Bard Music Festival
Program Seven • Faith and Folklore
August 15
Bard Music Festival
August 15
The Festival’s second all-Martinů event opens with one of the composer’s greatest choral works. A Czech-language cantata written to honor the Czech volunteers who fought in the French army, Martinů’s Field Mass had him blacklisted by the Nazis. Set to texts by Jiří Mucha, passages from Bohemian folk poetry, and lines from psalms and the liturgy, this powerful anti-war protest anticipates such later works as Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem and Leonard Bernstein’s MASS. Folk poetry is also the basis for Martinů’s Brigand Songs, which use Moravian tales of feudal tyranny to address the Soviet invasion of Hungary. The program concludes with the world premiere of the original French version of Martinů’s one-act opera Mariken de Nimègue (“Mary of Nijmegen”). Based on a medieval Dutch miracle play, and better-known in the later Czech version for which he won the Czechoslovak State Prize for Composition, Martinů’s original is set to French text by Henri Ghéon and features different orchestration as well as extensive original musical material that has never previously been published or performed.
Image: Karel Plicka, film still from The Land of Song, 1933. Courtesy of Moravian Gallery in Brno, Czechia.
6 pm • Preconcert talk: Michael Beckerman and Aleš Březina
7 pm • Bard Festival Chorale, James Bagwell, choral director; The Orchestra Now, conducted by James Bagwell and Zachary Schwartzman; Adam Prentis, supertitle translation (Field Mass)
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Field Mass, H279 (1939) (Mucha)
Tyler Duncan, baritone
From Brigand Songs, H361 (1957)
The Shepherds
The Feast
They are Building
In the Green Forest
Brave Lads Drinking
Ej, Janík
By the White Mountain
From The Prophecy of Isaiah, H383 (1959)
Part 2
Anna Thompson. soprano
Taylor Raven, mezzo-soprano
Tyler Duncan, baritone
Bard Festival Chamber Players
INTERMISSION
Bohuslav Martinů
Mariken de Nimègue, H236/2 I (1933)
Mariken • Anna Thompson, soprano
Devil • Tyler Duncan, baritone
Master of Ceremonies • Bhavesh Patel
Mascron • Terrence Chin-Loy, tenor
Mother of God • Isabelle Kosempa, mezzo-soprano
God the Son • Ben Strong, bass-baritone
Director, Bard Festival Chorale; Conductor, The Orchestra Now
Conductor, The Orchestra Now
Soprano
Mezzo-Soprano
Baritone
Master of Ceremonies, Mariken de Nimègue
Tenor
Mezzo-soprano
Bass-baritone
2025 Bard Music Festival Scholar in Residence
2025 Bard Music Festival Scholar in Residence
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Eat & StayBard College’s main campus is located in Annandale-on-Hudson (a hamlet of Red Hook), New York, on the east bank of the Hudson River, about 90 miles north of New York City and 220 miles southwest of Boston. The Taconic State Parkway and the New York State Thruway provide the most direct routes to our campus. Click the Google map below, or get directions by entering the following address into your GPS: 60 Manor Avenue, Red Hook, NY 12571.
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If you are traveling from east of the Hudson River in New York State, take the Taconic State Parkway to the Red Hook / Route 199 exit, drive west on Route 199 through the village of Red Hook to Route 9G, turn right onto Route 9G, drive north 1.9 miles, turn left onto Annandale Road, then turn right onto Manor Ave.
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