Echoes from the Past - Concert in the Round

Today's concert continues our tradition of ending the season with a performance in the round. Rather than presenting the works of a single composer, as we have done the last couple of years, we are celebrating our 70th anniversary with a sampling of our most successful pieces, together with some new works the choir has never performed. We thus can showcase together our beloved Praetorius, the Venetians A. and G. Gabrieli, as well as the Englishman Tallis and the German Schütz, with Josquin, Lasso, Gallus (Handl) and others. In the first half of the program you will find a work the choir has never performed, Lasso's double-choir Stabat Mater, and in the second half a set of three special pieces, each written upon the death of a composer, which in part echoes our feelings about the loss that has befallen the choir this season.

To start from the latter group of pieces, Johannes Ockeghem wrote "Mort, tu as navré de ton dart/Pie Jhesu" on the death of his beloved friend and colleague Binchois (d 1460). Then upon his death the great Josquin Desprez, Ockeghem's pupil, wrote "La déploration sur la mort de Johannes Ockeghem" ("Nymphes des bois/Requiem aeternam") and finally when Josquin himself died Nicolas Gombert wrote "Musae Jovis/Circumdederunt" on his master's death.

The Flemish Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1410-1497) served French kings most of his life, mainly composing masses and French chansons. Fewer than ten of his motets (sacred, non-liturgical vocal composition in Latin) survive, though that was the most common genre at the time. He did not like imitation between the voices, and most of his melodies are non-imitative, non-repetitive, and seem more continuous and non-structured than they really are. It was common at the time to have pieces that had multiple lines in different languages, and in particular to have a vernacular text in a piece with a Latin-texted cantus firmus (a pre-existing melody inserted in the piece, most often a plainchant melody). In Mort, tu as navré/Pie Jhesu, a piece of archaic flavor, Ockeghem combines not only the French and Latin languages, but also the styles of the French ballade with the motet style. The form is that of a ballade, with its treble-dominated texture, but the structure is dictated by the medieval motet tradition of the cantus firmus. The plainchant in the tenor comes from the ending of the "Dies irae," which is the most dramatic section of the Requiem (the mass for the dead).

The Flemish Josquin Desprez (c.1450/55-1521) was certainly the most famous of the early Renaissance composers. Researchers are constantly learning new details about Desprez: His real name, as discovered just a couple of years ago, was Lebloitte, but he was known also as Josse, Gosse, Joskin, Jossequin, Josquinus, Jodocus, Judocus, Juschino, Desprez, des Près, des Prés, de Prés, a Prato, de Prato, Pratensis. Desprez's pieces embody the Renaissance polyphonic style where each new phrase of text gets a new musical idea, which is in turn passed from voice to voice in imitation. At crucial textual points the voices come together for more declamatory passages. On today's program you will hear both his 24-part canon "Qui habitat" and the piece written upon Ockeghem's death, Nymphes des bois/Requiem aeternam, on a poem by Jehan Molinet. Here too, all the voices but the tenor sing in French, while the tenor sings the Latin text "Requiem aeternam" (the beginning of the Requiem). The piece, for five voices, is in three main parts: the first, with all five voices, is imitative, like any motet, with points of imitation for each phrase. In the second section only the voices in French sing (it was common practice in pieces with a cantus firmus to free the texture of the constraints it imposed). For the final invocation (give him peace) all voices join the tenor and sing homophonically the Latin words for "may he rest in peace". The canon Qui habitat is a kind of tour de force. Each voice part (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass) is divided into six sections, which sing the appropriate line in a canon. However, each voice part has a specific musical line, so there are four different musical lines, creating a 24-part polyphony. The parts start one after the other at one-bar intervals. The effect is that of a gradual "pile up," as bar by bar all 24 voices are heard, but in four groups, as though creating four "rooms." The canon was one of Josquin's favorite devices.

Nicolas Gombert (c1495-c1560) was a South Netherlandish composer, who was probably a pupil of Josquin in Condé. Gombert worked as a singer for the court chapel of Emperor Charles V and also as a ma”tre des enfants (conductor and teacher for the children of the choir) and as court composer, though without the official title. Because of a crime he committed he was sent first to prison and then exiled. We know that he was pardoned and that he returned home, but it is not known how long he survived; we only know he was alive in 1556 and dead by 1561. As a worthy pupil of Josquin, he composed music in a highly contrapuntal manner, even more so than his master did. In fact, he tended to give the voices very few pauses and move them in what is called pervading imitation. Because of the pervasiveness of imitation (a new point of imitation for each new phrase of text) the voices tend to have equal importance. He did favor lower and darker ranges. Indeed, Musae Jovis/Circumdederunt, his tribute to Josquin, is scored for six low parts: a very low cantus, an alto part, and four tenor and bass parts. This piece is somewhat unusual in Gombert's output in that it uses some techniques that he tended not to use, such as cantus firmus.

Orlando di Lasso (born Roland [Orland] de Lassus 1530 or 1532-1594) was one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance, known for his versatility, his emotional style, and his musical vigor. His catalogue of works is impressive, including everything from masses and motets to French chansons, Italian madrigals, German lieder and everything in between, including sassy and licentious pieces as well. He traveled widely and worked for many years in Italy and then, from 1556 for the court of Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria in Münich. The Stabat Mater is an eight-part work added at the end of his second book of four-part Sacrae cantiones (1585). The text of the "Stabat Mater" is a 13th-century poem of uncertain authorship. For many years it was attributed to Iacopone da Todi, but other suggestions include Pope Innocent III (1161-1216), which found its way into the Roman Catholic liturgy in the late 15th century. The Council of Trent (1543-63) removed it from the liturgy but it was revived in 1727 for use on the Feast of the Seven Dolours (September 15). It is also used as an Office hymn on the Friday following Passion Sunday. Lasso's setting is a motet-like piece, with the two uneven choirs each taking alternate verses, to join only in the last one. While imitation is used throughout, listen for unusual and quick changes of harmony and the occasional chordal declamation.

Jacobus Gallus (Jacob Handl 1550-1591) was a Catholic Slovenian composer and Cistercian monk who lived most of his life in Austria and Bohemia. His birth name was probably Petelin ("rooster"), which in German translates to Handl ("little rooster") and which he eventually Latinized to Gallus. It is under the latter name that he was most commonly known. Gallus was in Austria from the mid-1560s until 1575, and then spent a few years traveling around Bohemia and surrounding regions. From 1580 he served as choirmaster to the Bishop of Olomouc, Stanislaus Pavlovsky, and by 1586 he was in Prague, serving as Kantor in St. Jan Church. He died in Prague at the early age of 41, leaving an astonishing corpus of over 500 works, most of them settings of sacred Latin texts. Alleluia! Cantate Domino (SATB SATB SATB) is a motet in which each verse receives a different treatment and is sandwiched between two "alleluia" statements. In this piece, you will hear alternating choirs responding to each other; sections of varying rhythms, moods, texture, and meter; and the rich 12-part sound. We can also see a favorite device of Gallus'sÑdisplacing the downbeat (the strongest first note of each bar) to another place in the bar, so that even within one section with the same meter variety can be created. For example, at "et exsultate et psallite" the strong note is on beat four, or in the last alleluia the three choirs all sing in what we hear as triplets though the alternation of the choirs creates a duple meter. Laudate Dominum is for two eight-part SSAATTBB choirs. Each of the rapid-fire exchanges (especially on "Laudate") acquires thus great drama and impact. The piece starts in duple meter and then switches to the lilting and more "perfect" triple meter.

Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli (uncle and nephew) were the main creators of and composers in the new Venetian concerto (polychoral) style in which blocks of heterogeneous sounds by "choirs" of voices and/or instruments came from different parts of the space. Andrea Gabrieli (c. 1532-1585) was the first Venetian composer of international stature after a period in which Netherlandish composers had been dominant in the city. Not much is known about Andrea's early life. In 1557, he unsuccessfully applied for the position of organist in St. Mark's, which was instead won by Claudio Merulo. He did serve under the duke of Bavaria with Lasso (1562) and was finally hired at St. Mark's sometime between the end of 1564 and 1566, where he remained as organist until his death some 19 years later. Andrea published music in many styles and genres, including quite a few ceremonial polychoral works, the style of which he may have learned when at the court of the duke of Bavaria with Lasso. The pieces he composed later tend towards the simpler chordal style of Giovanni's works. He also composed many pieces for the organ, including intonazioniÑshort improvisatory works arising from the necessity to provide the choir with pitches for singing. Maria Magdalene, Maria Jacobi is a seven-part motet scored for SSAATBB. It was first published in 1587 though it was certainly performed during Andrea Gabrieli's life. The 1587 print was from a collection titled Concerti di Andrea, e di Gio[vanni] Gabrieli... , which contained concerti (i.e., pieces for voices and instruments together) composed by both uncle and nephew. The performance of one or more parts by an instrument was often the conductor's choice. This piece is fairly contrapuntal and has extensive imitation, with each new phrase of text having a new melodic segment elaborated in imitation by each successive voice. The motet ends, as was typical, with a lively alleluia.

Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1554/7-1612) achieved more fame than his uncle even though his production is almost exclusively for the church. Like Andrea, Giovanni spent some time studying with Lasso at the court of Bavaria in Munich. In 1584, he temporarily filled the vacant organist position at St. Mark's. By the next year he had successfully won the position of permanent organist, which he kept until his death. Therefore he and his uncle served together as organists for about a year. After the death of Andrea, Giovanni edited many works by his uncle and supervised the publication of the 1587 volume mentioned above. After Andrea's death, Giovanni took over the role of principal composer of ceremonial music for St. Mark's, while also working as the principal organist of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, a major confraternity of Venice. Giovanni Gabrieli composed and published quite a few pieces intended for use in St. Mark's, including the most famous collection Sacrae symphoniae for 6-16 voices and instruments of 1597, which was followed by a second posthumous volume in 1615 titled Symphoniae sacrae ... liber secundus. He is also known for having taught many an important composer, including Schütz, who studied with him from 1609 to his death in 1612.

Most of Gabrieli's motets were intended for important liturgical occasions, such as Pentecost, Easter, and Christmas. His earliest works (almost all with cori spezzati, i.e., broken choirsÑmultiple choirs) tend to be in the style of Andrea, that is with chordal motion and mostly syllabic declamation. In his later works Giovanni starts to explore more possibilities and expands his musical language to include a larger amount of dissonance and imitation between choirs. His lively rhythms become a trademark. Often times he contrasts two unequal choirs, a higher and a lower one, called a coro superiore (usually SSAT) and a coro grave (usually ATBB). A similar device was also used by Andrea. One such piece on today's program is his Plaudite, psallite. Plaudite has 12 parts, including a coro superiore, a coro grave, and a regular four-part choir in the middle. It starts with a three fold invocation by T2, T1, and A3 in turn, followed by all parts singing together "omnis terra" (all the earth). Like many pieces in this antiphonal style by Giovanni, this one features a ritornello (refrain) on the words alleluia after each line of text. The most interesting feature of this piece is the variation in sound quality with the enormous variety of groupings of parts. The motet Sancta Maria succurre miseris (scored for SSATTBB) was one of the most famous motets published in the 1597 volume of Sacrae sinfoniae. It was republished in 1600 with different words and in 1617 for organ, and is also included in a Slovak manuscript. Its style is similar to Andrea's seven-part motets, with pervasive imitation and with each line of text carrying a new melody.

Heinrich Schütz (alias Henricus Sagittarius, 1585-1672) epitomizes the early German Baroque. After a long and legendary life he was memorialized on the epitaph in the old Frauenkirche of Dresden as "saeculi sui Musicus excellentissimus," the most excellent musician of his time. Schütz's early musical accomplishments impressed the Landgrave Moritz, who took the 13-year old boy with him to Kassel as choirboy and to study music, and later convinced Schütz to drop studies in law for music. The Landgrave paid for the composer's studies in Venice with Giovanni Gabrieli. Upon his return to Kassel, Schütz was summoned by the elector Johann Georg I (1585-1656) to Dresden for two months. In 1615, the elector requested Schütz's services for an additional two years and finally as a permanent member of the court, with which the Landgrave had to comply, if reluctantly, for political reasons.

The two pieces on today's program come from Schütz's "Songs of David" (Psalmen Davids), a monumental collection of psalm settings that Schütz composed in Venice and after his return in 1613. In them, the opulent, majestic, and sometimes extravagant Venetian style of Giovanni Gabrieli and his uncle Andrea shines through. The Psalmen Davids were published in 1619 after a lengthy period of gestation, during which Schütz explored ways of adapting the polychoral and concertato techniques he had learned in Venice to the demands of his native language and Lutheran ritual. Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied is a setting of Psalm 98, scored for two SATB choirs. In response to the colorful text, Schütz employs sweeping melismatic patterns for "trumpets and cornet," "let the sea roar," "floods," and "let the hills be joyful." The lesser Doxology (Glory be to the Lord...) concludes the piece. Unusual for Schütz, the beginning of the Doxology recalls the beginning of the piece. Aus der Tiefe ruf ich, Herr, zu dir is a setting of Psalm 130 "a penitential text" and calls for two SATB choirs. The work is set in a freely treated form of the Phrygian (E minor) mode (traditionally associated with sorrow and contrition) and discloses a pattern of powerful antiphonal echoes, with "waves" of overlapping choral entries. This piece has a combination of Venetian-like antiphonal movement and Renaissance-like polyphony. The sorrowful side of the texts is often portrayed with extreme dissonances, almost painfully excruciating (such as at the very beginning).

Thomas Tallis (c. 1505-1585) was without doubt the greatest English composer of the middle of the 16th century. He served as a lay clerk at Canterbury Cathedral and then as Gentleman of the Chapel Royal during the reigns of four monarchs (Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth). He was married in his late forties, but no children are known to have been born to the couple. Tallis was among the first to set English words to music for the rites of the Church of England, although most of his vocal music was written in Latin. A composer of great contrapuntal skill, his works show intense expressivity and are cast in a bewildering variety of styles. Though Tallis learned his trade in the English tradition of florid music, which preserved the independence of individual voices much more than on the Continent, he was content to compose in an unostentatious manner, relying not on technical display but on the mastery and control born of long experience. In his middle years, he turned to the imitative technique of Josquin Desprez and his followers. Later on, he became more concerned with the association of musical design with the words being set.

The Latin motet Laudate Dominum is a so-called "psalm-motet," a fashionable genre in the 1560s. It is written in a thoroughly modern style, with alternating sections of homophony and of points of imitation (such as at the beginning of the piece). Even though he was a recusant Catholic, Tallis had to compose for whichever sovereign he happened to be serving and so, ironically, he is remembered as one of the earliest composers who wrote Anglican music (during the reign of Edward VI first and then again for Elizabeth at the end of his own life). The anthem on today's program, If Ye Love Me, is found in an early source of Anglican music (the "Wanley" partbooks, copied between 1546 and 1548). This piece clearly responded to the demands of the reformers for more simple and chordal settings, though it does include a couple of points of imitation within the predominantly homophonic texture. Like many early Anglican anthems, it is cast in ABB form, the second section repeated twice.

Michael Praetorius (born Michael Schultheiss in Thuringia around 1571- died in 1621), was the son of a Lutheran pastor and served for part of his career at the Dresden court of the Elector Johann Georg of Saxony. Praetorius's musical style was strongly influenced by the Germans Schütz and Scheidt, and by the latest Italian music, which heard in Dresden in the 1610s. His creative power was impressive and his output is astonishing (the list of works he had already written as well as those he still planned to write consumed 28 pages of his treatise Syntagma musicum of 1614-15). Most of Praetorius's sacred music is based on Protestant hymns (chorales).

Herzlich lieb hab ich dich, o Herr is a motet for eight parts on a text by Martin Schalling (1532-1608), written around 1567 "for the dying" and first published in 1571. Based on Psalms 18 and 73, it has been described as "a jewel of the Church from the heart of Schalling." The composer of the chorale tune that is imbedded in the piece is unknown, though the music first appeared in Strassburg in 1577. (J.S. Bach's St. John Passion heartwarmingly and thrillingly concludes with a choral rendition of the third stanza of this beautiful chorale.) The choral setting by Praetorius, for two choirs, exploits all techniques for double choir. It also includes a number of Italianate madrigalisms, such as an acceleration of rhythm and an increase of flourishes for "erfreuet mich" (makes me happy) even though it turns ironic since the text actually says "nicht erfreuet mich" (does not make me happy). Notice also the grandiose full-texture invocations "Herr Jesu Christ". The third verse (at "Ach Herr lass dein liebe Engelein"ÑLord, let at last Thine angels come) is set in an appropriately angelic tone, as if a child were speaking. Frohlock O Tochter Zion fast is a piece taken from the collection Puericinium which contains pieces set for a choir of treble voices (SSAA) and a capella of TTB, all with instruments doubling. While the treble voices sing most of the piece, imitating and chasing each other, the bottom parts join in at the end of the two sections for rousing conclusions.

A feature of our program is that most composers studied with one another: Gombert studied with Josquin who studied with Ockeghem, Schütz was a pupil of Giovanni Gabrieli, who together with his uncle Andrea were pupils of Lasso. We hope you will hear the different styles as well as some of the musical interrelationships among the composers. The main interest of this concert may well be to recognize the plethora of choices composers made within the polychoral idiom, and to recognize the "regional" differences, from Venice to Dresden, to Münich and Prague, and across the Channel.
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Alexandra Amati-Camperi, Ph.D., 2006