Program Notes for Sunday, May 6, 2007

By Wayne D. Shirley, © WDS 2007

Mass in C Major, K. 337

(“Mass for Archbishop Colloredo”)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

In September of 1776, Mozart wrote to his friend and mentor Padre Martini, enclosing a motet he had recently written and explaining the problems of writing sacred music for Salzburg:

Our church music is very different from that of Italy [where Padre Martini was living], since a mass with the whole Kyrie, the Gloria, the Credo, the Epistle sonata, the Offertory or Motet, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei must not last longer than three quarters of an hour.  This applies even to the most solemn mass said by the Archbishop [of Salzburg] himself.  So you see that a special study is required for this kind of composition.  At the same time, the mass must have all the instruments – trumpets, drums and so forth.

These were the limitations within which Mozart’s sacred style developed during his years in Salzburg, years that ended with his departure for Munich to write Idomeneo in 1780 and his dismissal from the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg in 1781. The short duration of Mozart’s masses when compared to such masterworks as the Bach B-minor, the late Haydn masses, Mozart’s own C-minor Mass, and the Beethoven Missa Solemnis has caused some commentators to view them as lesser works (although audiences continue to be faithful to the Coronation Mass, K. 317). If, however, we consider their brevity as necessary condition of their existence, we can come to a more just judgment on them.    

             
Tonight’s mass–the Mass, K. 337, written in March 1780, during Mozart’s last months in Salzburg–is particularly worth a close look. It is Mozart’s last complete setting of the Mass text (the great C-minor Mass, K. 427, whose greater length suggests the proportions Mozart himself would have chosen for setting the Mass text, remains a fragment, as does the Requiem.)  Furthermore, it was written during a period that produced such important works as the music to King Thamos of Egypt, the C-major Symphony, K. 338; and the Vesperai Solennes de Confessore. Those who in fact know this Mass have been unanimous in admiring it: Kochel in his catalog of Mozart works gave it the title Missa Solemnis (a title that probably did little to help that work, since it suggests comparisons with Beethoven’s very different masterpiece); H.C. Robbins Landon in his recent editions calls it a “great… neglected work.”

             
The mass, K. 337, is a work that speaks for itself. The only spot in the piece that may perhaps benefit from annotation is the elaborate organ part that accompanies the soprano solo that begins the Agnes Dei. This Soprano solo is, in fact, an aria with three wind instruments obbligato: the organ solo is on an equal footing with oboe and bassoon here, rather than being a separate strand in the texture. (If the Salzburg orchestra had contained clarinets, Mozart might have used a clarinet as a third wind instrument rather than the organ.)

Lux Aeterna

Morten Lauridsen (1943)

Morten Lauridsen writes of his Lux Aeterna as follows:

Lux Aeterna for chorus and orchestra was composed for and is dedicated to the Los Angeles Master Chorale and its superb conductor, Paul Salamunovich, who gave the world premiere in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on April 13, 1997. The work is in five movements, played without pause. Its texts are drawn from sacred Latin sources, each containing references to Light. The piece opens and closes with the beginning and ending of the Requiem Mass with the central three movements drawn respectively from the Te Deum (including a line from the Beatus Vir), O Nata Lux, and Veni, Sancte Spiritus.

             
The instrumental introduction to the Introitus softly recalls motivic fragments from two pieces expecially close to my heart (my settings of Rilke’s Contre Qui, Rose from Les Chansons des Roses, and O Magnum Mysterium) which recur throughout the work in various forms. Several new themes in the Introitus are then introduced by the chorus, including an extended canon on ex lux perpetua. In Te, Domine, Speravi contains, among other musical elements, the cantus firmus Herzliebster Jesu (from the Nuremberg Songbook, 1677) and a lengthy inverted canon on fiat misericordia. O Nata Lux and Veni, Sancte Spiritus are paired songs, the former a central a cappella motet and the latter a spirited, jubilant canticle. A quiet setting of the Agnus Dei precedes the final Lux Aeterna, which reprises the opening section of the Introitus and concludes with a joyful Alleluia.

© Peermusic Classical – Reprinted by permission.

Porgy and Bess (Concert Version)

George Gershwin (1898-1937)

Arranged by Robert Russell Bennett

Lyrics by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin

Robert Russell Bennett made two large-scale arrangements drawn from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. The first, made in 1941-1942 at the request of Fritz Reiner, is Porgy and Bess:  A Symphonic Picture, an extended series of excerpts brilliantly and sympathetically arranged for orchestra alone. The second, which we are performing today, is the “Concert Version” of Porgy and Bess, for soprano and baritone soloists, chorus and orchestra. (The leading scholar of Robert Russell Bennett’s works is unsure of the year of creation of the Concert Version, though it certainly comes later than the Symphonic Picture.)

             
Unlike the Symphonic Picture, which presents its excerpts from Porgy and Bess in an ordering dictated by purely musical factors (it starts with the opening of Act II Scene III), the Concert Version starts with the opening Introduction to the opera and presents its excerpts in the order in which they appear in the opera. Yet the Concert Version makes no attempt to retell the story of Porgy and Bess in a more compact form:  it consists to a large extent of the most famous numbers in the opera. The baritone sings not only numbers sung by Porgy, the goat-cart beggar who is the hero of the opera; he also sings music sung in the opera by Jake the fisherman and Sportin’ Life the figure of evil; the soprano sings not only music associated with reformed lowlife Bess but also with Jake’s wife Clara and with the tragic widow Serena. Baritone and soprano sing the final “Oh Lord, I’m On My Way,” which in the opera is Porgy’s final solo. The chorus, at least, functions as one group of people:  the miscellaneous inhabitants of Charleston, South Carolina’s Catfish Row in some summer early in the twentieth century.

             
Here, for those whose knowledge of the plot of Porgy and Bess is modest, is a playlist of the Concert Version, with notes as to where the numbers fit in the plot.

             
Introduction (orchestra). “Summertime,” a lullaby sung by Clara to her baby, the first music by a solo voice to be heard in Porgy and Bess. “A Woman Is a Sometime Thing,” Jake’s teasing counter-lullaby sung to the same baby.

             
The next three numbers come from the saucer-burial scene which was a sensation in both the 1927 play Porgy and in Porgy and Bess. In a “saucer-burial” the corpse is laid out for waking with a saucer nearby:  mourners put money in the saucer to defray the burial expenses of the corpse. The three numbers from this scene are “Gone, Gone, Gone/Overflow,” a choral lament for the dead man and an exhortation to fill the burial saucer; “My Man’s Gone Now,” the widow’s aria of lamentation, and “Leavin’ for de Promise’ Lan’,” the railroad-spiritual which ends the scene.

             
At the start of Act II Porgy and Bess are an established couple. Porgy’s “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’” establishes his happiness; in “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” the central love duet of the opera, Porgy tries to persuade Bess to go to the picnic scheduled for the day because as his woman she “must laugh and sing and dance for two instead of one”; in “Oh, I Can’t Sit Down” the chorus leaves for the picnic, played off by the Orphans’ Band. The next two numbers are form the picnic itself, which seems to be rather wild for something originally planned as a church social:  the chorus singing “I Ain’t Got No Shame” and Sportin’ Life’s mock sermon “It Ain’t Necessarily So.”

             
The Orchestra’s second independent solo is the prelude to Act III Scene I, the calm of the evening after the hurricane whose excitement closes Act II of the opera. Choristers may wish that Bennett had continued into the chorus of mourning which follows this prelude, one of the most beautiful passages in Porgy and Bess; but the Concert Version moves directly to Sportin’ Life’s other main number, “There’s a Boat Dat’s Leavin’ Soon for New York,” in which he attempts to lure Bess away from Catfish Row. The Concert Version ends with the finale of the opera, “Oh Lawd, I’m On My Way,” sung by Porgy in the opera but sung by both soprano and baritone in the Concert Version. (The effect is somewhat that of Porgy and Bess riding into the sunset like Dick Johnson and Minnie at the end of The Girl of the Golden West.) The chorus supports them, as they support Porgy in the opera; above them in the orchestra can be heard many of the other themes of the opera.