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.
The treatment of the cantus firmus in the hymn Ave maris stella is quite different from its use in the psalms and the Magnificats.
The Sonata sopra Sancta Maria borrows the opening phrase from the Litany of the Saints and reiterates it in the soprano voice eleven times over a sonata for eight instruments. In general, the structure of the Sonata resembles, on a very large scale, that of a typical late sixteenth-century instrumental canzona, comprising a series of loosely related sections with repetition of the opening material at the end. As with the adaptation of the L’Orfeo toccata to Domine ad adiuvandum, a liturgical chant is superimposed on the instrumental composition, which could easily stand alone.
Whereas the structure of Dixit Dominus, Laudate pueri, Nisi Dominus, and Lauda Ierusalem is centered around reiterations of the psalm tone in each verse, the formal organization of Laetatus sum does not depends on the cantus firmus, but rather on the disposition of the text over a series of repeated bass patterns.
Monteverdi's setting of Laudate pueri (1610) is scored for eight voices, but here, in contrast ith his technique in Nisi Dominus and Lauda Ierusalem, Monteverdi rarely divides the ensemble into antiphonal four-voice combinations, preferring instead to pair voices in the same register. Throughout the psalm, Monteverdi is extremely flexible in his treatment of the plainchant. The psalm tone (tone 8 with finalis g) migrates freely from voice to voice, is transposed and is absent altogether in some passages. Nevertheless, each verse of the psalm appears at least once in plainchant.
The treatment of the psalm tone at the beginning of Laudate Read More...
After its opening verse, Monteverdi's 1610 setting of Dixit Dominus alternates between falsobordone settings of the chant (tone 4 with finalis e) and imitative textures built over the cantus firmus in the bass. Each falsobordone is followed by an instrumental ritornello. The doxology then concludes with a solo tenor intonation of the psalm tone and a six-voice polyphonic chorus, balancing the opening verse in symmetrical construction. Throughout the psalm, only the melismas that conclude each half verse (typical for falsobordoni) and the ritornellos are free of the chant.
Within this scheme, Monteverdi varies the context of the chant in several different Read More...
It is a pleasure to be working together again with The Whole Noyse in Magnificat's performances of Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers. In numerous collaborations over the past two decades, I have been consistently impressed with their musicianship and impeccable ensemble playing and Steve, Richard, Sandy and Herb have all become dear friends and trusted musical colleagues. The Whole Noyse will be joined by cornettist Kiri Tollaksen and frequent collaborator trombonist Ernie Rideout in our Vespers performances.
The Whole Noyse has collaborated with Magnificat from our very first season in 1992, when they joined for a series of memorable performances of Schütz' Weihnachtshistorie, Read More...
The structural parralels between Lauda Ierusalem and Nisi Dominus not only relate these two psalms to one another, but separate them from the other three, which are also related to one another by various means.