Volume 25 Issue 4 - December 2019 / January 2020

Mozart’s Messiah
This year is less routine. The TSO has engaged Alexander Shelley,
music director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, to conduct
Mozart’s orchestration of Messiah. This eliminates a wide range of
issues, but by no means all. Mozart’s Messiah is originally sung in
German. Shelley wants English, but his preferred edition (Bärenreiter)
does not produce a score with English text. For the chorus, this is no
problem, since the choruses retain the same music and bar count as
Handel’s original. TMC members can read from their familiar parts
with a list that converts the Bärenreiter numbers to Watkins Shaw.
Parts for the vocal soloists are, however, more complicated. Mozart
chose some of Handel’s standard voice assignments, but also some of
his optional ones. Most of these can be taken from the original Handel
vocal score and its Appendix. So far, so good – until you get to an alto
aria reassigned to the bass (the clef doesn’t work) or “The Trumpet
Shall Sound” in which measures are deftly omitted, and the whole is
rescored with horns taking prominence. In these cases, it was necessary
to replace the German text with English in the Mozart vocal
score. Sometimes matching the syllables is quite a challenge.
The TSO’s principal trombone, Gord Wolfe, had no idea what he was
getting into when he first encountered the Mozart Messiah – in more
ways than one.
In keeping with the orchestras of his time, Mozart augmented Handel’s
instrumentation by two flutes, two clarinets, one bassoon, two horns and
three trombones, so players who might usually have enjoyed an extra
holiday week are obliged to work. Trombones appear in only three short
movements of the full score, however it was the performance practice
of Mozart’s time that the three trombones would reinforce the alto,
tenor and bass voices in all the choruses. Only a remark in the critical
commentary, printed in a separate volume of the Bärenreiter edition,
points to this. Bärenreiter doesn’t even print complete trombone parts.
Quite ironically, the “trombone” does appear in the German title of
“The Trumpet Shall Sound,” [Sie schallt, die Posaun’]. (In the German
tradition, the trombone is the instrument of the last judgment, and
Mozart would again use it as such in his Requiem.)
A Match Made by Mozart
Messiah is, as Elmer Iseler was fond of saying, a “big sing” for the
chorus and nobody knew that better than Gord at the end of the first
rehearsal. As he looked skyward in exhaustion, his eyes wandered over
to the choir loft where Stephanie Fung, an alto in the TMC who was
also singing her first Mozart Messiah, happened to be looking back.
“Oh, she’s cute,” Gord thought to himself. He looked for her on the
subway, but she was living in Markham at the time and had driven.
By some electronic holiday miracle, they booked a coffee before the
final concert – and then agreed to a drink afterward. That was 13 years
ago – the last time the TSO performed the Mozart Messiah. Steph and
Gord got married in 2009 so in performing together again in these
concerts they are celebrating the anniversary of their meeting.
On the topic of “Orchestra Librarian Nightmares,” next month the
TSO will be giving four performances of Mozart’s Requiem - a work
left unfinished at Mozart’s death
and which exists in completed
versions by Süssmayr, Robbins
Landon, Beyer, Maunder, Levin,
and Druce. If you want to see and
hear how it goes – the Süssmayr
version, that is – come to Roy
Thomson Hall on January 15,16,17
or 18, 2020: tso.ca/concerts.
Gary Corrin is principal
librarian of the Toronto
Symphony Orchestra, would-be
scholar and eternal romantic.
He met his wife, Ingrid Martin, a
soprano with the Canadian
Opera Company Chorus, at
“Bravissimo!” the annual New
Year’s Eve opera gala at RTH –
but that’s another story.
Gordon Wolfe and Stephanie Fung
Gary Corrin in the Toronto
Symphony Orchestra library
EMMA BADAME
God is in the Trombone
The trombone is said to have been invented in the middle of the
15th century, but until the 18th century was called a “saqueboute”
(in French) or a “sackbut” (in English). Originally it was closely
associated with Christian church music and for this reason was
often used to symbolize God or supernatural phenomena when it
began to be used for other kinds of music during the 18th century.
Mozart is said to have picked up on this from Gluck and Salieri.
In the impressive solo at the end of Mozart’s Requiem, the trombone
announces the Last Judgment. And when Don Giovanni
is sent to hell for his life of debauchery, the trombone is used to
portray a supernatural force that reaches beyond human intellect.
In Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony the trombone represents the
powerlessness of man in the face of nature during the fourth movement
which depicts a thunderstorm, and in the fifth movement the
trombone voices mankind’s gratitude toward God.
10 | December 2019 / January 2020 thewholenote.com