The Standard Cantatas: Their Stories, Their Music, and Their Composers: A HandbookUpton, George P. (George Putnam)
History
The Standard Cantatas: Their Stories, Their Music, and Their Composers: A Handbook
Upton, George P. (George Putnam)
Cantatas -- History and criticism
The work is composed in seven numbers. After a short introduction the
voices give out the theme, "Lauda Sion," followed by a chorus, "Laudis
Thema," full of devotional spirit. The soprano then enunciates in the
"Sit Laus plena" phrases repeated by the chorus, followed by a
beautifully accompanied quartet, "In hac Mensa." The fifth number is a
solemn chorale in unison, leading to a soprano solo in the arioso style,
"Caro cibus," which is exquisitely beautiful. The work concludes with a
very dramatic solo and chorus, "Sumit unus," set to the words "Bone
pastor," and the closing verses of the hymn itself. Short as the cantata
is, it is one of the most felicitous of all Mendelssohn's settings of the
ritual.
MOZART.
Johann Chrysostomus Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one of the most remarkable
of musical geniuses, and the only one of his contemporaries whose operas
still hold the stage with unimpaired freshness, was born at Salsburg,
Jan. 27, 1756. He was the son of Leopold Mozart, the Salzburgian
Vice-Capellmeister, who gave him and his sister Nannerl their earliest
instruction in music, and with such good results that the children
travelled and gave concerts with great success. Before he was seven years
of age he had composed several pieces for piano and violin, his earliest
having been written at the age of five. At twelve he became court
capellmeister in Salzburg. After his musical travels he went to Vienna,
and there began his period of classic activity, which commenced with
"Idomeneus," reached its culmination in "Don Giovanni," and closed with
the "Requiem,"--the "swan-song" of his wonderful career. In his brief
life Mozart composed more than fifty great works, besides hundreds of
minor ones in every possible form of musical writing. His greatest
compositions may be classed in the following order: "Idomeneus" (1780);
"Entführung aus dem Serail" (1781); "Figaro's Hochzeit" ("The Marriage of
Figaro"), (1785); "Don Giovanni" (1787); "Cosi fan Tutti," "Zauberflöte"
("The Magic Flute"), and "Titus" (1790); and the "Requiem" (1791, the
year of his death). The catalogue of Mozart's works is an immense one,
for his period of productivity was unusually long. From the age of five
to his death there was not a year that was not crowded with his music.
Besides his numerous operas, of which only the more famous are given
above, he wrote a large number of symphonies (of which the "Jupiter" is
now the best known), sonatas, concertos, for all kinds of instruments,
even to musical-glasses, trios, quartets, quintets, and sextets for all
possible combinations of instruments, marches, fugues, masses, hymns,
arias of extraordinary brilliancy, liturgies, cantatas, songs and
ballads, and indeed every form of music that is now known. His style was
studied by Beethoven, and so closely imitated that the music of his first
period, if published without autograph, would readily be attributed to
Mozart.
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