A RENAISSANCE CHRISTMAS
December 6-7-8, 2013
Program Notes by Sanford Dole
Program Notes by Sanford Dole
Welcome to Bay Choral Guild’s 2013-14 season! Long-time fans will know that I like to cover many different eras and styles every year. Unlike past seasons, however, as I was putting together the plan for this, our 35th season, I found it made more sense to focus on one period in each of our three concerts than to present a variety within each show.
Tonight we are singing music that was composed, with one exception, in the late Renaissance period—the half-century covering the years of 1570-1620. Starting with the first commercial printing of musical scores in 1501 in Venice, the 16th century saw a great flowering of musical development. Print runs of 500-2000 copies were commonplace and fed a growing demand all across Europe among the new bourgeois public, initially amateurs for whom performing music was a higher form of recreation. The Italian and English madrigal traditions met the demands of a newly cultivated public. Along with the increasing interest in such secular music came the publication of sacred music in all its forms and varieties, both Catholic and Protestant, devotional and liturgical, Latin and vernacular.
By the end of the 16th century, with the growth of music schools, the publication of books on the art of composition, and composers from the north traveling to the music centers in Italy for education and exposure, choral music saw a huge flowering. By this time, the constraints of medieval music―including rhythmic modes, isorhythms, and the cantus firmus principle―had largely been transcended with the development of harmony, musica ficta, and the introduction of chromaticism and modulation. This is the period of music I wanted to explore in tonight’s program.
Along with the musical developments noted above, more attention began to be paid to the connection of the words to the music. With that in mind, I found it made sense to group the music by liturgical season. We’ll start with five anthems whose texts explore the themes of Advent, the period when the church anticipates the arrival of Christ. Then we’ll proceed to Christmas itself, with much celebration of the birth of Jesus. We’ll conclude with two motets related to Epiphany, the feast day celebrating the revelation of God the Son as a human being. Most of us in Western churches know Epiphany as the day (January 6) marking the visit of the Magi to the Christ child; however, Eastern Christians commemorate the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River, a different sort of revelation.
As often happens in a survey such as this, I wasn’t able to include works by all the great composers from this era. Sadly lacking are any pieces by Palestrina and other Italian greats, Flemish masters such as Josquin and Ockegem, and the English superstars Byrd and Tallis. However we are singing many of my favorite works from the Renaissance and we hope you find the program rewarding.
Each half of the program begins with a work by Dutch master Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. He spent most of his life in Amsterdam, where he was organist at Oude Kerk for 44 years, a position his father also held. Sweelinck’s organ compositions were very important in the development of music, and his innovations, particularly the introduction of the fugue, were to have a profound impact. In addition to many psalm settings, his 39 motets display the richness, complexity and spatial sense of the Gabrielis, with whom he was familiar from his travels to Venice. His Hodie Christus natus est, which begins the second half of our program, has long been one of my favorite Christmas motets. I enjoy the fact that he has divided the text into four sections, each announced by the first word, Hodie (Today), in triple meter followed by delightfully intricate contrapuntal statements in duple time. New to me is our program opener, Magnificat. This text, the Song of Mary, is sung year-round in Western churches, although it has special significance during the season of Advent. I find this piece amazingly advanced harmonically for its time, and the word painting is striking. In particular, listen at the words “timentibus eum” (to them that fear him) for the unusual use of the chromatic scale, which suggests to me a cowering, fearful gesture of the body, perfectly illustrating the meaning of the words.
Hans Leo Hassler is represented with three pieces on the program, one from each liturgical season. Born in Germany, he was among those that studied in Venice at the height of the development of the polychoral style later to be known as the Venetian school. In fact, he became friends with the greatest exponent of this style, Giovani Gabrieli, when both were students of Giovanni’s uncle, Andrea. Upon the death of the elder Gabrieli, Hassler returned to Germany, bringing the innovations of the Venetian school across the Alps. He took a position as organist in Augsburg, and later as Kapellmeister in his home town of Nuremburg. The simple beauty of his four-part motet, Dixit Maria, which sets a portion of the Magnificat text, and his six-part Epiphany motet, Tribus miraculis, makes them enjoyable to sing and satisfying to listen to. His Christmas motet, Verbum caro factum est, is almost a double-choir piece, as the three-part women’s voices often sing alone, alternating with the three men’s parts. It is one of my all-time favorite Christmas anthems, one that I’ve programmed on BCG concerts in the past as well as at St. Gregory’s.
Ave Virgo sanctissima, a hymn to Mary, is by Francisco Guerrero, a child prodigy who went on to become second only to Victoria in the Spanish Renaissance. This motet has a fascinating formal structure. The women sing a melody in canon throughout, the second group starting two measures after the first group. All the while the men’s voices, in three parts, support and harmonize the beguiling round in the upper voices.
Peter Philips, composer of Alma Redemptoris Mater, another Marion text, is less well known than his English contemporaries. Like William Byrd, who had also received early training as a chorister at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London twenty years earlier, Philips was a Catholic. Likely for this reason he left England for good at the age of 20. He went to Rome, where he stayed three years engaged as the organist at the English Jesuit College. There he met a fellow Catholic exile, Baron Thomas Paget, with whom he traveled throughout Italy, Spain, France, and Belgium as a court musician. Over his lifetime he was extremely prolific; his surviving motets alone number in the hundreds. While these works do show some English characteristics, they are mostly in the more conservative style of his Italian colleagues.
Michael Praetorius was born Michael Schultze, the youngest son of a Lutheran pastor in Creutzberg, Germany. (Praetorius is the conventional Latinized version of his family name.) He is no relation of Hieronymous Praetorius, whose work also appears on this program, although there is evidence that the two met in Gröningen, along with Hans Leo Hassler. Michael went on to work in churches and for various dukes and electors around Germany before he died on his 50th birthday. We’ll conclude the Advent portion of our program with his delightful setting of the tune Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, made popular by J.S. Bach’s harmonization and sung in English-speaking churches as “Sleepers, wake!” This version appeared quite a bit earlier, however. Rather more dense in texture than we usually expect―there are seven different voices―the tune is nonetheless recognizable. The counterpoint is very imaginative, with the familiar three-note opening motive set in myriad ways. Listen too for the three part canon sung by the men at the text “Wohlauf, der Bräutgam kommt.”
We’ll start our celebration of Christmas with Giovani Gabrieli’s setting of Hodie Christus natus est, a classic example of cori spezzati (separated choirs). After studying in Munich with Orlando di Lasso, Gabrieli returned to Venice to become the principal organist at St. Mark’s Basilica. He went on to become the most influential musician of his time, and represents the culmination of the Venetian School style as it transitioned from the Late Renaissance to the Baroque period. If you have ever had the chance to visit St. Mark’s, you will find it easy to imagine how sonorously the two choirs would resonate in that grand edifice.
Our one piece from earlier in the Renaissance era, as well as our only French entry, was composed by Jean Mouton. Born in 1459, he became a priest in the 1480’s and by 1500 was put in charge of the choirboys at the cathedral in Amien. Within ten years he was the principle composer of the French court and would remain in the kings’ employ for the rest of his life, creating new works for state occasions such as weddings, coronations, papal elections, births, and deaths. Quaeramus cum pastoribus holds special significance for me. It was included on the first Christmas concert presented by Chanticleer in 1979 and appears on one of the first recordings of the group. I love the simple four-part texture using paired imitation and other canonic techniques, somewhat reminiscent of Josquin des Prez’s style. I agree with one scholar of Mouton’s day who said “his melody flows in a supple thread.”
Among Michael Praetorius’s published works is the nine-volume Musae Sioniae (1605-1610), a collection of more than twelve hundred chorale and song arrangements. From the last volume of this huge collection comes the delightful arrangement for two voices of In dulci jubilo that we will hear tonight. More of an etude than a full blown arrangement, it is nonetheless a beguiling setting of the familiar tune, especially when sung by sisters whose voices are beautifully matched.
The first half of our program will conclude with another well-known Christmas melody, Joseph lieber, Joseph mein. This version for 8-part choir, with its “macaronic” text (in both Latin and German), is by Hieronymous Praetorius, who was born and lived most of his life in Hamburg. He is known as the first composer to compile a collection of four-part German chorales with organ accompaniment, a style that was to become standard in Protestant churches for centuries. Joseph lieber is lovingly crafted, like most of his choral music, in the Venetian polychoral style. In this case, a four-part women’s choir alternates with a four-part men’s choir, which come together for grand cadences.
The second half of our program will feature the music of Tomás Luis de Victoria. He was the most famous composer of the 16th century in Spain, and one of the most important composers of the Counter-Reformation, along with Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Orlando di Lasso. He was a priest as well as an accomplished organist and singer, but preferred the life of composer. Perhaps that is why, after studying in Rome (with Palestrina) and entering the priesthood, he returned to Spain at the behest of Phillip II to become the chaplain and convent organist to the Dowager Empress Maria. Victoria was paid much more than he could have made as a cathedral chapelmaster, and therefore stayed in the Empress’ employ for the rest of her life and beyond. The job allowed him opportunities for frequent travel (including attending Palestrina’s funeral in 1594) and ample time for composing.
We will sing what may be the greatest Christmas motet ever composed, Victoria’s sublime setting of O magnum mysterium. It is likely that you have heard this work many times. Although I have performed this work just about every year since I first sang it in high school, I find it never gets old. Revisiting this exquisite piece of art is a part of Christmas tradition for many. To extend the chance to live in the wonderful world of Victoria’s genius, we will then sing his Mass setting based (loosely) on the motet. The connection is most evident in the opening of the Kyrie and again at the start of the Sanctus. Here, the sopranos sing the interval of a descending fifth, followed by the altos, in the same manner as in the opening bars of the motet. But then, as the Mass text unfolds, the music spins out in glorious counterpoint.
Somewhat unusual among Victoria’s 22 Mass settings, the final Agnus Dei movement is set for five voices instead of four. The sopranos divide and sing in canon in the same manner as was employed in Guerrero’s Ave Virgo sanctissima. Also, in a standard Mass, the Agnus Dei consists of three repetitions of one line of text, the third of which substitutes dona nobis pacem (grant us peace) for miserere nobis (have mercy on us). Victoria set only the first line; it is unclear whether the choir masters of his day would know to sing the three repetitions. Tonight we are compromising by singing it just twice, omitting the middle repetition.
The concluding Epiphany motets include the aforementioned Tribus miraculis by Hassler and a work by another one of my favorites, Orlando di Lasso. Born in Mons in what is now the Belgian province of Hainaut, he is considered the chief representative of the polyphonic Franco-Flemish school. Blessed with a beautiful boy-soprano singing voice, he left the Low Countries at age twelve for Italy, where his talents developed. He later worked as a singer and composer in Naples and Rome before landing a job in Munich, where he settled and married. Videntes stellam is a fine example of text setting. Note how when the kings find the boy and fall prostrate to worship him, the music goes low and still in an aural representation of that image. Later, when they present their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, notice how animated and “sparkly” the musical setting of the word aurum(gold) is!
Thank you come for coming tonight and supporting the choral arts. We hope this concert will send you into the holidays feeling uplifted as we face the long nights of December. Next up in our season-long tour of different eras will be the classical period. You won’t want to miss our festival of music by the great Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Joining us for the concerts at the end of February will be the wonderful Jubilate Orchestra and four outstanding soloists. This program is sure to be a feast of classical beauty.
Then in June, make plans to expand your knowledge of the current trends in choral music. I’ve discovered many exquisite settings of the world’s great poetry by mostly living composers. This program is sure to be a revelation and a pleasure to the ear.
Tonight we are singing music that was composed, with one exception, in the late Renaissance period—the half-century covering the years of 1570-1620. Starting with the first commercial printing of musical scores in 1501 in Venice, the 16th century saw a great flowering of musical development. Print runs of 500-2000 copies were commonplace and fed a growing demand all across Europe among the new bourgeois public, initially amateurs for whom performing music was a higher form of recreation. The Italian and English madrigal traditions met the demands of a newly cultivated public. Along with the increasing interest in such secular music came the publication of sacred music in all its forms and varieties, both Catholic and Protestant, devotional and liturgical, Latin and vernacular.
By the end of the 16th century, with the growth of music schools, the publication of books on the art of composition, and composers from the north traveling to the music centers in Italy for education and exposure, choral music saw a huge flowering. By this time, the constraints of medieval music―including rhythmic modes, isorhythms, and the cantus firmus principle―had largely been transcended with the development of harmony, musica ficta, and the introduction of chromaticism and modulation. This is the period of music I wanted to explore in tonight’s program.
Along with the musical developments noted above, more attention began to be paid to the connection of the words to the music. With that in mind, I found it made sense to group the music by liturgical season. We’ll start with five anthems whose texts explore the themes of Advent, the period when the church anticipates the arrival of Christ. Then we’ll proceed to Christmas itself, with much celebration of the birth of Jesus. We’ll conclude with two motets related to Epiphany, the feast day celebrating the revelation of God the Son as a human being. Most of us in Western churches know Epiphany as the day (January 6) marking the visit of the Magi to the Christ child; however, Eastern Christians commemorate the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River, a different sort of revelation.
As often happens in a survey such as this, I wasn’t able to include works by all the great composers from this era. Sadly lacking are any pieces by Palestrina and other Italian greats, Flemish masters such as Josquin and Ockegem, and the English superstars Byrd and Tallis. However we are singing many of my favorite works from the Renaissance and we hope you find the program rewarding.
Each half of the program begins with a work by Dutch master Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. He spent most of his life in Amsterdam, where he was organist at Oude Kerk for 44 years, a position his father also held. Sweelinck’s organ compositions were very important in the development of music, and his innovations, particularly the introduction of the fugue, were to have a profound impact. In addition to many psalm settings, his 39 motets display the richness, complexity and spatial sense of the Gabrielis, with whom he was familiar from his travels to Venice. His Hodie Christus natus est, which begins the second half of our program, has long been one of my favorite Christmas motets. I enjoy the fact that he has divided the text into four sections, each announced by the first word, Hodie (Today), in triple meter followed by delightfully intricate contrapuntal statements in duple time. New to me is our program opener, Magnificat. This text, the Song of Mary, is sung year-round in Western churches, although it has special significance during the season of Advent. I find this piece amazingly advanced harmonically for its time, and the word painting is striking. In particular, listen at the words “timentibus eum” (to them that fear him) for the unusual use of the chromatic scale, which suggests to me a cowering, fearful gesture of the body, perfectly illustrating the meaning of the words.
Hans Leo Hassler is represented with three pieces on the program, one from each liturgical season. Born in Germany, he was among those that studied in Venice at the height of the development of the polychoral style later to be known as the Venetian school. In fact, he became friends with the greatest exponent of this style, Giovani Gabrieli, when both were students of Giovanni’s uncle, Andrea. Upon the death of the elder Gabrieli, Hassler returned to Germany, bringing the innovations of the Venetian school across the Alps. He took a position as organist in Augsburg, and later as Kapellmeister in his home town of Nuremburg. The simple beauty of his four-part motet, Dixit Maria, which sets a portion of the Magnificat text, and his six-part Epiphany motet, Tribus miraculis, makes them enjoyable to sing and satisfying to listen to. His Christmas motet, Verbum caro factum est, is almost a double-choir piece, as the three-part women’s voices often sing alone, alternating with the three men’s parts. It is one of my all-time favorite Christmas anthems, one that I’ve programmed on BCG concerts in the past as well as at St. Gregory’s.
Ave Virgo sanctissima, a hymn to Mary, is by Francisco Guerrero, a child prodigy who went on to become second only to Victoria in the Spanish Renaissance. This motet has a fascinating formal structure. The women sing a melody in canon throughout, the second group starting two measures after the first group. All the while the men’s voices, in three parts, support and harmonize the beguiling round in the upper voices.
Peter Philips, composer of Alma Redemptoris Mater, another Marion text, is less well known than his English contemporaries. Like William Byrd, who had also received early training as a chorister at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London twenty years earlier, Philips was a Catholic. Likely for this reason he left England for good at the age of 20. He went to Rome, where he stayed three years engaged as the organist at the English Jesuit College. There he met a fellow Catholic exile, Baron Thomas Paget, with whom he traveled throughout Italy, Spain, France, and Belgium as a court musician. Over his lifetime he was extremely prolific; his surviving motets alone number in the hundreds. While these works do show some English characteristics, they are mostly in the more conservative style of his Italian colleagues.
Michael Praetorius was born Michael Schultze, the youngest son of a Lutheran pastor in Creutzberg, Germany. (Praetorius is the conventional Latinized version of his family name.) He is no relation of Hieronymous Praetorius, whose work also appears on this program, although there is evidence that the two met in Gröningen, along with Hans Leo Hassler. Michael went on to work in churches and for various dukes and electors around Germany before he died on his 50th birthday. We’ll conclude the Advent portion of our program with his delightful setting of the tune Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, made popular by J.S. Bach’s harmonization and sung in English-speaking churches as “Sleepers, wake!” This version appeared quite a bit earlier, however. Rather more dense in texture than we usually expect―there are seven different voices―the tune is nonetheless recognizable. The counterpoint is very imaginative, with the familiar three-note opening motive set in myriad ways. Listen too for the three part canon sung by the men at the text “Wohlauf, der Bräutgam kommt.”
We’ll start our celebration of Christmas with Giovani Gabrieli’s setting of Hodie Christus natus est, a classic example of cori spezzati (separated choirs). After studying in Munich with Orlando di Lasso, Gabrieli returned to Venice to become the principal organist at St. Mark’s Basilica. He went on to become the most influential musician of his time, and represents the culmination of the Venetian School style as it transitioned from the Late Renaissance to the Baroque period. If you have ever had the chance to visit St. Mark’s, you will find it easy to imagine how sonorously the two choirs would resonate in that grand edifice.
Our one piece from earlier in the Renaissance era, as well as our only French entry, was composed by Jean Mouton. Born in 1459, he became a priest in the 1480’s and by 1500 was put in charge of the choirboys at the cathedral in Amien. Within ten years he was the principle composer of the French court and would remain in the kings’ employ for the rest of his life, creating new works for state occasions such as weddings, coronations, papal elections, births, and deaths. Quaeramus cum pastoribus holds special significance for me. It was included on the first Christmas concert presented by Chanticleer in 1979 and appears on one of the first recordings of the group. I love the simple four-part texture using paired imitation and other canonic techniques, somewhat reminiscent of Josquin des Prez’s style. I agree with one scholar of Mouton’s day who said “his melody flows in a supple thread.”
Among Michael Praetorius’s published works is the nine-volume Musae Sioniae (1605-1610), a collection of more than twelve hundred chorale and song arrangements. From the last volume of this huge collection comes the delightful arrangement for two voices of In dulci jubilo that we will hear tonight. More of an etude than a full blown arrangement, it is nonetheless a beguiling setting of the familiar tune, especially when sung by sisters whose voices are beautifully matched.
The first half of our program will conclude with another well-known Christmas melody, Joseph lieber, Joseph mein. This version for 8-part choir, with its “macaronic” text (in both Latin and German), is by Hieronymous Praetorius, who was born and lived most of his life in Hamburg. He is known as the first composer to compile a collection of four-part German chorales with organ accompaniment, a style that was to become standard in Protestant churches for centuries. Joseph lieber is lovingly crafted, like most of his choral music, in the Venetian polychoral style. In this case, a four-part women’s choir alternates with a four-part men’s choir, which come together for grand cadences.
The second half of our program will feature the music of Tomás Luis de Victoria. He was the most famous composer of the 16th century in Spain, and one of the most important composers of the Counter-Reformation, along with Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Orlando di Lasso. He was a priest as well as an accomplished organist and singer, but preferred the life of composer. Perhaps that is why, after studying in Rome (with Palestrina) and entering the priesthood, he returned to Spain at the behest of Phillip II to become the chaplain and convent organist to the Dowager Empress Maria. Victoria was paid much more than he could have made as a cathedral chapelmaster, and therefore stayed in the Empress’ employ for the rest of her life and beyond. The job allowed him opportunities for frequent travel (including attending Palestrina’s funeral in 1594) and ample time for composing.
We will sing what may be the greatest Christmas motet ever composed, Victoria’s sublime setting of O magnum mysterium. It is likely that you have heard this work many times. Although I have performed this work just about every year since I first sang it in high school, I find it never gets old. Revisiting this exquisite piece of art is a part of Christmas tradition for many. To extend the chance to live in the wonderful world of Victoria’s genius, we will then sing his Mass setting based (loosely) on the motet. The connection is most evident in the opening of the Kyrie and again at the start of the Sanctus. Here, the sopranos sing the interval of a descending fifth, followed by the altos, in the same manner as in the opening bars of the motet. But then, as the Mass text unfolds, the music spins out in glorious counterpoint.
Somewhat unusual among Victoria’s 22 Mass settings, the final Agnus Dei movement is set for five voices instead of four. The sopranos divide and sing in canon in the same manner as was employed in Guerrero’s Ave Virgo sanctissima. Also, in a standard Mass, the Agnus Dei consists of three repetitions of one line of text, the third of which substitutes dona nobis pacem (grant us peace) for miserere nobis (have mercy on us). Victoria set only the first line; it is unclear whether the choir masters of his day would know to sing the three repetitions. Tonight we are compromising by singing it just twice, omitting the middle repetition.
The concluding Epiphany motets include the aforementioned Tribus miraculis by Hassler and a work by another one of my favorites, Orlando di Lasso. Born in Mons in what is now the Belgian province of Hainaut, he is considered the chief representative of the polyphonic Franco-Flemish school. Blessed with a beautiful boy-soprano singing voice, he left the Low Countries at age twelve for Italy, where his talents developed. He later worked as a singer and composer in Naples and Rome before landing a job in Munich, where he settled and married. Videntes stellam is a fine example of text setting. Note how when the kings find the boy and fall prostrate to worship him, the music goes low and still in an aural representation of that image. Later, when they present their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, notice how animated and “sparkly” the musical setting of the word aurum(gold) is!
Thank you come for coming tonight and supporting the choral arts. We hope this concert will send you into the holidays feeling uplifted as we face the long nights of December. Next up in our season-long tour of different eras will be the classical period. You won’t want to miss our festival of music by the great Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Joining us for the concerts at the end of February will be the wonderful Jubilate Orchestra and four outstanding soloists. This program is sure to be a feast of classical beauty.
Then in June, make plans to expand your knowledge of the current trends in choral music. I’ve discovered many exquisite settings of the world’s great poetry by mostly living composers. This program is sure to be a revelation and a pleasure to the ear.
