User:Musicescu/Magnificat article

The Magnificat Baroque Ensemble, or Magnificat, is an early music ensemble of voices and instruments specializing in the Baroque music of the seventeehth century under the artistic direction of Baroque cellist Warren Stewart. Stewart founded the ensemble in San Franicsco in 1992 with Baroque harpsichodist Susan Harvey. Harvey resigned in 2002, and the group has remained under the sole musical direction of Stewart since then. The group derives its name from the first word of the Latin translation of the Canticle of Mary in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 1:46–55) Magnificat anima mea, "My soul magnifies the Lord", which is sung during the Roman Catholic evening prayer or vespers service.

Since 1992 Magnificat has provided instrumental ensembles to San Francisco Bay Area choral groups desiring to bring historically-informed performance practice to their concerts of Baroque music. In 2000 Magnificat launched an annual series of concerts and has continued to provide instrumental support to other groups through its affiliate, the Jubilate Orchestra, which has now particpated in over 300 performances with a variety of groups. Magnificat has also performed at music festivals and venues around the United States.

The ensemble's repertoire covers the sweep of sacred, relgious chamber music of the 17th Century by giants such as Claudio Monteverdi, Giacomo Carissimi, Alessandro Stradella, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Heinrich Schütz, Dieterich Buxtehude, Henry Purcell, and lesser-known and infrequently-performed composers of the era.

Magnificat has particularly championed and performed music by women composers Francesca Caccini, Isabella Leonarda, Barbara Strozzi and Chiara Margarita Cozzolani and has hosted a conference on Women and Music in Seventeenth Century Italy. Magnificat's annual concerts, recordings, and participation in music festivals and have won audience and critical acclaim, and engaged the collaboration of respected scholars and musicologists.

Repertoire

Magnificat's repertoire covers the genres of sacred music motets, masses, vespers, and oratorios, and well as opera, stage, and vocal chamber music. It is particularly noted for its musical reconstruction of religious works in the liturgical context in which they were first performed. Religious works are performed with all the music a seventeenth-century audience would have heard in church including liturgical chants and prayers. Audiences are invited to join in singing congregational hymns and chorales that form part of the reconstruction.

Outstanding among its reconstructions is the performance of all the music performed at the rededication of the chapel of St. Gertrude in Hamburg in 1607. A premier musical establishment severely damaged by fire, its rededication drew the collaboration of major composers of North Germany.

Magnificat's signature work is Monteverdi's great Vespro della Beata Vergine 1610 (Vespers of the Blessed Virgin of 1610) written to win the prestigious musical directorship of St. Mark's in Venice and which Magnificat has performed several times. It will again perform the Vespers in 2010 to mark the work's 300th anniversary.

Magnificat has performed the first opera buffa starring a bass, Stradella's Il Trespolo Tutore, and will perform the first opera written by a woman, Francesca Caccini's La Liberazione di Ruggiero in October 2009. It has also staged performance of Charpentier's rarely performed music for Jean-Baptiste Molière's comedy Le Malade imaginaire.

Notable among its opera productions have been its performances with the Carter Family Marionettes of the [[puppet] opera La Grandmère amoureuse by Fuzelier and Dorneval from the fair tradition of Paris. The October 29 presentations of Caccini's La Liberazione di Ruggiero will be performed with the Carters according to the Sicilian puppet tradition.

Esthetic

Emerging from the early music revival Magnificat was originally conceived as a collective of equal parts - a "chamber music" esthetic grounded in the talent and individual inspiration of Magnificat's musicians that is reflected in its interpretations and recognized by its audiences. Over the years, Magnificat has has been guided by the spirit of the period in its emphasis on dramatic narrative and sensitive emotional expression. The ensemble has given numerous contemporary premieres of music not heard for the last 200 - 300 hundred years. Because much music of the 17th century still remains unpublished, performing editions have been prepared from original manuscript sources by Stewart and musicologists on its Artistic Advisory Council.

Organization

Magnificat is a California 501(c)(3) non-profit organization governed by a Board of Directors whose current president is Nicholas Elsishans. Stewart serves as its musical director and Dominque Pelletey as its managing director. Nina Kornychenko serves as Creative Director and Boby Borisov as Audio Engineer. The group's agent is Robert Friedman Presents.

An Advisory Council of scholars and musicologists contribute advice, performing editions, and scholarly essays for programs, websites, and CD notes which are posted on Magnificat's website. Advisory Council members are Alan Curtis of the ensemble Il Complesso Barocco; Robert Kendrick, [[University of Chicago][; Jeffrey Kurtzman Washington University (St. Louis]); John Powell,University of Tulsa; Elanor Selfridge-Field, Stanford University, and Kate van Orden,University of California, Berkeley.

Recent performance history

2009 - 2010

Francesca Caccini: La Liberazione di Ruggiero

Chiara Margarita Cozzolani: Mass for Christmas Day

Alessandro Grandi: Celesti Fiori

Claudio Monteverdi: Vespro alla Beata Virgine 1610

2008 - 2009

Marc-Antoine Charpentier: Les Plasirs de Versailles and La Couronne des Fleurs

Giovanni Antonio Rigatti: Motets

Heinrich Schütz: Musicalische Exequien as setting for a mass for the Feast of the Purification

Alessandro Scarlatti: Venere, Amore, e Ragione

2007 - 2008