Sing a New Song --
Music for St. Cecilia Day

November 20, 2011

Te Deum (W.A. Mozart, 1756-1791)

Composed in 1769, this work is one of the last of Mozart’s “childhood” compositions. And though the young Mozart had sat on the lap of Johann Christian Bach and taken turns playing passages of various sonatas, it was Michael Haydn who most influenced this particular work. It was common for young composers to study and even copy the works of established composers in order to learn, and Mozart was no exception: this work is patterned nearly measure for measure after a setting of the same text by Haydn, whom he greatly admired. It adheres largely to the musical conventions of the day: homophonic harmony, with the choir singing the text together and choral segments imitating each other. The composition is generally uncomplicated, though one hears here and there a hint of the complex, dance-like rhythms that appeared in the composer’s later works.

Singet dem Herrn (Heinrich Schutz, 1585-1672)

Considered to be the most important German composer before J. S. Bach (and the primal source of the school of Northern German organ music, which culminated in J.S. Bach), Heinrich Schutz found his way into music via a musical count who was an official of the Holy Roman Empire with ties to the emperor himself.  Schutz became a choirboy, then studied law as well as music, and spent several years in Venice under the tutelage of Gabrielli. After a few detours, he came to rest in Dresden as court composer for the Elector of Saxony, a position he kept for the rest of his life (though he punctuated his duties with musical excursions to Denmark and Venice). Singet dem Herrn comes from one of his major works, The Psalms of David (Psalmen Davids), which features settings for many Psalms for multiple choirs. This particular work was written for double choir, and one can hear Gabrielli’s influence in antiphonal splendor between the two choirs.  In his later years, Schutz composed in a much more restrained and  austere style, but scholars believe this has less to do with his taste than with the financial effects of the Thirty Years’ War, which made an orchestral cast of thousands unaffordable.

Te Deum and Jubilate Deo (Henry Purcell, 1659-1695)

Though he only lived to be 35, Henry Purcell made a mark on Baroque music in general and English Baroque music to the extent that he is sometimes known as “the English Bach.” Born within a stone’s throw of Westminster Abbey, he gained a place in His Majesty’s chapel choir through an introduction by his uncle and made his somewhat circuitous way in time to the post of the famed Abbey’s organist. Along the way he composed music both sacred and secular – operas, songs, anthems, funeral marches, and liturgical music. The Te Deum and Jubilate Deo on today’s program were written in 1693 for the feast of St. Cecilia, a patron saint of music said to have met her martyr’s death with songs of God’s praise upon her lips.  Purcell’s was the first English Te Deum laudamus to be composed with an orchestral accompaniment, and so great was its reception that it was performed at St. Paul’s Cathedral each year until 1712, after which it alternated years with Handel’s Utrecht Te Deum (in 1743, both works were unseated by Handel’s Dettinger Te Deum).  Purcell was buried near the organ in Westminster Abbey. His importance is confirmed through his sharing a feast day – July 28 – with Bach and Handel on the liturgical calendar of the U. S. Episcopal Church, and also through being erroneously credited as the composer of several fine works of other composers, most notably Jeremiah Clarke’s Prince of Denmark’s March, which is known by thousands of brides and wedding attendees as Purcell’s Trumpet Voluntary.

Mass in C – The Sparrow Mass (W.A. Mozart)

Masses in Mozart’s time usually came in two varieties – the solemn mass, meant for high feast days and special occasions, and the missa brevis, meant for Sundays and the celebration of lesser festivals and feasts.  The former features brass and timpani, arias and extended solos in addition to choral passages, and the latter small ensembles of strings, brief solos, no arias, with the bulk of the work performed by choir. Mozart combines the two forms in this, his first “missa brevis et solemnis,” written in 1776 for the Saltzburg Cathedral after the archbishop had ruled that the Mass should take no more than 45 minutes. Short solos with dominant choir – but with trumpets and timpani – show the hybrid nature of this work. Mozart shuns the  tradition of fugues for Gloria and Credo, instead inserting memorable themes and a reiteration in the Agnus Dei of a motif from the Kyrie, thus giving the work a feeling of coming full circle.  The mass’s nickname, “The Sparrow,” comes from a bird-like chirping figure from the violins near the beginning of the Sanctus.

Church Sonata in C, KV 263 (W.A. Mozart)