- Category
- Free Fridays
Gloria in Excelsis Deo: Masterpieces by Handel, Corelli, and Vivaldi
As part of SLAM’s Festive Fridays celebration, Early Music Missouri will perform music by three of the most renowned composers of the Baroque era in the Museum’s Farrell Auditorium.
Free tickets will be available for this concert in person at the Museum starting at 10 am on the day of the performance. Tickets will be available at the Museum’s welcome desk.
About the concert
Selected movements from Arcangelo Corelli’s famous Christmas Concerto will be bracketed by George Frideric Handel’s Gloria for solo soprano and Antonio Vivaldi’s Gloria for soloists, choir and strings. This concert of High Baroque masterpieces focuses on settings of the biblical song of the angels at Bethlehem and offers an entertaining and inspiring musical start to the holiday season. Handel composed his Gloria as a young man, only in his twenties, treating the text as a solo cantata. Early Music Missouri regular Arianna Aerie will be the featured soprano soloist, supported by Baroque violinists Celina Boldrey and Suzie Theirbach. Following Handel’s Gloria, Early Music Missouri’s string ensemble offers a period-instrument performance of selected movements from Arcangelo Corelli’s popular concerto grosso “Fatto per la Notte di Natale,” composed for a Christmas Eve performance around 1690. The concert concludes with Antonio Vivaldi’s stirring Gloria, composed originally for his ensemble at Venice’s Ospedale della Pietà. Vivaldi’s Gloria features rousing choruses, and sopranos Samantha Arten and Arianna Aerie and alto Olivia Roland will be featured soloists.
About the performers
Since its creation in 2018, Early Music Missouri has grown to become an important part of the St. Louis area’s musical life, presenting concerts, workshops, master classes, and lectures regionally and nationally. Early Music Missouri’s concerts feature Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and early Classical repertoire played on instruments (originals and reproductions) from these eras. Using historical documents and original musical scores—and guided by modern research—performances reflect a historically informed approach to technique, interpretation, and performance. Early Music Missouri’s performers are musicians with specialized training and expertise on early instruments like the viola da gamba, lute, Baroque bassoon, harpsichord, and more as well as long experience with historical styles from the past 700 years.
Generous support provided by Art Bridges Foundation’s Access for All program.
