Violons du Roy | A Handel Celebration at the Maison symphonique: Words from Bernard Labadie

Genres and styles : Baroque / classique

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In 1985, the young maestro Bernard Labadie conducted Les Violons du Roy and his vocal ensemble (which later became La Chapelle de Québec) in a highly ambitious program, including the famous Dixit Dominus by Georg Friedrich Handel, a German composer who was then living in Italy before moving to England, where he spent most of his career and became a naturalized British citizen. Bernard Labadie explains here the greatness of the work and recalls its impact on his own career at the helm of Les Violons du Roy and La Chapelle de Québec. All this as the two ensembles perform this Sunday, May 3, at the Maison symphonique, 4 p.m.

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PAN M 360: Handel’s Dixit Dominus was composed in Rome. Handel was only 22 at the time; it is truly an early work. However, according to the program notes from Les Violons du Roy, this piece is highly virtuosic, even though the composer was just beginning his creative career.

Bernard Labadie : Handel’s Dixit Dominus is a kind of musical cataclysm. I find it hard to imagine how this music was received in Rome, given that Handel was visiting Italy—he had spent several years there early in his career. How was this music received by the audience of the time, by the performers of the time? The question arises because Handel demands more of them than anyone has ever done before in a form of ensemble music.

He wrote this piece for a five-part choir. There are two distinct soprano parts. So it’s a very dense work, in which he first and foremost brings to bear all his experience with counterpoint as a composer of the North German school. He mastered everything related to writing canons, fugues, and, in short, music for multiple individual voices. He possesses this mastery to a degree that his Italian contemporaries do not. No one is as skilled as he is—at the age of 22—in this type of composition, yet he integrates this language into the world of Italian opera, where he developed his craft and where he went to study. But even as he was learning, he was already better than almost everyone else.

So, it’s a work that draws on its ancient roots while remaining incredibly modern for its time. And, it must be said, the choral part is quite astonishingly difficult. Only Bach’s great choral works, such as the Magnificat or the Mass in B minor, as I was saying, demand comparable levels of virtuosity in 18th-century choral music. And it is a work of great significance in the history of Les Violons du Roy and in my own personal history, because it was part of the very first program ever presented by Les Violons du Roy and La Chapelle de Québec (which was then very modestly named the Ensemble vocal Bernard Labadie—laughter), it was the very first program where the two ensembles performed on the same stage in 1985, dedicated to the two great giants of the late Baroque era, Handel and Bach (the 300th anniversary of their births in 1985). It was a massive program that showed just how ambitious and reckless we were; in the first half, we performed Bach’s greatest concerto for harpsichord and orchestra in D minor and Cantata No. 4, then in the second half we performed Handel’s longest Concerto grosso, Op. 11, and concluded with the Dixit Dominus. Let’s just say it was a rather daring way to stake our claim, but I still have excellent memories of that premiere.

PAN M 360: That was the wonderful arrogance of youth!

Bernard Labadie : Yes, that’s the right way to put it. And I rearranged this music in 1997. We haven’t touched it since. You really need to be at an exceptional level to perform it. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that everyone stays healthy; so far, everything looks promising for this piece, whose final chorus is a real fireworks display. It’s a work that leaves a lasting impression and poses a huge challenge for the performers. This program echoes 1985 somewhat, as the first piece is by Johann Sebastian Bach, preceded by a short motet by Johann Kuhnau, Bach’s predecessor in Leipzig. Bach was familiar with this work, which he had arranged for orchestra. In the second half, we’ll perform a Concerto Grosso by Handel followed by the Dixit Dominus. It’s therefore a very generous, deeply rewarding program that poses a huge challenge for our performers. We’re all excited to dive right in.

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