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Rare Jewish Cantata by Emory Early Music
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Concert Review
Emory Early Music Ensemble. Thursday at Emory University’s Cannon Chapel. www.arts.emory.edu.
What’s not to love when serious scholarship meets spirited performance?
The Emory Early Music Ensemble devoted half its concert to an extreme rarity, a sacred Jewish cantata from 1733 called “Lift Up Your Voices, Sing and Rejoice.”
How rare? The manuscript had been buried in a Moscow library, rediscovered only in 1964.
Emory artist-in-residence Matthew Peaceman, an oboist who lives in Germany and who edited the score, knows of no previous American performances, although in modern times it’s been heard in Israel and Germany. (The run-through Wednesday night at The Temple, in Midtown, might have been the U.S. premiere.)
The 55-minute cantata was originally intended as part of a long night vigil on the eve of Hosha’na Rabbath, an extension of the Yom Kippur day of atonement. The venue was the synagogue in the Piedmont town of Casale Monferrato, in Northern Italy.
The cantata retains its mystery. The libretto, by S. H. Jarash, concerns Judgment Day. The music was likely cobbled together from various pre-existing sources; most of its composers remain unidentified.
In Peaceman’s introductory words to the large audience at Emory’s Cannon Chapel, he was a little too severe. He warned us that the music isn’t first-rate, and that it is audibly similar to contemporaries Bach, Handel and Telemann — the international Baroque style — and lacking unique character. Still, it’s a work from a culturally enlightened era, where Jews and gentiles could collaborate in open artistic exchange. And cultural politics aside, it’s another window into the perennially fascinating Baroque world, an indicator of the extent (and uses for) the common musical vocabulary.
The cantata, sung in Hebrew, is in 16 sections. Three vocal soloists — countertenor (here it was Khaemille Parham), tenor (Brent Runnels) and bass (Yosuke Normura) — sing recitatives, arias and duets. The numbers are connected by a spoken narration. A big chorus brings it to a close.
The Emory players — mostly students with a few local professionals, all led by Peaceman — were scrappy but kept the music moving. Who knows? It might have been a lot worse at the 1733 premiere.
The concert started with music by Antonio Vivaldi. For a G Major Sinfonia (RV 149), the student string ensemble deployed a mostly “historically informed” performance style, with lean bow strokes and no vibrato. That the style often sounded similar to the lean, edgy modernist ideals suggests it is impossible to go back in history and know how it sounded to Vivaldi’s audience.
For Vivaldi’s Concerto in C (RV 87), Peaceman was oboe soloist and Jody Miller played recorder. Backed by five musicians, they soared and glided through the saltatory solo lines, with energy and virtuosity in abundance.
Just before intermission, a student recorder quintet played four instrumental pieces by Salomon Rossi, who was born about 1570, almost a century before Vivaldi. These were exquisitely crafted, brightly appealing, and brief.
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