CELEBRATION – A Jubilee Concert
A Saturday evening concert, conducted by David Murray, in Sunderland Minster to mark the Queen’s Jubilee.
Tickets are £12 in Nave (£6 concessions for full time students and UB40s), £8.00 in Gallery (with limited view) and accompanied children under 16 admitted free. Obtainable via this website or info@bishopwearmouth.co.uk and from online ticketing at http://wegottickets.com/BCS
The concert will include the Magnificat in D major – Bach, Ein feste Burg – Bach, and feature Coronation Anthems by Handel. The soloists will be Jessica Holmes – soprano, Ben Williamson – countertenor, Joseph Cornwell – tenor, and Adrian Powter – baritone.
The Magnificat in D major is a setting of the Magnificat text by Johann Sebastian Bach for five soloists, a five part choir and orchestra. Bach first composed a version in E-flat major for Christmas 1723 and then reworked that music in D major in 1733 for the feast of the Visitation. The Latin text is the canticle of Mary, mother of Jesus, as told in the Gospel of Luke.
Ein feste Burg (A mighty fortress is our God) is a church cantata also by Johann Sebastian Bach, which he composed in Leipzig for Reformation Day. It is based on Martin Luther’s chorale ‘Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott’.
Many composers have written coronation anthems but the best known were composed by George Frideric Handel. Handel’s four coronation anthems use text from the King James Bible and are Zadok the Priest, let Thy Hand Be Strengthened, The King Shall rejoice and My heart Is Inditing. The text for all four anthems were picked by Handel – a personal selection from the most accessible account of an earlier coronation, that of James II of England in 1685. One of George I last acts before his death in 1727 was to sign an ‘Act of naturalisation of George Frideric handel and others’. The first commission for Handel as a newly- naturalised British subject was to write the music for the coronation of George II and Queen Caroline which took place on 11th October that same year. Right from their composition the four anthems have been popular and regularly played in concerts and festivals even during Handel’s own lifetime.
