Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Messe de Minuit
St. Patrick's Seminary Menlo Park
12.17.10 8PM
St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Berkeley
12.18.10 8PM
St. Mark's Lutheran Church, San Francisco
12.19.10 4PM
Magnificat has long championed the music of the remarkable Marc-Antoine Charpentier and in this program we turned to his best-known work: the delightful Messe de Minuit (Midnight Mass). Drawing on the popular melodies of French Christmas carols, or noëls, Charpentier preserves their charming simplicity in achieving a perfect synthesis of popular art and the lush elegance of the Age of Louis XIV. The program also included Charpentier’s Dialogus inter Angelos et Pastores and noel settings by Nicolas LeBegue and André Raison.
