Bard Music Festival
Program Six • I live with God ever before me: Mozart’s Religion
August 13
Bard Music Festival
August 13
Following the past three seasons’ sold-out concerts in nearby Rhinebeck, the Bard Music Festival returns off-campus for Program Six, “I live with God ever before me: Mozart’s Religion.” Featuring James Bagwell, the Bard Festival Chorale, and the renovated organ of the Episcopal Church of the Messiah, this program presents a sampling of Mozart’s own sacred music, dating from God is Our Refuge, a motet composed at just nine years old, to a late work commissioned for the musical clock at a wax museum, by way of two Church Sonatas and the dramatic liturgical psalm settings of his Vesperae solennes de Confessore. These will be heard alongside the original, less familiar version of Gregorio Allegri’s haunting Miserere, a work strictly guarded by the Vatican until Mozart transcribed it from memory as a child; J. S. Bach’s funeral motet Fürchte dich nicht; the fourth Chandos Anthem by George Frideric Handel, whom Mozart held in particularly high esteem; an Epiphany anthem by his student Thomas Attwood, the organist of London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral; and the Missa brevis in F, a major liturgical choral work by Joseph Haydn, with whom Mozart shared a close friendship and deep-seated mutual reverence.
7 pm • Performance: Bard Festival Ensemble and Chorale, conducted by James Bagwell, choral director
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart (1756–91)
God is Our Refuge, K20 (1765)
Church Sonata No. 6 in B-flat, K212 (1775)
Church Sonata in D, K245 (1776)
Vesperae solennes de Confessore, K339 (1780)
Adagio and Allegro in F Minor for Mechanical Organ, K594 (1790)
Gregorio Allegri (c. 1582–1652)
Miserere mei, Deus (1661)
George Frideric Handel (1685–1759)
Chandos Anthem No. 4, “O sing unto the Lord,” HWV 249b (1718)
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
Fürchte dich nicht, BWV 228 (1726)
Joseph Haydn (1732–1809)
Missa brevis in F, Hob. XXIII:1 (1749)
Thomas Attwood (1765–1838)
O God, Who by the Leading of a Star (1814)
The organ at the Church of the Messiah was installed in 1923 by the celebrated E.M. Skinner Company of Boston. The company, which had a reputation for creating instruments of superb quality and great tonal beauty, built organs for prominent churches and universities, including both the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine and St. Thomas Church in New York. A gift to the parish by Captain Vincent Astor, the organ has just returned to the church following a major reconditioning by Quimby Pipe Organs of Warrensburg, Missouri.
Artwork: Louis Jean Desprez (1743–1804) and Francesco Piranesi (1748-1810), Holy Sacrament in the Pauline Chapel, etching, ca. 1785. Credit: Alamy
Grab a bite and a drink while you’re at the Fisher Center! We offer theater concessions at Sosnoff Theater, LUMA Theater, and Olin Hall. Across the way is the al fresco Spiegeltent Garden—or grab a nosh while seeing a Spiegeltent performance. There is ample space for outdoor picnics across the Bard College campus. Nearby villages and towns in the Hudson Valley boast a large selection of restaurants, as well as a variety of hotels, motels, inns, and bed & breakfasts.
Eat & StayChurch of the Messiah
6436 Montgomery Street
Rhinebeck, NY 12572
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