Drawn from diverse cultures and various points in history, Music of the Baroque conductor William Jon Gray has assembled a program that feature the holiday traditions from the 12th through the 19th century from Germany, Italy, Mexico, Russian, the Netherlands, Spain and North America.
Music makes the holidays come alive, and through the centuries this special time of year inspired composers to new creative heights. Drawn from diverse cultures and various points in history, conductor William Jon Gray has assembled a program highlighting multifarious holiday traditions around a single unifying principle: whether in the twelfth or nineteenth centuries, in Germany, Italy, Mexico, Russia, the Netherlands, or Spain, music gives voice to the spirit of the season.
The first half of the program draws together Giovanni Gabrieli’s sparkling “stereophonic” music for brass ensemble and ethereal choral music written for performance in the soaring churches of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. Christmas music for Russian czars and the straightforward harmonies of North American music, including William Billings’s Shiloh and the Revivalist hymn “I shall be satisfied” illustrate dramatically the wealth of musical styles employed in the celebration of the holiday.
While the Christmas theme continues in the second half of the program, the repertoire becomes even more diverse. Lively instrumental dances by Tylman Susato contrast with “Adoramus te, Christe,” a sacred madrigal written by opera “inventor” Claudio Monteverdi, and Polish composer Mikolaj Zieleński’s Vidimus stella euis in Oriente. The joy of the holiday season shines through in the infectious rhythms of the medieval villancico Riu, riu chiu and A siolo flasiquiyo by the sixteenth-century Mexican composer Padilla. The program concludes on a more traditional note with Praetorius’s “Lo, how a rose e’er blooming,” leaving listeners with the beautiful image of a delicate flower flourishing in the snow.
