Two blockbuster works take up the program for the next concert featuring the TMSingers conducted by Jean-Sébastien Vallée, including Vivaldi’s popular Gloria, and Jocelyn Hagen’s fascinating multimedia work, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci.
The TMSingers are the choir’s core professional ensemble. They’re currently accepting applications for an audition; details here.
The Music
Antonio Vivaldi: Gloria in D major, RV 589
Vivaldi’s Gloria is a setting of the hymn Gloria in excelsis Deo, and it’s estimated that the words date back to the 4th century, when they became an integral part of the Latin mass. The composer wrote three Glorias, and only two of them survive. RV 589 is the most popular, and most widely performed.
The work was most likely written between 1713 and 1717, while Vivaldi was stationed as a priest at the Santa Maria della Pietà church in Venice. It consists of 12 movements, and falls into the genre of cantata-mass. It’s speculated that he wrote it for the orphaned and abandoned girls who lived in the charitable home called Ospedale della Pietà. Vivaldi taught the girls music and was known to have composed music for their choir.
As a cantata-mass, the text is sung in snippets that are given various treatments by the instruments, soloists, and full choir. The music is textural and expressive, and incorporates vocal and instrumental fireworks among its shifting moods, including elements that come from popular Venetian music of he era.
Jocelyn Hagen: The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
Hagen’s imaginative multimedia work immerses the audience in the world and art of Leonardo da Vinci in a concert format. Cutting edge video syncing technology brings the words and drawings of the Renaissance master and polymath’s notebooks to life in harmony with the Toronto Mendelssohn Singers as they perform.
The American composer has written a broad based body of work that includes a specialty in vocal music of various kinds, along with orchestral, chamber, and wind compositions. She is known for her large-scale projects, including dance and opera.
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci is written for SATB choir, orchestra, and video projections, and it premiered in 2019. Jocelyn explains the arrangement on her website.
“As the composer who is the creative force behind both the music and visual component, I have designed the work so that the music serves as the foundation for the film instead of it functioning as purely a supporting musical soundtrack.”
The project was inspired by an exhibition of da Vinci’s Codex Leicester, a collection of his scientific writings, at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in 2016. Impressed by viewing the original notebooks, where he explained and connected his ideas with pictures, she became determined to pursue what became The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci.
His intricate writing goes from right to left, and his sketches are stunning. Filmmaker Isaac Gale took these images and turned them into the projections, which use Muséik by Ion Concert Media for a seamless sync with the music.
- Find more details about the February 8 presentation of Toronto Mendelssohn Choir presents Visionaries: Vivaldi & Da Vinci [HERE].
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