The next performance of the Norfolk Camerata will be on Saturday 23rd November at 7.30 p.m. at St Nicholas’s Church, North Walsham, Norfolk
The concert will feature Charpentier’s Messe de Minuit de Noel (Midnight Mass for Christmas) and other festive music.
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Marc-Antoine Charpentier was one of the most outstanding musicians in late seventeenth-century France. He was particularly drawn to writing Christmas music, producing instrumental carols, Latin oratorios on Christmas themes, French pastorales and a Christmas mass – the delightful Messe de Minuit pour Noël. This piece dates from around 1690 and was probably composed for the great Jesuit church of St. Louis in Paris, where Charpentier held the post of maître de musique. The use of popular carols in church music had long been an accepted practice and in France noëls figured prominently in the substantial French organ repertoire. The liturgy of the Midnight Mass permitted the singing and playing of these Christmas folksongs, and by Charpentier’s time quite complex instrumental arrangements were commonplace. However, Charpentier’s idea of basing a whole mass on these songs was completely original. Altogether there are eleven noëls, most of which are dance-like in character, reflecting the carol’s secular origins, though Charpentier also composed new material, such as the slow sections ‘Et in terra pax’ at the beginning of the Gloria and ‘Et incarnatus est’ in the Credo. (Acknowledgements: John Bawden) |
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