Magnificat Starts 23rd Season with Schütz’s Opus Ultimum
On the weekend of October 3–5, Magnificat will open their 23rd season with the monumental Opus Ultimum of Heinrich Schütz. The performances—taking place in Palo Alto on October 3, Berkeley on October 4, and San Francisco on October 5—will feature sopranos Clara Rottsolk and Jennifer Paulino, countertenors Andrew Rader and Tim Galloway, tenors David Kurtenbach and Daniel Hutchings, and basses Hugh Davies and Peter Becker. For these concerts Magnificat will be joined by The Sex Chordæ Consort of Viols and the early wind ensemble The Whole Noyse.
Composed during the last years of the composer’s life, Schütz’s Opus Ultimum, or Der Schwanengesang, was never published, and the manuscript partbooks were only rediscovered in the 1970s. Der Schwanengesang is a setting of three separate texts: the first eleven motets set Psalm 119, which praises God’s law. An “acrostic” poem, Ps. 119 is divided into twenty-two stanzas of eight verses each, with all the verses in a stanza beginning with the same Hebrew letter (the acrostic is of course lost in Luther’s German translation.) Schütz pairs the stanzas into eleven 16-verse motets. To these he appends a setting of Psalm 100 and the Magnificat Canticle.
Der Schwanengesang is set for double choir with continuo, and in his dedicatory comments to the Elector of Saxony, Schütz notes that the work could be performed “by eight good voices with two little organs in the two fine choir lofts that were constructed opposite each other on either side of the altar in your Highness’ Court Chapel.” However, Schütz apparently also asked his colleague at the Dresden Chapel, Constantin Christian Dedekind, to “add instruments” but apparently Dedekind, rather than carrying out the master’s request, made his own setting of Psalm 119 which he published several years later. For these performances Magnificat’s Artistic Director Warren Stewart has drawn on his decades of experience with 17th-century music to provide an ‘orchestration’ of Schütz’s masterpiece.
Performances will take place 8:00 p.m., Friday, October 3, in St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 600 Colorado Avenue, Palo Alto; 8:00 p.m., Saturday, October 4, in St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way, Berkeley; and 4:00 p.m., Sunday, October 5, in St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, 1111 O’Farrell Street, San Francisco. For tickets please call 800-595-4849 or visit our website order form at www.magnificatbaroque.tix.com. More information about the concert is available at Magnificat’s blog and website.
