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| Text © 2009 David Schildkret.
If this content is used to prepare a concert program or other published/presented work
please credit David Schildkret, ASU School of Music, and Music Director,
Mount Desert Summer Chorale (also include the URL of this web page).
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Our 2009 concert
This year's program features a number of celebrations and commemorations.
All of the music places the organ, known as the "king of instruments," center stage.
Through this music, we celebrate the wonderful pipe organ in St. Saviour's church.
We also mark the anniversaries of the death of Handel (who died 250 years ago, in 1759)
and Haydn (who died 50 years later, in 1809, the same year that Mendelssohn, Lincoln,
and Darwin were born). There is a further link among the works: all are by composers
who were also known as outstanding organists.
We open with a Haydn gem: the Missa brevis Sancti Joannes de Deo, known as the "Little
Organ Solo" Mass, to distinguish it from an earlier, longer Mass that also highlights the
organ. The Mass honors the Portuguese saint, John of God. While the exact circumstances
for this piece are not known, it is likely that Haydn wrote it for John's feast day, March 8,
sometime between 1775 and 1778. Haydn's patrons, the Esterházy family, were also patrons
of the Brothers Hospitaller, the order founded by St. John. Their tiny church near the Esterházy
estate had a small pipe organ, which Haydn is known to have played, and a very small gallery
for musicians. The modest circumstances account in part for the compact nature of the piece:
it is scored for a bare-bones orchestra of two violins, cello, bass, and organ (no violas) —
the typical Austrian "church trio."
The longest passages of the liturgy, the Gloria and Credo, are telescoped by having the
various voices of the choir sing different portions of the text at the same time. Despite
this textual compression, there are several notable sections in these movements where the
whole choir sings the text at the same time. Most extraordinary of these is the magical
setting of "et incarnatus" in the Credo. Both the small orchestra and the telescoped text
setting are typical of so-called missae brevae (short masses). Apart from its elegant phrasing
and charming melodies, the work is celebrated for the magnificent soprano solo in the Benedictus,
sung to the accompaniment of the solo organ—which Haydn himself most certainly played.
Handel's organ playing was often a selling-point in performances of his oratorios.
Our second work,
a concerto in F major known by the nickname "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale" (a title given by
a publisher after Handel's death), was a feature in the first performances of Israel in Egypt
in 1739. Handel played a couple of the movements—the work was later expanded—as
interludes between sections
of the oratorio. It is the jolly second movement, with its birdlike trillings on the organ, that
gives the work its title. In design, it is typical of the Italian sonata da chiesa of the late 17th
and early 18th centuries (and this reminds us that Handel spent some time in Italy in the early
1700s): two pairs of movements, slow-fast, slow-fast. Between these written-out sections with
orchestral accompaniment, Handel improvised some music for the organ alone, indicated in the
score only by a key signature and a time signature. The movements with orchestra are adaptations
by Handel of music he had written earlier: the first and last movements of this concerto are
adapted from his Trio Sonata, opus 5, number 6, and the second and fourth movements of this organ
concerto are based on his Concerto grosso, opus 6, number 9—with the addition of the picturesque
organ passages that give the organ concerto its nickname.
Maurice Duruflé was known primarily as an organist, though he also wrote music and left a small
but distinguished legacy of compositions for organ solo and for various choral combinations.
The Requiem is probably his most famous piece, and it is certainly his most extensive. He
created several versions of the work: originally, it was for chorus and organ; later, he provided
a full orchestration; still later, he provided a chamber orchestra version, which is the one we will
perform tonight.
Duruflé closely followed Fauré's Requiem as a model for his work: he used the same texts as
Fauré (omitting the Dies irae and including In paradisum, which comes from the burial service),
and following Fauré's structure in assigning texts to solo and choral voices. Two sections
that Fauré had set for solo baritone are written that same way in Duruflé's score, but he
says in a prefatory note that they should actually be sung by the whole section. This is an
interesting way both to pay homage to Fauré and to depart from his example.
The musical material for Duruflé's Requiem comes mainly from Gregorian chant. The melodic
lines are, for the most part, derived from the appropriate chants given in the Liber usualis.
—David Schildkret
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