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PROGRAM NOTES
Holiday Concert—December 5-6, 2009
(Saturday 7:00 p.m., and Sunday 3:00 p.m., at St. Saviour's Church)
“O great mystery, and wondrous sacrament, that animals should see the new-born Lord lying in a manger.” What more fitting way to begin a Christmas concert than the words of the chant for Christmas morning, “O magnum mysterium”? This chant has inspired many composers who have written motets and even entire masses based upon it. None have surpassed the ethereal motet composed by Tomás Luis de Victoria, the leading Spanish composer of the Renaissance. De Victoria divided much of his time between Spain and Rome, where he probably studied with Palestrina before succeeding him as music director of the papal seminary. His first book of motets, including “O magnum mysterium,” was published in Venice in 1572. This motet demonstrates his ability to infuse 16th-century counterpoint with a deep emotion drawn from years of religious contemplation.
Franz Joseph Haydn’s Missa Sancti Nicolai is a joyous mass written to celebrate the Feast of St. Nicholas on December 6, 1772. For most of Haydn’s life he composed in the service of his Hungarian patrons, the noble house of Esterhazy. In 1772 his patron was Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy, and December 6 was the prince’s name day. This missa brevis (“little mass”) is less than half an hour long; its brevity is achieved in part by overlapping certain portions of the text, which are heard simultaneously in different voices.
During Haydn’s lifetime, his church music was criticized for being too light and modern. The approved sacred style was old-fashioned and conservative, hearkening back to the complex and academic contrapuntal writing of the Baroque era. As to whether church music should be more solemn or more celebratory, Haydn definitely favored the celebratory. He responded to his critics by explaining, "At the thought of God my heart leaps for joy and I cannot help my music doing the same." Even so, he never failed to give expressive depth and weight to the movements “Et incarnatus est” (“And was made man”) and “Crucifixus sub Pontio Pilato” (“...was crucified under Pontius Pilate”).
Randall Thompson’s Frostiana (Seven Country Songs) was commissioned to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Amherst, MA. This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Frostiana’s first performance in October 1959. The town leaders suggested that Thompson set Robert Frost’s patriotic poem “The Gift Outright” (which Frost would recite two years later at President Kennedy’s inauguration). Instead, Thompson chose seven Frost poems in which we are directed to observe, contemplate, and learn from nature. Thompson’s understated style is perfectly in keeping with the emotional restraint of Frost’s poetry. There are conflicting reports about Frost’s opinion of the music, although it is often said that at the conclusion of “Choose Something Like a Star,” he leapt to his feet and shouted, “Sing that again!”
Our final work is Gustav Holst’s Christmas Day (Choral Fantasy on Old Carols). In 1893, at the age of nineteen, Holst became the organist and choir director of a small village church. Like his friend Ralph Vaughan Williams, he had an affinity for the folksongs of the English countryside. He was also inspired by the English madrigal and music of the Elizabethan and Tudor periods. That interest is evident in Christmas Day, which weaves together several traditional carols. Christmas Day was published in 1910 while Holst was teaching at Morley College, several years before the resounding success of his orchestral suite The Planets. Vaughan Williams was no doubt familiar with Christmas Day when he wrote his own Fantasia on Christmas Carols in 1912.
