Volume 24 Issue 4 - December 2018 / January 2019

Beat by Beat | Early Music
Christmas Music
Across Europe
MATTHEW WHITFIELD
National identity and culture play a profound and vital role
in the artistic self-perception of a country’s performers and
composers. Looking back on the Renaissance and Baroque
eras, it is clear that unique combinations of pedagogy, performance
practice, politics and technique led to the development of identifiable
national schools, particularly in France, Germany, Italy and England.
These schools are where we see the development of such localized
phenomena as the polyphony of Tudor England, the chorale-based
compositions of Lutheran Germany, and the development of Italian
operatic and dramatic forms.
The annual arrival of Christmas brings with it a host of music from
across Europe, connected through various forms of Christianity, but
unique in individual flavours and styles. Last month we were introduced
to the villancicos navideños, an ebullient form of protopopular
Christmas music native to Spain; this December and January
we are fortunate to hear a wide range of music from other cultural
hotspots, performed by some of our city’s finest ensembles.
Jubilance and Joy
No name is more synonymous with the German Baroque than
Johann Sebastian Bach, whose choral compositions combined
Lutheran theology with divinely inspired music. Bach’s Christmas
Oratorio is a classic Christmas composition from the Baroque era,
compiled and composed between 1733 and 1734 to celebrate the
Christmas season in Leipzig. Although considered a single, freestanding
work (catalogued as BWV 248) this “oratorio” is a series of
six individual cantatas that were performed during the time between
Christmas and Epiphany and divided between the Thomaskirche
and Nikolaikirche. Monumental in scope and brilliant in its musical
expression of Bach’s beliefs and theology, the Christmas Oratorio is,
along with the Passions, the closest Bach came to writing a dramatic
work. The Toronto Classical Singers tackle this incredible work on
December 9, bringing a touch of variety to an oratorio scene saturated
with performances of Handel’s Messiah!
About 100 years before Bach was born, Michael Praetorius was
pioneering new musical forms in the Lutheran tradition, developing
and incorporating Protestant hymnody into freely composed pieces,
such as the chorale fantasias for organ. Praetorius was prolific, his
voluminous output showing the influence of Italian composers and
his younger contemporary Heinrich Schütz. His works include the
nine volume Musae Sioniae (composed between 1605 and 1610), a
collection comprised of more than 1200 chorale and song arrangements,
and Terpsichore, a compendium of more than 300 instrumental
dances, which is both his most widely known work and his
sole surviving secular work. Now known almost exclusively for his
harmonization of Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, made famous in the
Carols for Choirs collection, a broader overview of Praetorius’s music
will be on display December 14 to 16 with The Toronto Consort’s
Praetorious Christmas Vespers, a reproduction of a Christmas Vespers
as it might have sounded in the early 17th century. It is worth remembering
that there were many generations of composers who paved the
path for the great composers of the late baroque, and the chance to
hear the unique sounds of these earlier soundsmiths is certainly valuable
and rewarding.
350 Years of François Couperin
François Couperin (1668 - 1733), known by his contemporaries
as Couperin le Grand (Couperin the Great), was born into
one of the most renowned musical families in Europe, the French
Ensemble Masques
equivalent of the German Bachs. Couperin was a prolific and influential
composer, receiving a 20-year royal publishing privilege in
1713 and subsequently issuing numerous volumes of keyboard and
chamber music including his most famous book, L’Art de toucher le
clavecin. Unlike other Baroque composers whose works were lost and
later revived, Couperin’s have remained in the repertory; Johannes
Brahms performed Couperin’s music in public and contributed to the
first complete edition of Couperin’s Pièces de clavecin by Friedrich
Chrysander in the 1880s; Richard Strauss orchestrated a number of
Couperin’s harpsichord pieces; and Maurice Ravel memorialized his
fellow French composer in his Le Tombeau de Couperin.
On December 15, Ensemble Masques visits the University Club of
Toronto Library to celebrate the 350th anniversary of Couperin’s birth
with a commemorative concert featuring the music of Couperin, Lully
and Corelli. While the inclusion of an Italian in this French-themed
REMENYI
BRINGS THE MUSIC
OF THE HOLIDAYS
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print music, musical gifts for children
and adults, and all the latest accessories
that musicians love and need.
VISIT OUR NEW ONLINE STORE
www.remenyi.com
A Family Christmas Tradition
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416.961.3111
thewholenote.com December 2018 / January 2019 | 39