Word: exequien
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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WITH singular integrity the Cambridge Society for Early Music last Wednesday evening avoided the institutionalized classics of antiquity, particularly those Interesting Historical Figures Palestrina, Monteverdi and Gabrieli, to present two pivotal and masterful liturgical compositions. These were the Musikalische Exequien (1636) of Heinrich Schutz, and the Vesperae de Dominica (1779) of Mozart. The first work was instrumental in transferring musical hegemony from Italy to Germany, while the Mozart work illustrates that composer's bursting maturity, a maturity which would soon reach its highest achievement in his church music with the great unfinished Mass in C minor...
...music's choral masters is exceeded only by his inexplicable anonymity. He absorbed the colossal Baroque style of Giovanni Gabrieli as well as the audacious innovations of Monteverdi, both Schutz's contemporaries and teachers, to forge a colorfully formal, intensely spiritual, quietly progressive style. In its unorthodox form, the Exequien looks forward to the cantatas of Bach and the oratorios of Handel. The work is characterized by an evangelical passion which perhaps only Bach and Verdi, in his singularly tumultuous idiom, were able to equal; and also by a supreme melodic beauty which is the result of consummate vocal understanding...
...diversity in their original settings and simple length that an evening of varied chunks and snippets, and Etcetera concert, very easily comes apart at the seams. This concert did not, for the predominance of sacred works accentuated the contrasts among them, and an excellent performance of Schutz's Musicalische Exequien capped the evening off well...
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