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Magdalena Kozená | Czech Christmas Mass
ARTISTS
Magdalena Kožená, mezzo-soprano
Gabriela Eibenová, soprano
Jaroslav Brezina, tenor
Michael Pospíšil, bass
Capella Regia Musicalis
Robert Hugo
TRACK LISTING
RYBA: Three Pastorellas
RYBA: Czech Christmas Mass
In every country where Christmas is celebrated, traditions have grown up that give the festival a specifically local colour. In the Czech-speaking lands, one such tradition has been part of Christmas for over 200 years: church performances of the Czech Christmas Mass by Jakub Jan Ryba, also known as “Hej, mist?e” (“Hey, master”), from its opening, exclamatory phrase.
Ryba was born in 1765 in P?eštice, a small town in Bohemia, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Ryba was among the earliest Czech composers to use his native tongue in his works rather than German, the official language, and he played an important role in promoting the idea of Czech nationalism in music. The mass, dating from 1796, can thus be seen as part of a Europe-wide attempt to cast aside the modes and manners of the ancien régime in favour of Enlightenment ideals. Its use of a vernacular text has undoubtedly contributed to its undying popularity in what is now the Czech Republic.
Magdalena Kožená, who made this recording of the mass in 1998, at a relatively early stage in her career, grew up with Ryba’s music. As she recalls: “This mass is an important piece for Czech people. Every little church does its own amateur performance on Christmas Eve. It’s a national phenomenon: everybody wants to take part; you don’t need to be a singer. Naturally I sang it when I was growing up. In Central European countries during the Soviet era, Christmas had a special magic. Of course we got presents, and music was important, but this was also when we got bananas, oranges, things which we couldn’t buy every day. We often made presents instead of buying them, then gave them out early on Christmas Eve before going to church at midnight, where we would sing Ryba’s Mass.”
Ryba also composed many liturgical masses, in Czech or Latin or both. One of them was published under Joseph Haydn’s name, and it would not to be fanciful to see Ryba as a kind of rustic Haydn: his other works include seven requiems as well as songs, singspiels, symphonies, concertos and string quartets. Most of his compositions now lie neglected, but the Christmas Mass has earned its survival by virtue of its innocence and directness.
As Magdalena Kožená concedes, those very qualities pose problems for the classically trained singer: “The Christmas Mass is almost like a play; in fact it’s sometimes performed semi-staged, or even in a puppet theatre. It has a harmonic simplicity that is disarming, and there is a special charm about a performance by amateurs, people who are singing for the joy of it. Trained singers would lose that charm if they approached it like Verdi or Wagner. You have to keep it simple, not using vibrato, singing it as if it was a folksong.”
There are moments in the mass that seem to be distant echoes of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, a work with which Ryba was almost certainly familiar: it had its Prague premiere in March 1792. Yet if we look too hard for Mozartian grace and profundity in Ryba’s mass, we are likely to be disappointed. Instead we should take it for what it is, a religious work that wears its reverence lightly, and which prizes immediacy above all.
Although the movements of the Mass have the traditional Latin names (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Benedictus, Agnus Dei), the work is not strictly speaking a mass. Rather, it is a miniature sacred drama, its narrative made up of a sequence of so-called pastorellas. These were pieces written specifically for Christmas performance, deriving much of their style from folk music and often using folk instruments including bagpipes and hurdy-gurdy.
The very opening finds the organ playing in emulation of a hurdy-gurdy; elsewhere the broad humour of opera buffa shines through, lending an earthy quality to the musical celebration. The work consists of a succession of solos, duets and ensembles telling the story of Czech shepherds called upon to witness the child Saviour’s divine presence in a manger in Bethlehem: or is it in some remote Bohemian village? The music’s flavour suggests the latter.
As a preface to the Czech Christmas Mass, Magdalena Kožená sings three free-standing pastorellas, each blessed with the same wide-eyed wonder that suffuses the longer work. For Kožená, these pieces are poignant reminders of her younger self: “I had just finished my studies, and it was a lovely period of my life. I was simply going round the country singing in beautiful castles and churches – including the one where we recorded this CD. We didn’t have much access to the wider period instrument movement then; we were making our own discoveries, making the music in the moment. It gave me my own basis of knowledge and experience. One of the things I enjoy about working with period instrument groups like Capella Regia Musicalis is rediscovering that same joy in simply making music.”
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