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Home , Chicago Symphony Chorus, Confiteor, Credo, Credo (MacMillan), Duain Wolfe, Mass (Bernstein)

Program

One Hundred Twenty-Second Season Symphony Music Director Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO

Thursday, April 11, 2013, at 8:00 Friday, April 12, 2013, at 8:00 Saturday, April 13, 2013, at 8:00 Tuesday, April 16, 2013, at 7:30 Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Conductor Director Eleonora Buratto Soprano Anna Malavasi Mezzo-soprano Saimir Pirgu Tenor Adam Plachetka Bass- Robert Chen Mathieu Dufour Yukie Ota Flute Eugene Izotov d’amore Scott Hostetler Oboe d’amore Daniel Gingrich Horn David McGill Dennis Michel Bassoon Continuo: John Sharp Alexander Hanna Bass David Schrader Organ Mark Shuldiner Harpsichord

(continued) J.S. Bach in , BWV 232

Kyrie Chorus:  eleison Duet: Christe eleison (Eleonora Buratto, Anna Malavasi) Chorus: Kyrie eleison

Gloria Chorus: Gloria in excelsis Chorus: Et in terra Aria: Laudamus te (Anna Malavasi) Chorus: Gratias agimus tibi Duet: Domine Deus (Eleonora Buratto, Saimir Pirgu) Chorus: Qui tollis peccata mundi Aria: Qui sedes ad dextram Patris (Anna Malavasi) Aria: Quoniam tu solus (Adam Plachetka) Chorus: Cum Sancto Spiritu

Intermission

Credo (Symbolum Nicenum) Chorus:  in unum Deum Chorus: Credo / Patrem omnipotentem Duet: Et in unum Dominum (Eleonora Buratto, Anna Malavasi) Chorus: Et incarnatus est Chorus: Crucifixus Chorus: Et resurrexit Aria: Et in Spiritum sanctum Dominum (Adam Plachetka) Chorus:  Chorus: Et expecto resurrectionem

Sanctus Chorus: Sanctus Chorus 1 & 2: Osanna in excelsis Aria: Benedictus (Saimir Pirgu) Chorus 1 & 2: Osanna in excelsis

Agnus Dei Aria:  (Anna Malavasi) Chorus: Dona nobis pacem

The CSO thanks Randy and Melvin Berlin for their generous support of these performances. This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

2 Comments by Phillip Huscher

Johann Sebastian Bach Born March 21, 1685, Eisenach, Thuringia, Germany. Died July 28, 1750, , Germany.

Bach’s portrait by E.G. Haussmann (1746) , BWV 232

e now believe that in his final of his fiftieth birthday. He made a Wdays, place for himself, and for his many worked not on , children, among the generations which he left unfinished at his of Bachs whose name was already death, but on his great Mass in synonymous with music. Johann B minor. It was, in many respects, Sebastian could readily see that he the summation of his life’s work, was not the first, nor would he be although, at the time, Bach did not the last—his sons had already taken expect that it would ever even be care of that—in a line of compos- performed, let alone revered. In the ers unique in history. He did not years immediately following Bach’s make room for Veit Bach—a baker death in 1750, public knowledge by trade and the first Bach family of his music was nil, even though member to show musical skill— other, more cosmopolitan compos- who died sometime before 1578; ers, such as Handel, who died he has been rescued by modern only nine years later, remained musicology. It was still too early to popular. It is true that Mozart expect that any of his own grand- came to know and admire several children would continue the tradi- of Bach’s works—Mozart attended tion, although Wilhelm Friedrich private concerts in the home of the Ernst Bach, born nine years after Viennese aristocrat Baron van Seiten his grandfather’s death, would carry in the 1780s, where, he reported: the family business well into the “Nothing is played but Handel and next century. Ultimately, there were Bach.” And Beethoven, at eleven or more than eighty musicians named twelve, mastered The Well-Tempered Bach who worked over the span of Clavier, to the great delight of his three centuries. teacher. But outside the world Bach seemed unconcerned with of professional musicians, Bach had leaving us any information about become no more than a figure from his life and career beyond the basic the distant past. résumé of court and church posi- Bach himself drew a copy of his tions. “Since he never wrote down family tree in 1735, near the time anything about his life,” his son

3 Carl Philipp Emanuel said, “the congregation, but for posterity. gaps are unavoidable.” With dozens (Bach knew the mass would go of students to teach, music to write unperformed during his lifetime, on order day in and day out, and since it fit neither the Protestant ten children to raise (another ten nor the .) And died in infancy), he appeared to although composers did not yet be too busy to worry about poster- think that their music would be ity. Despite repeated requests, played long after their deaths—they he neglected to submit anything themselves seldom performed that for publication in a biographi- of their predecessors—Bach evi- cal dictionary of the important dently wanted to leave something musicians of the day. Only one extraordinary and timeless behind. portrait of Bach was painted during his lifetime (see page 32), and, as he Mass in B minor may well a result, we have a solitary image Thave been a late-in-life idea, of the composer—a stern, stolid, but its genesis follows a long and rather unimaginative looking man twisted path, spanning decades and quite at odds with the brilliant, bringing together newly composed dramatic, and often joyous music he music, older mass movements, and wrote. It is easy to subscribe to the still other music originally written common view of Bach as the most for different purposes, but revised unassuming of composers, satis- for use in the mass. (Throughout fied to work far from the limelight, his career, Bach regularly writing music to please himself, resorted to the common “parody” with no aspirations to the larger technique—fitting older music to a world or the fame and fortune that new text—in this case, not to save Handel, his exact contemporary, time and trouble, but to incorpo- enjoyed. But the B minor mass was rate the finest music he had yet clearly conceived not for a church composed into this comprehensive

Composed Most recent CSO CSO recording 1714–1749; assembled performance 1990. Felicity Lott, Anne 1747–1749 January 28, 1990, Orchestra Sofie von Otter, Hans Peter Hall. Felicity Lott, Anne Blochwitz, William Shimell, First performance Sofie von Otter, Hans and Gwynne Howell as complete: 1859, Leipzig Peter Blochwitz, William soloists; Chicago Symphony Shimell, and Gwynne Chorus; Sir First CSO Howell as soloists; Chicago conducting. subscription concert Symphony Chorus; Sir Georg performance Solti conducting January 8, 1935, Orchestra Hall. Jeannette Vreeland, Instrumentation Kathryn Witwer, Rose two , three , two Bampton, Dan Gridley, and oboi d’amore, two , Chase Baromeo as soloists; horn, three , Apollo Music Club; Frederick , continuo, strings Stock conducting

4 work.) When the mass finally was Bachian intention of excelling assembled, it represented music beyond himself and others.” written over four decades. With All his life, Bach had assembled this work, Bach found a seemingly sets and cycles of music—a liturgi- perfect and harmonious balance cal calendar of organ chorales, for between the old and the new. example, or the preludes and fugues of The Well-Tempered Clavier in all t is difficult to know when Bach the major and minor keys. In the Ifirst thought of preparing a monu- last decade of his life, this fondness mental setting of the mass text. for unified sets became an obses- Most of the work appears to have sion, inspiring the Musical Offering; been done during the last decade of the Goldberg Variations, a cycle his life; it occupied him nearly to of thirty variations generated by his dying day. The first significant one musical subject; and The Art of installment dates from 1733, when Fugue, a compendium of fugal writ- Bach wrote a missa (essentially the ing, with all the fugues based on Kyrie and Gloria we now know) to a single theme. The B minor mass honor the new elector of Saxony. was Bach’s final word on the art of The Credo (or Symbolum Nicenum) writing sacred choral music—the was probably composed in the culmination of a career that had early 1740s. Later in the decade, produced the great and when Bach decided to complete hundreds of cantatas. the mass, he added the massive The complete mass was never choral Sanctus he had written in performed during Bach’s lifetime, 1724 and reworked a number of and with his death in 1750, it easily earlier pieces as the final “Osanna,” slipped into oblivion, the tempo- “Benedictus,” “Agnus Dei,” and rary fate of virtually all his music. “Dona nobis pacem.” When C.P.E Bach led a perfor- It has not been difficult for mance of the Credo alone in 1784 musicology to track down Bach’s in , it was beyond dispute process, but it is harder to that this was music the audi- understand his thinking. This is, ence “had never heard before and after all, the first important mass would probably never hear again.” written for no apparent practical Even during the early nineteenth purpose. , the century, when Bach’s music came distinguished Bach scholar, sug- back to life—he was the first great gests that the B minor mass was composer to emerge from years of assembled in order to preserve the neglect—Bach was known primar- summation of Bach’s art in vocal ily for The Well-Tempered Clavier music, just as The Art of Fugue was or the organ music. The great compiled to demonstrate his unsur- Passions and the Mass in B minor passed ability in instrumental music. were forgotten. Haydn, in his old Both works show a mastery of coun- age, acquired a manuscript copy terpoint unmatched at the time— of the mass. Beethoven apparently what Wolff calls “the ever-present consulted its pages when writing

5 his own Missa solemnis. The real The arias and duets, too, are reappraisal of Bach’s music came richly diverse, with important two years after Beethoven’s death, instrumental countermelodies. in 1829, when Mendelssohn Each of the Gloria’s four solo led the landmark performance movements calls forward a differ- of the Saint Matthew Passion in ent obbligato instrument (each one Berlin. Truncated versions of the representing a different family of B minor mass followed in several Bach’s orchestra—strings, flutes, German music centers, some under reeds, and brass)—the violin Mendelssohn’s direction. But it paired with the female voice in was only in Leipzig in 1859—more “Laudamus te”; the flute turning than a century after the composer’s the “Domine Deus” duet into a death—that the first complete per- trio; the oboe d’amore imitating formance was given. , the singer in “Qui sedes”; the horn one of the so-called musicians of playing against the bass solo lines the future, was in the audience. (By in “Quoniam.” then, the score had been published The B minor mass is no ad hoc at last. The Zurich publisher and compendium, however, but a work collector Hans Georg Nägeli had constructed to a master plan of purchased the at auction carefully weighed proportions. in 1805, but although he quickly The Kyrie and Gloria sections, for announced plans to publish “the example, are conceived together greatest musical artwork of all as one large unit; the opening times and peoples,” in the end that harmony of B minor does not did not happen for another three resolve with the end of the Kyrie decades, and then only piecemeal.) itself (which concludes in F-sharp minor) but only with the turn t is easy to view the mass as a kind to (the relative major Iof summing-up, for it represents partner of B minor) at the end of an impressive diversity of material: the Gloria. The entire Credo is an the opening “Kyrie” is as elaborate architectural structure of perfect a choral fugue as Bach ever wrote symmetry, with brilliant fugal (and comparable in scale only to choruses framing solo movements the opening chorus of the Saint at either end, and, at the heart, that Matthew Passion); the “Gratias”— remarkable and powerful and the final “Dona nobis pacem” of choruses beginning with the which shares the same music—is solemn “Et incarnatus est” and the an old-fashioned motet; the “Crucifixus,” in which so few notes “Confiteor” is strictly canonic, over perfectly convey immeasurable a roving bass line; “Et incarnatus grief, and then, from the depths of est” is free and boldly expressive; those final chords, the explosion the subsequent “Crucifixus” inches of “Et resurrexit.” The sequence is forward over a relentless passaca- a stroke of dramatic genius from a glia; the “Credo” and “Confiteor” composer who never wrote a note both use plainchant melodies. of music for the theater. (This trio

6 of movements, so perfectly apt as not a public figure, at least in the the centerpiece of the Credo, unites modern sense, we know very little the oldest and newest music in the about his funeral, not even what score: the “Crucifixus” is based on music was played. a cantata chorus dating from 1714; “Et incarnatus est,” something of very generation has learned an afterthought and composed Efrom the Mass in B minor, in 1749, is the last piece of choral and this timeless masterwork has music Bach wrote.) survived the interpretative fashions The Sanctus and the follow- of them all. Many of the questions ing movements, which date from we still ask today—how many 1748 and 1749, when the mass was singers should take each part? Is being polished and completed, the unidentified solo instrument are all based on earlier works, yet in the “Benedictus” a flute, or even here Bach stretches the art of perhaps a violin?—are the same parody and revision to incorporate ones musicians have always asked. not only substantial changes, but The answers keep changing: in the newly composed music as well. 1830s, Mendelssohn used a chorus The great Agnus Dei solo, a freely of hundreds; in the 1980s, the elaborated version of a cantata American scholar movement from 1725, is a perfect proposed that Bach intended the example of Bach’s determination to mass to be performed with just one surpass even his own finest work. singer to a part. Efforts to deter- These final sections of the B minor mine how best to present Bach’s mass, along with the incomplete works date back to Mendelssohn’s quadruple fugue from The Art of day, when so little was known Fugue, are the last pages of music about the way music was presented Bach composed, in the first weeks in the previous century that a of 1750 at the latest. Already in Bach performance style had to be December of 1749, his signature virtually reinvented at the time. on a dictated letter looks labored Today’s popular quest for historical and stiff, a sign of the rapidly authenticity in performances of this deteriorating eyesight that would final testament to his art is merely soon put an end to his composing our latest way of engaging with days. An operation by a famous music that by its very nature, and English oculist who was lecturing by Bach’s own design, is meant for in Leipzig in the spring of 1750 was all people and all times. botched. After that, Bach could no longer use his eyes. In mid-July, he temporarily regained partial vision, but then suffered a stroke within a few hours. He died ten days later. Phillip Huscher is the program annota- Not surprisingly, for a man who was tor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

7 Mass in B Minor

Kyrie 1. Chorus

Kyrie eleison. Lord, have mercy.

2. Duet (Eleonora Buratto, Anna Malavasi)

Christe eleison. Christ, have mercy.

3. Chorus

Kyrie eleison. Lord, have mercy.

Gloria 4. Chorus

Gloria in excelsis Deo. Glory to God in the highest,

5. Chorus

Et in terra pax hominibus and on earth peace to people of bonae voluntatis. good will.

6. Aria (Anna Malavasi; Robert Chen, violin)

Laudamus te, We praise you, benedicimus te, we bless you, adoramus te, we adore you, glorificamus te. we glorify you,

7. Chorus

Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam we give you thanks for your great glory, gloriam tuam.

8 8. Duet (Eleonora Buratto, Saimir Pirgu; Mathieu Dufour, flute)

Domine Deus, Rex coelestis, Lord God, heavenly King, Deus Pater omnipotens, O God, almighty Father. Domine Fili, unigenite, Lord Jesus Christ, Only Begotten Son, Jesu Christe altissime, Jesus Christ, most high, Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Lord God, , Filius Patris. Son of the Father,

9. Chorus (Mathieu Dufour, Yukie Ota, flutes)

Qui tollis peccata mundi, you take away the sins of the world, miserere nobis. have mercy on us; Qui tollis peccata mundi, you take away the sins of the world, suscipe deprecationem nostram. receive our prayer;

10. Aria (Anna Malavasi; Eugene Izotov, oboe d’amore)

Qui sedes ad dextram Patris, you are seated at the right hand of the Father, miserere nobis. have mercy on us.

11. Aria (Adam Plachetka; Daniel Gingrich, horn; David McGill, Dennis Michel, bassoons)

Quoniam tu solus sanctus. For you alone are the Holy One, Tu solus Dominus. you alone are the Lord, Tu solus altissimus, you alone are the Most High, Jesu Christe. Jesus Christ,

12. Chorus

Cum Sancto Spiritu in gloria Dei with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of Patris. Amen. God the Father. Amen.

(Please turn the page quietly.) 9 Credo (Symbolum Nicenum) 13. Chorus

Credo in unum Deum. I believe in one God.

14. Chorus

Credo in unum Deum, I believe in one God, Patrem omnipotentem, the Father almighty, factorem coeli et terrae, maker of heaven and earth, visibilium omnium et invisibilium. of all things visible and invisible.

15. Duet (Eleonora Buratto, Anna Malavasi; Eugene Izotov, Scott Hostetler, oboi d’amore; David McGill, bassoon)

Et in unum Dominum I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, Jesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum the Only Begotten Son of God, et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula. born of the Father before all ages. Deum de Deo, God from God, lumen de lumine, Light from Light, Deum verum de Deo vero, true God from true God, genitum, non factum begotten, not made, consubstantialem Patri, consubstantial with the Father; per quem omnia facta sunt. through him all things were made. Qui propter nos homines For us men and for our salvation et propter nostram salutem descendit he came down from heaven, de coelis.

16. Chorus

Et incarnatus est and by the Holy Spirit de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria virgine, was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, et homo factus est. and became man.

17. Chorus

Crucifixus etiam pro nobis For our sake he was crucified sub Pontio Pilato, under Pontius Pilate, passus et sepultus est. he suffered death and was buried,

10 18. Chorus

Et resurrexit tertia die and rose again on the third day secundum scripturas. in accordance with the Scriptures. Et ascendit in coelum, He ascended into heaven sedet ad dextram Dei Patris. and is seated at the right hand of the Father. Et iterum venturus est cum gloria He will come again in glory judicare vivos et mortuos, to judge the living and the dead cujus regni non erit finis. and his kingdom will have no end.

19. Aria (Adam Plachetka; Eugene Izotov and Scott Hostetler, oboi d’amore; David McGill, bassoon)

Et in Spiritum sanctum Dominum I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, et vivificantem, the giver of life, qui ex Patre Filioque procedit; who proceeds from the Father and the Son, qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur who with the Father and the Son is et conglorificatur; adored and glorified, qui locutus est per Prophetas. who has spoken through the prophets. Et unam sanctam catholicam et I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolicam ecclesiam. apostolic Church.

20. Chorus

Confiteor unum baptisma in I confess one for the remissionem peccatorum. forgiveness of sins

21. Chorus

Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen. and the life of the world to come. Amen.

(Please turn the page quietly.) 11 Sanctus 22. Chorus

Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, Holy, holy, holy, Dominus Deus Sabaoth. Lord God of hosts, Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria ejus. heaven and earth are full of your glory.

23. Chorus

Osanna in excelsis. in the highest.

24. Aria (Saimir Pirgu; Mathieu Dufour, flute)

Benedictus qui venit in Blessed is he who comes in the name of nomine Domini. the Lord.

25. Chorus

Osanna in excelsis. Hosanna in the highest.

Agnus Dei 26. Aria (Anna Malavasi)

Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, miserere nobis. have mercy on us.

27. Chorus

Dona nobis pacem. Grant us peace. © 2013 Chicago Symphony Orchestra © 2013 Chicago

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