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A Note from the Artistic Director
On behalf of all the musicians and board of directors of the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado, welcome to this special holiday concert! We are delighted to collaborate with St. Martin’s Chamber Choir in a program culminating with a joint performance of Charpentier’s exquisite and engaging
Messe de Minuit pour Noël.
Marc-Antoine Charpentier (c.1643-1704) is the French Baroque composer most associated with incorporating
Noëls into his sacred works, most notably his Messe de Minuit pour Noël
(Midnight Mass for Christmas). Written in the 1680s, it was probably intended for the private chapel of his first employer, the Duchess de Guise, who boasted a very numerous musical establishment. Other than this, the reasons for its writing are unknown; but its incorporation of numerous well-known
Noël tunes of the day leaves no doubt that it was intended for performance on Christmas Eve. With its enduring combination of solemnity, mystery and joy, it is not too surprising that a number of composers through the centuries have chosen to create music for the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass.
Like the Messe de
Minuit, Arcangelo Corelli’s Concerto Grosso in G minor was composed specifically for performance on Christmas Eve
(fatto per la notte di Natale or “made for the night of Christmas”). This concerto, an example of the
concerto da chiesa or church concerto style, is one of a collection of twelve
concerti grossi published posthumously in 1714 and likely composed in Rome around 1690 for Corelli’s patron Cardinal Pietro
Ottoboni. As with most works of this genre, the concerto features a continuous interplay between a small ensemble (called the
concertino group, usually consisting of two violins, cello, and harpsichord), and the larger ensemble or orchestra (called the
ripieno or tutti).
By concluding with a Pastorale movement, Corelli was drawing on a long tradition of pastoral music at Christmas time that goes back to at least the 16th century. Musical motifs – drone bass, lilting melodies, and parallel thirds and sixths – were employed to imitate the music-making of Italian shepherds playing their pipes at Christmas time. The listener makes a natural connection in the mind and ear to the ancient shepherds who witnessed Christ’s birth. A number of Corelli’s contemporaries and successors also composed Christmas concertos with pastoral themes, and the tradition was extended to cantatas and oratorios as well. A well-known example is the instrumental
Pifa (derived from Piffaro, or shepherd’s pipes) that serves as an interlude in the Christmas section of Handel’s
Messiah.
Pastoral themes are also evident in a number of Charpentier’s Noëls sur les instruments composed in Paris around the same time as the Corelli concerto (early 1690s). These delightful arrangements, which can easily have voices added to sing the original
Noël texts, have a rustic dance-like quality evoking the music of the common folk more than the court. We have selected several of these
Noël arrangements for the first half of the program, along with a contrasting motet in a more courtly style,
In navitatem Domini canticum, composed in the early 1670s.
Frank Nowell
Artistic
Director, Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado
©
2009 St. Martin's Chamber Choir
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