Leos Janecek (1854 – 1928)

 

Leos Janecek (1854 – 1928) was a Czechoslovakian composer and music theorist who was inspired by his native Slavic and Moravian folk music. He was also influenced by the music of Antonin Dvorak who, himself, was influenced by folk music not only of his homeland, but of other places that he lived, including America. Janecek used local folk melodies to develop his own original musical style.
Although best known for his orchestral and piano compositions, he also wrote choral music. He is best known in liturgical music for his Glagolitic Mass, or, Slavonic Mass for soloists, double choir, organ and orchestra, completed in 1926. It is based upon an Old Church Slavonic text, which differs from the Roman Catholic mass by omitting the “Dona nobis pacem.”

Janáček was a strong supporter of pan-Slavism, and this mass has been viewed as a celebration of Slavic culture.

Glagolitic Mass [1/8]

Glagolitic Mass [2/8]

Glagolitic Mass [3/8]

Glagolitic Mass [4/8]

Glagolitic Mass [5/8]

Glagolitic Mass [6/8]

Glagolitic Mass [7/8]

Glagolitic Mass [8/8]

For a beautiful example of a contemporary of Janacek, see Beati quorum via integra est [How blessed are faithful souls which undefiled are] (Psalm 119:1) – Charles Villiers Stanford at http://bibleasmusic.com/beati-quorum-via-integra-est-how-blessed-are-faithful-souls-which-undefiled-are-psalm-119-1-charles-villiers-stanford/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheBibleAsMusic+%28The+Bible+as+Music%29&utm_content=Yahoo%21+Mail

 

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Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (1858 – 1924)

Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (1858 – 1924) is the greatest opera composer in the Italian style to follow Verdi, developing his own Realistic style. He is perhaps best known for Madame Butterfly, La Bohème and Tosca. As with his predecessor, Verdi, Puccini’s sacred music benefits greatly from his opera experience. However, his sacred works don’t begin to challenge the special place in liturgical music possessed by Verdi’s Requiem.

Messa di Gloria
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQIMkQ4XFQE

GLORIA from Puccini’s Messa di Gloria

REQUIEM

 

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Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (1813 –1901)

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (1813 –1901) represents the height of Romantic Italian opera. He probably is best known for his operas, La Traviata and Aida. He a wrote a Requiem Mass, which benefits greatly from his theatrical experience, and a few other smaller sacred pieces. It is so theatrical and popular that there seems to be more YouTube videos of great performances of this mass than any other that I have researched to this point.

Requiem

BBC Prom 13 -BBC documentary , discussing the theatricality of the Requiem which threatened to lose official church sanction, and his inclusion of women that had to be hidden to obtain that sanction

Performance with Margaret Price, Jessye Norman, José Carreras, Ruggero Raimondi, and Claudia Abado

Performance with Karajan conducting La Scala Orchestra and Chorus of Milan

Performance with Leontyne Price, Fiorenza Cossoto, Luciano Pavarotti, Nikolai Ghiaurov

“Dies Irae” from Requiem, conducted by Leonard Bernstein

Verdi:Requiem-Bernstein-Arroyo-Veasey-Domingo-R.Raimondi

 

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Gabriel Urbain Fauré (1845 –1924)

Gabriel Urbain Fauré (1845 –1924) was a French composer, organist and teacher. He had great impact on French music and 20th-century composers. At age 9, he attended a music Institute in Paris, where he was trained to become an organist and choirmaster. He earned his living by teaching and playing organ and often had little time to compose. As a result, much of his music was composed later in his life, when he had earned some security to permit it.

Fauré is considered to bridge the Romantic era with the 20th century style, then known as Modernism.

Requiem, op.48

Requiem – Libera me, In Paradisum
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSKhlAUYDcE –

 

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Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893) was a Russian composer of symphonies, concertos, operas, and chamber music. He remains a favorite of audiences. He is lesser known for his choral settings of the Russian Orthodox Divine Liturgy. His career began as a civil servant, but he received a Western musical education at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He attempted to wed his Western education to his Russian folk roots. Folk purists might find fault with that effort, but from a Western perspective, his music is a culmination of Romanticism, steeped in folk heritage.

His music is well known and much loved. He tried marriage so that he might appear to be of “normal” sexuality, but that was a disaster. He wrote to his brother concerning it:

There is no doubt that for some months on and I was a bit insane and only now, when I’m completely recovered, have I learned to relate objectively to everything which I did during my brief insanity. That man who in May took it into his head to marry Antonina Ivanova, who during June wrote a whole opera as though nothing had happened, who in July married, who in September fled from his wife, who in November railed at Rome and so on – that man wasn’t I, but another, Pyotr Ilyich.

He was dogged with depression throughout his life. Yet his music is beautiful and much loved. Few would suspect, for example, that the Nut Cracker uite arose from such turmoil.
Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom

Liturgy. Fragments. Vladimir Miller basso profundo

“Hymn of the Cherubim

9 Sacred Pieces No. 1 – Cherubic Hymn 1

9 Sacred Pieces No. 4 – To Thee We Sing

9 Sacred Pieces No. 5 – It is truly meet

9 Sacred Pieces No 6 – Lord’s Prayer

9 Sacred Pieces No. 7 – Blesssed are they whom Thou hast chosen

9 Sacred Pieces No. 8 – Let my prayer arise

9 Sacred Pieces No. 9 – Now the powers of Heaven

Male Choir of St. Petersburg: “The Lord’s Prayer”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCeG9cBrtRQ

Hymn of the Cherubim – USSR Ministry Of Culture Chamber Choir

 

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Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (1835 –1921)

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (1835 –1921) was a French composer, organist, pianist, poet and playwright. He wrote extensively in a wide range of genre. As with some prophets, he was better known and respected abroad than in France, his home. His creative output occurred earlier in life, when he was prone to depression.

Oratorio de Noêl

Oratorio de Noël: Tecum principium

Christmas Oratorio
Performed by Unknown Choir In Three Parts

The Entire Oratorio Performed by the Chicago Chamber Choir

“Ave Verum Corpus

Tollite Hostias (et adorate)

Requiem, Op.54

Organ Works
Tu es Petrus

“PRELUDE

Organ Symphony

“Finale”

 

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Johannes Brahms (1833 –1897)

Johannes Brahms (1833 –1897) was a German composer and pianist, popularly classified as the last of the “Three B’s,” with Bach and Beethoven being the first two. He greatly expanded and developed the Baroque and classical forms that he had inherited from Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. He did not begin the study of the piano until he was seven years of age. To relieve his family’s poverty, he played piano for the dance halls, some suspect, of ill repute. Having high expectations of himself, he destroyed many of his first compositions, and he did not attempt to compose symphonies until later in life, feeling that he lay in the shadow of Beethoven.
Schumann befriended Brahms and championed his music. With mental difficulties that Schumann experienced later in life, he played an important role in the management of Schumann’s affairs. He had a close relationship with Robert’s wife, Clara, who was 15 years older than he. He never married, but his music was an avenue for expression of his passion. His choral masterpiece is the German Requiem, based, not upon the Catholic liturgical mass, but rather, Scriptures typically cited by Protestants concerning death and hope.
Ein Deutsches Requiem

 

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César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck (1822 –1890)

César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck (1822 –1890) was born in Belgium, but spent his adult life in Paris, where he was an organist, a pianist, and a composer. He was well-known for his improvisational skills. His father was overbearing in his attempt to control César Franck’s professional musical life, leading to the disruption of their relationship. He is perhaps most popularly known for “Panis Angelicus.” He is known among organists for his contributions to modern literature for the organ.  He was a great champion of chamber music (music for small groups of instruments).

Mass in A Major

Renee Fleming sings “Panis Angelicus”

Placido Domingo sings Panis angelicus and Ave Maria (Schubert)

Vittorio Grigolo – Panis Angelicus – Petite Messe solenelle”Domine Deus”

Psaume 150

Dextera Domini

“Ave Maria”

Grandes Orgues Notre-Dame-de-Paris – Improvisation

GRAND CHOEUR sur un théme de Nöel LIUDMILA MATSYURA

Grand Choeur in C

 

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Charles Gounod (1818 – 1893)

He was so much inspired by the music of Johan Sebastian Bach that he referred to the Well Tempered Clavier as “the law to piano forte study.” He adopted Bach’s C major Prelude from the Well Tempered Clavier as the accompaniment for a melody that Gounod wrote to the words of Ave Maria, which remains well-known and popular.

He wrote some opera, and is best known for his opera, Faust, based upon the story of Goethe. As Mozart’s Requiem is closely associated with his death, cloaking it in mystery, so Gounod died of a stroke shortly after he had finished his own Requiem.

Messe Solennelle De Sainte Cecile
I feel most fortunate to find on YouTube the wonderful, complete performance of this work by the Moscow Oratorio:

Jessye Norman sings Gounod’s “Sanctus” from Messe solennelle:

“O Divine Redeemer”

A choral arrangement of the same by the Mormon Tabernacle choir:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybBEQpFxYhs I

“Ave Maria

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dhPsd5X4OU

 

 

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Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti (1797 – 1848)

Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti (1797 – 1848) was roughly contemporary with Rossini and Bellini, and was also a composer of operas in the belcanto style. He wrote in both Italian and French. Among his best-known operas are The Elixir of Love, Lucia diLammermoor, Don Pasquale and Daughter of the Regiment.

As with Rossini and Bellini, he is best known for his operas, but he also wrote liturgical music, primarily the Mass.
Messa di Requiem (complete)

“Requiem” – Ingemisco

Compare his operatic style as in the following performance of Lucia di Lammermoor – “Mad Scene”

I am particularly fond of Beverly Sills’ performance of the aria, because I was singing in the chorus of Opera Omaha when Beverly Sills performed this opera with us.  I stood at the foot of the staircase as she descended singing the mad scene.  When she took the last step down, the chorus had an entrance.  In each performance, as she took that last step, she looked me, I froze.  Each time, I was so stunned that she would look at me that I missed the entrance.  She was the most humble and gracious of the principals who sang with us.

I am also partial to the Sextet of Lucia di Lammermoor: Fleming and Pavarotti, performing:

Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini (1801 –1835)

Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini (1801 –1835) was one of many Italian opera composers who culminated an era of which “belcanto,” or “beautiful singing” was the rage. He was born in Catania, Sicily to a family of rich musical heritage. He, like so many composers of the age, was also a child prodigy, reputed to have been able to sing an aria at 18 months of age, to begin studying theory at two, the piano at three and playing well at five years of age. He is said to have composed five musical pieces by the time that he was six years of age. Whatever the truth of these claims, it is clear that his musical prowess was recognized at an early age, as was Mozart. When he was age 21, he studied at the conservatory in Naples, Italy where he studied the style there prevalent and the orchestral works of Haydn and Mozart. There, he wrote his first opera. His primary contributions to music are his operas, among which Norma and I Puritani may be the best known.

Whereas he is primarily known for his operas, he also made significant contribution to the related genre of liturgical music, particularly the Mass, among which are his Mass in D Major, Mass in A Major, and Mass in G Minor.

Petite Messe Solennelle Chailly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VYMonulBCU
Mass in A minor – VI. Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv_nr5sQ6Wo
Petite Messe Solennelle (Sanctus)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlveUssYLzc
Agnus Dei – Petite Messe Solennelle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkk2X9nKKv4
Petite Messe Solennelle (Agnus Dei)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Poy3w3rXcg
Petite Messe Solennelle – (Agnus Dei)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhvpHPQesYU
Gloria from Petite Messe Solennelle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktVxlLcV9SM
Mass in A: (Laudamus Te)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scwg6jj6NyA
Ave Maria
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXTMT7MCoiY

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Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828)

His father was a well-respected educator with limited musical training, but sufficiently acquainted with musical composition and skilled to prepare his son for musical composition and string experience, beginning at age 5. Franz was early influenced by the melodious music of Mozart, and one can see that influence in his own music. Coming from a poor family, and being, himself, without financial means until much later in his short life, he was supplied manuscript paper by his friend, Joseph von Spaun. When I was studying music, he was considered willing to set any low quality of poetry to much superior music. He is reported to have claimed that he composed each morning, and when that piece was done, he immediately undertook another. In his last two years of life, as though portending his own death, his compositions became dark, even morose, such as Death and the Maiden. Officially his death was attributed to typhoid fever.

Of his sacred music, perhaps he is best known for his setting of Ave Maria:

Mass in G

I am particularly fond of the recordings of his Mass in G. When I was living in Ord, Nebraska, I directed the choir of the United Methodist Church there. This mass is quite appealing and is within the reach of most well-prepared local choirs. My older children were then taking Suzuki violin lessons from Mischa Johnson, wife of Jim Johnson, who then directed the Hastings Symphony. I asked Jim to put together a string quartet to accompany the choir in a performance of this mass, which he did. It was exciting to be able to bring such beautiful music to that small city in rural Nebraska .

I found that if I was going to live in rural Nebraska and yet enjoy good music I would have to gather the resources and do it myself.   Additionally, I have found that small church choirs can appreciate and perform good music and don’t have to feed on a “watered- down diet.”  Thereafter, I organized other choral productions with professional instrumental accompaniment and participation, including two different performances of Britten’s Ceremony of Carols with professional harpist, Harvey Griffin; and three performances of Messiah with small orchestras from the Hastings Symphony, in the last of which Jane Bunnell, contralto with the Metropolitan Opera, and her husband, bassist Mark Embree, who was born and reared locally in the Nebraska sandhill, were soloists.

But, I am particularly drawn to the Benedictus of the Mass in G.

Kyrie

Agnus Dei

Sanctus-Benedictus

I especially appreciate the following sensitive, perhaps even sensual in the most naively positive sense, performance of the Credo by the Ocean Springs High School Choir and the string orchestra from the University of Southern Mississippi. I don’t know the conductor, but I like very much her interpretation and her direction:

Here is a laudable performance of the complete Mass in G in two parts, performed by the University of Michigan Residential College Singers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoJjpL7Bksw

 

 

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Gioachino Rossini (1792 – 1868)

Gioachino Rossini (1792 – 1868) was an Italian composer, particularly known for his operas, but also for his sacred and chamber music. He was born into a musical family: his father inspected slaughterhouses and was a horn player, and his mother was a singer. His father supported Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Northern Italy, but when Napoleon was defeated, his father was imprisoned for a year.

By age 10, Rossini was composing for his own version of a string quartet: two violins, a cello, and a double bass. He learned much by scoring the quartets and symphonies of Haydn and Mozart, becoming known as “the little German.” He was early recognized as a composer of Italian opera, perhaps best known for his opera, the Barber of Seville, and his William Tell Overture. He was one of the first composers to earn a good living apart from the patronage system, and he enjoyed some freedom of movement and production throughout Europe.  He was known, not only from his mellifluous musical style, but also as a gourmet chef, “a la Rossini.”

Stabat Mater – complete

“Agnus Dei” from Stabat Mater

“Amen” from Stabat Mater

Petite Messe Solennelle (Little Solemn Mass)

“Crucifixus” from his Petite Messe

Petite Messe Solennelle Chailly

Andrea Bocelli – ”Domine” – Deus Rossini Petite Messe Solennelle

 

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