"The Little Church Around the Corner"
One East 29th Street, New York
MUSIC NOTES:
Easter III - April 29, 2001
The Mass setting for today's service is Philip W.J. Stopford's superb new composition (1997), the Keble College Missa Brevis. This work saw its North American premier at the Church of Transfiguration earlier this year, and is a fine addition to the wealth of new compositions specifically conceived for liturgical use. Written during this young composer's time as an organ scholar at Keble College, Oxford, the work portrays the ongoing spiritual intensity of that great Anglican college, and is a fitting tribute to its founder, John Keble, one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. The resonant harmonies that characterize this work are designed to take advantage of the splendid acoustical properties of the college chapel.
It has often been said that if all the relics of the True Cross were brought together, there would be enough wood to build Noah's Ark. Something similar might be said of the vast catalogue of works ascribed to Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736), who died in relative obscurity at the early age of 26, from tuberculosis. For a brief period after his death, Pergolesi's name became a household word through a single work, La serva padrona, a short and immensely popular comic opera. Seizing the opportunity, unknown or rising composers would often sign Pergolesi's name to their works in a bid to have them performed. The Magnificat is probably the work of Francesco Durante (1684-1755), Pergolesi's teacher at the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesu Cristo in Naples. Durante was a revered teacher, and most of what little fame he achieved as a composer rests with his church music rather than his operas. The Magnificat is composed on a grand scale, and its jubilant accompaniment, assured harmonic progressions and fine melodic curves more readily suggest the oratorios of Handel than the sacred music of Pergolesi, the former also having had several works of other composers ascribed to him.
Sebastian Bach's Prelude and Fugue in D Major, which form today's organ prelude and postlude, is a youthful work from the composer's Arnstadt-Mühlhausen period. It is highly sectionalized, the prelude beginning aggressively with rising pedal scales and fanfare-like motives, then settling into a developmental section built upon a succession of sequences and ending with extended cadential material rife with harmonic tension. The fugue is a playful and virtuosic composition, built upon an unusual subject which is often hidden in the dense counterpoint and rapid movement of its supporting material.
It has often been said that if all the relics of the True Cross were brought together, there would be enough wood to build Noah's Ark. Something similar might be said of the vast catalogue of works ascribed to Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736), who died in relative obscurity at the early age of 26, from tuberculosis. For a brief period after his death, Pergolesi's name became a household word through a single work, La serva padrona, a short and immensely popular comic opera. Seizing the opportunity, unknown or rising composers would often sign Pergolesi's name to their works in a bid to have them performed. The Magnificat is probably the work of Francesco Durante (1684-1755), Pergolesi's teacher at the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesu Cristo in Naples. Durante was a revered teacher, and most of what little fame he achieved as a composer rests with his church music rather than his operas. The Magnificat is composed on a grand scale, and its jubilant accompaniment, assured harmonic progressions and fine melodic curves more readily suggest the oratorios of Handel than the sacred music of Pergolesi, the former also having had several works of other composers ascribed to him.
Sebastian Bach's Prelude and Fugue in D Major, which form today's organ prelude and postlude, is a youthful work from the composer's Arnstadt-Mühlhausen period. It is highly sectionalized, the prelude beginning aggressively with rising pedal scales and fanfare-like motives, then settling into a developmental section built upon a succession of sequences and ending with extended cadential material rife with harmonic tension. The fugue is a playful and virtuosic composition, built upon an unusual subject which is often hidden in the dense counterpoint and rapid movement of its supporting material.
