Inspired by imaginative genius
and, at times, financial necessity, Handel created musical forms, including the
English-language oratorio, which have remained at the heart of English musical
life ever since. His works garnered extraordinary acclaim in his own day, and
continued to exert an enormous influence on the musical history of his chosen
country of residence long after his death,
In the 1730s and 1740s, as London audiences’ fickle taste for
Italianate opera seria waned, and wearied by the continual political
intrigues of the capital’s theatrical life, Handel turned his attention
to another creative outlet and source of income; realising the possibilities
offered by large un-staged dramatic works, by the 1740s the oratorio had
completely replaced opera in his output.
Skilfully combining elements taken from Italian opera and oratorio, the
English anthem and other genres, Handel produced a uniquely
‘English’ musico-dramatic form, one which has since inspired many
composers, both native and foreign. The Barbican Hall’s six-month series
celebrating the English oratorio continues in 2012 with a varied array of works
of contrasting styles and intent, performed by illustrious English orchestras,
conductors and soloists.
Today, compared with the box office popularity of Mozart and Beethoven, it
is common to dismiss Haydn as — to coin Charles Rosen phrase — a
‘connoisseurs’ composer’, but, as Rosen points out, to do so
is to overlook Haydn’s enormous popular success during the 1790s, a
decade which witnessed an immense outburst of musical creativity in a
deliberately popular style.
It is to this decade that both of Haydn’s major oratorios, The
Creation and The Seasons, belong. The latter’s numerous
allusions to Haydn’s ‘back catalogue’ — such as the
quotation from that perennial audience favourite, the Surprise
Symphony, in the fourth number — reveal the composer’s shrewd
commercial and musical instincts.
The Seasons sets texts by the early Romantic nature poet, James
Thompson, poems which enable the composer to indulge in his beloved pastoral
idiom. The work is characterised by wonderfully evocative tone-painting which
explicitly points the sentiments of the text with particularity and dramatic
inventiveness; surprising modulations and unexpected dynamic accents provide
deliberately theatrical flourishes.
As the title suggests, the oratorio depicts the passing of the year, but it
is more than a pictorial portrait; Haydn’s musical idiom, at times
surprisingly simple, even naÔve, expresses not only his wonder at the beauty of
the natural world, but also reveals a sincere exploration and depiction of
man’s relationship to Nature. It is a true coup de thÈ‚tre,
presenting before us the entire universe as Haydn and his contemporaries new
it.
Following his recent award-winning recording of Haydn’s other late
oratorio, The Creation, conductor Paul McCreesh now leads some of the
same performers, including his renowned period ensemble the Gabrieli Consort,
in a performance of this work of infinite beauty, grace and insight.
The son of an aristocratic family of assimilated Jews, Mendelssohn was
baptised and raised as a Protestant and lived as a devout Christian. His
preoccupation with works of a religious nature was thus a natural outgrowth of
his faith; but, when his interests in the Baroque oratorio tradition and, more
particularly, in the revival of the Passions of J.S. Bach combined
with nineteenth-century taste for theatrical melodrama, the result was a
thrilling Biblical epic, Elijah.
Though compositional sketching commenced in 1837-8, the oratorio might, like
Mendelssohn’s third oratorio, Christus, have remained unfinished
had it not been for a contract in September 1845 from the Committee of the
Birmingham Music Festival to conduct the 1846 Festival, which offered him the
opportunity to present a major new composition.
According to one eye witness, the work was finished only 9 days before the
Festival. Premiered on 26 August, by an orchestra of 125 players and a chorus
comprising 271 singers, it was a sensational success: audiences demanded that
four arias and four choruses be immediately repeated. Mendelssohn himself was
clearly overwhelmed by the occasion, later recording: “A young English
tenor [Charles Lockey] sang the last aria so beautifully I was obliged to
exercise great self-control in order not to be affected, and to beat time
steadily.”
Andreas Delf will conduct the Britten Sinfonia and Chorus in a performance
show-casing some of the finest contemporary British voices: joining experienced
baritone Simon Keenlyside and alto Catherine Wyn-Rogers are young singers at
their forefront of a new generation of acclaimed performers, soprano Lucy Crowe
and tenor Andrew Kennedy.
It was the first performance of Tippett’s A Child of our
Time, on 19th March 1944, in a concert promoted by the London Philharmonic
Orchestra, the London Region Civil Defence and Morley College Choirs —
conducted by William Goehr, with soloists Joan Cross, Margaret McArthur, Peter
Pears and Rogerick Lloyd –that brought Michael Tippett’s name
before a wider public.
Tippett’s oratorio characteristically embodies a considered philosophy
of music’s nature and function. In November 1938 Herschel Grynsbaum, a
17-year Polish Jew, assassinated a minor Nazi diplomat in retaliation for the
persecution of his parents; the boy was imprisoned and disappeared, and the
Nazis retaliated with a savage pogrom. Initially Tippett asked T.S. Eliot to
write the libretto, but the poet suggested that as his own response might be
too obviously ‘poetic’, the composer might be better advised to
produce his own text. Tippett’s emotional response to Grynsbaum’s
fate, and to that of all European Jews in the ensuing war, was typical in its
desire to express both the horror of man’s inhumanity to man and the
assurance of compassion and peace — the light and shadow within us
all.
The three-part form of the oratorio was modelled on Handel’s
Messiah, but the masterstroke was the inclusion of Negro Spirituals at
crucial emotional and dramatic highpoints. Tippett thereby created for himself
the problem of integrating the language of these spirituals with his own style,
one of highly sophisticated European sensibility; he reduced the spirituals to
a simple minor triad with added 7th, using them as an imaginative substitute
for the Lutheran chorale, and based his own music on this core triad, thereby
overcoming the apparent incompatibility of styles. There is not merely
juxtaposition but true integration, as taught musical arguments combine with
naturally expansive lyricism. Thus, in ‘Nobody knows’, the opening,
immediately recognisable melodic quotation is treated contrapuntally and with
the irregular accentuation that is consistent with Tippett’s own musical
language. Similarly, the alto solo ‘The soul of man’ is derived
melodically and rhythmically from the spiritual, but is also distinctively
personal particularly with regard to the natural declamation of the text.
Tippett’s work explores elemental questions which retain their power
to urge us to reflect on the relationship between individual human actions and
universal catastrophes. At the Barbican Hall in March, Sir Andrew Davis
conducts the BBC Symphony and Chorus, in a performance of this great work,
which has been described as “an impassioned protest against the
conditions which make persecution possible”.
Setting a poem by Cardinal Newman, Elgar’s The Dream of
Gerontius depicts an ordinary man on the point of death, facing his
judgement before God. Elgar found in Newman’s poetry a subject of both
private and universal significance: Gerontius’s predicament touched the
composer’s own anxieties, and these doubts ring through the painful
chromaticism of Part 1 as forcefully as the vision of eternity offered in the
more affirmative Part 2.
Derived from a close network of musical motifs, the music is shaped in wide
arches and moves swiftly and dramatically through the text, the harmonies
changing rapidly as the orchestra shares the expressive responsibility with the
choral voices.
Widely considered one of the composer’s greatest works, The Dream
of Gerontius was, like Mendelssohn’s Elijah, commissioned
by Birmingham Music Festival, and it was first performed at Birmingham Town
Hall. It is thus fitting that in April Andris Nelson will conduct the City of
Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, and soloists Toby Spence, Sarah
Connolly and James Rutherford in a performance of this deeply moving work,
which combines religious fervour with human passion.
It might be argued that Handel’s Messiah has influenced
British musical life more than any other single composition; Handel’s
feeling for the English language was perhaps as fine as that of Shakespeare,
and it was this musical power of expression to which the composers who followed
in his footsteps aspired. In so doing, they created a musical and dramatic
heritage which is gloriously celebrated in this exciting series at the Barbican
Hall.
Claire Seymour
Haydn: The Seasons
14 January 2012
Gabrieli Consort & Players
Paul McCreesh conductor
Christiane Karg soprano
Allan Clayton tenor
Christopher Purves baritone
Click here for additional information.
Mendelssohn: Elijah
7 March 2012
Britten Sinfonia and Britten Sinfonia Voices
Andreas Delfs conductor
Simon Keenlyside baritone
Catherine Wyn-Rogers mezzo-soprano
Lucy Crowe soprano
Andrew Kennedy tenor
Click here for additional information.
Tippett: A Child of Our Time
Hugh Wood: Violin Concerto No 2 (London premiere)
23 March 2012
BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Symphony Chorus
Sir Andrew Davis conductor
Nicole Cabell soprano
Karen Cargill mezzo-soprano
Toby Spence tenor
Matthew Rose bass
Anthony Marwood violin
Click here for additional information.
Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius
14 April 2012
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and CBSO Chorus
Andris Nelsons conductor
Sarah Connolly mezzo-soprano
Toby Spence tenor
James Rutherford bass-baritone
Click here for additional information.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Joseph_Haydn%2C_Hardy.gif
image_description=Joseph Haydn by Thomas Hardy (1792) [Source: Wikipedia]
product=yes
product_title=The English Oratorio: A Celebration (Barbican Hall, London)
product_by=Click here for details regarding forthcoming performances
product_id=Above: Joseph Haydn by Thomas Hardy (1792) [Source: Wikipedia]
The English Oratorio: A Celebration (Barbican Hall, London)
Inspired by imaginative genius
and, at times, financial necessity, Handel created musical forms, including the
English-language oratorio, which have remained at the heart of English musical
life ever since. His works garnered extraordinary acclaim in his own day, and
continued to exert an enormous influence on the musical history of his chosen
country of residence long after his death,
In the 1730s and 1740s, as London audiences’ fickle taste for
Italianate opera seria waned, and wearied by the continual political
intrigues of the capital’s theatrical life, Handel turned his attention
to another creative outlet and source of income; realising the possibilities
offered by large un-staged dramatic works, by the 1740s the oratorio had
completely replaced opera in his output.
Skilfully combining elements taken from Italian opera and oratorio, the
English anthem and other genres, Handel produced a uniquely
‘English’ musico-dramatic form, one which has since inspired many
composers, both native and foreign. The Barbican Hall’s six-month series
celebrating the English oratorio continues in 2012 with a varied array of works
of contrasting styles and intent, performed by illustrious English orchestras,
conductors and soloists.
Today, compared with the box office popularity of Mozart and Beethoven, it
is common to dismiss Haydn as — to coin Charles Rosen phrase — a
‘connoisseurs’ composer’, but, as Rosen points out, to do so
is to overlook Haydn’s enormous popular success during the 1790s, a
decade which witnessed an immense outburst of musical creativity in a
deliberately popular style.
It is to this decade that both of Haydn’s major oratorios, The
Creation and The Seasons, belong. The latter’s numerous
allusions to Haydn’s ‘back catalogue’ — such as the
quotation from that perennial audience favourite, the Surprise
Symphony, in the fourth number — reveal the composer’s shrewd
commercial and musical instincts.
The Seasons sets texts by the early Romantic nature poet, James
Thompson, poems which enable the composer to indulge in his beloved pastoral
idiom. The work is characterised by wonderfully evocative tone-painting which
explicitly points the sentiments of the text with particularity and dramatic
inventiveness; surprising modulations and unexpected dynamic accents provide
deliberately theatrical flourishes.
As the title suggests, the oratorio depicts the passing of the year, but it
is more than a pictorial portrait; Haydn’s musical idiom, at times
surprisingly simple, even naÔve, expresses not only his wonder at the beauty of
the natural world, but also reveals a sincere exploration and depiction of
man’s relationship to Nature. It is a true coup de thÈ‚tre,
presenting before us the entire universe as Haydn and his contemporaries new
it.
Following his recent award-winning recording of Haydn’s other late
oratorio, The Creation, conductor Paul McCreesh now leads some of the
same performers, including his renowned period ensemble the Gabrieli Consort,
in a performance of this work of infinite beauty, grace and insight.
The son of an aristocratic family of assimilated Jews, Mendelssohn was
baptised and raised as a Protestant and lived as a devout Christian. His
preoccupation with works of a religious nature was thus a natural outgrowth of
his faith; but, when his interests in the Baroque oratorio tradition and, more
particularly, in the revival of the Passions of J.S. Bach combined
with nineteenth-century taste for theatrical melodrama, the result was a
thrilling Biblical epic, Elijah.
Though compositional sketching commenced in 1837-8, the oratorio might, like
Mendelssohn’s third oratorio, Christus, have remained unfinished
had it not been for a contract in September 1845 from the Committee of the
Birmingham Music Festival to conduct the 1846 Festival, which offered him the
opportunity to present a major new composition.
According to one eye witness, the work was finished only 9 days before the
Festival. Premiered on 26 August, by an orchestra of 125 players and a chorus
comprising 271 singers, it was a sensational success: audiences demanded that
four arias and four choruses be immediately repeated. Mendelssohn himself was
clearly overwhelmed by the occasion, later recording: “A young English
tenor [Charles Lockey] sang the last aria so beautifully I was obliged to
exercise great self-control in order not to be affected, and to beat time
steadily.”
Andreas Delf will conduct the Britten Sinfonia and Chorus in a performance
show-casing some of the finest contemporary British voices: joining experienced
baritone Simon Keenlyside and alto Catherine Wyn-Rogers are young singers at
their forefront of a new generation of acclaimed performers, soprano Lucy Crowe
and tenor Andrew Kennedy.
It was the first performance of Tippett’s A Child of our
Time, on 19th March 1944, in a concert promoted by the London Philharmonic
Orchestra, the London Region Civil Defence and Morley College Choirs —
conducted by William Goehr, with soloists Joan Cross, Margaret McArthur, Peter
Pears and Rogerick Lloyd –that brought Michael Tippett’s name
before a wider public.
Tippett’s oratorio characteristically embodies a considered philosophy
of music’s nature and function. In November 1938 Herschel Grynsbaum, a
17-year Polish Jew, assassinated a minor Nazi diplomat in retaliation for the
persecution of his parents; the boy was imprisoned and disappeared, and the
Nazis retaliated with a savage pogrom. Initially Tippett asked T.S. Eliot to
write the libretto, but the poet suggested that as his own response might be
too obviously ‘poetic’, the composer might be better advised to
produce his own text. Tippett’s emotional response to Grynsbaum’s
fate, and to that of all European Jews in the ensuing war, was typical in its
desire to express both the horror of man’s inhumanity to man and the
assurance of compassion and peace — the light and shadow within us
all.
The three-part form of the oratorio was modelled on Handel’s
Messiah, but the masterstroke was the inclusion of Negro Spirituals at
crucial emotional and dramatic highpoints. Tippett thereby created for himself
the problem of integrating the language of these spirituals with his own style,
one of highly sophisticated European sensibility; he reduced the spirituals to
a simple minor triad with added 7th, using them as an imaginative substitute
for the Lutheran chorale, and based his own music on this core triad, thereby
overcoming the apparent incompatibility of styles. There is not merely
juxtaposition but true integration, as taught musical arguments combine with
naturally expansive lyricism. Thus, in ‘Nobody knows’, the opening,
immediately recognisable melodic quotation is treated contrapuntally and with
the irregular accentuation that is consistent with Tippett’s own musical
language. Similarly, the alto solo ‘The soul of man’ is derived
melodically and rhythmically from the spiritual, but is also distinctively
personal particularly with regard to the natural declamation of the text.
Tippett’s work explores elemental questions which retain their power
to urge us to reflect on the relationship between individual human actions and
universal catastrophes. At the Barbican Hall in March, Sir Andrew Davis
conducts the BBC Symphony and Chorus, in a performance of this great work,
which has been described as “an impassioned protest against the
conditions which make persecution possible”.
Setting a poem by Cardinal Newman, Elgar’s The Dream of
Gerontius depicts an ordinary man on the point of death, facing his
judgement before God. Elgar found in Newman’s poetry a subject of both
private and universal significance: Gerontius’s predicament touched the
composer’s own anxieties, and these doubts ring through the painful
chromaticism of Part 1 as forcefully as the vision of eternity offered in the
more affirmative Part 2.
Derived from a close network of musical motifs, the music is shaped in wide
arches and moves swiftly and dramatically through the text, the harmonies
changing rapidly as the orchestra shares the expressive responsibility with the
choral voices.
Widely considered one of the composer’s greatest works, The Dream
of Gerontius was, like Mendelssohn’s Elijah, commissioned
by Birmingham Music Festival, and it was first performed at Birmingham Town
Hall. It is thus fitting that in April Andris Nelson will conduct the City of
Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, and soloists Toby Spence, Sarah
Connolly and James Rutherford in a performance of this deeply moving work,
which combines religious fervour with human passion.
It might be argued that Handel’s Messiah has influenced
British musical life more than any other single composition; Handel’s
feeling for the English language was perhaps as fine as that of Shakespeare,
and it was this musical power of expression to which the composers who followed
in his footsteps aspired. In so doing, they created a musical and dramatic
heritage which is gloriously celebrated in this exciting series at the Barbican
Hall.
Claire Seymour
Haydn: The Seasons
14 January 2012
Gabrieli Consort & Players
Paul McCreesh conductor
Christiane Karg soprano
Allan Clayton tenor
Christopher Purves baritone
Click here for additional information.
Mendelssohn: Elijah
7 March 2012
Britten Sinfonia and Britten Sinfonia Voices
Andreas Delfs conductor
Simon Keenlyside baritone
Catherine Wyn-Rogers mezzo-soprano
Lucy Crowe soprano
Andrew Kennedy tenor
Click here for additional information.
Tippett: A Child of Our Time
Hugh Wood: Violin Concerto No 2 (London premiere)
23 March 2012
BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Symphony Chorus
Sir Andrew Davis conductor
Nicole Cabell soprano
Karen Cargill mezzo-soprano
Toby Spence tenor
Matthew Rose bass
Anthony Marwood violin
Click here for additional information.
Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius
14 April 2012
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and CBSO Chorus
Andris Nelsons conductor
Sarah Connolly mezzo-soprano
Toby Spence tenor
James Rutherford bass-baritone
Click here for additional information.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Joseph_Haydn%2C_Hardy.gif
image_description=Joseph Haydn by Thomas Hardy (1792) [Source: Wikipedia]
product=yes
product_title=The English Oratorio: A Celebration (Barbican Hall, London)
product_by=Click here for details regarding forthcoming performances
product_id=Above: Joseph Haydn by Thomas Hardy (1792) [Source: Wikipedia]