Christmas Concert - Vivaldi Magnificat and music by Schofield, Tavener, Rutter, Chilcott & audience carols

Portsmouth Baroque Choir

We’ve arrived again at the moment in the year when, in spite of everything, choirs unreservedly mix serenity and sentimentality, adoration and self-indulgence, the bleak and the bright into programmes that recycle old favourites, introduce hopeful novelties and get the audience to sing along. Yes, folks, it’s time for another concert of carols, long and short, tricky and straight, ancient and modern.

The story of Christmas in music need not be confined to carols. The Canticle of Mary, better known as Magnificat, is very appropriate to Advent, likewise motets and cantatas that relate elements of the Christmas story such as the virgin birth. The major work in the first half of our concert is Vivaldi’s Magnificat, a concise setting with some sections lasting less than a minute. It was intended for regular use at the Ospedale della Pietà, the Venetian charitable institution for foundlings where Vivaldi was employed on and off between 1703 and 1740 as violin master and orchestral director. Circumstantially, he also became chorus master, and that explains why a composer noted for instrumental music came to write sacred choral music, such as the well-known Gloria. The Magnificat exists in three versions: originally written 1715 it was revised in the 1720s and re-commissioned in 1739. We will be singing the second version.

That will be followed by Nöel, sors de ton lit (the French equivalent of Owt of your slepe, arise and wake) by François-Eustache du Caurroy (1549 –1609) a prize-winning songwriter, influential organist and official composer of the royal chamber who accumulated substantial wealth and honours in the last decade of his life, including a large estate in Picardy, which is when this jolly carol was written.

The Christmas antiphon Nesciens Mater by Jean Mouton (before 1459-1522) is the earliest music in the programme and also the most complex. It first appeared in the Medici Codex of 1518, an illuminated manuscript collection of motets reputedly copied under Mouton’s direction as a wedding gift for Lorenzo de Medici and his young French bride. Nesciens Mater is renowned for combining one of the most ingenious canonic structures possible with complete musical mastery. The circumstances of Mary’s role in the birth of Jesus are highlighted by a smooth, flowing eight-voice polyphony which is produced by four voices imitating the others at a distance of four beats and a fifth higher, resulting in an exquisite tapestry of sonorous beauty.

The first half ends with the short cantata In nativitatem Domini (Quem vidistis, pastores/ What did you see, shepherds?) H. 314 composed around 1670 by Charpentier, who wrote arguably some of the most engaging Christmas music of the French baroque.

Fast-forward to our own times for the second half, beginning with Today the Virgin written by John Tavener in 1989 to an exultant text by the composer’s spiritual muse Mother Thekla founder of the Orthodox Monastery of the Assumption in North Yorkshire. It was first performed by the Choir of Westminster Abbey.

That will be followed by Four Carols, rhythmic and melodious settings of medieval texts by the choir’s President and one-time conductor, Ian Schofield.

Our organist on the night, Philip Drew, provides another delightful medieval carol setting, There is no rose, originally written in 1974 and revised for SATB in 2022. Elsewhere, we celebrate the 80th birthday year of Sir John Rutter and the 70th of Bob Chilcott. Chilcott’s The Shepherd’s Carol has been regularly included in the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge since 2000. John Rutter (who knows a thing or two about carols) wrote: ‘For my money, this is the most beautiful modern carol there is. It brings on cascades of tears every time.’

Tears of sorrow, tears of joy, the obligatory mince and mulled during the interval will ensure good cheer for the audience carols in the second half. This will be our third year in a row at the Havant United Reformed Church, a warm and welcoming venue that is especially well-suited to the enjoyment of chamber choir singing.