March 5-7, 2010
Program Notes by Sanford Dole
Having been raised in a fairly “low” Presbyterian church that placed no great emphasis on Lent, I was never expected to give up meat and other pleasures for the six and a half weeks from Ash Wednesday to Easter. However, I have always loved the penitential music associated with the Lenten season. As our March concerts happen to fall in Lent, we invite you to explore this extremely beautiful repertoire with us now.
Lent is traditionally a somber time for meditating on Jesus’ suffering and death and on the fearful prospect of our own deaths. Expressions of joy are banished, and no alleluias are sung. So you will hear penitence, fear, mystery, and awe in the Lenten pieces on this program and a similar mix of emotions in the funeral music as well.
The music is not all doom and gloom, though. A dominant theme of Christianity is that Christ died in order to be resurrected and open the way for all people to pass through death to a life of everlasting joy. A funeral can be as much the celebration of a life on earth and a new life in heaven as the mourning of a death. Likewise, music for the dark days of Lent often expresses bright hope for better times ahead. To illustrate that, we sing Easter pieces at the end of each half of the program and let the alleluias burst forth.
This program has been especially fitting for me personally. My partner died of cancer in January, and rehearsing these pieces has been an important part of my grieving process.
I have never been more appreciative of having music in my life.
We begin with a Requiem by the Portuguese composer Duarte Lôbo, who is believed to have been born in 1565. He rose to become maestro de capilla at Lisbon Cathedral when only 29 and held that plum post the rest of his life. His contemporaries at the height of the Renaissance acknowledged Lôbo as one of the finest musicians of their time, and the six volumes of liturgical music he published show his mastery of the polyphonic style that Palestrina had established two generations earlier, as well as more contemporary dissonances.
The eight voices in the Mass for the Dead of 1621 allow for a great variety of vocal textures. At its most complex, seven voices weave a contrapuntal web around a plainchant melody in the eighth voice. At other times, all eight parts sing together or split into two choirs in antiphonal “conversation.” Or Lôbo may step back from the grandeur of eight voices to employ reduced combinations. The longest such passage is a trio in the third movement on the text “In memoria æterna erit justus.” Lôbo’s Missa pro defunctis is a wonderful way to become acquainted with his unique style.
Next comes music of another Iberian composer, Cristóbal Morales, a Spaniard born at the start of the 16th century, a few generations before Lôbo. His career got off to an early start, too, with his appointment by age 30 as maestro de capilla of Avila, the oldest Gothic cathedral in Spain. In 1535 he moved to Rome and sang for ten years in the papal choir, as Pope Paul III was partial to Spanish singers. From that time on, Morales composed prolifically and with such artistry that he became the first Spanish composer renowned throughout Europe. Despite his fame, financial and political difficulties kept him from finding permanent employment. He worked for the emperor for a time, then for Cosimo de’ Medici, and then returned to Spain to hold the post of maestro de capilla at a succession of cathedrals.
We present three motets by Morales that bracket the Lenten season. “Inter vestibulum et altare” and “Emendemus in melius” are an antiphon and responsory for the Ash Wednesday service at the very start of Lent. “Vidi aquam” is sung at Mass for the sprinkling of holy water during the Easter season that follows Lent. (A different sprinkling text is sung the rest of the year.) Morales’ florid setting of “Vidi aquam” highlights the Easter alleluias.
One thing to listen for in “Emendemus in melius” is the innovative use of a fifth voice with a separate text. The usual four voices sing the primary text, and an extra alto part enters last with a cantus firmus on the words the priest says as he daubs each forehead with ashes, “Remember, man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The altos intone the same Gregorian chant six times, alternating between a low key and a higher one, as the other four parts weave around them in achingly beautiful and constantly shifting polyphony.
After intermission, we present music by an Italian composer, but to hear it you would hardly guess that he is from the Renaissance like Morales and Lôbo. He might seem to have more in common with the composers who follow him on the program. Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, was born in 1561 in Naples to a family of wealthy and respected aristocrats. One uncle was canonized as Saint Charles Borromeo, and Pope Pius IV was his mother’s uncle. The family acquired the principality of Venosa a year before the composer’s birth.
Today Gesualdo’s musical genius is apparent, but for centuries he was ignored as a composer and was famous, or rather notorious, only as the bloodiest murderer in the history of music. When Gesualdo discovered that his wife of two years was unfaithful, he arranged to catch her and her lover in flagrante delicto. He slew them in the bed and left their mutilated bodies on display in front of the palace. As a nobleman, he was immune from prosecution, but he fled across the mountains from Naples to Venosa to avoid revenge. After that time, he rarely left his castle in Venosa, and taking pleasure in nothing but music, he used his great wealth to keep in residence a virtuoso ensemble of musicians who performed for him alone.
Gesualdo’s works are among the most experimental music written in the Renaissance and are certainly the most chromatic. Chord progressions like those in his intensely expressive madrigals and sacred music did not reappear until the 19th century. Characteristic of his style is a sectional format in which relatively slow passages of wild, even shocking, harmonies alternate with quick passages in intricate rhythms. This is quite evident in the two motets we sing from his Tenebrae Responsories for Holy Saturday.
Two years ago the chorus performed a set of Marian Motets by Frank Ferko, an American composer who recently moved to the Bay Area from Chicago. He earned a doctorate from Northwestern University and has made a name for himself both as a scholar of the music of Olivier Messiaen and as a composer. When I discovered that his simple yet lush style makes his music as gratifying for the singer as for the listener, I knew we would have to present more of it. Ferko’s Motet for Passion Sunday on a text from the vespers for Palm Sunday in the Byzantine Rite was an easy choice for this program.
The Funeral Ikos of John Tavener, like most of this British composer’s music, is in the Orthodox Christian tradition. Although the text is from the Order for the Burial of Dead Priests, I associate the piece with Holy Week and have often programmed it for Good Friday services at St. Gregory’s in San Francisco. The repetition of the chant-like melody alternating with simple three-part harmony creates an aura that I find deeply moving.
Our program concludes with exquisite choral music from Josef Gabriel Rheinberger. Born in Lichtenstein in 1839, he emerged as a child prodigy at the age of five. A special device was created to allow his feet to reach the pedals on the organ at the town church during his tenure as organist from age seven to twelve when he went to Munich to attend its conservatory. He took his degree at 15 and returned to Munich Conservatory five years later to begin a long and illustrious career as a professor and composer.
Organists have long been familiar with Rheinberger, and now with more performances of his work in other genres, he appears to be regaining the popularity he enjoyed in his lifetime. The choral music, in particular, is distinguished by masterful compositional technique that shows an absolute command of counterpoint and formal structures. His chromatic harmonies, altered chords, and songlike melodies unmistakably evoke the spirit of late German Romanticism.
Rheinberger wrote his cycle of Four Six-Part Motets for concert performance as well as liturgical use, and it is perfect for our program. The tone is far from funereal in the first motet, “Anima nostra,” but it would be sung at Mass on saints’ days honoring more than one martyr. “Meditabor” and “Laudate Dominum” are for particular Sundays in Lent, and “Angelus Domini” with its Easter Monday text lets us conclude with a jubilant cascade of alleluias.
Thank you for joining us for this program of music for a time when Christians look inward seeking forgiveness—and when I am grieving personally. Lent is also a time that looks forward with hope to the celebration of Easter, and we hope to see you again in June for our concerts of music with piano four-hands. The chorus will perform my own composition The Fabric of Peace paired with the much loved Liebeslieder Waltzes by Johannes Brahms.
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