MARCEL DUPRÉ - Church of the Epiphany
Transcription
MARCEL DUPRÉ - Church of the Epiphany
T HE T U ESDAY C O NC ERT S ER IES THE CHURCH OF THE EPIPHANY Since Epiphany was founded in 1842, music has played a vital role in the life of the parish. Today, Epiphany has two fine musical instruments which are frequently used in programs and worship. The Steinway D concert grand piano was a gift to the church in 1984, in memory of parishioner and vestry member Paul Shinkman. The 64-rank, 3,467-pipe ÆolianSkinner pipe organ was installed in 1968 and has recently been restored by the Di Gennaro-Hart Co. It was originally given in memory of Adolf Torovsky, Epiphany’s organist and choirmaster for nearly fifty years. The 3-stop chamber organ by Orglarstvo Škrabl of Slovenia was commissioned in 2014 in memory of Albert and Frances Manola. at Metro Center H OW Y OU C AN H ELP S U PPORT T H E S ER IES The Tuesday Concert Series reaches out to the entire metropolitan Washington community. Most of today’s freewill offering goes directly to our performers but a small portion helps to defray the cost of administration, advertising and instrumental upkeep. WE AS K Y O U T O CO NS I DER A M I NI M UM O F P ARTNER T U ESDAY C O NC ERT S ER IES at a giving level comfortable for you. This is a new venture for the Church of the Epiphany as the continuation of the concert series is dependent on your generosity. For further information on how to support the Tuesday musical activities here, please take a brochure available at the back of the church or make contact with either of the following: Jeremy Filsell, Director of Music; 202-347-2635 ext. 18: [email protected] Rev. Randolph Charles at 202-347-2635 ext. 12: [email protected] To receive a weekly email of the upcoming concert program, email Catherine Manhardt (Administrative Assistant) at [email protected] and request that your address be added to the list. P A RT N E RS O F T HE T U E SD A Y C ON C E RT S S E RI E S Kirkland & Ellis Law Partnership Alan M. King Christine Windheuser David Pozorski John Kattler David Post and Nancy Birdsall Tel: 202-347-2635 Good Friday 3 April 2015 at 6:00PM $10 We also invite you to consider becoming a OF THE 1317 G Street NW Washington, DC 20005 www.epiphanydc.org [email protected] MARCEL DUPRÉ (1886-1971) Le Chemin de la Croix Op. 29 (Stations of the Cross) With poetry by Paul Claudel (1868-1955) - Jeremy Filsell, organ Bard Wickkiser, reader The nature of tonight’s performance is meditative: Please ensure that cell phones are silenced and refrain from applause at the end. THE STATIONS Jésus est condamné à mort [Jesus is condemned to death] Jésus est chargé de la Croix [Jesus receives his Cross] Jésus tombe sous le poids de sa Croix [Jesus falls for the first time] Jésus recontre sa mère [Jesus meets his mother] Simon le Cyréneen aide Jésus à porter la Croix [Simon helps Jesus carry the cross] inspired directly by Romantic/poetic notion. It grew from an Improvisation at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels on 13 February 1931. Dupré recreated these Improvisations as a written work during the course of 1931 and whilst the spirit and thematic material of each improvised movement reemerged, a significant degree of rewriting and rethinking probably took place. Dupré himself always performed Le Chemin de la Croix during Lent at Saint-Sulpice and he retained a special affection for it, expressing late in his life, a greater personal satisfaction with this work above others of his oeuvre. He performed three movements at his daughter’s funeral in 1963 and often included selections from it in his recitals. Une femme pieuse essuie la face de Jésus [A woman wipes the face of Jesus] Jésus tombe à terre pour la deuxième fois [Jesus falls for the second time] Jésus console les filles d’Israel qui le suivent [Jesus comforts the women of Jerusalem] Jésus tombe pour la troisième fois [Jesus falls for the third time] Jésus est dépouillé de ses vêtements Dupré’s use of recurrent musical themes (his ‘symbolic motifs’) to characterize concepts and characters in the drama divulges knowledge of and respect for such ideas used by his musical forbears. The leaping interval of a fourth representing The Cross mirrors a similar representation in the music of Bach, Handel & Schutz, and the conjunct rising four-note figure signifying Redemption is found again in Handel, Bach’s St John Passion and Wagner’s Parsifal. [Jesus is stripped of his garments] Jésus est attaché sur la Croix [Jesus is nailed to the Cross] Jésus meurt sur la Croix [Jesus dies upon the Cross] Jésus est détaché de la Croix et remis à sa mère [Jesus’ body is taken from the Cross and laid in Mary’s bosom …..] Jésus est mis dans le sepulcher [The body of Jesus is laid in the tomb] Born in Rouen in 1886, Marcel Dupré was a piano student at the Paris Conservatoire, and learnt virtually all the standard piano repertoire winning his premier prix in 1905 at the age of 19. His composition studies in the class of Charles-Marie Widor were rewarded with a premier prix in Fugue in 1909, and then by the highest accolade of all, the Grand Prix de Rome in 1914 just a few weeks before the outbreak of the First World War. During the war, he acted as Charles-Marie Widor’s Assistant at Saint-Sulpice in Paris, but soon after, he rapidly established a reputation as a concert organist, following his performance from memory of the complete organ works of Bach. International success came first in England, and then here in America, where he spent much of the early 1920s. In 1926 he was appointed Professor of Organ at the Paris Conservatoire, where he remained for 30 years (including two as Director), training all the leading French organists of two generations. In 1934 Widor retired from Saint-Sulpice at the age of 89, and Dupré at last became titulaire in his own right – a post which he held until the day of his death. Dupré’s compositional legacy (comprising 65 opus numbers) was of fundamental significance for organ music in the twentieth century. Although Le Chemin de la Croix is not specifically entitled a symphonic poem, it is Dupré’s most important essay in a form The central protagonists in the musical drama are Christ and his mother but other individuals play their part: Pontius Pilate, Simon of Cyrene, Veronica and the Women of Jerusalem. The fourteen movements are dominated by recurrences of ten crucial and identifiable leitmotifs: Persecution [fall of a third and rise by an augmented 4th] – The Crowd [an animated dotted rhythm] – The Cross [falling 4th] - Steps [a falling half-step] – Suffering [a duplet + triplet rhythm] - Redemption [a rising tetrachord] – The Virgin Mary [two falling 3rds] – Compassion [two successive falling half steps] – Mercy [the rise and fall of a 5th ] – Pity [a chromatic chord sequence in quarter notes]. The poetry, the Stations of the Cross by Paul Claudel (18681955), was written in 1911. Born in Villeneuve-sur-Fère in France, he experienced a sudden religious conversion at the age of eighteen while listening to the choir sing Vespers in the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris: "In an instant, my heart was touched, and I believed." He remained a strong Catholic for the rest of his life, throughout a career spent in the French diplomatic corps – as vice-consul in New York (April 1893), French consul in China (1895–1909), then ambassador in Tokyo (1922–1928), Washington, D.C. (1928–1933) and Brussels (1933–1936). In his youth Claudel was heavily influenced by the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud and the Symbolists, all of whom were horrified by modern materialist views of life. Unlike most of them, however, Claudel’s response was to embrace Catholicism. All his writings are passionate rejections of the idea of a mechanical or random universe, instead proclaiming the deep spiritual meaning of human life founded on God's all-governing grace and love. His poetic language and imagery is often lush, mystical, consciously 'poetic', romantically distant, but always transcending a level of material realism. He used scenes of passionate, obsessive human love to convey with great power God's infinite love for humanity.