Newton Choral Society is pleased to offer these selections from our recent performances.*

We have two choruses from our concert of November 20, 2004: Jauchzet froh lokket, the opening chorus of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, and the first chorus from the third cantata, Herrscher des Himmels.

From our Program Book: The remarkable legacy of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) includes over 220 choral cantatas. In the celebrated Christmas Oratorio (1734–1735), Bach incorporates adaptations of several festive choral cantatas as well as harmonizations of sacred chorales. The oratorio is composed of six cantatas and combines chorales, imitative choral textures, solo recitatives, and arias to tell the story of Christ’s birth, from Christmas Day through Epiphany. The recitative texts derive from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and are presented in Bach’s native German language.

The opening movement of the oratorio, Jauchzet froh lokket, auf preiset die Tage (Celebrate, rejoice! Rise up!), begins with a full unison chorus exulting at the annunciation of Christ’s birth. The use of unison, especially by a composer so fond of harmonic motion and imitative textures, effectively portrays a sense of unity and solidarity in the Christian world on Christmas Day. The choral texture quickly splits into harmonies, moving into a fugal section on the text Lasset das Zagen, verbannet die Klage (Abandon fear, banish lamentation) and mid-movement returns to unisons invoking the beginning chorus.

Aside from contrasting unison with full harmonic texture to convey the spreading of joy at Christ’s birth, Bach also uses key relationships and meter to symbolize such emotions. Set in the key of D major, a key commonly used to signify joy in Bach’s day, the first cantata creates an emotion of exultation from the first downbeat. D major and its closely related keys are prevalent throughout the oratorio: the third and fifth sections open in D major, while the second section begins in the closely related key of G, and the fifth section moves to the key of A. The meter found in the opening choral sections of each cantata is most often a triple meter, frequently employing three repeated choral notes in the opening bar of each vocal line. Perhaps a reference to the Holy Trinity, and also another of Bach’s numerous repeating motives, the use of three plays a significant role in this work.

—Courtney Elf Rowe

This selection comes from our a capella concert of English choral music performed on March 14, 2004. The program included seven partsongs by C.H.H. Parry, Edmund Rubbra’s Missa in Honorem Sancti Domini, Benjamin Britten’s Five Flower Songs, and three motets by Charles Villiers Stanford, of which this is the third.

From our Program Book: Born and raised in Ireland, Charles Villiers Stanford (1852–1924) began his musical life in Dublin as an apprentice of Arthur O’Leary and Sir Robert Parry Stewart. His first composition was a march, written when he was eight years old and performed at the Theatre Royal, Dublin, when he was ten. Stanford’s musical achievements thereupon granted him admission to Queens’ College, Cambridge, and later the post of organist at Trinity College, where he ultimately earned his degree.

In addition to his vocation as an organist, Stanford enjoyed a reputable career as conductor of the Cambridge University Musical Society. In 1874, he took a leave of absence from his conductorship to study composition with Carl Reinecke in Leipzig and later with Frederich Kiel in Berlin. In the following years, Stanford went on to compose seven symphonies, ten operas, fifteen concertante works, and over thirty large-scale choral works. His sacred music continues to serve as a cornerstone of Anglican musical tradition.

Stanford spent his later years as a professor of both music and composition. Among his most notable students were Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, and Herbert Howells. After his death in 1924, Stanford was buried in Westminster Abbey next to Henry Purcell.

Though his compositional aesthetic is often considered markedly “Brahmsian” by contemporary scholars, Stanford was undeniably one of the most important figures in the late nineteenth-century renaissance of English music. Credited along with Hubert Parry for reviving the near-extinct English choral tradition, Stanford and Parry influenced a new generation of British composers that included Edward Elgar and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Stanford’s Three Motets for unaccompanied choir were written in 1892, the year in which Stanford left his post as organist at Trinity College. The motets are dedicated to his successor, Alan Gray, and are among the most celebrated of his sacred choral works.

Beati quorum via, the final and most renowned of the three motets, is written in six parts, dividing both the sopranos and the basses into two sections. In the motet’s opening statement, Stanford effectively treats the three upper voices as one choir an the three lower voices as another; each introduces the text, Beati quorum via integra est. Thereafter, the two “choirs” begin interweaving into one, though slight contrasts between the two are still detectable throughout. Such contrasts render the moments with all six voices together especially salient.

—Shannon Elisabeth Elf