The Concert Singers

present

Gloria

by Antonio Vivaldi

by Johann Sebastian Bach

Colleen Cronin, Director

David Simmons, Accompanist

Covenant Presbyterian Church

January 9, 1999; 7:30 p.m.

Gloria by Antonio Vivaldi

Suzanne Lawrence, Soprano
Margaret Harrell, Soprano

Suzanne Lawrence, Soprano

Cynthia Rothschild, Contralto

X. Aria

Cynthia Rothschild, Contralto

XI. Chorus

XII. Chorus

INTERMISSION

Magnificat in D by J. S. Bach

I. Chorus

Magnificat anima mea Dominum

My soul magnifies the Lord,

II. Aria

Et exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo;

And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

A. Chorus

From heaven high to earth I come;
To bring good news to every one.
Glad tidings of great joy I bring,
Whereof I now will say and sing.

III. Aria

Quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae:
Ecce enim ex hoc beatam me dicent . . .

For he has regarded the low estate of his maidservant;
Behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed,

IV. Chorus

omnes generationes.

all generations

V. Aria

Quia fecit mihi magna qui potens est:
et sanctum nomen ejus;

For he that is mighty has done great things for me,
And holy is his Name.

B. Chorus

Rejoice and sing with gladness,
At Bethlehem you will find
The dear baby Jesus,
Who shall your joy and desire be.

VI. Duet

Et misericordia a progenie
in progenies timentibus eum.

And his mercy is on those who fear him
From generation to generation.

VII. Chorus

Fecit potentiam in brachio suo:
dispersit superbos mente cordis sui;

He has shown strength with his arm;
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

C. Chorus

Gloria in excelsis Deo
et in terra pax hominibus bona voluntas.

Glory be to God on high
And on earth peace, good will to men.

VIII. Aria

He has put down the mighty from their seats,
And exalted the lowly.

IX. Aria

Esurientes implevit bonis:
et divites dimisit inanes.

The hungry he has filled with good things,
And the rich he has sent away empty.

D. Duet

Virga Jesse floruit,
Emanuel noster apparuit,
induit carmen hominis,
fit puer delectabilis.
Alleluja.

The rod of Jesse has blossomed;
Our Emmanuel has appeared;
He has clothed himself in human flesh,
And become a delightful child.
Alleluia.

X. Trio

Suscepit Israel puerum suum
recordatus misericordiae suae.

He has helped his servant Israel
In remembrance of his mercy.

XI. Chorus

Sicut locutus est ad patres nostros,
Abraham et semini ejus in saecula.

As he spoke to our fathers,
To Abraham and his seed for ever.

XII. Chorus

Glory to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning, is now,
and will be for ever.
Amen.

Program Notes

Antonio Vivaldi spent most of his working life at the Ospedale della Pietà, the Venetian orphanage for girls. He had flaming red hair, and was ordained, and thus was known as the "red priest". He wrote most of his sacred music between 1713 and 1719. The Gloria was probably intended for the girls at the orphanage, which explains why there are no male solo parts. The girls would have sung the choral parts, singing the bass part an octave higher.

The Gloria is used in Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran liturgy as a hymn at the beginning of the mass. It is Latin in origin, but the opening two lines are the angels’ song to the shepherds announcing the birth of Christ to the shepherds (Luke 2.14).

The twelve movements are carefully contrasted, using oboe and trumpet, with the strings and singers. The final movement, a double fugue, appears to be the work of Giovanni Maria Ruggieri, an earlier Venetian composer. Such borrowings were not uncommon at the time.

J. S. Bach arrived in Leipzig in May 1723. Among his duties were to compose a church cantata for every Sunday of the year. So by Christmas of that year, the citizens of Leipzig would have already heard about 30 of Bach’s cantatas. But none of these would have prepared them for the splendor of the Magnificat. The Magnificat (Luke 1.47-55) is one of three gospel canticles; Magnificat being Mary’s song of praise on meeting Elizabeth. Magnificat is sung at Vespers, in Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran use. Among German Lutherans, it was normally sung in German, but it was sung in Latin on major feasts. During the 17^th century at Christmas it was customary to insert additional sections of texts to make the work more specifically seasonal. By 1702 this practice had been banned in Leipzig, but the ban was not strictly enforced, since Bach’s original version  

includes four such movements. When the Magnificat was revised 10 years later, the interpolations were removed, the work was transposed from E-flat major to D major (to the relief of string players!), and flutes were used instead of recorders.

The form of the Magnificat is determined by the text and largely outside the composer’s control. The text contains balanced half verses, especially in Suscepit Israel, where the modulation of the chant tonus peregrinus on the oboes separates the movement into two sections. Elsewhere he treats each verse as a unit, or makes his own divisions, as when quia respexit suddenly becomes the tutti omnes generationes (the subject of the sentence being held in anticipation for a whole movement!).

This performance includes the four Christmas interpolations, which, as mentioned above, were included in the original E-flat version, but dropped in the D version. (In this performance they are transposed.) The text of the first, Vom Himmel hoch, is a Christmas hymn of Martin Luther’s of 1535. The setting uses Vorimitation; that is, the melody is sung by the sopranos in long note-values, and imitated in the other parts in shorter note-values before the soprano statement of each phrase of the melody. The third, Gloria in excelsis, is the angel’s song of Luke 2.14. The wording is slightly different from the familiar text (and as used in the Gloria, also in this concert), the difference in Greek being merely one letter. The end of the fourth, Virga Jesse, was lost, and it has been reconstructed, taken from the duet in Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe in Cantata no. 110.

—Tony McQuilkin, after Clifford Bartlett and Nicholas Anderson

Gloria