Music & the Arts - Trinity Church

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Program Notes “I am he who was born long ago and was widely known in the century, but now I am naked and nothing, dust in a tomb, at an end, and food for worms. I have lived enough, though too briefly in comparison to eternity…I was a musician, considered good by the good musicians, and ignorant by the ignorant ones. And since those who scorned me were more numerous that those who praised me, music brought me small honor and great burdens. And just as I at birth brought nothing into this world, thus when I died I took nothing away.” – Marc-Antoine Charpentier: Epitaphium Carpentarii (H. 474) It’s rather staggering to realize that the author from whom the world’s most famous early music ensemble (Les Arts Florissants) derives its name was subjected to almost complete obscurity until as late as the 1890s when a slightly skeptical Camille Saint-Saëns undertook to mount Molière’s final play Le Malade imaginaire in its 1672 version. This version, recently shorn of its incidental music by the monopoly-holding Jean- Baptiste Lully, was Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s meal ticket into the mainstream of 17th-century Parisian musical theater, and it was this work that was resurrected more than 200 years after its premiere. Climbing out of the pit of obscurity would be an arduous task for this composer and his music, for unlike Mendelssohn’s complete devotion to his rediscovery of Bach’s Matthäus-Passion, Charpentier’s champion was publicly not entirely enamored with the Baroque master’s abilities: “The oversights of Marc-Antoine Charpentier are crude mistakes, like a student’s clumsy turns of phrase…whatever the case, there are works in Charpentier’s considerable output that deserve to be known. His ideas have an attractive freshness and originality. Those marred by technical errors are easy to correct without spoiling or modernizing them; they are clearly improved by the elimination of inconsequential schoolboy’s errors.” 1 1 Camille Saint-Saëns, “A Contemporary of Lully” Au courant de la vie Dorbon-aîné, Paris 1914 2 Catherin Cessac, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Amadeus Press, Portland Oregon 1995 (Trans. E. Thomas Glasow) 26 Fortunately, Charpentier’s vast musical output survived the verbal lashings of Camille Saint- Saëns. Ironically, the composer himself did the same in his own time, sustaining a fruitful compositional life while under explicit attack by the rival Jean-Baptiste Lully, who enjoyed a royal monopoly on most matters artistic and firmly held his position as the king’s court composer. “Lully ruthlessly kept all other musicians (especially those of genius) from claiming what he coveted for himself alone: the supreme devotion and the recognition of his king and his adopted compatriots.” 2 The life of Charpentier exhibits a curious counterpart to the court-honored and -appointed Lully, as it reveals a considerably different career path, one that seems informed first by personal loyalty (his long term commitment as “house composer” to Madame de Guise), and additionally by a sustained relationship with the Jesuits, both in his youth and in his mature years serving as the maître de musique of St. Louis in Paris. His third and final position was also a master of music position, this time through royal appointment at St. Chapelle, where he served from 1698 until his death in 1704. Even by today’s standards, these jobs would be considered comfortable, plum positions – allowing plenty of time for compositional work in addition to the sustained level of performance that would be expected of a professional musician during this period. Despite the fact that almost none of Charpentier’s late music has survived, the composer maintained a meticulous catalogue of his own compositional portfolio up through his time at the Jesuit church St. Louis. This collection of cahiers was miraculously preserved for posterity as Charpentier’s heirs sold the entire collection to the bibliothèque nationale de France where they remained forgotten until the 20th century. This collection, Charpentier’s mélanges autographes, comprises over 500 works of stunning sophistication, variety and beauty. Today, when one hears Charpentier, one recognizes a truly unique voice – a compositional language as individual and recognizable as Brahms, Debussy or Mahler. In an ironic twist, it is rather obvious that his relative comfort in his positions, and his separation from the vulgarities of royal “taste,” kept his process pure. Catherine Cessac, one of Charpentier’s primary biographers and editors, observes: “Though detrimental to his personal fame and immortality, Charpentier’s marginal position perhaps benefitted his music. If the composer had obtained an official post at court, would he have had occasion to write his splendid masses when the king had no taste for that type of work?...Whatever Charpentier lacked in prestige, he gained in creative freedom during a long career that allowed him to express himself in diverse modes and to try his hand at all music genres of the era, both sacred and secular.” 3 This unique and colorful voice and mastery of compositional technique makes its most striking appearance in his multi-volume settings of the Tenebrae for Holy Week. Of the surviving works in H. Wiley Hitchcock’s catalogue, one can identify thirty-eight leçons and ten répons de ténèbres, (H. 91 – H. 143) and with very few exceptions, all are modestly scored and display a level of introspective sublimity that must surely have influenced François Couperin when he undertook to create his similarly conceived settings of the Tenebrae. In a wink to an archaic treatment of chant and cantus firmus, many of these lessons are rooted in the Gregorian ‘tonus lamentationis’ albeit merged and brilliantly clothed within a more baroque understanding of rhetoric and affectation. Clearly these works betray a Jesuitical methodology, particularly in the way in which subjective and deeply emotional vocal lines (contemporarily identified as the ‘high melismatic style’) interpret the ancient Jeremiahan texts. Indeed, much as the orthodox Lutheran church supports a hermeneutically informed system for Bach, Charpentier’s massive output of sacred repertoire clearly supports the thesis of a parallel methodology within franco-catholicism, particularly in its forward-thinking and erudite Jesuitical faction. “For the Jesuits to communicate most effectively with the faithful and to move their congregation, they had to provide what appeared tantamount to entertainment. Within their church-centered society, 17th-century Jesuits practiced enculturation: they adopted the secular artistic practices of the culture as a means of evangelizing, exploiting the ideals of devout humanism. Richard Viladesau has argued that the Jesuits understood ‘the realm of aesthetic 3 Catherin Cessac, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Amadeus Press, Portland Oregon 1995 (Trans. E. Thomas Glasow)
experience ... as a locus of explicitly religious (and theological) experience, expression, and discourse ... as well as ... a locus of secular human experience.’ Certainly, St. Ignatius had recognized the value of combining the idea of ‘sensual stimulation’ with selfreflection and devotion — of using all a person’s senses and experiences to encounter God.” [Loyola, Spiritual Exercises] 4 Today’s program presents three of these otherworldly leçons, H. 140, H. 105 and H. 110. While submerged in this beauty, imagine that there are forty-five (!) more examples of this stunning music to discover, merging “sensual stimulation” with self-reflection and devotion. ©2013 Julian Wachner 4 C. Jane Gosine and Erik Oland, “Docere, delectare, movere: Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Jesuit spirituality” Early Music, November 2004 Texts & Translations Leçons de Ténèbres pour Vendredi Première Leçon Lamentations 3:22-30 De lamentatione Jeremiae prophetae. HETH. Misericordiæ Domini, quia non sumus consumpti; quia non defecerunt miserationes ejus. HETH. Novi diluculo, multa est fides tua. HETH. Pars mea Dominus, dixit anima mea; propterea exspectabo eum. TETH. Bonus est Dominus sperantibus in eum, animæ quærenti illum. TETH. Bonum est præstolari cum silentio salutare Dei. TETH. Bonum est viro cum portaverit jugum ab adolescentia sua. JOD. Sedebit solitarius et tacebit quia levavit super se JOD. Ponet in pulvere os suum si forte sit spes JOD. Dabit percutienti se maxillam saturabitur obprobriis. Ierusalem, convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum. Deuxième Leçon Lamentations 4:1-6 ALEPH. Quomodo obscuratum est aurum, mutatus est color optimus! dispersi sunt lapides sanctuarii in capite omnium platearum! BETH. Filii Sion inclyti, et amicti auro primo: quomodo reputati sunt in vasa testea, opus manuum figuli! GHIMEL. Sed et lamiæ nudaverunt mammam, lactaverunt catulos suos: filia populi mei crudelis quasi struthio in deserto. From the lamentations of Jeremiah the prophet. HETH. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; HETH. They are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness. HETH. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” TETH. The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. TETH. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. TETH. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. JOD. Let him sit alone in silence when he has laid it on him; JOD. Let him put his mouth in the dust– there may yet be hope; JOD. Let him give his cheek to the smiter, and be filled with insults. Jerusalem, return to the Lord thy God. ALEPH. How the gold has grown dim, how the pure gold is changed! The holy stones lie scattered at the head of every street. BETH. The precious sons of Zion, worth their weight in fine gold, how they are reckoned as earthen pots, the work of a potter’s hands! GHIMEL. Even the jackals give the breast and suckle their young, but the daughter of my people has become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness. 27
Page 1 and 2: Trinity Wall Street February 6 -May
Page 3 and 4: ach st. matthew passion march 24, 5
Page 5 and 6: Welcome to Trinity Wall Street! The
Page 7 and 8: TENEbrae a Lenten earLy music serie
Page 9 and 10: Dietrich Buxtehude: Membra Jesu nos
Page 11 and 12: Texts & Translations Membra Jesu no
Page 13 and 14: VII. Ad faciem Concerto Illustra fa
Page 15 and 16: Program Notes “La Musique d’un
Page 17 and 18: Troisième Leçon Lamentations 1:10
Page 19 and 20: Program Notes Forced into great eco
Page 21 and 22: Lamentations II Lamentations 1:3-5
Page 23 and 24: Program Notes “The melancholy tem
Page 25 and 26: Texts & Translations Tenebrae Respo
Page 27: T E N E b r a E Marc-Antoine Charpe
Page 31 and 32: MaTThäus-PassioN March 24, 2013 29
Page 33 and 34: PART TWO 30. Aria (alto, flute) & C
Page 35 and 36: M a T T h ä u s - P a s s i o N Pr
Page 37 and 38: ach aT oNE March 18-May 27, 2013 35
Page 39 and 40: a c h a T o N E The Choir of Trinit
Page 41 and 42: BWV 129 Gelobet sei der Herr, mein
Page 43 and 44: Patrick Fennig, alto TeneT; The Sai
Page 45 and 46: Anne Trout, baroque bass, violone T
Page 47 and 48: Stravinsky Festival: The Complete S
Page 49: ach st. matthew passion march 24, 5

Music & the Arts - Trinity Church

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?