Word: oratorio
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...piece, which Bach composed in 1732, is generally acknowledged as the most powerful and unique oratorio setting of the Passion and Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. In this monumental work in which two choruses, two orchestras and eight soloists perform for over three hours, Bach alternates between recitative narration by the Evangelist, who represents St. Matthew, turbulent crowd choruses, various commentary in the solo arias and reflective, moving chorales...
Bach's Christmas Oratorio: Boston Premiere Ensemble, Sanders Theatre, Cambridge...
...film The Big Chill and Broadway's The Real Thing. This year for a topper, Close, 37, is trying two of each. The Connecticut-born actress opens this week in an off-Broadway play, Childhood, and recently did an off-off-Broadway performance of Arthur Honegger's oratorio Joan of Arc at the Stake. At the same time, she has two movies in the can: The Jagged Edge, a courtroom drama, and Maxie, a romantic comedy about a 1920s actress whose spirit materializes in the present. "I love doing comedy," enthuses Close, "and I love dressing up." But given...
...apart, Bach and Handel make an odd couple. Handel, whose 300th birthday was last month, was the son of a Halle barber- surgeon who wanted his boy to study law. A well-traveled cosmopolitan, he settled in London, anglicized his name from Handel, and became the dominant operatic and oratorio composer of his day. When he died, a bachelor at 74, he was buried with great ceremony in Poet's Corner at Westminster Abbey. By contrast, Bach, whose birthday falls this week, came from a long line of musicians and spent almost his entire life in what is now East...
Rorem's new oratorio, based on texts by Poe, Longfellow, Twain, Crane, Melville, Whitman, Emma Lazarus and Sidney Lanier, is one of four premieres this season for the prolific composer, and it too treads familiar ground. Best known for his art songs and his candid, elegantly written diaries recounting his life and loves in Paris, New York and elsewhere, the composer, 61, has long been a conservative voice in American music. He speaks in a basically breezy 1940s tonality, which is leavened by a few more recent technical advances. In An American Oratorio, Rorem's style works effectively with gentle...