We open tonight with Hyowon Woo’s “Cum sancto spiritu,” which is just a blast to sing. It is the third movement of Woo’s Gloria and is the most Western-sounding section of that work. “Renowned as one of Korea's leading composers, Hyowon Woo (b. 1974) stands as a formidable force within the realm of choral music. Her innovative creations weave together traditional Korean musical elements and Western techniques.” (hyowonwoo.com) “Cum Sancto Spiritu repeats the text and theme from the first movement of Gloria, but this time set to a lively homophony, which emphasizes the joy and praise for the glory of God. The “Amen” section is expanded into a call and response often found in the western contrapuntal practice of imitation.” (note from the published score) 

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), proud son of Venice, Italy, needs very little introduction for those of us who have heard The Four Seasons in concert halls and commercials for years. Vivaldi’s contributions to string playing technique and his devotion to the slow middle movement in each of his almost 500 concerti revolutionized the concerto form. He was also a prolific vocal composer, with perhaps 50 operas and many motets and other sacred works to his credit. Tonight’s motet for double choir, Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina (“O Lord, make haste to help me”), despite its somber text (from Psalm 70), is a propulsively joyful piece, with each choir battling for sonic supremacy as they “make haste.” The middle movement is a beautiful example of Vivaldi’s operatic writing, and the final movement brings it all home as the two choirs join forces in a fugue with two contrasting subjects (“Amen” and “Et in saecula saeculorum”).

It is probable that Vivaldi wrote Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina in the 1720s for his accomplished student musicians at the Ospedale dell Pieta (an orphanage for abandoned girls) in Venice. In 1729, his contemporary, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), composed the motet Der Geist hilft unsrer Schwacheit auf for the funeral service of Johann Heinrich Ernesti, rector of the Thomas School and Professor of Poetry at the University of Leipzig. It likely was sung by a combined choir including the best of Bach’s students from the St. Thomas school, singers from the four Leipzig churches whose music he oversaw, and university students. The Bible verses were probably chosen by Ernesti during the period of his declining health. The text is somewhat enigmatic and stern in its character, but Bach, characteristically, makes it dance.

The motet comprises three movements. The first begins in a lively triple meter. It is dominated by an extended melisma (many notes for one syllable) on the word “Geist” (“Spirit”), with figures akin to those of an organ toccata. The two choirs toss back and forth three-note declarations of “Der Geist hilft” (“The Spirit helps”) to reinforce the core importance of the text. The second section is a brief fugue (at “sondern der Geist”). The word “Seufzen” (“sighing”) is given prominence with syncopated falls, long lines, and two-note interjections. 

Bach then moves to a four-part texture for one of his most elaborate choral fugues. The main subject begins with a leaping fourth or fifth (“Der aber...”). The second main section of text (“denn er vertritt...”) brings a second theme with short, repeated notes, which would make this a standard double-fugue, which in and of itself isn’t too rare. But the second theme’s countermelody, with its easily identifiable fall of a fifth and return, is equally prominent as the fugue progresses. To try to identify every single time when each of these three motives pops up is like playing a game of musical whack-a-mole, or perhaps Pokémon. I challenge you to “catch ’em all”! 

It has been proposed, due to a lack of instrumental parts in the original source, that the concluding chorale was not part of the original motet, but was instead sung at the graveside after the service. Here Bach chose a chorale tune and text written by Martin Luther himself, though harmonized as no one but Bach could. (Gary D. Cannon)

The closing chorale, “Du heilige Brunst, süßer Trost” (You sacred warmth, sweet consolation) is verse 3 of Martin Luther’s Pentecost hymn, “Komm, Heiliger Geist, Herre Gott” (Come, Holy Spirit, Lord God). It is a beautiful harmonization of the tune and ends with a gorgeous “Hallelujah.”

Another, very different, “Hallelujah” is heard twice in Rejoice in the Lamb, by Benjamin Britten (1913-1976). In 1942, soon after returning to England from the United States, Britten was commissioned to write a choral piece for the 50th anniversary of the consecration of St Matthew's Church, Northampton, which took place the following year. The request for a composition came from the priest Walter Hussey, who was known as a great admirer of art and music and believed that the church should be a patron of art as it was during the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical periods. (In 1965 Hussey commissioned Leonard Bernstein; the result was Chichester Psalms.)

The text for Britten’s composition comes from a 1200-word poem by Christopher Smart (1722-1771), a well-known London poet. 

Though he spent his young professional life as a Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and won several prizes for his religious poetry, by the age of twenty-five, heavy drinking and mounting debt all but ended his promising career. By the year 1756, he began to display signs of mental illness. As described by William Force Stead, “he would fall upon his knees in the street to pour forth his prayers, in spite of the jeers of small boys and the curious glances of the passers-by.” Smart apparently took very seriously the New Testament mandate to “pray without ceasing.” His condition declined rapidly, and in that same year he was confined to an asylum, where he would remain until 1763. It was during this time that, in the company of his cat Jeoffry, the troubled Smart penned his lengthy devotional poem of praise, Jubilate Agno [Rejoice in the Lamb]. (Hilary Donaldson) 

Jubilate Agno was not published until 1939, and not in its correct order until 1954. 

Christopher Smart never completed the work, which consists of four fragments making a total of over 1,200 lines, each beginning with the words “Let” or “For”. For example, Fragment A is all “Let”s, whereas in Fragment B the “Let”s and “For”s are paired, which may have been the intention for the entire work, modelled on antiphonal Hebrew poetry. References and allusions abound to Biblical (especially Old Testament) figures, plants and animals, gems, contemporary politics and science, the poet’s family and friends, even obituary lists in current periodicals. The language is full of puns, archaisms, coinages, and unfamiliar usages. Dr Johnson famously said “Nothing odd will do long; Tristram Shandy did not last”. Jubilate Agno is, if anything, “odder” than Sterne’s novel, and perhaps we are readier to appreciate it in the twenty-first century than when it was written.

Here we have an example of what one could call Smart’s “encyclopaedic” style, his passion for listing and enumerating. And whereas the description of his cat is fairly straightforward, other passages in the poem are deeply obscure, seeming to emerge from some private store of reference. It has been suggested that, in his confinement, Smart had access to just six books: the King James Bible; Ainsworth’s Latin Thesaurus; Salmon’s guide for London pharmacists (in Latin); Miller’s Gardener’s Dictionary; and Hill’s Useful Family Herbal and History of Plants. The modern reader cannot hope to grasp every reference and allusion scattered within the poem, but Smart’s language is exact and exquisite, with a musicality that becomes hypnotic. (Frank Key)

The poet W.H. Auden introduced Britten to Jubilate Agno, and the composer carefully chose the passages he would set. (The Hallelujah is not in the original poem.) When Hussey expressed reservations about the 'cat' section, Britten replied: ‘I am afraid I have gone ahead and used a bit about the cat Jeffrey. He is such a nice cat.’

In the introduction to the score, Hussey writes,

The Cantata is made up of ten short sections. The first sets the theme. The second gives a few examples of one person after another being summoned from the pages of the Old Testament to join with some creature in praising and rejoicing in God. The third is a quiet and ecstatic Hallelujah. In the fourth section [Christopher] Smart takes his beloved cat as an example of nature praising God by being simply what the Creator intended it to be. The same thought is carried on in the fifth section with the illustration of the mouse. The sixth section speaks of the flowers - "the poetry of Christ." In the seventh section Smart refers to his troubles and suffering, but even these are an occasion for praising God, for it is through Christ that he will find his deliverance. The eighth section gives four letters from an alphabet, leading to a full chorus in section nine which speaks of musical instruments and music's praise of God. The final section repeats the Hallelujah.

Benjamin Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb is a much-performed work in the choral canon, in part because of its original scoring for choir, soloists, and organ, which makes it affordable and portable :). We are excited tonight to present the work as scored for chamber orchestra, at the request of the composer, by Imogen Holst. The orchestration was made for a concert given at the 1952 Aldeburgh Festival. 

Imogen Holst (1907-1984) was the daughter of composer Gustav Holst. She received a composition scholarship at the Royal Conservatory of Music. She worked as a composer, writer, educator, performer, conductor, and arts administrator

Her writings include the definitive biography of Gustav Holst (1938) and, subsequently, The Music of Gustav Holst(1951). She also penned a biography of English composers Benjamin Britten and Henry Purcell.

In 1952, she began a 12-year stint working as assistant to Benjamin Britten. That association led to her being named a director of the annual Aldeburgh Festival that had been founded by Britten and Peter Pears. She also formed a successful vocal ensemble, the Purcell Singers, that regularly performed at the Aldeburgh Festival. In 1964, she withdrew from many of these activities to focus on her own original compositions. (Hank Reynolds) Holst died in Aldeburgh in March 1984, and is buried at Aldeburgh parish church cemetery. 

The Mass in C, composed in 1807 by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), is often overshadowed by the much later Missa Solemnis (1819-1823), but it holds its own as a powerful and meaningful Mass setting. It is a work that blooms as one practices it, its subtle details and nuances revealing themselves to the singers. Of course there are also dramatic and energetic moments – in particular, the Gloria and the Credo movements are full of surprising harmonic shifts and glorious fugues. I think that the famous quote by Beethoven – “I do not like to say anything about my Mass or myself, but I believe I have treated the text as it has seldom been treated” refers in large part to the Credo, where every phrase is carefully expressed. Michael De Sapio writes, “One [Beethovenian touch] occurs at the start of the Credo, which starts piano and crescendos rapidly to forte with a fourfold repetition of the word “Credo”: “Credo, credo, credo, CREDO!” Composers often use text repetition for emphasis, but this is a striking instance that gives one pause. One commentator sees this passage as dramatizing the “leap of faith”; Beethoven, as it were, must arrive at faith through struggle.”

In the premiere of the work, though, there was none of this. The music was under-rehearsed (only 1 of the 5 altos was present at the dress rehearsal), and the performance was apathetic. The audience came expecting the joyful fireworks of the late Haydn masses and was disappointed by the tender, thoughtful opening of the Kyrie, by the restrained and non-bravura use of the soloists throughout, by the recurrence of the “Lamb of God, have mercy on us” text in the middle of the traditionally joyful “Dona nobis pacem,” and so on. Prince Nikolaus of Esterházy, who had commissioned the work, said to Beethoven after the performance, “But, my dear Beethoven, what is this you have done?” Still, the Mass in C remained one of Beethoven’s favorite works and he worked hard to get it published before giving it for free to Breitkopf & Härtel – with a dedication not to Esterházy but to a more faithful supporter, Prince Ferdinand Kinsky.

Beethoven sets his Mass in C symphonically, with five large movements, each with the composer’s characteristic harmonic adventurousness, sudden bursts of energy and engaging lyricism. It has been performed by the Chorale three times in its 50 years (and was scheduled to be performed in April of 2020). It is a pleasure to perform this radiantly beautiful work again today.

Anne Watson Born