MUSIC

Houston Chamber Choir presents For Unto Us. Saturday, December 8, 2012 at 7:30 pm at The Church of St. John the Divine, 2450 River Oaks Boulevard, Houston, TX 77019.

Once again the Houston Chamber Choir presents two concerts that have become community traditions for the holidays; For Unto Us, featuring Handel’s classic Messiah, and, Saturday, December 15 and Sunday, December 16 at 3:30 and 7:30 pm, at the Chapel of the Villa de Matel (6510 Lawndale Ave.)  Christmas at the Villa, featuring Grammy Award-winning vocalist Cynthia Clawson.

The Houston Chamber Choir opens the holiday season with Baroque classics, the Christmas portion of George Frideric Handel’s masterpiece Messiah and Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Midnight Mass for Christmas. Also on the program is Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto in C Major for 2 Trumpets and Strings.

Premiered in April 1742 George Frideric Handel’s classic oratorio Messiah recounts the entire life of Christ, but it is the Christmas portion that has become a December tradition worldwide. The Chamber Choir will perform this along with Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Messe de Minuit pour Noël (Midnight Mass for Christmas.) In this setting of the Mass, Charpentier draws on the melodies of French Christmas carols, or noëls, from the time of Louis XIV.

Though overshadowed by Jean-Baptiste Lully during his lifetime, Charpentier was in every way Lully’s equal, as this exuberant setting from the time of Louis XIV proves.

The concert will also include the fanfare-like effects of Vivaldi's Conceto for Two Trumpets in C Major, his only concerto to feature trumpets.