Advent 2024 - Magnificat

This Advent I am singing with a new choir in town - SOLI DEO GLORIA. What is amazing about this choir is that anyone who has a desire to sing Oratorio music can join, no experience necessary. This group sings with joy and passion of the amateur; that is doing it for the love of the art form and not as a job. I think you will be able to sense this at our performance December 1st!

We are performing 2 works that work together well thematically and span the centuries. First is Bach, Cantata 142 Uns ist ein Kind Geboren which proclaims the baby who will save us all has been born. There are beautiful arias, a great orchestral opening movement and 3 choral movements. Short and joyous and so very Bach - it will snag you immediately and pull you along all the runs and trills - completely exhilirating! Then will come Rutter's Magnificat. Opposite to Bach. First of all, unlike Bach, Rutter is a living composer and British. Though both are fans of the accidental and both have settings of the Magnificat you will never mix up the two. Bach has been my friend since I was a little girl and so before the orchestra has completed the first bar I am already in love. Rutter is a composer I have only learned to sing as an adult and I find all his time signature changes and occasional dissoance difficult to sing. I have to work so much harder at it - yes, as I mentioned - amateur choir. Still all the rehearsals have paid off and I have come to appreciate this piece very much. I am impressed with Rutter's very deliberate matching of music and text. First of all what is Magnificat? It comes from the opening lines of Mary's joyful prayer upon hearing the news that she is the to be the Mother of God's son. She begins, "My Soul doth Magnnify the Lord" How this newly pregnant teenager could rejoice instead of lament is one of the biblical mysteries. In Rutter's musical setting of Mary's words you will find incredible word painting. Mvt. 1 - My soul doth magnify the Lord: and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded the lowlineess of his hand-maiden: for behold, from henceforth All generations shall call me blessed Although we will sing this in latin you will immediately experience the exuberant joy in the opening lines, the lines about the lowly hand maiden will be subdued and beautiful. The music beautifully matches the text throughout this work. In mvt 5 you will immediately tell when the haughty are being scattered by our rapidly descending phrases followed then by the gently raising up phrases as the humble are being exalted. Wow, Mr. Rutter, such a perfect marriage of music and text! In the 6th moement comes the healing balm of the phrase "Suscepit Israel puerum suum" - (God in his mercy has helped his servant Israel.( I am close to tears when singing this line or when the soloist sings it, oh yes, there is a beautiful soprao solo in this piece, as there should be! Whoever heard of Mary being an alto? Marni Enns sings these lines beautifully! She alone is worth the price of admission. When you are sitting in the pews you will find your own striking examples of words and music working together to communicate the message of a young teen-age girl's outpourings so many years ago. Though the choir is ameteur the conductor, orchestra and soloists are not. Yuri Klaz will conduct the dynamic orchestra and soloists and weave us choristers into the mix with his magic baton. Come and experience the joy!

Summer Fallow

Here I am in another summer dry season.  No performances nor rehearsals.  The usual depression was staved off by copious amounts of German beer
whilst cheering on the German team during World Cup 2014. I share three loves with Pavarotti:  music, food and football. (soccer to our North American minds)
Now that Germany has hoisted up the cup I must return to normal life and this, said normal life, is harder to bear without the sweet hours of rehearsal in it.
What is a chorister to do? 
Time to look ahead at the upcoming Season.
1.   First off will be rehearsals for church Advent concert, but I don't know what that will be yet. 
2. in mid December will be Handel's Messiah with Ivars Taurins!!!  I posted about this great Handel conductor in a previous posting and I am thrilled he is coming back and is working with our choir again.  Now that we know what he wants, his markings still relatively fresh in our minds, we will certainly be able to deliver a memorable performance.  Who can forget his unique musical marking of a squiggle over a group of notes.  Don't remember that from your theory classes?  Nope.  It is an Ivar marking meaning, "Do Something with these notes."  He also appreciates altos which gives him bonus points and clearly shows his worth as a conductor.  There will be two performances with the WSO, one will be a sing-along, which will have Ivars in Handel costume! Good times! 

3.  Britten's War Requiem in March with the WSO and Alexander Mickelthwaite, who, have I mentioned, is becoming better and better at conducting choirs and seeing that we are also part of the concert.  He has also raised his passion up a few notches and so I find him less Peter Pan-ish than I used to.  This will probably be the most challenging work for me in that it is not from the baroque or classical period and I have never performed, rehearsed, nor listened to this work.   The Symphony Orchestra season guide has this to say about it:
Using massive forces of musicians and singers, English composer Benjamin Britten had a message when he composed his War Requiem in 1961: “My subject is War, and the Pity of War. The Poetry is in the Pity...All a poet can do today is warn,” the title page shows in poet Wilfred Owens’s words, on which the work is portrayed. Owens was killed during the last days of World War I. Britten’s War Requiem is among the most powerfully eloquent testaments to Owens’s universal message of peace.
4.  Good Friday performance of Rutter's Requiem.  I have performed this once before but don't remember anything about it.  Last season our church choir performed the Rutter's Magnificat after which a conductor from the audience named us "the Rutter choir of Winnipeg", so I am confident that after many note slogging rehearsals we will be able to deliver a respectable version of this Requiem.

So what will this chorister be doing this summer? 

1. Sing along to favourite Arias in my living room just to know my voice is still there.  This last activity requires strategic timing, unless I don't mind my son bellowing in the background, "Turn that down! Stop singing!"
2.  Get a thrill when writing down rehearsal dates in my Calendar.  Might do this in two stages so as to prolong the pleasure.
3.  Listen to the two Requiems
4.  Perhaps order the Britten score