The Classical Beat: Bach’s brilliant B minor Mass

Johann Sebastian Bach was the ultimate Lutheran, so its somewhat surprising that he wrote a full-length setting of the Roman Catholic Mass. In fact, its one of the most brilliant settings of the Mass ever written. The Spire Chamber Ensemble and the Rebel Baroque Orchestra will present an authentic period performance of the Mass in B minor at 7 Sunday night at Trinity Lutheran Church, 5601 W. 62nd St. in Mission./ppThis masterpiece has not been performed in Kansas City for several years, and I believe this will be the first period performance ever, said Ben Spalding, founder and conductor of the Spire Chamber Ensemble. I selected this piece to close our season because its not only one of the greatest works of history, but a truly modern work with much to teach us today./ppThe music is tricky for the singers and players, but weve assembled an all-star group of musicians who I think will bring the ancient words of the Mass to life. We want to capture humanitys relationship to the divine./ppBach was a devout Lutheran, but he, like many of his fellow Lutheran composers, would sometimes compose a movement or two of the Roman Catholic Mass. The Mass in B minor is unusual coming from a Lutheran composer because its a setting of the complete Mass. /ppBach seems to have written the Mass knowing it would never receive a full public performance in his Lutheran milieu. And, indeed, it was never performed in his lifetime. /ppUnlike most of his compositions, Bachs Mass in B minor was written for purely personal reasons, Spalding said. Its a pillar of Western music and may be my favorite choral work of all time, and I believe Im in good company./ppThe B minor comes at the pinnacle of his compositional output. It has the full range of human expression, from the plea of the opening Kyrie to the joyous outburst of the Gloria to the intimate Agnus Dei to the heart-stopping conclusion of the Dona Nobis Pacem./ppSpalding founded the Spire Chamber Ensemble in 2010 to bring together some of the countrys finest singers for choral concerts in the Kansas City area. Members of Spire sing or have sung with such stellar groups as Chanticleer, Conspirare, Seraphic Fire, the Kansas City Chorale, the Phoenix Chorale, Trinity Wall Street and Octarium./ppFor the B minor Mass, Spire is teaming up with Rebel, whom local audiences know from its performances on the Friends of Chamber Music series. The New York-based group, named after the French Baroque composer Jean-Fry Rebel, is considered one of Americas finest early music ensembles./ppI lived in Philadelphia for a few years, and my wife and I would often travel to Trinity Wall Street Church in New York City, where Rebel would collaborate with the Trinity Wall Street Choir on many outstanding choral masterpieces, Spalding said. One of my goals with Spire was to perform period performance chamber oratorios with the best players I could find, so I made contact with the directors of Rebel, and they enthusiastically agreed to travel to Kansas City again to perform this great work./ppFor tickets, call 913-432-5441 or visit a href =”http://tlcms.org/” target=”_blank”tlcms.org/a. Tickets will also be available at the door. $10 student rush tickets will be available 15 minutes before the performance. /ppspan class=”subhead”Ballet onscreen/span/pp Kansas Citians have another opportunity to see an HD screening of a ballet masterpiece with todays showings of the Royal Ballets production of La Fille Mal Garde. It screens at 1 p.m. at Phoenix Theatres at The Legends, 1841 Village West Parkway in Kansas City, Kan., and at 1:30 p.m. at the Tivoli Cinemas, 4050 Pennsylvania Ave./ppLa Fille Mal Garde has a distinguished history. The great choreographer Jean Dauberval came across an engraving in a Bordeaux shop of a painting by Pierre-Antoine Baudouin. The print depicted a young woman in a barn, teary-eyed, with her dress in disarray, as her mother gives her a stern lecture. In the background, a young man scampers up a ladder into the hay loft. /pp Dauberval was greatly amused by this randy tableau and decided to create a comic ballet based on the scene. /ppFor music, Dauberval used a pastiche of popular French airs (the original manuscript doesnt mention any composers), and the work had its premiere on July 1, 1789, at Grand Thtre de Bordeaux. /ppThe Ballet of the Straw, or There Is Only One Step From Bad to Good, as it was originally called, was an enormous hit, and two years after the premiere, Dauberval changed the title to La Fille Mal Garde (The Girl Who Needs Watching)./pp In 1828, Ferdinand Hrold wrote a new score using some of the original music. The musicians who played at the premiere apparently hated the original music; the original manuscript score is covered with scathing comments. The Hrold version has continued to be performed around the world, becoming the longest running ballet in the repertoire./ppIn 1959, Sir Frederick Ashton created for the Royal Ballet what many balletomanes consider the definitive La Fille Mal Gardee. Ashton wasnt quite satisfied with the music, so he asked the Royal Ballets conductor and composer, John Lanchbery, to rework and reorchestrate Hrolds original score./pp Hrolds charming and tuneful music provided a nice framework, but Lanchbery wrote a few numbers to Ashtons needs. The result of all this collaboration is a ballet that never fails to delight audiences./ppThe Royal Ballets production re-creates Ashtons vision with colorful costumes and sets. This is the perfect work to introduce a young person to the world of ballet, but people of all ages in need of good cheer will thoroughly enjoy it.

Loyola Institute for Ministry holds virtual open house, webinar on spirituality

The Loyola Institute for Ministry, in cooperation with the Archdiocese of New Orleans, is hosting the free webinar, “The Roman Missal: A Look at the New Translation,” on Tuesday, May 15 at 8 p.m. The presentation, by the Rev. Stephen Sauer, S.J., pastor of the Jesuit Church of the Immaculate Conception in New Orleans, is dedicated to providing a deeper understanding of the recent changes to the language of the Roman Catholic mass.

LIM will also host a virtual open house on Wednesday, May 16 at 8 p.m. and provide information on Loyola’s online graduate program in religious education and pastoral studies. For details on the webinar and open house, visit the LIM website.

LIM offers both Master of Religious Education and Master of Pastoral Studies degrees, which are 36-credit hour degree programs designed to be taken completely online.

The Loyola Institute for Ministry responds to the needs of ministry and education personnel who have limited access to Catholic educational resources. Focus areas include Christian spirituality for pastoral ministers, pastoral life and administration, youth ministry, Hispanic ministry, religion and ecology, marketplace ministry and small Christian community formation.

For more information about LIM and the information session, contact Eileen Hooper Chapoton at 504-865-2109 or email her at chapoton@loyno.edu.

Belleville priest says Burke would reject his appeal to save job

BELLEVILLE • A priest in the Belleville diocese at odds with his bishop over the wording of the Catholic Mass said the former Archbishop of St. Louis – now head of the Vatican’s highest court – said he should have been removed from his parish long ago.

The Rev. William Rowe said Belleville Bishop Edward Braxton told him in a meeting Tuesday that if he refused to resign as pastor of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Mount Carmel, Ill., the bishop would use canon – or church – law to remove him. Rowe said he asked Braxton if he could appeal a removal, if it came to that.

Rowe said Braxton told him that he could appeal an eventual removal to the Vatican’s version of the supreme court, called the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura. But, Braxton said, he had already spoken to the head of that court – former St. Louis archbishop, Cardinal Raymond Burke – in February, and that Burke told Braxton that Rowe should have been removed “a long time ago,” according to the priest.

“The understanding there is that I’m done,” Rowe said.

Messages left with the offices of Braxton in Belleville and Burke in Rome were not returned Wednesday morning.

Rowe said Braxton told him that on two recent trips to Rome several bishops asked him about Rowe’s case, and encouraged him to remove the priest. The bishop told him the bishops had heard about two civil weddings outside the church Rowe had performed for couples whose previous marriages had not yet been annulled. Braxton “said Rome was aware of those weddings and upset about that before the liturgy thing,” Rowe said.

For decades, Rowe has deviated from the language of the Roman Catholic Mass, a highly prescribed liturgical rite, parts of which are as old as Christianity itself. In December, the Vatican introduced a new English-language translation of the Roman Missal – the book of prayers, chants and responses used during Mass. The new translation rendered some of the language in the Missal closer in spirit to the original Latin. Critics of the new translation have said the English is clunky and awkward for priests and laity.

Most of the prayers read by priests from the Missal during Mass cannot be changed. But there has never been an established penalty for improvising non-alterable prayers, and bishops have traditionally looked past an individual priest’s extemporizing. Last June, Braxton had sent a letter to all the priests in the Belleville Diocese warning that “it will not be acceptable for any priest or any parish to refrain from using the new prayers due to their personal preference.”

Rowe offered Braxton his resignation October 12, 2011, after a meeting during which the bishop barred the priest from improvising prayers during Mass. Braxton didn’t accept Rowe’s resignation until Jan. 30, 2012. Canon law says a bishop must accept a priest’s resignation within three months of the original offer. Rowe has since retracted his resignation offer.

Belleville priest may be out for good, with Burke unlikely to help

BELLEVILLE • A priest in the Belleville diocese at odds with his bishop over the wording of the Catholic Mass said the former Archbishop of St. Louis – now head of the Vatican’s highest court – said he should have been removed from his parish long ago.

The Rev. William Rowe said Belleville Bishop Edward Braxton told him in a meeting Tuesday that if he refused to resign as pastor of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Mount Carmel, Ill., the bishop would use canon – or church – law to remove him. Rowe said he asked Braxton if he could appeal a removal, if it came to that.

Rowe said Braxton told him that he could appeal an eventual removal to the Vatican’s version of the supreme court, called the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura. But, Braxton said, he had already spoken to the head of that court – former St. Louis archbishop, Cardinal Raymond Burke – in February, and that Burke told Braxton that Rowe should have been removed “a long time ago,” according to the priest.

“The understanding there is that I’m done,” Rowe said.

Messages left with the offices of Braxton in Belleville and Burke in Rome were not returned Wednesday morning.

Rowe said Braxton told him that on two recent trips to Rome several bishops asked him about Rowe’s case, and encouraged him to remove the priest. The bishop told him the bishops had heard about two civil weddings outside the church Rowe had performed for couples whose previous marriages had not yet been annulled. Braxton “said Rome was aware of those weddings and upset about that before the liturgy thing,” Rowe said.

For decades, Rowe has deviated from the language of the Roman Catholic Mass, a highly prescribed liturgical rite, parts of which are as old as Christianity itself. In December, the Vatican introduced a new English-language translation of the Roman Missal – the book of prayers, chants and responses used during Mass. The new translation rendered some of the language in the Missal closer in spirit to the original Latin. Critics of the new translation have said the English is clunky and awkward for priests and laity.

Most of the prayers read by priests from the Missal during Mass cannot be changed. But there has never been an established penalty for improvising non-alterable prayers, and bishops have traditionally looked past an individual priest’s extemporizing. Last June, Braxton had sent a letter to all the priests in the Belleville Diocese warning that “it will not be acceptable for any priest or any parish to refrain from using the new prayers due to their personal preference.”

Rowe offered Braxton his resignation October 12, 2011, after a meeting during which the bishop barred the priest from improvising prayers during Mass. Braxton didn’t accept Rowe’s resignation until Jan. 30, 2012. Canon law says a bishop must accept a priest’s resignation within three months of the original offer. Rowe has since retracted his resignation offer.

Duerr returns to conduct the BPO

Robert Duerr is back in town, and he is conducting the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus tonight (April 20) in “Songs of Eternity: A Choral Spectacular.” Born in North Tonawanda, Duerr is the celebrated conductor who founded and led the critically acclaimed Pasadena Chamber Orchestra for almost 10 years. He also has conducted at the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Opera, the Los Angeles Opera and other prestigious venues.

Tonight’s concert opens with “Dona Nobis Pacem,” the majestic cantata by Ralph Vaughan Williams. After intermission, Duerr conducts the beloved Requiem of Gabriel Faure. This is one of the best-known settings of the Roman Catholic Mass for the dead. The music turns up everywhere from movies like “Interview With the Vampire” and “American Beauty” to the crime series “CSI.” Most famous is the ethereal “Pie Jesu,” embraced by both classical singers and pop singers for its beauty and sense of timelessness.

“Songs of Eternity: A Choral Spectacular” takes place at 8 tonight (April 20) in Kleinhans Music Hall. Admission is $30-$40. For info, call 885-5000 or visit www.bpo.org.

– Mary Kunz Goldman

Symphony faces impatience of ‘Missa Solemnis’

Beethoven always strained against limits – the limits of his time and place, with its vast inequalities and banal social conventions, the limits even of his own body, his failing hearing that slowly left him bereft of tone and timbre from the outside world, imprisoned in the silence of his own mind.

Hence the impatience haunting “Missa Solemnis,” Beethoven’s setting of the Latin Roman Catholic Mass for soloists, choir and orchestra, which the Peoria Symphony will present April 21 at Grace Presbyterian Church.

This is an impatience bridling under specific restraints: With the fleshly, prosaic elements of song and voice – frail vocal chords, gasping lungs and the sheer stamina needed to bear up under the burden of 80 minutes of music making. The vocal ranges are forbidding, the tempo seemingly sometimes too fast, and the vast, complex musical structure of the piece as a whole – while clear in the imagination – is hard to make cohere in a real, three dimensional performance space.

Like dance, music is the art of the body: fingers pressing strings to frets, breath transfigured into sound. But in “Missa Solemnis,” music seems to want to free itself of the body, and not merely the body. The material world with its practical demands and human, all-too-human, limitations seems a poor house for Beethoven’s vision of the Roman Catholic Mass as a great cosmic dance of humanity and God.

The esteemed conductor Otto Klemperer, who created what some consider the definitive recording of “Missa Solemnis,” put it this way:

“It is enormously difficult to translate a work into reality that doesn’t take reality into account.”

“Very few groups attempt this other than top professional groups like the New York Philharmonic or the Boston Symphony, and they do it maybe once a decade,” said John Jost, director of choral activities at Bradley University, who is preparing the Bradley Chorale and Community Chorus for the performance.

“I was very surprised when George said he wanted to do this. I think it’s a magnificent project, but I don’t think the Peoria Symphony has ever performed it. Preparation has been in the form of pep talks to the chorus – ‘Yes, we can do this.’ “

Composed between 1818 and 1823, “Missa Solemnis,” belongs to Beethoven’s so-called “third period” of development – his final artistic phase that saw the creation of such works as Symphony No. 9 and the late string quartets and other pieces, which anticipate, in so many ways, the future of European music.

“Missa Solemnis” was supposed to be written for the enthronement of Archduke Ruldolph, the youngest son of Emperor Leopold II, as Archbishop of Olmutz, on March 20, 1820.

As Beethoven composed, however, the work kept growing in scope. As ideas accumulated, Beethoven missed his deadline. But by drawing from neglected resources of the past – stored in the compositions of Bach, Handel and Palestrina – he created something distinctively new.

The text is traditional enough: the Latin Roman Catholic Mass, with its customary divisions of the Kyrie (pleas of mercy to God and Christ, the only part of the text in Greek); the Gloria (in part borrowed from the words of the angels who greeted the shepherds the night of the Nativity); the Credo (the statement of Christian beliefs); the Sanctus (words of praise accompanying the miracle of the transformation of the host); and the Agnus Dei (a plea of mercy to the Lamb of God).

But Beethoven handled these sacred texts in a way that was different from what his contemporaries might have done.

Like earlier composers such as Palestrina, Bach and Handel, Beethoven made extensive use of the archaic art of counterpoint – the technique of creating simultaneous, independent melodic lines of equal importance.

For example, Beethoven closes the Gloria with a tremendous fugue, a kind of counterpoint that was basic to the Baroque era of Bach and Handel. Another dazzling, complex fugue appears at the end of the Credo. Based on the words “Et vitam venturi saeculi” (“And the life of the world to come), this fugue is, if possible, even more fervent – and more than a little daunting for singers.

“That is the toughest place in the entire Mass,” Jost said. “The fugue is very difficult to sing. And then when he doubles the tempo, it’s almost impossible.”

To set words to music is also, in some degree, to interpret them. And Beethoven appeared to have his own ideas of what was important in this liturgical text so central to the Christian tradition.

For instance, Jost says, Beethoven – who was a spiritual, but not a conventionally religious man – hurriedly passes over the words in the Credo about belief in one holy, Catholic and apostolic church and one baptism for the remission of sins.

But he lavishes great musical care on the key words “homo factus est,” (“became man”), referring to the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. These words become the basis for a heroic tenor solo.

There is indeed something heroic about Beethoven’s artistic quest as a whole, a quest to transcend limits announced as early as the ambiguous, shifting harmonies that open his early Symphony No. 1 and that hint at the way Beethoven would build on, and eventually break, with his classical predecessors.

This quest culminates in Beethoven’s last works – in the late string quartets, which he claimed were written for the future, not the present; in the Ninth Symphony, which attempts to embrace all of humanity, to realize in music what the French Revolution could not in reality; and in “Missa Solemnis,” where Beethoven throws off time, place and condition, and contemplates the eternal questions of God, humanity, sin and forgiveness.

“In this late period, one finds Beethoven moving into a highly abstract, almost psycho-spiritual, type of music making which goes way beyond mere listening but really addresses human existence,” wrote George Stelluto, the symphony’s music director, in an email. “I cannot explain this, but Beethoven’s music of this period does take on an utterly profound quality that hints at a hidden truth we should all be seeking. It is very heady stuff. Beethoven seems to have access to the language of the soul, much more so than many other composers.”

______

‘Missa Solemnis’

What: Performance of Beethoven’s setting of the Latin Roman Catholic Mass, presented by the Peoria Symphony Orchestra with George Stelluto conducting. The performance features guest soloists Heather Youngquist (soprano), Ann Sauder (alto), Kevin Ray (tenor) and Evan Boyer (bass).

Also performing are the Milliken University Choir, led by Brad Holmes; the Bradley University Chorale and the Bradley University Chorus, led by John Jost; and the Illinois State University Concert Choir, led by Karyl Carlson.

When: 8 p.m. Saturday.

Where: Grace Presbyterian Church, State Route 91.

Tickets: $32 to $70. Call 671-1096.

______

Gary Panetta is the fine arts columnist and a critic for the Journal Star. He also has a blog, Bach and Lemon Shakeups, at pjstar.com. Panetta can be reached at 686-3132 or gpanetta@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @GaryPanetta.

Eastman School of Music Forces Present Beethoven Choral Masterpiece

Missa Solemnis, Beethoven’s inspiring and profound work for vocal soloists, chorus, and large orchestra, will be presented at 8 p.m. Friday, May 4 , in Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre.

Performed by the Eastman Rochester Chorus and Eastman School Symphony Orchestra under the baton of William Weinert, Director of Choral Activities at the Eastman School of Music, the concert features student soloists Yunjin Kim, soprano; Caroline O’Dwyer, mezzo-soprano; Joshua Bouillon, tenor; and Zachary Benton Burgess, bass.

“From the heart … may it go to the heart!” was the wish Beethoven inscribed on a copy of his great Missa Solemnis. This huge setting of the text of the Roman Catholic Mass took Beethoven four years to write, from 1819 to 1823. In it he summed up a lifetime of musical knowledge, and a lifetime of religious thought.

Beethoven originally intended the Missa Solemnis for the installation ceremony for his longtime friend and patron, Archduke Rudolph of Austria, as the Archbishop of Olomouc, Moravia. Engrossed in the preparation and composition of his Mass (and in some complicated and creative dealings with its potential publishers), Beethoven missed his March 1820 deadline – by several years. The Missa Solemnis was first performed in St. Petersburg in 1824, and only in part in Vienna a month later.

The work Beethoven eventually created is perhaps his greatest, and also one of his most challenging. The piece, says Weinert, is particularly demanding for the orchestra – and for the chorus, which sings almost continuously for the work’s 70-minute duration. While it is probably the grandest of all Beethoven’s works, the Missa Solemnis is seldom performed because of its difficulty, but it represents a “Mount Everest” of choral works.

While the text of the Missa Solemnis is traditional, Beethoven’s approach to it was unique. By middle age he was only marginally a Christian, but he had a profound religious impulse – and he wanted his Mass to appeal directly to the listener’s heart. “Beethoven was not somebody who cranked out masses,” says Weinert. “This was a significant text for him, and he looked word-by-word at what it meant.”

The finely balanced symmetry of the work’s structure was counter-acted by the many surprising and dramatic musical effects. The music incorporates all the styles of religious music that Beethoven knew (which he studied thoroughly before writing the piece), from Gregorian chant to such Baroque works as Bach’s Mass in B Minor and Handel’s Messiah.

“This was a strange piece when it was first performed,” says Weinert. “The important thing in performing it is to make it sound like a brand-new work.”

# # #

Friday, May 4
Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
Eastman-Rochester Chorus and Eastman School Symphony Orchestra, William Weinert conducting
8 p.m.
Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre
Free

Christians Celebrate Easter Sunday

Christians Celebrate Easter Sunday

Christians around the world Sunday celebrate the central event of their faith – Easter – the holiday that marks what Christians believe is the triumphant resurrection of Jesus three days after his crucifixion.

Many Christians, including Protestants and Catholics, make it a point to go to church on Easter, even if they rarely do so on other Sundays.

There are a number of Easter customs, including attending sunrise church services, and dyeing and decorating eggs.

Pope Benedict is marking the holy day with a Roman Catholic Mass in St. Peter’s Square.

Thousands of Christians gathered in Jerusalem late Saturday near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on the site where many Christians believe Jesus was crucified and buried.

Eastern Orthodox Christians will celebrate Easter on April 15.

Tags: Easter
Posted in US

Easter church services in Goole and Howden

Published on Thursday 5 April 2012 09:35

Today: Maundy Thursday joint Communion service, Central Methodist United Reformed Church, North Street, Goole 7pm; Roman Catholic Mass, St Joseph’s, Pasture Road, Goole, 7pm; The Last Supper, Howden Methodist Church, from 7.30pm.

Tomorrow: Good Friday Procession of Witness, starting at 10am on the forecourt of Central Methodist United Reformed Church, ending at St Joseph’s on Pasture Road; Stations of the Cross, starting at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Howden, at 10am, followed by soup and rolls; Good Friday Liturgy, at St Michael’s Church, Eastrington, at 2.30pm; Stations of the Cross, St Joseph’s, Goole, 7pm; and a Tenebrae Service at St Peter’s in Laxton at 7.30pm.

Easter Saturday: Easter fun with free chocolate, face-painting and a cake stall, New Beginnings Community Church on Mariners Street, Goole, and in the shopping precinct, 1 to 3 pm; Easter Vigil Mass, St Joseph’s, Pasture Road, 4pm; Polish Mass, St Joseph’s, 7pm; and an Easter Vigil Service at St Stephen’s Church, Newport, at 7.30pm.

Easter Day: Joint river bank Communion service at Lock Hill, Goole, 7.30am, followed by breakfast at Central Methodist United Reformed Church; Roman Catholic mass at Sacred Heart, Howden, 9.30am; Holy Communion, St John’s Parish Church, Goole, 10am; Easter service, Trinity Methodist Church, Clifton Gardens, Goole, 10.30am; Easter service, Central Methodist United Reform Church, 10.30am; Holy Communion, Howden Minster, at 10.45am and evening prayer at 5.30pm.

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Enjoy performance of Gabriel Faure’s Requiem in D Minor

PALM CITY —
On Friday, April 6, at 7 p.m., for one-night only, former Martin County High School musician Michael A. Ferrara returns to Palm City for his professional conducting début at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Palm City. Ferrara will conduct the Festival Choir in Gabriel Faure’s Requiem in D Minor. Gabriel Fauré composed his Requiem in D minor, Op. 48 between 1887 and 1890. This choral–orchestral setting of the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead is the best known of his large works.

This evening will also feature Samuel Morgan, a bass/baritone from Cleveland, Ohio. Morgan, classically trained at the Cleveland Institute of Music is most often seen on the stage in classic musical theater roles. The evening will also highlight Sandra McNiff, local soprano soloist, and section leader since 2005.

For more information, contact Mark S. Jones, founder of the MSJ Artist Series, at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Palm City, 2655 SW Immanuel Drive, Palm City, call 772-287-8188 or visit http://www.immanuel-elca.org/. There is no charge for admission, yet a free-will offering will be accepted.