Digital synlighed. Målbart afkast.

Bach's Oratorios : The Parallel German-English Texts with Annotations

The major choral works by Johann Sebastian Bach-the Christmas, Easter, and Ascension Oratorios, and the St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. John Passions-stand as the most frequently-performed and penetratingly discussed of thegenre. Renowned Bach scholar Michael Marissen has assembled a compact, well-designed and ideally useful treatment of Bach's oratorios, providing the full German texts with literal English translations and copious annotations. Heprovides strict literal translations of these texts, with citations from the Luther Bible as it was known in Bach's day, along side extensive footnotes that provide information addressing the interests and concerns of today'sBachcommunity. These are the first translations of the librettos from Bach's oratorios to accommodate the many sense-clarifying allusions to the readings of the Luther Bibles in Bach's day, to explore from historicaldictionaries the meanings of previously unnoticed archaic usages, and to contrast relevant findings from modern biblical scholarship. Marissen's insights are particularly helpful, his thoroughness is impressive, and the book willbe a longstanding, definitive, and essential reference for choral directors, performers, audience members, and Bach scholars alike.

Beautiful soup!

for SA children's chorus and piano This extrovert setting is in 6/8 interrupted by occasional 7/8 bars and with a rollicking chorus. The text is from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

Par La Bande

This is based on the opening bars of the Sarabande from Bach's second cello suite in D minor. 'Par la bande' means 'in a roundabout way' and suggests a circularity of form and a less than direct approach to the originaltheme.

Not Envious Of Rabbits

This piece is demanding for the performer, who has to adhere to Finnissy's detailed instructions, whilst having some freedom to interpret the occasional bars of graphic score. There are dramatic changes of tempo and overall thepiece is to sound 'boisterous'.

The Cantatas of J. S. Bach : With their librettos in German-English parallel text

Whispers

This quiet and spacious miniature challenges the performer's ability to play within the lowest dynamic range of the piano. The gently sonorous opening bars return after a lightly animated central section. The change of pacereflects the fact that whispering can be either tender or moderately urgent.

Molly-House

Molly-House contains two parallel streams of music. One consists of pages, some in conventional notation, others intentionally lacking determinacy with respect to durations and pitch. The other consists of 17 conventionallynotated arias: transcriptions, partial and with alterations and varying degrees of distortion, from four operas by Handel.

Multiple Forms Of Constraint

In this piece a solo (for the first violin) runs parallel to a trio (violin, viola, cello), but is independent in metre, speed, and style. The title is from Foucault: 'Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only byvirtue of multiple forms of constraint.' The work was commissioned in 1997 for the Kreutzer Quartet.

Da Vinci Requiem

This significant seven-movement work from Cecilia McDowall presents an imaginative pairing of extracts from The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci with texts from the Latin Missa pro defunctis. Da Vinci's reflective and penetrating insights into the nature of mortality and all that it encompasses cast new light on the familiar Requiem texts, and McDowall employs her orchestral forces to create a rich, atmospheric backdrop to the profound narrative presented by the chorus and soprano and baritone soloists. Dark, sonorous writing precedes an energetic 'Sanctus', and the closing bars of the luminous 'Lux aeterna' create a powerful allusion to da Vinci's concept of 'The Perspective ofDisappearance'.

Dark Sleep

This evocative solo piano piece looks back, as though in some troubled dream, to fragments of Purcell and Tippett. The widely spaced opening notes are interrupted, after only eight bars, by a quick and relentlessly turbulentpassage. A brief reference to the opening of Tippett's Fourth Symphony leads into a slower, more expressive section; a predominantly mysterious, even glassy sound world from which emerges the poignant notes of Dido's Lament fromPurcell's Dido and Aeneas, now at last momentarily in its correct juxtaposition. Finally, a tiny fragment of the music is spun obsessively until it falls out of control and back into the carefully placed notes of the opening.

Regina Caeli

Originally written for SATB, this hymn to the 'Queen of the Heavens' is a glorious work, replete with dramatic changes of mood and texture. The majestic chords of the opening bars quickly give way to a spirited exchange betweenthe voices. This pattern of contrasts is repeated throughout the piece before the final jubilant chords fade away to pianissimo. This is an approachable and rewarding motet, appropriate for any time of the year andin particular, the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Eastertide. The original SATB version of Regina Caeli has also been recorded by the renowned American choir, the Phoenix Chorale, and released on aGrammyaward-winning CD by Chandos (Spotless Rose CHSA 5066).