The Rockbridge Chamber Singers Are Back!

Since 2020, the Rockbridge Chamber Singers have been side-lined by Covid-19.  The group’s comeback concert, planned for February, 2022,  had to be cancelled, again due to concerns over rehearsing and performing during an up-swing in Covid infections in the local area.  This season, Chamber Singers have finally returned to full numbers and began rehearsing in late December for their concert on Sunday afternoon, February 12, 2023!  We are pleased to bring to our audience a performance of two very special choral works – George Frideric Handels’s Dixit Dominus and Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cantata No. 4, Christ lag in Todes Banden.

            Bach’s Cantata No. 4 is Bach’s first cantata for Easter, and is likely his only extant original composition for the first day of the Easter feast.  It is also his earliest surviving chorale cantata and was related to his application for a post at a Lutheran church at Muhlhausen, Germany.  John Eliot Gardiner described it as Bach’s “first known attempt at painting narrative in music”.  The source was Martin Luther’s hymn of the same title, which is the main hymn for Easter in the Lutheran church.  Listen.

            Handel’s Dixit Dominus is a setting of the text of Psalm 110 which begins with the words “The Lord Said”.  The work, written in the baroque style of the period and scored for five vocal soloists, five-part chorus, strings and continuo, was completed in April 1707 while Handel was living in Italy and contains the composer’s earliest surviving autograph.  It is thought that the work was first performed on July 16, 1707 in the Church of Santa Maria in Montessanto.  Listen

            The Rockbridge Chamber Singers are excited to be joined by chamber orchestra and soloists to present these two works just ahead of Lent and the Easter season.  Christine Fairfield, soprano, and Scot Williamson, tenor, will again be our soloists. The Chamber Singers will also welcome singers from Southern Virginia University among their ranks. Please join them on Sunday afternoon, February 12 at 3 PM at the Lexington Presbyterian Church for Bach and Handel!