Word: motet
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...Forbes had obviously worked hard on dynamics for all the works on the program. In "Deutsches Magnificat," by Heinrich Schutz, he established a different mood for each phrase, and built up a gradual, carefully controlled crescendo for the piece's final cadence. Forbes made Hans Hassler's distressful, chromatic motet very convincing with sudden pianissimo phrases; the words were never blurred when the chorus sang softly...
...seem amazingly modern to today's musicians, but in his own time he was considered hopelessly demode. He was the last great voice of concerted polyphonic music, a style that had lasted since the early 17th century. The very forms Bach favored-the fugue, the church cantata, the motet-were outmoded even as he worked on them. "Old Wig," one son called him, and Bach in his later years sadly agreed. "My art," he said, "has become old-fashioned...
...maintaining an admirable control of dynamics, he made the individual choruses grow within themselves and contrast among each other; the work ended with the largest sound the group produced all evening. The chorus closing the first half, also sounding as if it were ending something, possessed a motet-like lightness which is a remarkable achievement in this style...
...evening opened with J. S. Bach's Motet V, for which--an admission which will delight my numerous correspondents--I was not present. What I did hear, though, was first-rate. If Christmas and Christmas concerts only came more than once a year...
After the intermission, however, the audience was on much more familiar ground, as the Harvard Glee Club sang a motet by Brumel and a "parody mass" based upon it by Des Pres. The result, as seems to be usual with the Glee Club, was flawless...