![]() It’s pretty full-on, but that’s the reason I set up a Baroque group in the first place – to go to that emotional place with my singers and players. It uses dense harmony to paint the weeping of this community for a young girl who’s about to be sacrificed. It’s full of taut suspensions and lines and it requires really passionate singing from everyone. It’s a very hard concept for any of us to get our heads round, but that’s what happens.ĭuring the last chorus in this piece, called ‘Plorate filli Israel’ (‘Weep all ye daughters of Israel’), she goes up into the mountains to be sacrificed and her friends, family and onlookers are saying “this is ridiculous, this is so unjust, this is agony”. This oratorio by Giacomo Carissimi is from around 1650 and is about a father telling his daughter he’s got to sacrifice her for God. It’s full of these tortured, windy chromatic figures that just to my mind, paint fear, desperation that the ‘hear my prayer’ petition is answered. And I think it paints the national psyche very well – the idea of being terrified of the unknown and what’s on the other side. Purcell’s Hear My Prayer on the other hand is the complete opposite, it’s full of fear of the unknown and bitterness, resentment and upset. I’m working on a programme of funeral music by Schütz and Purcell – Schütz’s piece is full of joy and anticipation, it’s about having worked really hard in this world and being released into bliss in heaven. It’s a visceral impact, there’s nothing clever about it, it’s very very straight-forward and in-your-face. The whole effect is totally arresting, it hits you between the eyes. ![]() It’s like popping champagne corks – there are trombones playing really fast, florid, ornamented music with a choir singing big, Baroque chords, it’s really absolutely thrilling. ![]() ![]() It’s just one chord repeated for two minutes, but it just sets the party off perfectly. The opening chorus, ‘Domine ad adjuvandum me festina’, uses the same fanfare as he uses in his opera Orfeo (watch from 2.30 in the video below). ![]()
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