VERDI REQUIEM, CARNEGIE HALL, OCTOBER 2, 2022
The Artists
Christopher Shepard, Music Director
Chris Shepard is in his eighth year as Artistic Director of the Masterwork Chorus. He also leads the Worcester (MA) Chorus and CONCORA, Connecticut’s oldest professional choir. With these choirs and the Dessoff Choirs in New York City, which he led from 2010 to 2016, Chris has performed a wide range of repertoire, collaborating with a number of major orchestras in venues that include Lincoln Center and Radio City Music Hall in New York, as well as the Royal Festival Hall in London and the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. As guest conductor, Chris has conducted the New Haven Symphony, Sydney’s Willoughby Symphony Orchestra and the Al-Kamandjati Choir and Orchestra in Palestine; he was also a chorusmaster for the Sydney 2000 Olympics Opening Ceremony.
A conductor with a particular affinity for the choral music of J.S. Bach, Chris founded the Sydneian Bach Choir in Sydney, Australia, an ensemble that has performed all of Bach’s choral cantatas as well as all of his major choral works. He has taught at the Taft School, Sydney Grammar School and College of the Holy Cross, and he is currently Music Director at St John’s Episcopal Church in Stamford, CT. Also a pianist and keyboard continuist, Chris holds degrees from the Hartt School, Yale and the University of Sydney. His PhD dissertation won the American Choral Directors Association’s 2012 Julius Herford Prize for outstanding doctoral thesis in choral music.
Soloists:
Robyn Marie Lamp, Soprano
Sahoko Sato Timpone, Mezzo-Soprano
Jorge Pita Carreras, Tenor
Edwin Jhamal Davis, Bass
Program Notes:
RETRO-FITTING THE VERDI REQUIEM
One of the reasons that Giuseppe Verdi’s (1813-1901) setting of the Messa di Requiem is so profoundly satisfying is the sense of unity that this seasoned composer brought to his largest and most significant choral work. He achieved this cohesion through the use of various repeating musical elements—first and foremost the powerful, harrowing music of the Dies Irae, which appears four times in the work. Verdi also used a plainchant-style recitation of the text of the Requiem aeternam at the beginning and in the Libera me at the end, as well as in the Agnus Dei, whose exquisite opening for a cappella women soloists an octave apart is reminiscent of Medieval organum. And this tuneful composer, best known for the melodic accessibility of his Italian opera arias, reached back to his youthful work as a church organist in composing fugues for the Sanctus and Libera Me, plus a few scattered contrapuntal sections elsewhere.
Since these elements—the Dies Irae, plainchant, and fugues—help to bring a sense of wholeness to a text that composers often struggle to unify, it is easy to imagine that Verdi mapped out this architectural plan before writing the first note. But the truth is far more fascinating. Verdi’s Requiem work was originally known as the Manzoni Requiem, written in 1873 to honor the memory of Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873), one of the composer’s heroes. Although Manzoni’s name is generally only recognized today for its association with Verdi’s Requiem, he was a major figure of the Risorgimento, the unification of modern Italy. Both Manzoni—best known for his 1827 novel The Betrothed—and Verdi were major cultural figures of the Risorgimento; in fact, the rallying cry “Viva Verdi!” was actually an acronym for “Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D'Italia”. It was therefore not surprising that Verdi would wish to honor one of the giants of the movement of which he too was such an important part.
As it turns out, this wasn’t Verdi’s first attempt at writing a Requiem in honor of a national treasure. Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868), the great champion of Romantic Italian bel canto opera, had died in 1868. Verdi wished to honor his colleague, so he approached his publisher Ricordi about commissioning a collaborative work by a number of Italian composers as a memorial concert. As so often happens with “art by committee”, the final product was undistinguished, and of the thirteen composers involved, only Verdi’s name is recognizable 150 years later. For a number of logistical reasons, the concert was deferred several times, resulting in flared tempers (including Verdi’s), and the work went unperformed at the time. The premiere had to wait more than a century, when Helmuth Rilling gave the first performance of the Messa per Rossini in 1989.
But Verdi must have known that his Libera me was a consummate work of art. So it is not surprising that when his patriotic hero Manzoni died in 1873, he returned to this largescale movement for soprano, choir and orchestra, which had been languishing in a drawer for half a decade. And here we see a combination of Verdi’s resourcefulness and his genius: not only would he conclude his Manzoni Requiem with that movement from the collaborative Messa per Rossini (slightly revised), but he would also draw on this movement throughout the ninety-minute Requiem in order to bring a circular sense of unity to the Requiem as a whole.
Thus we find those returning motives throughout the work—the Dies Irae, the reference to plainchant, and fugal sections—which had been such integral elements of the original Libera me. Further, Verdi takes one of the most moving sections of the Libera me and reworks it for the opening of the entire work. This section, a stunning a cappella setting of the Requiem aeternam text for choir and soprano, is one of the most poignant excerpts in the entire choral repertoire. In transforming this section for the opening of the Requiem, Verdi gives the musical material first to the celli alone as an introduction, and then to the full strings, with the choir singing chantlike fragments in response. In this way, the a cappella section in the Libera me at the end of the work feels like a fulfilled promise from the beginning—when in fact, the music was composed in reverse order. Such is the ingenuity of a master craftsman, that Verdi is able to compose a deeply satisfying, wholly unified work in a way that makes the material written five years earlier feel at once somehow inevitable, and yet still completely fresh.
Because Verdi is associated almost entirely with opera, it is easy to think of him first and foremost as a composer of memorable melodies and brilliant music that is always in service to the drama of the operatic libretto. His Requiem reminds us, however, that he is certainly those things (there are many fine memories and much drama in this liturgical work as well)—but he is also a composer of outstanding technical skill, with the sure hand of a veteran artisan. And nowhere is this skill in greater evidence than in the reworking of the Libera me in composing his new Requiem.
-Chris Shepard, 2022
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The Masterwork Chorus acknowledges with gratitude those donors who participate in their *workplace giving program and the many individuals who made gifts of under $250.00.
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The Masterwork Chorus
Masterwork Chorus, founded in 1955, is an auditioned chorus of approximately 110 voices. The chorus is dedicated to enrich, delight and support the cultural life of the community through high-quality inspiring choral performances. The non-profit chorus has a performance history that includes not only the traditional masterworks, but also masterpieces spanning a variety of musical periods and styles. Some are well-known, others less so, but all are equally beautiful.
The chorus typically presents three major concerts each year, and has performed in venues throughout New Jersey as well as in New York City at Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall and in Washington, DC at the Kennedy Center. Since 1961, the chorus has returned to the Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall every year for its signature performance of Handel’s Messiah. The group’s Messiah history is iconic, and, although Messiah performances now exceed two hundred sixty in number, the magic of the music and the performance space continues to enrich and delight audiences and singers alike. For major events, the chorus is supported by the professional Masterwork Orchestra and renowned soloists.
The Worcester Chorus
The Worcester Chorus of Music Worcester has the unique distinction of being one of the most outstanding on-going choral groups in the United States. Founded in 1858 to sing at the first annual Worcester Music Festival in the newly-built Mechanics Hall, the 100-member group includes both amateur and professional singers from Worcester County, northern Connecticut and the Boston area. Its repertoire includes not only choral masterpieces, but also contemporary literature, arrangements of American folk songs, classics from musical theater and commissioned works. Each year the Chorus performs with orchestras and soloists in Mechanics Hall as part of Music Worcester’s main season, including an annual performance of Handel’s Messiah. The Worcester Chorus has also made guest appearances throughout the Northeast and overseas.
The Worcester Chorus has appeared with the Hartford Symphony, the American Symphony at Avery Fisher Hall in the Lincoln Center, and the Prague Symphony at Carnegie Hall. The Chorus performed at the 1992 American Choral Directors Association Eastern Division Convention in Boston, and has appeared at the Worcester Music Festival with the Philadelphia Orchestra, The Rochester Philharmonic, and the symphonies of Boston, Baltimore, and Detroit. View other events by the Worcester Chorus.
Artistic Director Dr. Christopher Shepard has been with the Chorus since 2009. Mark Mummert joined the ensemble as Assistant Director in 2019.