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SACRED REPERTOIRE
By Tim Smith
Given the radiance of her voice and her personality, Renée Fleming couldn't be better suited to the vast and uplifting portion of the classical repertoire known as sacred music. The soprano, one of the few bona fide superstars in today's opera world, grew up surrounded by music, much of it from the sacred category. Her father was a church choir director (for various Protestant denominations in New York and Pennsylvania), and was known for stretching his ensembles with demanding works by Bach, Mozart, and even Leonard Bernstein. When Fleming entered the Crane School of Music at the State University of New York, Potsdam, as a freshman, her first assignment was as solo soprano in the profound and challenging B minor Mass by Bach
Although Fleming went on to devote most of her attention to opera and lieder, she never lost her interest in and affinity for sacred music. And when she decided to record a collection of it, she took the project as seriously as any other, delving into a large number of pieces to find the right match of singer to song and then securing appropriate arrangements where needed (Chris Hazell did most of them). The result is SACRED SONGS, released on the Decca label in 2005, with the Royal Philharmonic conducted by a colleague from her student days, Andreas Delfs. A sampling of the material from that elegantly sung disc, plus favorite carols of the Christmas season, forms the evening's program, filmed at Germany's Mainz Cathedral and backed by the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, conducted by Trevor Pinnock.
These days, when personal faith often goes public, and not always from truly religious motivations, it may be worth reiterating that the classics of sacred music are really not about proclaiming a creed or proselytizing. Even pieces originally written for use during a church service take on a broader meaning thanks to the quality of the music alone. A setting of the ancient Latin text of the Mass, for example, might serve the faithful in one context and all lovers of musical creativity in another. Great works of religious painting or sculpture have the same wider appeal; even when viewed in a cathedral, they can be appreciated by people of any -- or no -- faith.
Portions of the Latin Mass have been sung for centuries, from the a cappella Gregorian chant style to today's congregational approach in parish churches. Many of the great composers have contributed to this genre, usually calling for choir, soloists, orchestra, and/or organ, and these works easily stand on their own in concert form. Excerpts from two Masses are featured on SACRED SONGS -- one by Mozart that is traditional, and one by Bernstein that is anything but.
Mozart's "Mass in C Minor," like his "Requiem," is unfinished, but recognized as a towering achievement just the same. Why Mozart never completed the Mass remains unclear; it may have been simply that he started writing it on his own, without a commission, and had no pressures to finish it. Fleming has chosen the eloquent, Italian arialike soprano solo from the "Gloria" section of this Mass, "Laudamus te" ("We praise thee").
Commissioned to write a work for the 1971 opening of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, Leonard Bernstein created his ambitious, still controversial "Mass," which he called a "theater piece for singers, players and dancers." Bernstein put practically everything he could think of into this score, from serialism to rock, and many nonliturgical texts, creating a personal and communal profession -- and crisis -- of faith.
Top banner photos: Mainz Cathedral Choir, the performers in Mainz Cathedral, and Renée Fleming. |
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Violinists of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. |
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Conductor Trevor Pinnock is also a virtuoso harpsichordist. |
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The CD is available from Amazon.com. |
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