut lanam: nebulam sicut cinerem spargit. Mittit crystallum suum sicut buccellas: ante faciem frigoris eius quis sustinebit?

The parts designated ‘Alto’ or ‘Septimus’ in Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers, like all music from the period, encompass a vocal range that in later music is most often sung by high tenors. The ‘counter tenor’ of the later Baroque would typically sing in a slightly higher register. As a result together with the ‘Tenore’ and ‘Quintus’ parts, we will have four tenors for our performances April 23-25.