Word: motets
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...motet Jesu, Meine Freude, which opened the Society's Sunday concert, exemplifies one difficulty peculiar to music for "chamber chorus." In a small group, Bach's vocal demands--no matter how great--cannot be conveniently ignored by concentrating purely on massed sound. When the Bach Society Chorus disappointed at all, it did so in technical respects. Conductor Howard Brown clearly brought out individual lines of counterpoint, but the sheer effort required to sing all the notes reasonably in tune resulted in a tone that was often coarse and piercing...
...Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony (hand somely packaged at $52.40); Bach and Handel Arias (London), sung by Contralto Kathleen Ferrier with the London Philharmonic, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult; Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé-Complete Ballet (London), with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and the Geneva Motet Choir conducted by Ernest Ansermet...
...each other in these works. Also, in the case of the Benedictus, the choirs were distributed in three parts of Sanders Theatre while in O Jesu the size of the chorus was cut considerably. There is no doubt, however, that the tonal chorus achieved, from the very first subdued motet to the final exultant Jubilate, place it in a unique and exalted rank among college choirs...
...Music Club Chorus under Peter Westergaard showed lovely tone quality and clearly-defined phrasing in the opening Palestina motet as well as in the difficult Machaut piece. Conductor Westergaard was enterprising as always in putting the program together and he carried it out with enthusiasm and understanding...
...chorus members got off to a shaky start in the Palestrina. They all appeared to be holding back, with the result that enunciation, tone quality, and interpretation were uniformly poor. However, they proved their worth by a spirited reading of Obrecht's Motet--a work which is not so good as the Palestrina, but which sounded better. This dozen singers do have excellent voices when they are willing to let themselves go, and they had no trouble in projecting the difficult music...