UCD Chapel Choir "The German Baroque Masters", with the Earley Musick ensemble and Andrew Redmond, bass, Claire Duff, violin, Richard Sweeney, theobro.
The UCD Chapel Choir is UCD's best-kept secret. Discuss. Most Sunday mornings, while all too many are celebrating the Sabbath by sleeping or vacantly watching TV, some of the best live music in the country is being performed free of charge on campus. The fact that it is during a religious ceremony would undoubtedly deter some, but it really shouldn't. This is genuinely sacred music; evoking wonder and awe in the listener. It may be a matter of personal taste, but older choral music conveys much more of a sense of the divine than the bland folk group singalongs that are so popular these days.
On Thursday 13 April in the Chapel the Chapel Choir joined forces with the Earley Musick ensemble (named after its founder Desmond Earley, who is also UCD Organist and Director of the Chapel Choir) to present "The German Baroque Masters" - a concert of song and music by J.S. Bach, Heinrich Biber, Johann Rosenm�ller and Heinrich Sch�tz.
It would be dishonest to pretend an expert knowledge of this music. Lamentably, truly intelligent and meaningful writing about music is rare because of lack of knowledge of musical theory and a wider contemporary cultural inability to write directly and meaningfully about beauty. Thus I am dependent on the programme.
The programme helpfully tells us that all the featured composers were exponents of "the new Italian style - the stile moderno" which is a start. The title of Bach's cantata "Ich habe genung" translates as "I have enough" and contains such lyrics as "Ich freue mich auf meinen Tod / ach! H�tt er sich schon eingefunden. / Da entkomm ich aller Not, / die mich noch auf der Welt gebunden" which translates as "I await my death with joy; ah, had it but already come! Then I shall escape all the woe that has bound me to this world." This is not intended to be depressing, but reflects the celebratory Lutheran attitude to eternal life and acceptance of death (thanks to the programme again)
The highlight of the set programme was Sch�tz's extraordinary "Deutsches Magnificat." Again scurrying back to the programme to find an intellectual justification for this, apparently "the practice of pitting two choirs (of equal or unequal force) against one another was a famous feature of Venetian sacred music� The Deutsches Magnificat was one of the last works to be put down on manuscript by the composer. The setting is imbued with a sense of urgency, of conviction and of strength." Exactly what I wanted to say.
For an encore the Choir performed a piece by Rachmaninov that reached heights of beauty. It was strange hearing this vast, oceanic, very Russian music after the perhaps more cerebral German works. These sounds would make Bertrand Russell or Richard Dawkins bless themselves.
Watch out for further instalments of the UCD Chapel Choir's summer concert series. I hereby command all -Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Muslim, atheist, agnostic, freemason and Scientologist - to hear these unsung heroes (ho ho ho) for themselves on Sundays at 11.30 in the Chapel.
