Saturday 19 November 2011

7.30 pm
Trinity Methodist Church
Cottingham Road, Hull HU5 2EJ
(at the corner of Newland Avenue)

J.S. Bach

My Spirit was in Heaviness (Cantata No 21)

Handel

Dixit Dominus

Composed within six years of one another (1707 and 1713) these two great works provide a striking contrast in styles, the one dramatic, the other meditative.

Dixit Dominus was composed when Handel was just 22. It is an extraordinarily mature piece for someone so young, and is rightly one of the most celebrated pieces of the whole of the 18th century. Its many choruses foreshadow the dramatic style of Israel in Egypt, written many years later. They speak of ‘destruction’, ‘ruin’, ‘judgement’ and violent death, but the work ends with choruses of triumph and rejoicing cast in brilliant vocal writing. In it Handel absorbs all the new Italian styles that he is hearing at first hand on this youthful visit to Italy with an enthusiasm which is still infectious today.

Bach’s well-known Cantata 21 My Spirit was in heaviness, was written only a few years after Dixit Dominus, and is also the work of a young man. This cantata has more choral participation than in Bach’s later works, and the last of the four choruses is a setting of Worthy is the Lamb, a text which was to gain more fame 30 years later in Handel’s setting in Messiah. In addition to its superb choruses, the work contains some beautiful arias and some striking writing for solo oboe and trumpets.