A note from our conductor, Tony Allen

Transcription

1 A note from our conductor, Tony Allen Happy New Year. I hope you are all looking forward as much as I am to the new term, with an exciting selection of music to perform on Good Friday, accompanied by excellent musicians who comprise our Oratorio Ensemble. More of them later, but the first point to make is that our President Neil Jenkins has agreed to sing in the excerpts from the Bach St Matthew Passion. Neil is one of the leading English exponents of the role of the evangelist in Bach s passion music and has been so for a good number of years. As I write this I am listening to him singing the arias in the St Matthew in a recording made in 1978 with the Bach Choir conducted by David Willcocks, alongside the late Robert Tear and John Shirley- Quirk (recently returned to the UK from the US. So it is a real privilege to have him sing for us again, especially as we are using his own Novello edition. Neil and I are already hard at work devising the selection of music and finding music and instrumentalists, alongside our new Performer Secretary, Angie Letteboer. The exciting soprano soloist is to be Rachel Shouksmith, another pupil of Penny Jenkins, based in Eastbourne, and we look forward to hearing her. We shall be accompanied by two flutes, two oboes, organ, keyboard and cello. The Rutter Requiem is a work familiar to some of us, and I believe it to one of John Rutter s best works. Again we shall have a band of instrumentalists, this time solo oboe, flute, cello, keyboard, organ and timpani. For those who do not know it, do try to get hold of a recording and listen to it. It covers a wide range of moods and will be a good musical counterpoise to the formality of the Bach. Yet both a highly emotional works and many of the underlying ideas and feelings are common to both. So, bearing in mind that the concert will be free with a retiring collection, and that the audience will have a chance to sing too, I hope we shall have an absolutely full St Mary s on Good Friday (so long as they bring a generous retiring collection, as this will be an expensive concert!) I have made a start on the programme note for the concert, and I thought I would share with you all the essence of it as a way of preparing for what will be a very busy term with a lot of work to do. I am sorry that I will miss a couple of weeks in early February and I am as always really grateful to Margaret Baker for deputising. Please support her fully when I am away, as there are only ten rehearsals before Holy Week. So here goes with the programme note, which I hope you will find interesting. I have added the list of numbers we are doing, so that so that those of you with St Matthew copies can start paper-clipping pages together for ease of movement! I also add the words of the Rutter, which will be handed out at the first rehearsal on Thursday 17 th January. To the disappointment of some of you, I know, I have decided we shall not have time to learn the final chorus of the Bach, added to which, using it as a meditation, I think it ends best at the penultimate number, and will not overwhelm the Rutter which follows it. Another time perhaps, and we might try it one evening out of sheer pleasure, if you all learn everything else quickly. It has been a Holy Week tradition in many churches to recount the Passion story in music since the Middle Ages. The tradition culminated in the great Passions of J.S Bach, the largest and finest of which is the setting of St Matthew s Gospel version in Martin Luther s translation, told by a tenor Evangelist and other sung characters, with the choir taking the part of the crowd. The story is interspersed with reflective poetry set for soloists, choir and orchestra and incorporating chorales familiar to Lutheran churchgoers. It was first performed in the Thomaskirche, Leipzig, on Good Friday 1727, where Bach was Musical Director for over 30 years. He finally revised it in 1746, in the version familiar today, four years before his death in His Passions then disappeared from the musical scene until S.O.C. Easter Concert Programme Page 1

2 Mendelssohn revived the St Matthew Passion in 1829 in Berlin. Since then it has been recognised as one of the greatest masterpieces of sacred music. It was first performed in England in Putting on a full performance of the St Matthew Passion is an enormous undertaking, yet its music deserves to be sung and heard as often as possible. So for the first half of our concert, I have devised a meditation on the Christ s Passion befitting the solemnity of Good Friday, based on a selection of words and music from the St Matthew Passion. We are singing the English version edited by our President Neil Jenkins, and SOC is delighted that he has agreed to sing for us, Neil being one of the premier Bach Evangelists of his era. Whatever your beliefs may be, the calm and quiet contemplation of the true meaning of commitment to ideals, of falling short in those ideals (or sin, in religious terms), suffering, severance from those we love and the facing of death by others and ourselves are universal themes which emerge from this meditation. So that you can more readily make some of the thinking actively your own, we invite you to join in several chorales for audience, all to the famous and familiar Passion Chorale tune, the music being inset in the programme, though sung in different keys, style and harmonisations. Even these simple yet subtly different pieces illustrate Bach s genius and imagination. We know you will want to express your appreciation of the performers at the end of this musical meditation, but before breaking the reflective mood, we would ask you to leave a suitable silence until I turn to the audience. After a brief interval, we will perform John Rutter s Requiem, a modern response to grief and death whether of Jesus, or your own friend or relative - and the hope which lies beyond it. This was first performed in 1985 in Dallas, Texas (itself the scene of a tragic loss to mankind in 1963 with the death of President Kennedy). Perhaps the most poignant performance of all was at Ground Zero at the memorial service to commemorate the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre, and in many other memorial services at that time across the USA. Like Brahms and Fauré, his Requiem faces the darkness of death, while at the same time giving comfort and hope to those who live on and mourn. And like the Requiems of Fauré, Mozart and others, the music comes full circle at the end, perhaps a reflection on the cycle of life for us all. And many of the themes which emerge from the Bach mediation re-emerge in the Rutter Requiem. S.O.C. Easter Concert Programme Page 2

3 A meditation on the Passion of Christ with music from J.S. Bach s St Matthew Passion The puzzles of suffering, sin and undeserved unconditional love Choir chorale O blessed Jesu, how hast thou offended, that such oppression on thee has descended? Of what misdeed hast thou to make confession? Of what transgression? Soprano solo Break in grief, thou loving heart Choir chorale Tis I whose sin hast bound thee, with anguish did surround thee and nailed thee to the tree. The torture thou art feeling, thy patient love revealing, thou hast endured it all for me. How do I respond to the challenge of commitment? Soprano solo Jesus Saviour I am thine, come and dwell my heart within. AUDIENCE CHORALE Here would I stand beside thee. Lord bid me not depart, From thee I will not sever, though breaks thy loving heart. When bitter pain shall hold thee, by agony oppressed, Then, then will I enfold thee within my loving breast. Then cometh Jesus with them unto a garden called Gethsemane, and said to his disciples Sit ye here while I go yonder and pray. Tenor and choir O grief, how throbs his heavy laden breast His spirit faints, his countenance how pale O Saviour why must all this ill befall thee? They lead him to the judgment hall, there is no help, no comfort near. My sin alas from highest Heaven did call thee The powers of darkness now o er take him, His dearest friends will soon forsake him. Tis I should offer to endure the torment which thou dost suffer. Ah if my love thy stay could be, if I could weigh thy grief and share it, Could make it less or help to bear it, how gladly would I watch with thee! Tenor and choir I would beside my Lord be watching And so our sins will fall asleep From his grave tis his cross my soul will save His sorrows make me free and joyful. The griefs that he for us endureth, how bitter yet how sweet are they. The meaning of redemption Choir O man thy heavy sin lament, for which the Son of God was sent to earth from highest Heaven. He left his father s throne above to ransom us with tender love, and make our intercession. He healed the sick, he raised the dead, and hungry multitudes he fed, until the time appointed, When he should be betrayed and slain, that we God s pardon might obtain, for all mankind s transgression. S.O.C. Easter Concert Programme Page 3

4 AUDIENCE CHORALE Commit thy way to Jesus, thy burdens and thy cares. He from them all releases, he all thy sorrow shares, Who gives the winds their courses and bounds the ocean s shore, Will suffer not temptation to rise beyond thy power. The crowd condemns Jesus despite his love for them And Pilate said unto them What then shall I do unto Jesus to whom they give the name of Christ? They all say: Let him be crucified Soprano solo For love my saviour now is dying But they cried out all the more and said Let him be crucified. AUDIENCE CHORALE O sacred head surrounded by crown of piercing thorn, O bleeding head so wounded, reviled and put to scorn. Beneath thy cross and passion forever I would rest, In thy dear love confiding, and with thy presence blest. Who died on the cross? And how does it affect me? Choir If he be King of Israel let him now come down from the cross and we will believe in him. He trusted in God, let him deliver him now if he will have him For he hath said I am the son of God. Choir chorale Be near me Lord when dying, O part not thou from me. And to my succour flying, come Lord and set me free. And when my heart must languish in Death s last awful throe, Release me from mine anguish by thine own pain and woe. And then behold the veil of the temple was rent in twain e en from the top unto the bottom, And the earth did shake and the graves were opened up, and there arose many bodies of the holy ones And came out of the graves after Jesus resurrection, and went into the holy city and appeared unto many. But the centurion and they that were with him keeping watch over Jesus, when they saw the earthquake and the things that were done, they feared greatly saying Chorus Truly this was the Son of God. A final reflection Tenor And now the L0rd to rest is laid His sorrows o er, for all our sins atonement made Soprano O weary broken body, see with repentant tears we would bedew it, Which our offence to such a death hath brought. While life shall last let us adore and praise the Lord, Since he for man has full salvation wrought. Lord Jesu fare thee well. S.O.C. Easter Concert Programme Page 4

5 Requiem: John Rutter Requiem aeternam Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine Et lux perpetua luceat eis Te decet hymnus Deus in Zion Et tibi reddetur in Jerusalem. Exaudi orationem meam Ad te omnis caro veniet. Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Give them eternal rest O Lord and let everlasting light shine upon them. O God you deserve hymns of praise in Zion which will be offered up in Jerusalem. Hear my cry, for unto you shall all flesh come. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Out of the deep (psalm 130) Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord Lord hear my voice. O let thine ears consider well the voice of my complaint. If thou Lord wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss, O Lord who may abide it? For there is mercy with Thee Therefore shalt thou be feared. I look for the Lord, my soul doth wait for him, And in his word is my trust. My soul fleeth unto the Lord before the morning watch, I say. O Israel, trust in the Lord: with the Lord there is mercy, And with him is plenteous redemption. And he shall redeem Israel from all his sins. Pie Jesu Pie Jesu Domine dona eis requiem aeternam Sempiternam requiem Holy Lord Jesus, give them rest for ever, Everlasting rest. Sanctus Sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua Hosanna in excelsis Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini Hosanna in excelsis Holy Lord God of the Sabbath Heaven and earth are full of your glory Hosanna in the highest! Blest is he who comes in the Lord s name Hosanna in the highest! Agnus Dei Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi Dona eis requiem Lamb of God who takes away all our sins give them rest. Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower He fleeth as it were a shadow. Whom may we seek for succour? I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. S.O.C. Easter Concert Programme Page 5

6 The Lord is my shepherd (Psalm 23) The Lord is my shepherd, therefore can I lack nothing. He shall feed me in a green pasture, and lead me forth beside the waters of comfort. He shall convert my soul, and bring me forth in the paths of righteousness for his name s sake. Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil. For thou art with me: thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou shalt prepare a table for me in the sight of them that trouble me. Thou hast anointed my head with oil and my cup shall be full. But thy loving-kindness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. Lux aeterna I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, For they rest from their labours. Even so saith the Spirit. Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine Cum sanctis tuis in aeternam, quia pius es. Requiem aeternam dona eis. Let eternal light shine upon them, O Lord As it does on your blessed ones for ever For you are holy. Grant them rest for evermore. S.O.C. Easter Concert Programme Page 6