Latest Posts from Magnificat's Blog
The Magnificat Blog features news about Magnificat’s concerts and the music we perform along with articles about the art and culture of the 17th Century
- Magnificat: Two Decades of Exploration 02/14/2012This article by Trista Bernstein was posted at San Francisco Classical Voice. Every musician searches for masterpieces to bring to the stage. For two decades, Magnificat has been in pursuit of such creations to please Bay Area audiences. Luckily, it has narrowed its focus to the 17th century, a time bursting with dynamic composers and emotional works. “It’s a tribute to the audience in the Bay Area that a group could focus on repertoire from the 17th century and be successful and have a following,” explains Artistic Director Warren Stewart. “That’s a joint effort between Magnificat and the audience.” Stewart, an accomplished cellist, has dedicated the last 20 years of his career to early music. His love of Baroque music is evident in the dynamic programming presented by the group each season. “It’s a fascinating time and period of music. Lots of things were changing, new rules were being written, and new kinds of music were being invented. I think it’s really fascinating to have the opportunity to explore that remarkable music and share it with the audience.“ Stewart had the great responsibility of crafting Magnificat’s 20th season. “I tried to choose composers and specific pieces that were somehow representative of what we’ve done. They are very influential composers, and they’ve shaped our style and approach to interpretation. The four composers who were featured this season were the four towering figures of the century, and represent four of the major centers where music was being created.” Although many new pieces were presented during the current season, it has been very reminiscent of the group’s first season.Magnificat
- 2002-2003: Magnificat’s 11th Season 02/13/2012Coming off a triumphant performance at the 2002 Berkeley Festival and the release of a second recording of music by Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, Magnificat's eleventh season featured music by Charpentier, Stradella, Isabella Leonarda and Buxtehude, as well as a conference on Women and Music in Italy and our first appearance in New York. Working with Charpentier scholar John Powell, Magnificat opened the season with a program of music the composer had written for the Parisian theatre. In our first season we had presented incidental music that Charpentier had written mostly from plays by Moliére also based on Powell's work. For this program music we selected music from three plays written in the 1670s: Circé, Les fous divertissements and La Pierre philosophale.Magnificat
- Madrigals of War and Love 01/26/2012In 1638, Claudio Monteverdi, the seventy-one year-old music director of the ducal church of St. Mark's in Venice, published his Eighth Book of Madrigals, the final collection of his secular music to be issued in his lifetime. He had last published a set of secular compositions in 1619, so the Eighth Book has a retrospective character, bringing together music written as early as 1608, and including one large work from 1624 and a variety of other compositions whose origins are unknown but which probably span the entire period 1619-1638. This unusually large collection was dedicated to Ferdinand III, the newly crowned Hapsburg Emperor in Vienna, whose mother was a member of the ducal family of the Gonazagas, former rulers of Mantua in northern Italy, where the early part of Monteverdi's career had unfolded and to which he was still connected by various threads. Monteverdi subtitled the Eighth Book Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi con alcuni opuscoli in genere rappresentativo("Madrigals of war and love with some pieces in the theatrical style"), and the texts repeatedly expound the interlocking themes of love and war-- the warrior as lover, the lover as warrior and the war between the sexes. The relationship between love and war had been a common Italian poetic conceit ever since the time of Petrarch in the 14th century, and had been given additional impetus by its prominence in Torquato Tasso's late 16th century epic poem, Gerusalemme Liberata. The notion of lover as warrior was also central to the Neapolitan poet Giambattista Marino, who exerted a significant influence on Italian literature and aesthetics of the 17th century and whose poetry was set many times by Monteverdi.Magnificat
- Favored by the Muses: the Florentine Poet Ottavio Rinuccini 01/10/2012Five of the poems set by Monteverdi in his Madrigals of War and Love are by Ottavio Rinuccini, a poet at the Medici court in Florence and the author of the first opera libretti. Closely connected with staged entertainments throughout his career, Rinuccini's earliest poetry was written for the wedding festivities of Francesco de' Medici and Bianca Cappello in 1579. Part of the circle of artists, poets and noblemen scholars known to musicologists as the “Florentine Camerata,” Rinuccini also provided texts for the famous intermedi at the performance of La pellegrina at the wedding of Ferdinand I de' Medici and Christine de Lorraine in 1589 and later wrote the libretto for Jacopo Peri’s Dafne in 1597. His most historically noteworthy work though was Euridice, his re-telling of the Orpheus legend that was set by both Peri and Giulio Caccini in 1600 that are considered the first operas. No less important was his libretto for Monteverdi’s second opera, Arianna. The score for Ariannahas not survived save for Arianna's lament, which was published independently and became one of the best known and most often imitated works of the century. Rinuccini may have also been involved with Striggio's libretto for Monteverdi's first opera L'Orfeo.Magnificat
- San Jose Mercury News Review: Magnificat celebrates holiday and its 20th anniversary with Schütz’s ‘Christmas Story’ 12/19/2011Everything but the sermon. Other than that, it's the full package this weekend as the Magnificat Baroque Ensemble re-creates Christmas Vespers at the Dresden Court Chapel circa 1660. Friday's rendering in Palo Alto was a gleeful holiday present for early-music lovers, unleashing sounds of sackbut and curtal (distant relatives of trombone and bassoon), while bringing forth German composer Heinrich Schütz's "Christmas Story," a setting of the Gospel narrative. Schütz's wondrous piece -- quasi-operatic -- was the centerpiece not only of the court's service back in 1660; it also was the centerpiece of a 1992 program by Magnificat, during its inaugural season in the Bay Area. And just as Warren Stewart, the group's artistic director, conducted the performance in 1992, he led it Friday. He was surrounded onstage at First United Methodist Church by 13 instrumentalists and eight singers, including bright-voiced German tenor Martin Hummel, passionately singing the role of the Evangelist, as he did in 1992.Magnificat
- San Francisco Examiner Review: The seventeenth-century Christmas service at St. Mark’s 12/19/2011The San Francisco Early Music Society and Warren Stewart’s Magnificat combined forces this season to reconstruct a Christmas Vespers service, as it would have been given in the Dresden Court Chapel of 1660. This production was given its San Francisco performance last night at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church. The Lesson for such a service would have been an account of the Nativity from one of the Gospels. Music for the service would have been the responsibility of the Kapellmeister to the Elector of Saxony, at that time Johann Georg I. That Kapellmeister in 1660 was Heinrich Schütz. Thus, the major work at last night’s performance was a setting of Nativity texts in what was probably one of the earliest forms of oratorio. This involved music for both a chorus and soloists, with the soloists corresponding to the characters of the narrative along with an “Evangelist” narrator, with instrumental accompaniment. For the libretto for this narrative, Schütz drew upon two of the Gospels: Luke (primarily the first 21 verses of the second chapter) and Matthew (the first 23 verses of the second chapter). In addition to the Evangelist, the characters consisted of an angel, the shepherds in the field, the three wise men, Herod, and his high priests.Magnificat
- 2001-2002: Magnificat’s Tenth Season 12/08/2011Magnificat celebrated it's tenth season with a mix of old and new programs that included two of the composers featured in the 20th anniversary season this year: Heinrich Schütz and Claudio Monteverdi. The season also saw the release of our first two recordings of the Chiara Margarita Cozzolani's music and two more weeks of recording sessions. Magnificat also made another appearance at the biennial Berkeley Festival and Exhibition. A week of Cozzolani recordings in August preceded the regular season, which began in September with a program devoted to an excellent but under-performed composer, Johann Hermann Schein, one of Bach's predecessors as cantor at Thomas Kirche in Leipzig. Already in Magnificat's first season, Magnificat had included Schein's striking setting of the Vater unser as part of our December concerts and individual works by the composer had made their way into program on other occasions. The release of a recording of Schein's Banchetto Musicale in 2000 by the Sex Chordæ Consort of Viols led to plans for a joint program of the composer's consort music and vocal works.Magnificat
- Italians in Dresden – The Musical Ensemble at the Court of Johann Georg II 12/08/2011When Schütz was first engaged as Kappelmeister by the Elector of Saxony, Johann Georg I, the court in Dresden boasted one of the finest musical establishments north of the Alps. After Saxony’s disastrous decision in 1627 to enter the then decade-old conflict now known as The Thirty Years War, this once glorious musical establishment was [...]Magnificat
- Schütz’s Christmas Story 12/07/2011Magnificat performs Schütz's Christmas Story and other music from the Dresden Court the weekend of December 16-18.Tickets are available here. In what has become a decennial tradition, Magnificat will perform Schütz's Weihnachtshistorie (Christmas Story) in the context of a Christmas Vespers from the Electoral Court chapel of Saxony in Dresden. Schütz's masterpiece served as the Gospel reading in the Dresden liturgy and in 1992 and 2001, settings of the remaining texts in the liturgy (the psalm, Magnificat, Vater unser, etc.) were drawn from other works by Schütz and colleagues from earlier in his carrier in Dresden, namely Michael Praetorius, Johann Hermann Schein, and Samuel Scheidt - all music from the first half of the 17th Century. For this season's incarnation of Christmas Vespers ina co-production with the San Francisco Early Music Society, Magnificat will focus on the music in fashion in Dresden in 1660, when Schütz wrote the Weihnachtshistorie. In creating this program, we have been fortunate to have the assistance of Magnificat Artistic Advisory Board member Mary Frandsen, professor of musicology at Notre Dame University, whose 2006 book Crossing Confessional Boundaries, explored musical patronage in Dresden under Johann Georg II. Saxony, along with the rest of northern Europe, was finally beginning to recover from the economic and social devastation of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). As always resources had been devoted to weapons instead of people and for many years during the war musicians in the court musical ensemble were paid only occasionally. In a letter written in 1651, Schütz described “the very great lamentation, distress, and wailing of the entire company of poor, deserted relatives of the singers and instrumentalists, who live in such misery that it would move even a stone in the earth to pity.” The situation changed significantly in the 1650s, particularly with the ascent of Johann Georg II in 1656. While there was some concern among church authorities about his allegiance to the Lutheran confession, Johann Georg II was quite devoted to spiritual matters and to the support of the arts, and the new Elector lavished huge sums from the court treasury on an opulent musical ensemble. Some of the finest Italian singers were appointed and the instrumental ensemble was expanded to become one of the finest musical establishments in Europe.Magnificat
- 2000-2001: Magnificat’s Ninth Season 11/26/2011Magnificat's ninth Season began earlier than usual with a week of recordings at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Belvedere in August. All the works by Chiara Margarita Cozzolani that Magnificat had performed on the San Francisco Early Music Society series the previous December were recorded plus two new psalms and a motet, Maria Magdalene stabat. The sessions ended with a performance for a small invited audience. The sessions were such a success that the decision was made for Musica Omnia to release not merely a Vespers CD but to undertake a project to record Cozzolani's complete works and another week of recordings were planned for January. The season officially opened in September with a program devoted to settings of texts from the Song of Songs, a rich source for composers throughout the 17th century. While Magnificat's program most often are focused on a single composer, style, or historical event, this program, entitled "Sonnet vox tua in auribus meis," featured settings in a variety of genres and from several composers. After an opening motet from Palestrina's fourth book of motets for 5 voices, the program was divided into four "chapters," each beginning with one of the four "seasons" of Charpentier's soprano duet Quatour anni tempestes.Magnificat
