Publications (click here for writing samples)

TFC News, Tanglewood Festival Chorus, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston, MA.

• "Belshazzar's Feast in Four Courses," vol. 2, no. 3, Winter 2004.

Compact Disc Liner Notes, San Francisco Symphony Chorus, San Francisco, CA.

• "Voices 1900/2000: A Choral Journey through the Twentieth Century," Delos Records, #3270, 2001.

Cadenza Magazine, San Francisco Symphony Chorus, San Francisco, CA.

• Mahler & Britten articles, vol. 10, no. 1, September 2002.
• "Form in Beethoven's Ode," vol. 8, no. 5, May 2000.
• "Singing the Ode "To Joy" in Auschwitz: A Ten-Year-Old's Story," vol. 8, no. 5, May 2000.
• "Konx-Om-Pax: Giacinto Maria Scelsi's Ode to Peace," vol. 8, no. 5, May 2000.
• "Zoltan Kodaly and the Te Deum," vol. 8, no. 4, March 2000.
• "Carl Rütti and the Missa Angelorum," vol. 8, no. 4, March 2000.
• "Elgar and Gerontius," vol. 8, no. 3, January 2000.

Compact Disc Liner Notes, San Francisco Choral Society, San Francisco, CA.

• "Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass in D Minor," recorded in St. Ignatius Church, April, 1998.

Plenary Session Publication, Music Library Association National Meeting, Kansas City, KS.

• "Sources for Research in American Music and Dance," March 1994.

Plenary Session Publication, Sonneck Society for American Music National Meeting, Pacific Grove, CA.

• "Sources for Research on Early American Choral Music," February 1993.

Requiems and the War Requiem

Among modern composers, Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) holds a high position by virtue of the variety, high quality and forceful expressiveness of his operas and choral works in particular. His War Requiem, composed in 1961, marks the culmination of many recurring themes in his life. This work was commissioned for the dedication [May 30, 1962] of the reconstructed St. Michael's Cathedral in Coventry, which had been fired-bombed and destroyed during World War II.

The Missa pro defunctis (Mass for the Dead), generally known as the Requiem Mass, differs from the normal five-part musical Ordinary of the Catholic Mass. Its form remained fluid until the seventeenth century, and settings of the famous Sequence, Dies irae (Day of wrath) did not appear regularly until the Baroque period. Early requiems alternated plainsong sections (intoned by a priest) with contrapuntal or choral sections (sung by the choir) until Giuseppe Pitoni (1657-1743), abandoned that practice in his Requiem of 1688.

The influence of opera on sacred music gradually led to a new appreciation of the dramatic possibilities inherent in the requiem text. Many phrases suggested violent treatment: the day of judgement, heaven and earth burning in ashes, the final trumpet sounding-- the Dies irae most often became the vehicle for extravagant music. Britten did not choose to make a liturgically precise setting of the traditional Latin text: he inserted several moving anti-war poems in English by Wilfred Owen, a soldier and victim of World War I. Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Program Annotator Nick Jones comments, "Britten was aware that [the Requiem's] message of comfort had all too often been used to palliate or even consecrate humankind's evil warlike habits, and he chose to confront the requiem's everlasting assurance with twentieth-century poetry carrying a message of despair, bitterness and disillusionment."

A soprano soloist and four-voice mixed choir (accompanied by orchestra) and a children's choir (accompanied by organ), sing the Latin text. Representing two soldiers from opposite sides, tenor and baritone soloists sing the words of Wilfred Owen, accompanied by a separate chamber orchestra. The original soloists were Heather Harper, Peter Pears, Britten's companion and fellow pacifist, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who had participated in the German war effort in the 1940s. This music is colder and more pointillistic, emphasizing the horror and confusion of Owen's vision.

Continuity is assured by the overlap of these various musical forces, allowing the listener to discover Britten's ironic and haunting perspective on the requiem text. A great variety of melodic types is present in the vocal writing: the melodies in the choral sections of the Introit are based on only two pitches (F and C), while harsh chordal writing, dissonant intervals, and intricate polyphony (including some brief canons) are found in the more dramatic sections. Lyric, impassioned, and recitative-like melodies are given to the soloists, and the powerful orchestral writing, often attaining symphonic scope, supplies enormous dramatic power. The War Requiem is an enormous achievement, and it is considered by critics to be one of the most successful choral works of our century.

The Composer
Edward Benjamin Britten was born at Lowestoft, Suffolk, England, on Saint Cecilia's Day, November 22, 1913, and died at Aldeburgh, Suffolk, on December 4, 1976. On June 12, 1976, he had been created Baron Britten of Aldeburgh in the Queen's Birthday Honors, the first musician to be elevated to the peerage.

A lifelong pacifist, (Britten composed a pacifist march as early as 1937) the appeasement of Hitler by Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain drove him to follow W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood to the United States in 1939. By chance, Britten discovered a volume of poetry by George Crabbe in a Los Angeles bookstore and, a few days later, an article by E. M. Forster on Crabbe which began "To think of Crabbe is to think of England." This crystallized Britten's resolve to return to England in the spring of 1942.

Britten had gained a considerable reputation within the profession with his piano concerto, violin concerto, Les Illuminations, A Ceremony of Carols, among other works, but public awareness of Britten increased dramatically with the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, leading people to hope that England had finally produced the first composer of international stature since the death of Henry Purcell in 1695.

If there is a single theme which dominates Britten's work, it is innocence outraged (the collision of innocence with wickedness and corruption). He used this theme in parable form in Peter Grimes and later, more explicitly in the War Requiem. Britten had planned two other projects which would have been preparations for the War Requiem, but in both cases the projects were dropped for external or technical reasons. One of these was an oratorio, Mea culpa, after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and a work to commemorate the assassination of Gandhi in 1348.

The disquieting presence of the "tritone" is a constant in the War Requiem. This dissonant interval, once known as diabolus in musica (the devil in music) was, at one time, banned in church music. Obviously Britten didn't want us to be too comfortable. Britten wrote the War Requiem in 1961, the year of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the construction of the Berlin Wall, and the escalation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

The Poet
Wilfred Owen was born at Plas Wilmot, Oswestry, Shropshire, England on March 18, 1893. He contemplated the ministry, and was both a pupil and lay assistant to a clergyman in Oxfordshire. He wrote competent but not highly original verse as a boy, much influenced by Keats and Tennyson. Ironically, it was the war that freed his gift. In 1915 he joined the Army (a company called the Artist's Rifles). From December, 1916 he was on active service in France with the Manchester Regiment, spent five months of 1317 at Craiglockhart Military Hospital in Scotland, and, after several months of service in England, was again posted to France. In October, 1918 he was awarded the Military Cross, and on November 4, just a week before the war ended, he was machine-gunned to death while trying to get his company across the Sambre canal. He was twenty-five.

It had not taken him long to realize that the clergy was not for him. He distrusted the church as an institution, saw military chaplains as betraying the message of Christ, and saw the war as the failure of a Christian civilization to practice what it professes. In May, 1917 he wrote to his mother from the 13th Casualty Clearing Station at Gailly on the Somme:

"Already I have comprehended a light which will never filter into the dogma of any national church: namely, that one of Christ's essential commands was: passivity at any price! Suffer dishonor and disgrace, but never resort to arms. Be bullied, be outraged, be killed; but do not kill. It may be a chimerical and ignominious principle, but there it is. It can only be ignored, and I think pulpit professionals are ignoring it very skillfully and successfully indeed...Christ is literally in "no man's land." There men often hear his voice: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for a friend. Is it spoken in English only and French! I do not believe so. Thus you see how pure Christianity will not fit in with pure patriotism."

Unknown as a poet when he died, elements of Owen's style were adopted by W H. Auden and Stephen Spender, among others. In an attempt to find substitutes for rhyme, he used unusual suspensions, consonances and dissonances which, because of their unexpectedness, enrich the verse. It is now clear that Owen was the outstanding English poet of World War I, and of World War II as well, because that was essentially a continuation of the first conflict.

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Notes for Baroque Masters Concert, San Francisco Choral Society, December 1998

© by Dr. Laura Prichard

This concert is a partial recreation of a charity concert given by C. P .E. Bach in 1786 benefiting a medical institute for the poor. The original program began with an orchestral introduction by C. P. E. Bach on two phrases of Allein Gott, followed by the Credo from the B minor Mass by J. S. Bach with an orchestral prelude by C. P. E. Bach, Handel's I Know That My Redeemer Liveth and the Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah, a symphony and Magnificat by C. P. E. Bach, concluding with Heilig, a work for double chorus.

Unlike his brothers, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach,known as Emanuel, took a vital interest in the music of his own time. His works display genuine passion, and show his openness toward other national musical styles (a trait encouraged in the Bach family). Through his combination of strict German counterpoint with contemporary influences, his works achieved an emotional intensity that ranged close to the greatest products of the literary Sturm and Drang movement.

Emanuel Bach moved to Berlin at the age of twenty-four and became a member of the court of Frederick the Great. He established a new style of instrumental music: this subjective and highly emotional idiom, known as Empfindsamkeit (sensibility), is noticeable in his vocal and keyboard music from the middle third of the eighteenth century. Although he adopted a modern approach (especially in his chamber music), conservative compositional elements are not lacking in his sacred works. When the need arose, he wrote elaborate canons and fugues, and while reserving his more daring experiments for his favorite instrument, the clavier, he fashioned his great choral work, theMagnificat of 1749, after his father's composition on the same text. The work encompasses several styles of the time: French rhythms, florid Italian melodies, fugues based on the sacred works of his teachers, and progressive homophonic choruses. Karl Geringer, author of The Bach Family (Oxford, 1954), described significant parallels between the themes used in the last movement of the Magnificat and those appearing in the Kyrie of Mozart's Requiem. This points to Emanuel's historic position as a link between J. S. Bach and the classical composers.

C. P. E. Bach's Heilig, for two choruses, published in 1779, is a setting of the Sanctus from the Mass. In composing a German Sanctus, Emanuel followed old Protestant traditions also adopted by his predecessor, Telemann, and his brother, Friedemann. The main choral section radiates dramatic energy with a "chorus of the angels" and a second "chorus of the nations." Conforming to earlier conceptions of the Roman and Venetian schools, he contrasts the tone-colors and orchestrations of the two groups. Remarkable aspects of this work include a grand Handelian fugue, bold modulations, and the use of remote keys such as C-sharp and F-sharp major. The public's response to the work was gratifying to C. P E. Bach, and soon after the publication he wrote to his Publisher (Breitkopf): "Heilig, like the sonatas, is selling as fast as the hot pastry in front of the Stock Exchange."

J. S. Bach composed most of his Great Mass in B-minor for the Catholic court in Dresden in the hope of being rewarded with the title of court composer, a distinction he finally received. Although he hoped that the work would transcend any specific liturgical function (be it Catholic or Protestant), he did underline the dogmatic importance of parts of the central movement, a Latin setting of the Creed, by using Gregorian chant melodies in augmentation or canon. Moreover, the frequent five-part choruses and old-fashioned alle breve rhythms (4/2) in several sections enhance the retrospective nature of the work.

Contemporary techniques appear in the movement as well: arias enhanced with coloratura technique from the High Baroque Italian opera, as well as superb duets in the style of Agostino Steffani, enliven the structure. Bach even re-texted some music from his cantatas for use in the Credo. This procedure, known as contrafactum, shows the mastery with which Bach reworked earlier material, refining the counterpoint to a higher degree of perfection than its original. One example of a timely use of forward- looking material can be found in the gentle duet of the oboi d'amore in the aria No. 18 for bass, with its reference to unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam (one Holy catholic and apostolic church). Several scholars have postulated that since this part of the creed was accepted by all Christian denominations of Bach's time, the peaceful duet of the two oboes may have been intended to signify harmony and understanding between Catholics and Protestants.

Number symbolism (also called figure symbolism) permeates Bach's works. The Crucifixus appears in thirteen variations. Substituting numbers for letters of the alphabet was a common practice in Bach's time, and he used this method to structure motives, phrases, and melodies. With the help of the figure alphabet, the word "Credo" can be expressed as 43 (c=3, r=17, e=5, d=4, 0=14 and 3+17+5+4+14=43; i and j count as the same letter). It is significant in this work that the word Credo appears exactly 43 times.

The Messiah, the most celebrated and universally known composition of George Frederic Handel, does not fall into any existing categories of Baroque oratorio. It has neither a continuous plot nor recognizable characters and is dedicated entirely to devotional contemplation. The three parts of the work cover many phases of the life of Christ and thus are appropriate to many different parts of the Church Year.

The second part concludes with the well-known Hallelujah Chorus, an excellent example of Handel's use of counterpoint. Handel's free-voiced contrapuntal style stands diametrically opposed to Bach's uniformly polyphonic approach to choral writing. Handel's harmonies do not grow out of everchanging melodic combinations, but work with terse motives and countersubjects, conceived in double counterpoint. The Hallelujah furnishes the best known example of this technique: two distinct melodic ideas are presented and then overlapped. This ingenious approach accounts for the flexibility of Handel's choral textures.

Italian music has influenced and been influenced by English music since trade routes were established in Europe in the Middle Ages. One of the most noteworthy moments of cultural contact came in 1588 with the publication of Musica transalpina, a collection of Italian madrigals "Englished," which reinvigorated the English compositional scene. Although new and distinctly English musical forms such as the ballad opera and the Anglican verse anthem began to appear, English composers remained heavily influenced by Italian innovations throughout the 16th and 17th centuries.

Henry Purcell's (1659-1695) genius as a composer for the English stage was hampered by there being no public opera in London during his lifetime. Most of his theatre music consists simply of instrumental music and songs interpolated into spoken drama, though occasionally he created more extended musical scenes (Dido and Aeneas). He identified himself with the Italian style in his later works, often demanding considerable agility from the soloists and preferring to write for consorts of string instruments. To later ages, Purcell's songs and instrumental compositions stand out in the English Baroque for their inventive variations and convincing blending of English and Italian musical styles. Second only to Handel, his work became the model for future generations of English composers.

"The married beau, or, The curious husband" is a typical Restoration farcical comedy, complete with cases of mistaken identity and baudy behavior. The "Curioso Impertinente" tale in Part I of Cervantes' Don Quixote was the model for the play, written by John Crown (1640-1712) and first performed at the Theatre-Royal in London in 1694. Purcell wrote an overture and eight other pieces for the play, and the musical quality surpassed Crown's wildest expectations. Some of Purcell's music had been published for solo harpsichord as early as 1692, suggesting that the incidental music was composed well in advance of the first production.

At the age of twenty-one, Georg Frideric Händel (1685-1750) met Prince Ferdinand de' Medici, and was invited to visit Florence. The Italian years (1706-1710) were decisive in Handel's career. He composed Italian operas, Latin sacred works, and the oratorio La Resurrezione, which was led by Arcangelo Corelli. The soprano Durastanti sang the leading role at the premiere, but was immediately replaced by a castrato by order of the pope, who objected to the appearance of a female singer.

In the early 18th century, Italy was the home not only of vocal music but also of the principal instrumental forms, the concerto and the sonata. Handel met all the leading practitioners: Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, Locatelli, and Corelli at Rome, Vivaldi and Albinoni at Venice, and Perti at Florence. Handel's keyboard contest with Domenico Scarlatti at Ottoboni's palace is famous; both were outstanding harpsichordists, but everyone, including Scarlatti, acknowledged Handel's superiority on the organ.

Even after settling comfortably in England, removing the umlaut from his name, and becoming a citizen, Handel's instrumental writing showed Italian influence. His six Concerti Grossi, op. 6, were written in 1739 and premiered during the 1739-40 season in London. They demonstrate him to have been a cosmopolitan and eclectic artist, drawing impartially from German, Italian, French, and English traditions.

Pietro Locatelli (1695-1764) was born in Bergamo, then governed by the Republic of Venice. A violin pupil of Arcangelo Corelli in Rome, he toured widely and settled in Amsterdam (1721), where he gave regular public concerts. Locatelli was known throughout Europe for extending the technical vocabulary of the violin through virtuosic experimentation with special tunings and double stops. Some of the bravura passages in his studies and caprices anticipate those of Niccolò Paganini. His sonatas and concerti reveal him to have been a serious musician capable of elegant and expressive melody. Locatelli's concerti were performed in English courts, Italian cathedrals, and by the Leipzig Collegium Musicum (copied in Bach's own hand).

According to tradition, Thomas Arne (1710-1778) was the son of an upholsterer in King Street, Covent Garden. Educated at Eton, he was intended for the law, but by secretly practicing he acquired such mastery of the violin and keyboard instruments that his father withdrew all objections to a musical career. Arne taught both his sister, later famous as the actress Mrs. Cibber, and his young brother to sing, and they appeared in his first stage work, Rosamond (1733). This opera, based on Joseph Addison's libretto of 1707, was set "after the Italian manner," and its bravura air "Rise, Glory, Rise" was sung for the next forty years.

After his successful Comus at Drury Lane Theatre in 1738, Arne became established as the leading English lyric composer and premiered several works just down the street from those of Handel. Arne's early melodic style was natural and elegant, owing something to Scots, Irish, and Italian sources. His later concerti and dramatic music became more Italianate and ornamented, though in his final years there emerged an opera buffa style that anticipates Sullivan. As the composer of such melodies as "Rule, Britannia," "Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind," and "Where the Bee Sucks," Arne, like Purcell, added substantially to the English heritage of song.

Charles Avison (1709-1770) lived and worked in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and was Organist at the Parish Church of St. Nicolas (now the Cathedral, clearly visible from the East Coast Main Line). As the conductor of some of the first subscription concerts in England and leader of the northern musical scene in the 18th century, Avison's ideas were widely known through his Essay on Musical Expression of 1753.

Avison believed that music created only "social and happy passions" and tended to subdue those which are contrary to this, such as selfishness, violence, and suspicion. He grouped contemporary composers into the following categories: the "lowest group, those defective in harmony and invention, " including Vivaldi and Locatelli; "those rising above the former in dignity," including Hasse and Porpora; and "those of the highest regard," emphasizing "the chaste and faultless" Corelli, the "bold and inventive" Scarlatti, and "of course" Handel.

As a composer, Avison was a representative of the last phase of the late Baroque style. Among his works are compositions for piano, string quartet, and sonatas for harpsichord and two violins. He produced no concerti grossi of his own, but arranged the Harpsichord Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti for string orchestra in 1741. Some of these sonatas had their genesis in the famed keyboard contest between Handel and Scarlatti thirty years before.

Capel Bond (1730-1790) conducted the first Birmingham Festival in 1768, and introduced Handel's oratorios to the Midlands. As organist for Gloucester Cathedral and St. Michael's in Coventry (later to become Coventry Cathedral), he often engaged professional choristers to present sacred oratorios. Bond's own anthems and concerti grossi show influences of Handel's instrumental technique and knowledge of contemporary Italian works.

Notable in baroque Europe, a diverse English middle class took the lead in the active support and consumption of music. Subscription concerts began under Charles II in the early 1670s, and most public programs included overtures or concertos in the Italian style. New varieties of secular music flourished, and recalled the words of English composer Thomas Morley, from his Plaine and Easie Introduction of 1597: "If therefore you will compose in this kind you must possess yourself with an amorous humor, […] so that you must in your music be wavering like the wind, sometime wanton, sometime drooping, sometime grave and staid, otherwhile effeminate; you may show the very uttermost of your variety, and the more variety you show the better you shall please."

Music in the Air

The U.C. Berkeley Music Library maintains a web site with links for research, recreation, and exploration of music and related arts. We circulate books and musical scores to all UCB students, and have a large sound recordings collection which may be used at the Library. Currently, we have over 14,000 CDs and 30,000 LPs, in addition to videos from all over the world. Many music courses make their listening assignments available online, and our web site has links for online listening. One of the best free ways to hear samples of current releases is the site http://www.cdconnection.com/, which has sound files for thousands of CDs attached to their ordering catalog. We maintain an updated guide for buying CDs, printed music, and hard-to-find books relating to the arts.

Trying to identify a piece of music or a tune? Try http://www.themefinder.com, a new internet page which you can search for music by pitches, intervals, and even melodic shape! Want free MIDI files or sound examples straight from the web? See the lists at CyberPlayground and http://www.findsounds.com/.

One of our most frequent requests relates to popular song lyrics. Check out the Music Library's guide to song research, which includes online lyrics and translation sites for both popular and art songs. The page includes links to sheet music collections and other archives with digital images of primary sources and sound files.

Writing a paper on a musical topic? Dozens of free online journals in English and other languages can be read from the comfort of your room. UCB has one of the most complete lists of music-related internet links, including special sections on popular music, specific composers, world music, musical instruments, and competitions. For online help with musical terms, try Performance Practice Encyclopedia (with sound examples), or (via the Library's proxy service) the New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians.

Need help with bibliographies and citation of tricky musical sources and examples? See the rules according to MLA, APA, and other guidelines.

The Music Library reference desk often receives questions about translations of musical texts and interdisciplinary resources, so we have automated our reference desk in order to make many of the resources available 24 hours a day. Check out http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MUSI/ref.html to search the full text of many dictionaries, encyclopedias, and great works of literature. Our reference desk is staffed 10-5pm every weekday, so feel free to drop by with questions or research challenges (510-642-2624) or and/email us. Happy listening!

Laura Prichard, Music Library, Morrison Hall, University of California, Berkeley

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Last update 2/15/04. Server manager: Michael Prichard