Concert of Yale Schola Cantorum
Featuring soloists from the new graduate voice program and specialist instrumentalists from the School of Music trained by Robert Mealy and Robert van Sice
Free and open to the public. Sprague Hall, 470 College Street, New Haven. Information at 203.432.5062
The Yale Schola Cantorum, under the direction of Simon Carrington, will present its first concert of the 2004-2005 season on Saturday, November 6, 2004 at 8 pm at Sprague Memorial Hall in New Haven (470 College St.). The program, entitled Chiaroscuro – Contrasts of Light and Shade, includes Italian works from the late Renaissance/early Baroque period and from the twentieth century.
In 1641 Claudio Monteverdi, the greatest composer of the time, released his retrospective collection Selva morale e spirituale, encapsulating a lifetime of composition and the broadest imaginable palette of styles and colors. Four hundred years later Luigi Dallapiccola, a lifelong Monteverdi enthusiast, mingled the elegant contrapuntal choral lines of the old master with his own brand of 12-tone, Schoenbergian harmony to produce Canti di Prigionia, a stark and harrowing work of protest against the excesses of Mussolini’s Fascist regime.
Soloists from the new graduate voice program and specialist instrumentalists from the School of Music and the community trained by Robert Mealy and Robert van Sice will join the Schola Cantorum under Simon Carrington’s direction to explore the nuances of light and the darkness evoked in music by two great Italian masters.
The Yale Schola Cantorum, now in its second year, is a 24 voice specialist chamber choir supported by the Institute of Sacred Music with the Yale School of Music. Simon Carrington is the founder and conductor. The choir’s repertoire concentrates on music before 1750 and from the last 100 years. In addition to performing regularly in New Haven and elsewhere, the choir records and tours nationally and internationally. During its first year, Schola Cantorum’s repertoire included works by Josquin des Pres, Orlando di Lasso, Schütz, Monteverdi, Bach, Charpentier, Stravinsky, Rautavaara, James MacMillan, and Yale faculty composer Ezra Laderman. In May, 2005 the choir will tour southern England, performing in many of the most glorious medieval and renaissance cathedrals and abbeys in the area.
The concert, presented by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, is free and open to the public. For more information, call 203/432-5062.