The Choral Masterpieces of Bruckner
One of Bruckner’s most remarkable works, the Mass in E minor
(1866-82) was composed for the dedication of the votive chapel in
the (then) new Linz Cathedral. It is composed for the unusual
combination of eight-part chorus and fifteen wind instruments;
indeed the choice of wind instruments is itself unusual - oboes,
clarinets and bassoons (but not flutes), with horns, trumpets, and
trombones. It is based strongly on old-church music tradition, and
particularly old Gregorian style singing. The Kyrie is almost
entirely made up of a cappella singing for eight voices, the
Gloria ends with a fugue, as in Bruckner's other masses, and
in the Sanctus, Bruckner uses a theme from Palestrina’s Missa
Brevis In the climactic moments all voice parts reach the very
highest reaches, in remarkable sequences of suspensions and
resolutions.
Alongside the Mass the choir sing a chronological selection of
Bruckner’s unaccompanied motets, beginning with the 11 year-old
Bruckner’s first Pange lingua setting, and ending with
the 68 year-old’s Vexilla regis, introduced as part of an
illustration of Bruckner’s life by our Musical Director (who
dedicates the concert to his late friend, and Bruckner scholar, Paul
Coones (1955-2018)).
Programme:
Northampton Bach Choir
Conductor & Compere - Lee Dunleavy Seven Motets from
Seven Decades
for unaccompanied chorus
Pange lingua (1835)
Christus factus est (1844)
Ave Maria (1861)
Locus iste (1869)
Os justi meditabitur (1879)
Christus factus est (1884)
Vexilla Regis (1892)
- Interval of twenty minutes -
Mass No. 2 in E minor (1866, rev. 1882)
for eight-part chorus and fifteen wind instruments
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