"Stimmt an die Saiten" from Joseph Haydn's The Creation (Die Schöpfung) & Weekly Roundup

     Today is the Sixth Sunday of Easter: He is truly Risen, alleluiah, alleluiah!
     Joseph Haydn is rightly considered one of the great composers.  He made a large contribution to the development of music in the late 18th century, not just through his own music, but through the other composers he taught and mentored.  Among his students wee two of the greatest: Mozart and Beethoven.
     Haydn also was eager to learn from other composers.  On a trip to England he became intrigued by Handel's oratorios, and wanted to try something similar in the musical vocabulary of his own day.  The result was his oratorio The Creation, finished in 1798.  The brief clip below is a chorus celebrating the 3rd day of creation.

Added Bonus: Weekly Round-up from 

Principium et Finis & Nisi Dominus

Tuesday – “The Liturgy of the Hour and You (LOH 3)” A practical discussion of how even insanely busy lay men and women can make the Liturgy of the Hours a part of their life.

Wednesday – “Spirit, Matter, and the Word of God” It's worth a little extra effort to come to know the words of Scripture, because words matter, especially those inspired by the Eternal Word Who Became Flesh.

and – “Abortion Myth #12” Apparently, it's o.k. to kill anyone, human or not, who isn't a "person"; but who gets to decide which of us are "persons" and which aren't? 

Thursday – “When ‘Progress’ Isn’t Progress”  Substituting the Wisdom of This World for what has been handed on from the beginning isn't progress.

Friday – “Archbishop Cordileone, Catholic Teachers, and the ‘TorreTest’”  The Archbishop of San Francisco seems to think that he shouldn't have to pay people to subvert the Church.  The Nerve! Now if he were the owner of a sports franchise, that might be different . . . 

"So Now My Jesus Has Been Taken Prisoner" - Bach, St. Matthew Passion

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday, and Passion Sunday, the beginning of Holy week.  Now we start to focus more directly on the suffering and death of Jesus, as in this clip from Bach's St. Matthew Passion: "So now my Jesus has been taken prisoner . . . "

Dirck van Baburen, The Arrest of Christ

(My final music clip for Lent is “O Sacred Head SoreWounded” from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, on the Nisi Dominus blog) 

De Profundis (C.W.Gluck)

    Christoph Willibald Gluck was one of the most influential composers of his time in the mid 18th century; he had an enormous impact on Salieri (whose Requiem Mass we've been sampling for the last couple weeks), Mozart, and many others. Perhaps no composer of his time had a greater influence on the development of the operatic genre. While his music is performed somewhat more often today than that of his protege Salieri, he is no longer one of the better-known composers.
     While Gluck's primary area was opera, he also composed musical settings for a few Psalms, few of which have survived. One that has come down to us is this hauntingly beautiful setting for Psalm 130 (linked below), a performance of which Salieri conducted at his old friend and mentor's funeral in 1788.
   

Antonio Salieri: Requiem in C minor: "Agnus Dei"

     As a follow-up to last week's post featuring the unjustly maligned composer Antonio Salieri, here is the "Agnus Dei" from Salieri's Requiem in C Minor.  There is some beautiful music here: I especially like the oboe part that weaves through it (and I have to admit that there are a few brief moments where the strings remind me of Mozart's Don Giovanni, which premiered a year earlier).
     Of course, it's all too easy for us here in the 21st century to think of pieces like this as simply music to be performed, which is in fact how they are usually treated today.  We forget that a work such as this is not only religious in inspiration, but an actual act of prayer; it is not simply a "mass" but a Mass, intended to be used in the highest form of worship available to us in this world (and, in this particular case, as an offering for the dead).  Like religious painters and the builders of the great cathedrals, composers of sacred music strove to make their work as beautiful as possible to honor their Lord and Creator.  In other words, this is not just a work of art: it is an expression of Love.

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Salieri: Requiem in C minor - Sanctus & Benedictus

     While we're on the topic of neglected composers, how about poor Antonio Salieri?  Had he not been cruelly libeled by Peter Shaffer in the play & film Amadeus,  it is quite possible that his music would not be performed at all (incidentally, Shaffer did no favors to the memory of Mozart either, who was the purported protagonist of his story).  The truth is that although Mozart had some suspicions about Salieri when he first arrived in Vienna, the two eventually developed a friendly and respectful professional relationship.  Salieri, in fact, responded very favorably to Mozart's opera The Magic Flute, and in his final letter Mozart mentions taking Salieri to a musical performance in his own carriage.  Needless to say, Salieri did not murder Mozart (nor anyone else that we know of).
     The lovely piece below is the "Sanctus & Benedictus" from Salieri's Requiem Mass, one of his four Masses.  It is, I think, a good example of why he was considered one of the finest composers of his day.
   
   

Antonio Salieri