MAGNIFICAT
Monteverde and Bach

By Judith Eckelmeyer

(GRACE WOODS MUSIC SESSION DECEMBER 9, 2024)

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This evening’s focus is on musical setting of the Magnificat. This liturgical text, one of 4 canticles (songs) in the New Testament, comes from the Gospel of Luke, 1:46-55. Mary, who is pregnant with Jesus, visits her cousin Elizabeth, who is pregnant with John, who will become known as “the Baptist” when he begins his ministry as an adult. When Mary greets Elizabeth, John leaps in Elizabeth’s womb; Elizabeth praises Mary, who then responds with this joyful song praising God. 

The text was a long-standing part of early Christian worship and continued to be sung as plainchant until about 1600, with composers choosing it for polyphonic setting. The two major exponents of Baroque era, Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) composed magnificent settings of the text in vastly different styles, representative of their own time, location, and Christian denomination.

Magnificat - Latin & English

Magníficat ánima mea Dóminum.

Et exultávit spíritus meus: in Deo salutári meo.


Quia respéxit humilitátem ancíllae suae:


Ecce enim ex hoc beátam me dicent omnes generatiónes.


Quia fécit mihi mágna qui pótens est: et sanctum nómen eius.

Et misericordia eius in progenies et progenies timéntibus eum.


Fécit poténtiam in bráchio suo: dispérsit supérbos mente cordis sui.


Depósuit poténtes de sede: et exaltávit húmiles.


Esuriéntes implévit bonis: et dívites dimísit inánes.

Suscépit Ísrael púerum suum: recordátus misericórdiae suae.

Sicut locútus est ad patres nostros: Ábraham, et sémini eius in saecula.

Glória Patri, et Fílio, et Spirítui Sancto,


Sicut erat in princípio, et nunc, et semper, et in sæcula sæculórum. Amen.

​My soul doth magnify the Lord.  (Chorus)    

And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior. (Soprano 2)

Because He hath regarded the humility of His servant.  (Soprano 1)

For behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
(Chorus)

Because He that is mighty hath done great things to me; and holy is His name. (Bass)

And His mercy is from generation unto generations, to them that fear Him. (Alto and Tenor)

He hath shewed might in His arm: He hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart. (Chorus)

He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble. (Tenor)

He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich He hath sent empty away. (Alto)
 
He hath holpen Israel His servant, being mindful of His mercy: (Sopranos 1 and 2, Alto)

As He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed forever. (Chorus)

Glory be the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, (Chorus)

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forever and ever, Amen. (Chorus)

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Monteverdi by Bernardo Strozzi (c. 1630)

Monteverdi, working at the Ganzaga court in Mantua from 1601 to 1613, had essentially perfected the new manner of composing, using expressive devices and florid, intricate vocal detail. His opera L’Orfeo of 1607—one of the earliest in history— displayed this style successfully, as did his subsequent stage works and middle and late madrigals.

Orfeo Monteverdi Savall Liceo favola in musica

 But the style was not only for secular works but also for religious use, as in his setting of the Magnificat in 1610, which Monteverdi dedicated to Pope Paul V. The rather long text of the Magnificat, in Latin, is set up in verses like a Psalm, but treating each verse as a separate piece. Monteverdi unified the whole by basing each verse on one of the psalm tones long in use in the church. Each verse has a different setting of the same psalm tone: some as extremely florid solos, some as choruses with the psalm tone imbedded in the music. The entire work stands today as a rarely performed tour-de-force of early Baroque music.

Monteverdi - Vespro della Beata Vergine - Gardiner

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1746 portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach

Bach, on the other hand, wrote his Magnificat about a century and a quarter later, under very different circumstances from Monteverdi’s. As a German, a Lutheran, and practitioner of the evolved, late Baroque style, he prepared his setting of this canticle for a church service in two slightly different versions. The earlier in E-flat for Christmas day in 1723 shortly after he took up his cantorial duties at the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, included Christmas carols.

Conducted by Ton Koopman, the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir here present the difficult and rarely-performed original version of the Magnificat in E flat major, BWV 243.1, in Leipzig's St. Thomas Church, 2003.

He revised this version during the years 1728-1731 changing the key to D major, removing the Christmas music, modifying the orchestration to include 2 flutes instead of 2 recorders, and adding an oboe d’amore to the already scored two oboes. This later version is thus more brilliant, richer in sound. In both, Bach used an extended vocal group of 5 voice ranges (with a second soprano), three trumpets, timpani, strings and the traditional continuo. Both versions differ from most of Bach’s sacred music in that they retain the Latin text; only his Mass setting(s) are also in Latin.

Bach’s work clearly marks the joyous and festive nature of the canticle with the trio of trumpets, timpani, full orchestra and chorus. Subsequent verses convey varying the varying moods of the individual texts. The second verse, for instance, features long decorative solo lines suggesting exultation, and the third verse, also a solo, is in minor and lacks the florid style, thus suggesting the “humility” mentioned in the text. In the 4th verse, the chorus illustrates the ongoing generations with climbing entrances of each choir part. In the wonderfully evocative tenor solo of the 8th verse the vigorous descent of the melody in different phrases suggests the downfall of the mighty, and the rising lines suggest the opposite for the humble. The emptiness of the rich, in verse 9, is conveyed by a significant break in the melody. The treble trio in verse 19, simply accompanied by continuo, has a melody floating above in an oboe solo. Significantly, this is the German Magnificat 9th psalm tone, which traditionally is associated with Psalm 111, “In exitu Israel”, remembering God’s merciful deliverance of Israel from Egypt. The 11th verse, beginning the doxology which is always appended to a psalm in Christian tradition, lays out the arrival of each “person” of the Trinity. And finally, the 12th verse brings back the music that opened the work in a triumphant conclusion.

Bach - Magnificat BWV 243 - Van Veldhoven | Netherlands Bach Society

Judith Eckelmeyer ©2024