Acrpost: A Project of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres

Event Description

The two principal works for this programme were altered by their composers for publication. Vivaldi wrote many of his works for the young women of the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice. These women, amateurs in the strict sense, were nonetheless intensively trained, and their technique and musical knowledge often exceeded that of professional musicians. Vivaldi, in preparing his works for general dissemination, often altered them to make them accessible to less specialized performers. Such is the case with the Magnificat in g minor. In the Ospedale version, the work is largely a connected series of solos. The names of the intended singers are even given in the score. Vivaldi later recast the work as a sequence of nine discrete movements, principally choral, interspersed with shorter, simpler arias.

Antonín Dvořák's Mass in D major underwent the reverse process. Having originally composed the work quite simply for choir with organ accompaniment, Dvořák was required by his publisher to provide a full orchestration. In its original form, the work is the epitome of a liturgical mass setting. Unlike in many major mass settings (such as Beethoven's Missa Solemnis) here the sections of the mass are not broken down into a series of choruses and arias, but are treated as organic wholes, with solos coming from within the choir. In our performance we shall be singing the later version of the Vivaldi and the earlier version of the Dvořák. We will also perform a Credo by Vivaldi and the Haydn "Missa Brevis Sancti Joannes de Deo"' sometimes known as 'Kleine Orgelmesse." This performance will use a "Gloria" elaborated by Franz Josef's brother, Michael Haydn.