St. Thomas Boys Choir Brings Bach to Cornell Campus Last Friday, November 10th, music enthusiasts packed Sage Chapel to attend the choral concert given by the 50 boys and young men from the St. Thomas Boys Choir of Leipzig, the last performance of the Cornell Concert Series in 2017. Despite the frigid gusts of wind, the line in front of the entrance nearly wrapped around Sage Chapel minutes before the concert started at 8 p.m. The much-anticipated concert attracted faculty and students across the campus, and even audience beyond the Cornell community. Among the audience there was even a German family with their daughter who were paying a visit to US. The history of the St. Thomas Choir of Leipzig, Thomanerchor Leipzig in German, reaches back …show more content…
more than 800 years, undisputedly making it one of the oldest choir in the world. In 1212, when German was still part of the Holy Roman Empire, Emperor Otto IV acknowledged the founding of the Augustinian monastery of St. Thomas, which was initiated by Dietrich von Meißen, the Lord of Meissen. The St. Thomas choir started off as part of a convent school affiliated with the monastery, making it the oldest public school in Germany. Singing was always part of the school’s education since liturgical music was crucial to the weekly church service. Now, after 805 years, the choir consisted of almost one hundred boys and young men from nine to eighteen years old, the so-called Thomaner, with a common passion for music. The choir performed three times a week to more than 2000 visitors for the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. The St.
Thomas Choir was known for its cantors, called Thomaskantor in German, one of which was Johann Sebastian Bach, an exceptional and prolific composer who had served as the Thomaskantor for 27 years. Bach had created many original cantatas for the choir, most of which were still performed today, together with modern choir music. After the choir’s American tour in 2013 as a celebration of its 800th anniversary, the New York Times praised its performance as “The tender, clear sound of the sopranos and altos had uncanny carrying power in the church. These voices held their own easily against the robust, youthful sounds of the somewhat older tenors, baritones and basses.” This year, the St. Thomas Choir toured around the world to celebrate the 500-year-anniversary of Martin Luther’s …show more content…
Reformation. The 75-minute performance on Friday night featured cantatas by Heinrich Schütz, the first German baroque composer, Johann Hermann Schein, one of the first composers to import the Italian stylistic innovations into German music, Felix Mendelssohn, know for his romantic music, and Bach. Gotthold Schwarz, the 17th Thomaskantor, conducted the choir, with Hartmut Becker playing the violoncello and Stefan Altner playing the chest organ. The fifty Thomaners stood in four rows orders by their parts — soprano, alto, tenor and bass. “Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.” The concert opens with “Der 100. Psalm”, or “Rejoice in the lord All the Earth” from “Psalmen David”(1619) by Schütz, a choral music piece composed in Italianate choral style. This opening piece features a fundamental practice of double chorus effects: echo. The soprano and alto sang one verse loudly, and the tenor and bass repeat the verse softly, accompanied by the cello. The audience could feel the divinity of the sacred music purely by its rhythm and the fluctuation in its pitch. The performance also featured four superb solos and duets by Schütz, Schein and Bach. Many of the vocal solos and duets were created during the Thirty Years War, when the size of the choir recorded drastically. The angelic voice of these young boys echoed in the chapel. Soprano Elias Unger, a ten-year-old boy, sang Bach’s “Gott lebet noch” with a silvery and tender voice, and Nathanael Vorwergk delivered an elegant rendering of the composer’s “Dir, dir Jehova, will ich singen,” accompanied by a soft continuo from the cellist and organist. At the end of the performance, all the audience stood up and the applause continued for minutes. The rapturous applause brought an encore conducted by one of the
Thomaner.
There was a vocal recital on October 19th, 2017 at 7:30PM, held at the performance hall in Mountain view college. Alex Longnecker, a tenor vocalist and Imre Patkai, (pianist) played a series of homophonic textured songs, some being sung in German and others in English. The Three selected songs I will be writing about are, The Lincolnshire Poacher, The Plough Boy, and Im Wunderschonen Monat Mai. This performance played a total of 24 Pieces, composed by 4 composers, being Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ernest Chausson, Benjamin Britten, and Robert Schumann.
Combined Choirs. 1964. A History of First Baptist Church Lindale, Georgia. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 1-68. Print.
Johann Sebastian Bach was a composer, a musician, teacher, and organist who later became a specialist in construction of organs. Bach learnt to play the violin, the orchestra, and the organ from his father and his famous uncle and twin brother to the father, Johann Christoph at a young age. The organ was his chosen instrument. He also achieved success in the art of Fugue, choral polyphone, instrumental music and dance forms. In Eisenach he attended Old Latin Grammar School, the same school that Martin Luther had attended. He sang in the schools choir. His parents died before Bach was 10 years old. His mother died when Bach was nine years old, his father’s death followed nine months later (Sherrane, 2011). After the parents death Bach was taken in by his older brother Johann Christoph who had already established himself as an organist in Ohrdruf. Johann Christoph had a great influence in Bach’s success in music as he taught him and encouraged him to study music composition. At the same time Bach was attending the Gymnasium grammar school in Ohrdruf where he studied theology, Latin...
The choirboys by Joseph Wambaurgh is it a depiction of how ten urban police officers cope. This novel is a dark and powerful comedy with the ending of a tragedy. Five sets of Los Angeles Police Department officers on the night watch at Wilshire division come together after patrol at MacArthur Park and rewind from the past day. Spermwhale Whalen and Baxter Slate partners of 7-A-1, Sam Niles and Harold Bloomguard partners of 7-A-29, Spencer Van Moot and Calvin Potts partners of 7-A-33, Calvin Potts and Francis Tanaguchi partners of 7-A-77, Roscoe Rules and Dean Pratt partners of 7-A-85.
On Friday November 15, 2013, I attended a concert that I found very interesting. It took place at 7:30 pm at the First Presbyterian Church of the Covenant. The group performing was the Erie Chamber Orchestra but as a special the Slippery Rock University Concert Choir was also there.
The concert began with an incredibly brief introduction from the president of the Rochester Oratorio Society, after which the society performed a piece that is not listed on the program. After hearing the raw talent the choir displayed in their first performance the crowd praised them, and at this time a representative from the city’s mayor office took the stage and presented the society with a proclamation. The proclamation was on behalf of the city offices and expressed thanks for their 70 years of musical performances and education. Afterwards the society performed Norman Dello Joio’s “A Jubilant Song,” which served as a transition for the Houghton College Choir to take the seats of the men’s choral section. The college choir was approximately a third the size of the society choir, but still managed to perform with a lot of talent. The Houghton College Choir performed Kenneth Jennings’ “The Lord is the Everlasting God” and Larry Farrow’s “Give Me Jesus.” After a quick intermission the Rochester Oratorio Society took to the stage to perform Brahm’s Requiem, which is typically performed with an orchestra, but in their rendition a two person piano served as a replacement. Brahm’s Requiem is in German, making it difficult to understan...
On Tuesday, October 17, 2017, I attended a musical concert. This was the first time I had ever been to a concert and did not play. The concert was not what I expected. I assumed I was going to a symphony that featured a soloist clarinet; however, upon arrival I quickly realized that my previous assumptions were false. My experience was sort of a rollercoaster. One minute I was down and almost asleep; next I was laughing; then I was up and intrigued.
Looking at one of these Hymns called, “Lord, Keep Us Steadfast in Thy Word” by Luther himself, written somewhere in between 1541 and 1542. Here it is written in the very first verse that, “Lord, keep us steadfast in thy Word, and curb the pope’s and Turk’s vile sword, who seek to topple from the throne Jesus Christ, thy only son.” (Discovering, 275). In the first verse of this hymn Luther drops that gauntlet by saying that the Pope must be stopped and Luther then accuses the Roman church as wanting to overthrow God the Son,
Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil—also referred to as his Vespers, is a collection of 15 works for solo alto, tenor, and choral that he composed in under two weeks. The ranges for the singers in this work as well as the intonation and breath control were thought to be absurd and profound. To find basses capable to sing it would be "as rare as asparagus at Christmas” as the conductor Nikolai Danilin put it. But Rachmaninoff claimed "I know the voices of my countrymen!” and he did indeed! The text for this work is taken directly from the Russian Orthodox All-Night vigil ceremony as well as various plainchant melodies. “The 15 movements of the Vespers together form the core of a well-known Russian Orthodox monastic service” (Rodman). The work premiered in 1915 during World War I “and Russians were hailing the Vespers as a masterpiece even before the performance began” (Rodman). His eight-voiced choral textures are part of the reason why this was such a popular work. In Rodman’s quick analysis of the Vespers he talks about how the chant-like homophony created a texture of “sobriety, and power…[and] his harmonic language is tonally grounded with frequent pedal points, but also rich modal and chromatic inflections. Antiphonal textures (Nos. 2, 8, 10) and liturgical refrains (Nos. 3, 9, 11, 12) evoke the incense-choked atmosperes of the church. At the same time, local text details can inspire him to exsquisite passages, such as the radiant harmonic shift before the first tenor solo (No. 4) and the clusters of angelic melismas at the climax of No. 7. ” The country was still recovering from the Russian Revolution in 1905 so this work was just what was needed at the time of political turmoil that Russia was in. It was “enthusiastically received by the audience and critics alike. Alexander Kastalsky thought the Vigil
On Monday March 25, some members of the baseball team, my girlfriend, and I traveled to Murray State University to watch a concert performed by Nelly and the St. Lunatics. It was a terrible night to go anywhere because it was raining and storming the whole way, but there was nothing that was going to stop us from going to the concert. We where all so hyped up about it and couldn’t wait to head out. My brother, who attends Murray State, had gotten us excellent seats about seventy-five feet away from the stage.
Lefebvre, Eliza. "Choir gives voice to kids’ confidence." Buffalo News 14 March 2013, n. pag.
I attended the Los Angeles Philharmonic classical music concert at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on Friday 29 November 2013. The classical concert started at 8:00pm to the enjoyment of the huge audience that had been waiting for this amazing music extravaganza. Classical music concerts always offer magnificent entertainment and the audience in this concert was expectant to derive such entertainment or more. In attendance were Christian Zacharias who was the conductor and Martin Chalifour who was the LA Phil commanding Principal Concertmaster and Bach violin player. In readiness for the concert, I enjoyed a special dinner prepared for the audience. More specifically, LA Phil staffer introduced us to the evening classical concert amidst cheers from the audience. It was such a refreshing and joyous feeling to be part of this audience.
On November 16th, 2013, I attended a concert choir, fall choral concert. This event took place on the Wheaton College Campus, in the Edman Chapel at 7:30 pm. The chapel was well-lit, with long pews for the audience to be seated. The concert began with the audience looking up into a balcony, where the ensemble stood in neat rows. They watched the conductor, who stood on a stage in front of the audience, waiting for their cue.
On Wednesday, May 23rd, I attended the College Choir concert in the Reamer Campus Center. The choir performed a variety of songs, ranging from pieces in Latin to traditional American folksongs. Two of the pieces featured solos, and one even featured percussion instruments. Mrs. Elinore Farnum provided piano accompaniment for each of the songs, and performed beautifully. I was extremely impressed by the talented choir members and their ability to sing such a varied range of songs.
Musical concerts are undoubtedly an incredible opportunity to experience a great aesthetic pleasure by listening to the musicians perform in front of your eyes. The power of music can hardly be overestimated – it can transfer a number of messages, thoughts and feelings through the performed sounds. Therefore the one can comprehend the music in the best possible way only when it is heard live. Musical concerts are often revelatory and highly impressive experiences to me. This essay thereby aims to provide my reflections and impressions of the concert of Gregory Porter & the Metropole Orchestra which I had the opportunity to attend in Nashville, TN.