Tessitura: New Chamber Choir Debuts

The BMC is launching a new initiative, Tessitura, a chamber choir which explores music of the Baroque and Modern eras. Directed by Mark Nelson, Tessitura offers a debut performance Sunday, March 23, at 3 p.m. at the BMC.

Tessitura’s inaugural concert will feature works by three gifted composers representative of three successive generations of German musical artistry: Heinrich Schütz, Dietrich Buxtehude, and Johann Sebastian Bach.Works will include four motets from Schütz’s Cantiones Sacrae, opus 4 and his Aus der Tiefe, from Psalmen Davids, opus 2; Buxtehude’s Der Herr ist mit mir; and Bach’s “Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir, BWV 131” from his Cantata.

In rehearsal, the choir has savored the singular voices of these composers. As Nelson explains: “Writing for four unaccompanied voices, Schütz crafts distinctive textures reflective of text meanings while also displaying an acute sensitivity to the rhythms and inflections of the German language. Buxtehude’s works can shift gears quickly; each new line of text elicits a new musical idea — a new shape, new rhythm, new mode of interplay. The centerpiece of Bach’s cantata is an extraordinary evocation of waiting and hoping; by its end the choir reaches a moment of stillness and wonder.”