Music for the Baptism of the Lord — Sunday, January 9, 2022

Nun danket alle Gott (Op. 65) – Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933)

 

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Sigfrid Karg-Elert was a German composer of considerable fame in the early twentieth century, best known for his compositions for organ and harmonium.

 

The cultural climate in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s was very hostile to the internationally oriented, French-influenced Karg-Elert; and although his works were admired outside Germany, especially in the U.K. and in the U.S.A., in his home country his music was almost completely neglected.

 

Notable influences in his work include composers Johann Sebastian Bach (he often used the BACH motif in Bach’s honour), Edvard Grieg, Claude Debussy, Max Reger, Alexander Scriabin, and early Arnold Schoenberg. In general terms, his musical style can be characterised as being late-romantic with impressionistic and expressionistic tendencies. His profound knowledge of music theory allowed him to stretch the limits of traditional harmony without losing tonal coherence.

 

Today’s postlude in church, subtitled Marche Triomphale, uses a chorale tune that is familiar to European and North American listeners (Nun danket alle Gott – “Now thank we all our God”). The cantus firmus (tune) is somewhat hidden in the thick texture, but the piece, in da capo form, is concise and avoids the rambling found in some of Karg-Elert’s other works.

 

Gerald Harder

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Music for The Holy Family — Sunday, December 26, 2021

Messe de Minuit pour Noël — Marc-Antoine Charpentier (c. 1636-1704)

 

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As the most recorded French composer of the Baroque period in in our time, it would seem that Marc-Antoine Charpentier, overshadowed, private and often silent in life, has had a bit of revenge.

 

Charpentier’s Midnight Mass for Christmas, our setting of the Mass Ordinary at the Solemn Mass of Midnight in church, was composed in 1694, and is an excellent example of 17th-century musical craftsmanship, while remaining highly accessible. One of eleven masses by Charpentier scored for voice and orchestra, this work is set for four voices, two flutes, strings, organ and continuo. It is written in choral anthem style, primarily homophonic, with several sections of imitative polyphony, and is through composed in nature.

 

The Messe de Minuit pour Noël is also an excellent example of a parody Mass. Although parody Masses were out of fashion by the 1680s, Charpentier, by using familiar French noël settings as the basis of the work, camouflages the parody aspect of the composition. Charpentier´s use of beloved carols, dynamically developed with structural, harmonic and instrumental finesse, achieved a work accessible and translatable to many strata of musicians and listeners in his day, as well as for us today.

 

Gerald Harder

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