Vox Luminis DAVID SAMYN DAVID
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Please turn off all electronic Photography and audio/video recording devices before entering the in the performance hall are prohibited. performance hall. Vox Luminis DAVID SAMYN DAVID DEPARTMENT OF These performances are made possible in part by: PERFORMING ARTS, MUSIC, The P. J. McMyler Musical Endowment Fund AND FILM The Ernest L. and Louise M. Gartner Fund The Cleveland Museum of Art The Anton and Rose Zverina Music Fund 11150 East Boulevard The Frank and Margaret Hyncik Memorial Fund Cleveland, Ohio 44106–1797 The Adolph Benedict and Ila Roberts Schneider Fund The Arthur, Asenath, and Walter H. Blodgett Memorial Fund [email protected] The Dorothy Humel Hovorka Endowment Fund cma.org/performingarts The Albertha T. Jennings Musical Arts Fund #CMAperformingarts Programs are subject to change. Series sponsors: Wednesday, October 24, 2018 TICKETS 1–888–CMA–0033 cma.org/performingarts Welcome to the PerformingVox Luminis Arts 2018–19 Cleveland Museum of Art Lionel Meunier, artistic director cma.org/performingarts In the season ahead, the museum’s performing arts series #CMAperformingartsWednesday, October 24, 2018, 7:30 p.m. continues its exciting schedule with a range of artists from Gartner Auditorium, the Cleveland Museum of Art traditions far and wide, old and new. New this year is the Chamber Music in the Galleries Henry Threadgill Wednesday, October 3, 6:00 Friday, January 11, 7:30 establishment of a major commissioning program that will include six composers traveling to Cleveland from around VoxENSEMBLE Luminis Chamber Music in the Galleries the globe to create new works inspired by the museum’s Wednesday, October 24, 7:30 Wednesday, February 6, 6:00 Sopranos Tenors collection. Co-sponsored by the Cleveland Foundation’s Chamber Music in the Galleries CIM Organ Studio Zsuzsi Tóth Robert Buckland Creative Fusion program, these internationally respected Wednesday, November 7, 6:00 Sunday, March 3, 2:00 artists will visit Cleveland throughout the fall, and we will OberlinStefanie Contemporary True ChamberPhilippe MusicFroeliger in the Galleries begin a series of world premieres early in 2019 that will MusicCaroline Ensemble Weynants Wednesday,Olivier Berten March 6, 6:00 Sunday, November 11, 2:00 extend into 2020. Victoria Cassano AyaDavid Nishina Lee Chamber Music in the Galleries Friday, March 8, 7:30 In the Galleries Wednesday,Altos December 6, 6:00 Basses Alexander Chance CarolinSebastian Widmann Myrus Allen Ruppersberg: Then and Now Paul Goussot Friday, March 29, 7:30 Sunday,Jan Kullmann December 9, 2:00 Lionel Meunier (artistic director) Through December 2 Emmanuel Culcasi Sunday, March 31, 2:00 Marlon de Azambuja and Luisa Lambri Organ Viola da Gamba Chamber Music in the Galleries Through December 30 Anthony Romaniuk Wednesday,Ricardo Rodriguez April 3, 6:00 Miranda William Morris: Designing an Earthly Paradise Oberlin Contemporary Through January, 13, 2019 Music Ensemble PROGRAM Sunday, April 7, 2:00 Clarence H. White and His World: Avi Avital with Omer Avital The Art and Craft of Photography, 1895–1925 J. S. Bach – Motets Wednesday, April 10, 7:30 Through January 21 Chamber Music in the Galleries Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750): Renaissance Splendor: Wednesday, May 1, 6:00 Catherine de’ Medici’s Valois Tapestries Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, BWVCenk 225 Ergün November 18–January 21 May 2019, to be announced Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf, BWV 226 Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern November 23–March 3 Komm, Jesu, komm, BWV 229 Please turn off all electronic devices before entering the performance hall. — Intermission — Photography and audio/video recording in the performance hall are prohibited. Ich lasse dich nicht, du segnest mich denn, BWV Anh. 159 Jesu, meine Freude, BWV 227 PROGRAM NOTE to a text of the Bible or to a verse of a hymn. Hence it follows that the period of its fullest bloom fell within the In June 1708, Johann Sebastian Bach resigned from his post first great period of art, reaching to about the year 1600, in the Thuringian town of Mühlhausen. In an open letter when music was essentially polyphonic, vocal and sacred addressed to his parishioners, Bach described how “God has […] brought it to pass that an unexpected change should offer itself to me, in which I see the possibility of a more adequate Spitta goes on to claim that by the beginning of the living and the achievement of my goal of a well-regulated eighteenth century the motet’s “time was past”, and that church music.” Following spells at the courts of Weimar and “only Sebastian Bach could still have created anything really Cöthen, in 1723 Bach was appointed Cantor and Director of original and powerful in this branch of music.” However, as Music at Leipzig’s prestigious Thomasschule, where he would more recent musicological research has shown, Bach’s works work for the remaining twenty-seven years of his life. were part of a long-established German Lutheran polyphonic In Leipzig, Bach was able to fulfil his goal. There, he motet tradition that extended back into the sixteenth produced both the Matthew and John Passions, three century. complete cantata cycles, and at least five authenticated They were distinct from the contemporary German and motets—not to mention the organ and instrumental music. Italian works for solo voices and instruments sometimes Though the motets may be small in number by comparison referred to by the same label. Bach’s own cousin J. G. with his cantatas, they constitute some of the most daring Walther (1684–1748) provides a succinct definition of the and impressive music ever conceived for vocal ensemble. motet in his Musicalisches Lexicon (1732). He describes the Scored from five to eight voices, each—in its own ways— motet as “a musical composition on a biblical Spruch [i.e. demands the highest levels of virtuosity of their singers. text, or ‘saying’], to be sung without instruments (basso Bach uses the voices to synthesize complex musical textures, continuo excepted), and richly ornamented with Fugen and going far beyond merely “expressing” the words. Rather, Imitationibus.” The emphasis placed on the text reflected one through Bach’s seemingly exhaustive musical invention, they of the key tenets of Lutheran theology—that the word should present elucidating explorations of the texts, highlighting the be the central focus for Christian faith. From the sixteenth underlying spiritual and metaphysical implications they carry. century, the setting of sacred texts to music formed a central Bach’s motets are among the relative few of his works part of the Lutheran liturgy, Luther himself extollling that that have remained in constant performance since their “next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the composition. However, they puzzled nineteenth-century greatest treasure in the world.” musicologists, who saw them as somewhat separate from Another misconception attached to the motets was the the rest of his output. In his monumental two-volume notion that they had been intended as training works for Bach biography, Philipp Spitta considered the motet only Bach’s more junior singers. However, the motets require a fleetingly. Spitta, one of the protagonists of the Bach revival, significant amount of vocal athleticism across all of their described how parts, and would most likely have been excessively difficult for the less-experienced singers in Bach’s charge. It was The essential stamp and character of the motet are: that only during the second decade of the twentieth century it is in several parts, that it admits of no obbligato [i.e. that Bernhard Friedrich Richter challenged this assertion, independent] instruments, and that its subjects are set citing evidence that showed Bach’s motets were, in fact, 4 5 occasional pieces that had been specifically composed to The effervescent sixteenth-notes of the opening section commemorate a variety of special occasions. make a clear allusion to the work of the Holy Spirit, before giving way to a more subdued, prayerful central passage. As As suggested by Walther, seventeenth- and eighteenth- a means of conclusion, Bach brings the two choirs together century motets are often highly contrapuntal—that is to say, as one, constructing a four-voice fugue based on a theme made up of audibly independent vocal lines, but which are that audibly evokes the “incommunicable sighs” with which carefully designed to complement one another. Throughout the Spirit intercedes. A set of instrumental parts survives for Bach’s motets, the listener can hear how the text is this motet, hinting that instrumental doubling could have apparently “discussed” between the voices, as if a meaning is also been employed in the performance of other motets in being worked out collectively. They often combine scriptural Leipzig, despite Walther’s definition in the Musicalisches and contemporary poetic texts, with the latter offering a sort Lexicon. of commentary on the former. As such, the motets are often extremely demanding, for listeners and performers alike. Unlike Bach’s other motets, Komm, Jesu, komm (BWV 229) contains neither any biblical text nor fugal writing. Instead, Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied (BWV 225) opens with it sets the first and eleventh verses of a chorale written by an incredibly florid section, which clearly plays on the Paul Thymich in 1684 for the funeral of Jacob Thomasius, a idea of the eight singers literally singing about singing. celebrated rector of the Thomasschule, calling on Jesus to It sandwiches the third verse of a chorale text by Johann comfort the believer in the advent of death. This work falls Gramann, thought to have been written around 1530, into two clear sections—the first a highly elaborate chorus between verses from Psalms 149 and 150. While this motet with a significant amount of interaction between the two was almost certainly composed sometime between June choirs, while the second—given the title “Aria” by Bach—is 1726 and April 1727, the actual occasion it was intended for much more static.