ERIC HARRISON, HOST:
Good afternoon and thanks for tuning in to Little Rock Public Radio and KLRE-FM, 90.5. I'm Eric Harrison, I write about arts and culture at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and I’ll be your host for the next two hours.
You're listening to our new show, ‘Major and Minor Masterpieces,’ where we will focus each week on a broad range of classical music, from chamber music to choral works to full symphonies and maybe even an occasional touch or two of opera.
Today we’re taking a look at sacred music by Giuseppe Verdi. Verdi is, of course, best known as a composer of opera; he wrote 27 of them, at least a dozen of which remain in the regular repertoire, including “La Traviata,” “Il Trovatore,” “La Forza del Destino,” “Rigoletto,” “Don Carlos,” “Un Ballo in Maschera,” “Aida,” “Nabucco,” “I Vespri Sicilliani” and his trio works derived from Shakespeare (“Macbeth,” “Otello” and “Falstaff”).
But his output was not limited to opera — in his latter years, he composed several pieces of sacred music and even a string quartet.
His Requiem Mass in Memory of Manzoni, however, is no less operatic than his operas. (“Opera in church dress,” scathed Verdi contemporary Hans von Bülow.)
The piece had its origins in 1868, following the death of titanic opera composer Gioachino Rossini. Four days later, Verdi wrote to his publisher proposing a Requiem Mass in which a group of living Italian composers would collaborate, each contributing one section. Verdi contributed the final segment, the “Libera me.” However, because of various complications involving various conductors and committees, it was never performed.
Verdi rebooted the project on his own following the death in 1873 of celebrated Italian author Alessandro Manzoni, who had been pivotal in the creation of an Italian consciousness at a time when Italy was still a collection of independent city states, and in which Verdi had also been an important player. (The chorus of Hebrew slaves from “Nabucco” is frequently cited as an expression of Italian nationalism.)
Verdi built upon the “Libera Me” movement, starting in June 1873 and finishing it the following April. He conducted the Requiem’s premiere in Milan’s Church of San Marco on the first anniversary of Manzoni’s death, to great public acclaim, with a successful second performance at Milan's La Scala opera house three days later. It’s been popular ever since.
The Requiem is in eight movements — Requiem and Kyrie, Dies irae, Offertorium, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, Lux aeterna and Libera me, with the Dies Irae separated into eight sections. It calls for four soloists of operatic caliber, a massive chorus and orchestra, and is, of course, better adapted to the concert hall than the cathedral.
You’ll be listening to the Verdi Requiem in its entirety today. The performance features Anja Harteros, soprano; Daniela Barcellona, mezzo-soprano; Wookyung Kim, tenor; Georg Zeppenfeld, bass, and the Munich Philharmonic and choir, conducted by Lorin Maazel.
(GIUSEPPE VERDI’S “MANZONI REQUIEM”)
You’ve heard Giuseppe Verdi's “Manzoni Requiem”, with Anja Harteros, soprano; Daniela Barcellona, mezzo-soprano; Wookyung Kim, tenor; Georg Zeppenfeld, bass, and the Munich Philharmonic and choir, conducted by Lorin Maazel.
You’re listening to Major and Minor Masterpieces on listener-supported Little Rock Public Radio, KLRE-FM, 90.5.
—PROGRAM BREAK—
[EDUCATIONAL SEGMENT]
SARAH BUFORD, PRODUCER:
Hey listeners, welcome back to Major and Minor Masterpieces. It’s time for the terminology breakdown. I’m Sarah, your producer and Eric is going to assist me with our term of the week. So, our term of the week is sacred music. Sacred normally means religious from my understanding. Alright, am I correct in that Eric? What exactly is sacred music?
ERIC HARRISON, HOST:
Well Sarah, so-called “sacred music” is music, mostly vocal or choral but sometimes instrumental, based on sacred texts or sacred subjects. It goes back at least as far as the 9th and 10th century Gregorian chants, with major examples from just about every century since.
It includes some of the most beautiful music ever written. Some primary examples are:
-The musical settings of the Catholic Mass; among the most listen-able: Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in b minor, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, Mozart’s “Coronation” Mass, Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Lord Nelson” Mass; Or perhaps musical settings of the Requiem, the Catholic Mass for the dead, most prominently those by Mozart, Giuseppe Verdi, Luigi Cherubini and Gabriel Faure; Musical settings of the Passion story, of which the three surviving ones by J.S. Bach (Matthew, Luke, and John) are the most often performed. (By the way, in the Matthew Passion, the biggest of the three, Bach sticks almost entirely to the text in the German Lutheran Bible, with one exception: Christ cries out on the cross, in Aramaic, “Eli, Eli, lama — lama? — asabthani,” which translates to “My God, my God, why — why? — hast thou forsaken me?” That second “why,” which is not in the Bible, expresses the deepest possible feeling in Bach’s soul.); And oratorios, among the most famous: Georg Frideric Handel’s “Messiah,” Haydn’s “The Creation” and Felix Mendelssohn’s “Elijah”; And then there’s all sorts of music based on sacred texts, such as most of Bach’s cantatas and his “Magnificat,” and any number of chorales, motets, hymns, anthems and other shorter pieces –for example, Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria” or Mozart’s Vesperae solennes de confessore, particularly the third in the set, the gorgeous “Laudate Dominum.”
SARAH: Thank you so much, Eric! Let's get back to more Major and Minor Masterpieces.
[END OF EDUCATIONAL SEGMENT]
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLINKSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
ERIC: Welcome back to Major and Minor Masterpieces on Little Rock Public Radio, KLRE-FM, 90.5. I’m your host, Eric Harrison of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
We’ll finish out today’s show with more sacred music by Giuseppe Verdi. Though he was considered in his lifetime — and maybe thereafter, though Puccini fans might disagree — Italy’s foremost opera composer, his final musical work was a quartet of sacred compositions, the Quattro pezzi sacri, or Four Sacred Pieces, composed as separate works between 1889 and 1897. We’ll hear three of the four pieces on today’s show: “Ave Maria,” for mixed voices; the second, a setting of the “Stabat mater,” the Catholic hymn “The grieving Mother stood,” for a four-voice choir and large orchestra with harp. And the third, “Laudi alla Vergine Maria,” a setting of the text from the last canto of Dante’s “Paradiso," for female voices only.
This is the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and chorus with conductor Robert Shaw.
(GIUSEPPE VERDI’S “AVE MARIA”)
(GIUSEPPE VERDI’S “STABAT MATER”)
(GIUSEPPE VERDI’S “LAUDI ALLA VERGINE MARIA”)
You’ve heard the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and chorus with Robert Shaw on the podium, performing Giuseppe Verdi’s “Ave Maria,” “Stabat Mater” and “Laudi alla Vergine Maria,” three of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Four Sacred Pieces.”
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLINKSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
Thanks for listening this week! I’ve been your host, Eric Harrison of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. You’ve been listening to Major and Minor Masterpieces on Little Rock Public Radio and classical station KLRE FM 90.5. Many thanks to Operations Coordinator and Producer Sarah Buford for all her hard work making all this sound good as well as a big thank you to Wojciech Cieslinski for our transition and credit music. Tune in next week for more Major and Minor Masterpieces.