PILGRIMAGE
March 15-17, 2013
Program Notes by Sanford Dole and Gabriel Jackson
Program Notes by Sanford Dole and Gabriel Jackson
The title of this program is derived from our featured work, the American premiere of English composer Gabriel Jackson’s To the field of stars. Commissioned in observance of the 400th anniversary of the death of the great Spanish composer Tomás Luis de Victoria, this work celebrates the pilgrimages across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela.
On the first part of the concert we will take a journey around Europe sampling the great riches of choral music from the Renaissance, Baroque, and Romantic eras as we lead up to Jackson’s cantata, which was first performed in 2011. Along the way there will be references to Spain, both in the music of Victoria himself?including the motet that Jackson quotes in To the field of stars?and in a newly composed suite for cello, guitar, and percussion, based on Sephardic melodies.
We’ll begin with several works for double chorus. J. S. Bach’s Der Geist hilft is the only one of his six motets for which the occasion of composition can be specifically determined: it was composed for the funeral of St. Thomas School headmaster J. H. Ernesti in 1729. Comprised of three contiguous movements followed by a chorale, Bach uses texts from the Epistle to the Romans and a stanza from one of Martin Luther’s hymns. Ernesti himself had chosen the text from the epistle for the funeral sermon. Bach set the text according to its meaning, not as music for mourning. The opening is very lively, presenting the word Geist (Spirit) as a fast-moving melisma in 3/8, which is passed between the two choirs. The following section, “but the Spirit prays for us,” is a fugue in 4/4. It begins with independent entrances of all eight parts, but condenses to four parts at the end, at the text “with unutterable sighs.” The third section, now in 2/2, is a double fugue for four-part chorus setting Luther’s text, “He who searches the heart well knows what the Spirit’s mind is.” The motet proper is followed by Bach’s setting of the chorale Du heilige Brunst, süßer Trost, the inclusion of which has become standard performance practice, though it is unclear whether Bach actually intended the chorale to be an official part of the motet.
Tomás Luis de Victoria is one of the best-regarded composers of sacred music in the late Renaissance and by far the most famous Spanish composer of the late 16th century. It’s no wonder that he is celebrated in Jackson’s To the field of stars. To continue the Spirit theme, I have chosen Veni sancte Spritus from Victoria’s vast output to represent his talent and musical voice. He sets the text from Pentecost, “Come Holy Spirit, send forth the heavenly radiance of your light,” in his preferred style of simple lines and homophonic textures (unlike that of many of his contemporaries), along with sudden and surprising rhythmic contrasts. We’ll follow this with one of his four-part gems, O quam gloriosum. You will hear the same motet later in the second half of our program, but with four newly-composed voice parts superimposed upon it.
As we approach Easter (it’s so early this year!) I thought it appropriate to include the Easter Hymn by one of my favorite choral composers, Josef Gabriel Rheinberger. The son of the Prince of Liechtenstein’s treasurer, Rheinberger showed exceptional talent at an early age, which led to his entering the Munich Conservatory. He later had a long and distinguished career as a professor at that institution. Rheinberger is best known for his organ music; I only became aware of his choral works in the last decade and have been excited to explore them in concert and at church. Osterhymne, written for double choir, sets two ancient Easter texts, Victimae paschali laudes (literally, “Praise to the Paschal victim”) and Terra tremuit (“the earth trembled”), with rich harmonies and compositional flair. The motet ends with a grand eight-part fugue on the word Alleluia.
When I asked our cellist, Rebecca Roudman, if she would play something in the first half of the concert, she suggested a new piece being created by her friend, Jason Eckl. Still incomplete as I write these notes, I cannot comment on the music other than to say that I was thrilled to learn that it is based on three Sephardic songs, which fits our Spanish theme perfectly.
Born in Ukraine, Dmitry Bortniansky received his musical education starting at the age of seven in the Imperial Court Chapel in St. Petersburg. After continued studies in Italy he returned to Russia, eventually to become, to great acclaim, the Director of the Imperial Court Chapel. His music was universally performed throughout the entire 19th century and still is heard in churches to this day. Among his many sacred works are 45 choral concertos (extended anthems), all unaccompanied as prescribed in the Russian Orthodox Church. Skazhi mi, Ghospodi (Lord, make me know my end) sets verses from Psalm 39 and is sung during communion. In a collection edited for publication by Tchaikovsky, there is a footnote that reads “I consider this concerto to be one of the best. P. Tchaikovsky.”
Some commentators consider all of Johannes Brahms’ prior choral music to be preparation for his magnum opus, Ein Deutches Requiem. Maybe so, but that doesn’t diminish the beauty and great craft displayed in these earlier works! Schaffe in mir, Gott, a setting of Psalm 51, is a three-movement work dating from 1864, just after Brahms took a strong interest in the works of Bach. Not only is it beautiful to listen to and wonderful to sing, but it also shows off Brahms’ compositional genius in a textbook demonstration of various contrapuntal techniques. The first, five-voice section utilizes augmentation brilliantly—the soprano part sings a lovely melody twice through, while at the same time the basses sing the same tune in notes that are twice as long, so that all arrive simultaneously. The second section is a wonderful four-voice fugue. Not only are there 22 complete statements of the subject, something very difficult to achieve, but there are also uses of stretto (overlapping statements of the fugue subject), inversion (upside-down statement of the subject), and augmentation. The third movement opens gently with three-part men’s choir in canon (strict imitation)—the tenor melody is followed one measure later by the second basses exactly one seventh lower. The women then repeat the same canon. The movement closes with a rousing fugue.
While on sabbatical in 2011, I made a point of attending a concert in Stockholm presented by the St. Jacobs Chamber Choir. I was excited to find that they had co-commissioned a new work, along with the Netherlands Chamber Choir and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Chorus, from the English composer Gabriel Jackson, as I was familiar with his music from recordings. Born in 1962, Jackson was a chorister in the choir at Canterbury Cathedral and later studied composition at the Royal College of Music. He has since gone on to receive numerous awards and commissions, gaining much acclaim for his choral works. The performance in Stockholm was so exciting that I decided right then that BCG would perform To the field of stars this season. The composer, who has been following our Facebook updates, was kind enough to forward his original program notes, which I’ve included here.
On the first part of the concert we will take a journey around Europe sampling the great riches of choral music from the Renaissance, Baroque, and Romantic eras as we lead up to Jackson’s cantata, which was first performed in 2011. Along the way there will be references to Spain, both in the music of Victoria himself?including the motet that Jackson quotes in To the field of stars?and in a newly composed suite for cello, guitar, and percussion, based on Sephardic melodies.
We’ll begin with several works for double chorus. J. S. Bach’s Der Geist hilft is the only one of his six motets for which the occasion of composition can be specifically determined: it was composed for the funeral of St. Thomas School headmaster J. H. Ernesti in 1729. Comprised of three contiguous movements followed by a chorale, Bach uses texts from the Epistle to the Romans and a stanza from one of Martin Luther’s hymns. Ernesti himself had chosen the text from the epistle for the funeral sermon. Bach set the text according to its meaning, not as music for mourning. The opening is very lively, presenting the word Geist (Spirit) as a fast-moving melisma in 3/8, which is passed between the two choirs. The following section, “but the Spirit prays for us,” is a fugue in 4/4. It begins with independent entrances of all eight parts, but condenses to four parts at the end, at the text “with unutterable sighs.” The third section, now in 2/2, is a double fugue for four-part chorus setting Luther’s text, “He who searches the heart well knows what the Spirit’s mind is.” The motet proper is followed by Bach’s setting of the chorale Du heilige Brunst, süßer Trost, the inclusion of which has become standard performance practice, though it is unclear whether Bach actually intended the chorale to be an official part of the motet.
Tomás Luis de Victoria is one of the best-regarded composers of sacred music in the late Renaissance and by far the most famous Spanish composer of the late 16th century. It’s no wonder that he is celebrated in Jackson’s To the field of stars. To continue the Spirit theme, I have chosen Veni sancte Spritus from Victoria’s vast output to represent his talent and musical voice. He sets the text from Pentecost, “Come Holy Spirit, send forth the heavenly radiance of your light,” in his preferred style of simple lines and homophonic textures (unlike that of many of his contemporaries), along with sudden and surprising rhythmic contrasts. We’ll follow this with one of his four-part gems, O quam gloriosum. You will hear the same motet later in the second half of our program, but with four newly-composed voice parts superimposed upon it.
As we approach Easter (it’s so early this year!) I thought it appropriate to include the Easter Hymn by one of my favorite choral composers, Josef Gabriel Rheinberger. The son of the Prince of Liechtenstein’s treasurer, Rheinberger showed exceptional talent at an early age, which led to his entering the Munich Conservatory. He later had a long and distinguished career as a professor at that institution. Rheinberger is best known for his organ music; I only became aware of his choral works in the last decade and have been excited to explore them in concert and at church. Osterhymne, written for double choir, sets two ancient Easter texts, Victimae paschali laudes (literally, “Praise to the Paschal victim”) and Terra tremuit (“the earth trembled”), with rich harmonies and compositional flair. The motet ends with a grand eight-part fugue on the word Alleluia.
When I asked our cellist, Rebecca Roudman, if she would play something in the first half of the concert, she suggested a new piece being created by her friend, Jason Eckl. Still incomplete as I write these notes, I cannot comment on the music other than to say that I was thrilled to learn that it is based on three Sephardic songs, which fits our Spanish theme perfectly.
Born in Ukraine, Dmitry Bortniansky received his musical education starting at the age of seven in the Imperial Court Chapel in St. Petersburg. After continued studies in Italy he returned to Russia, eventually to become, to great acclaim, the Director of the Imperial Court Chapel. His music was universally performed throughout the entire 19th century and still is heard in churches to this day. Among his many sacred works are 45 choral concertos (extended anthems), all unaccompanied as prescribed in the Russian Orthodox Church. Skazhi mi, Ghospodi (Lord, make me know my end) sets verses from Psalm 39 and is sung during communion. In a collection edited for publication by Tchaikovsky, there is a footnote that reads “I consider this concerto to be one of the best. P. Tchaikovsky.”
Some commentators consider all of Johannes Brahms’ prior choral music to be preparation for his magnum opus, Ein Deutches Requiem. Maybe so, but that doesn’t diminish the beauty and great craft displayed in these earlier works! Schaffe in mir, Gott, a setting of Psalm 51, is a three-movement work dating from 1864, just after Brahms took a strong interest in the works of Bach. Not only is it beautiful to listen to and wonderful to sing, but it also shows off Brahms’ compositional genius in a textbook demonstration of various contrapuntal techniques. The first, five-voice section utilizes augmentation brilliantly—the soprano part sings a lovely melody twice through, while at the same time the basses sing the same tune in notes that are twice as long, so that all arrive simultaneously. The second section is a wonderful four-voice fugue. Not only are there 22 complete statements of the subject, something very difficult to achieve, but there are also uses of stretto (overlapping statements of the fugue subject), inversion (upside-down statement of the subject), and augmentation. The third movement opens gently with three-part men’s choir in canon (strict imitation)—the tenor melody is followed one measure later by the second basses exactly one seventh lower. The women then repeat the same canon. The movement closes with a rousing fugue.
While on sabbatical in 2011, I made a point of attending a concert in Stockholm presented by the St. Jacobs Chamber Choir. I was excited to find that they had co-commissioned a new work, along with the Netherlands Chamber Choir and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Chorus, from the English composer Gabriel Jackson, as I was familiar with his music from recordings. Born in 1962, Jackson was a chorister in the choir at Canterbury Cathedral and later studied composition at the Royal College of Music. He has since gone on to receive numerous awards and commissions, gaining much acclaim for his choral works. The performance in Stockholm was so exciting that I decided right then that BCG would perform To the field of stars this season. The composer, who has been following our Facebook updates, was kind enough to forward his original program notes, which I’ve included here.
To the field of stars: Notes from the composer
Since the very first journeys to Santiago de Compostela began over 1000 years ago, the Way of St. James has been articulated and celebrated in music. The vast Codex calixtinus, dating from the 12th century, is a compendium of advice and instructions for pilgrims, sermons, reports of miracles, prayers and polyphonic motets. Over the years many concert programmes have been devised to relive the Medieval pilgrims’ journey in song, drawn from the codex and other sources, and new pieces have been composed which also reimagine the experience of travelling the Way of St. James.
So the challenge with this commission was to try and say something new and worthwhile about the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela that hasn’t already been said. I didn’t want to write a literal account of the journey, a series of postcards from the pilgrimage route—today we are in Puente la Reina…tomorrow we reach Finisterre—for that has already been done and done very well. So while To the field of stars is about the pilgrimage to Santiago, it is also about journeying in a wider sense—the physical, emotional and psychological struggle to reach a long-sought-after and life-changing goal.
One of the first things that struck me was the possible etymological origin of ‘Compostela’ as ‘campus stellae’, the field of stars. This suggested a literal field of stars, and that notion became the sixth movement of the piece, a sustained, glistening carpet of murmured stars’ names underpinning a flickering high cello descant.
In order to articulate and give structure to the journey, the piece is divided into seven movements, seven ‘stations’ as it were, points of meditation and reflection, which are separated by choral refrains and brief cello envois. The texts of the refrains are drawn from a Medieval pilgrims’ hymn in the Codex calixtinus, and they also act as a Latin grammar primer, each verse addressing St. James in one of the six grammatical cases (nominative, genitive, vocative, etc.). These bare and rustic-sounding refrains are isorhythmic—the rhythm remains identical each time, only the pitches changing.
The piece begins with an ecstatic and ululatory Intrada, a brief choral fanfare which apostrophises St. James and his illustrious martyrdom. The seven movements that follow are both stages in the physical journey and reflections on the transforming experience of any arduous voyage, often sparked by key words in the preceding refrain in a kind of free association.
Prayer for travelling is by turns optimistic and apprehensive, full of both fear and excitement about the journey ahead. A quiet chorale is repeatedly answered by melismatic exlamations from upper voices and cello, replete with sighing appogiaturas and declamatory glissandi.
In the second movement, Pilgrim’s song with history lesson, the female voices sing of the joys of travel in rather obsessively jubilant tones. At this stage of the journey there is much to look forward to, and the almost-nonsense verse of their effusions is anchored by a jaunty march from the cello. Later in the movement we hear an account of the history of the shrine from the second president of the USA, John Adams.
Walking with God is dominated, in contrast, by the male voices, a dark-hued riposte to the bright cheerfulness of the preceding movement. Cowper’s poem, so familiar as a comfortable Anglican hymn, is here reimagined as a raw and angry dark night of the soul. Beset by doubt and uncertainty, the pilgrims sing in ornate and anguished tones, thoughts of the dove of peace offering a brief moment of balm, and leading to a quiet and unsure conclusion.
St. James was noted for his performance of miracles, and in the fourth movement Walt Whitman tells of his apprehension of the divine in the everyday in a poem that is truly sacred in the broadest sense. Linguistically rich and full of ritualistic repetition, Whitman’s vision is set to some of the lushest music in the piece, its polyphonic intertwinings both meditative and sensual.
In Emily Dickinson’s Our journey had advanced the end destination is almost certainly death (as was her wont) but that “God at every gate” may equally be found at the shrine of St. James. The movement is simple and quiet, for the most part, its bare homophony briefly overlaid with filigree in the second verse.
In a kind of other-wordly interlude, the whispered field of stars that is the sixth movement supports a solo soprano cantilena that also longs for those “heavenly citadels among the stars.”
And then, at last, we reach our destination—the Basilica of St. James—and “O how glorious is the kingdom” indeed! 2011 is the 400th anniversary of the death of the great Spanish composer Tomás Luis de Victoria, and here his iconic 4-part motet is elaborated by a further four polyphonic voices, its long concluding pedal-point launching the final peroration, an exuberant and jubilant hymn to St. James. Bedecked by virtuosic cello roulades and chiming bell sounds, the piece ends, exhausted but uplifted, in a clanging paean of fortissimo ecstasy.
So the challenge with this commission was to try and say something new and worthwhile about the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela that hasn’t already been said. I didn’t want to write a literal account of the journey, a series of postcards from the pilgrimage route—today we are in Puente la Reina…tomorrow we reach Finisterre—for that has already been done and done very well. So while To the field of stars is about the pilgrimage to Santiago, it is also about journeying in a wider sense—the physical, emotional and psychological struggle to reach a long-sought-after and life-changing goal.
One of the first things that struck me was the possible etymological origin of ‘Compostela’ as ‘campus stellae’, the field of stars. This suggested a literal field of stars, and that notion became the sixth movement of the piece, a sustained, glistening carpet of murmured stars’ names underpinning a flickering high cello descant.
In order to articulate and give structure to the journey, the piece is divided into seven movements, seven ‘stations’ as it were, points of meditation and reflection, which are separated by choral refrains and brief cello envois. The texts of the refrains are drawn from a Medieval pilgrims’ hymn in the Codex calixtinus, and they also act as a Latin grammar primer, each verse addressing St. James in one of the six grammatical cases (nominative, genitive, vocative, etc.). These bare and rustic-sounding refrains are isorhythmic—the rhythm remains identical each time, only the pitches changing.
The piece begins with an ecstatic and ululatory Intrada, a brief choral fanfare which apostrophises St. James and his illustrious martyrdom. The seven movements that follow are both stages in the physical journey and reflections on the transforming experience of any arduous voyage, often sparked by key words in the preceding refrain in a kind of free association.
Prayer for travelling is by turns optimistic and apprehensive, full of both fear and excitement about the journey ahead. A quiet chorale is repeatedly answered by melismatic exlamations from upper voices and cello, replete with sighing appogiaturas and declamatory glissandi.
In the second movement, Pilgrim’s song with history lesson, the female voices sing of the joys of travel in rather obsessively jubilant tones. At this stage of the journey there is much to look forward to, and the almost-nonsense verse of their effusions is anchored by a jaunty march from the cello. Later in the movement we hear an account of the history of the shrine from the second president of the USA, John Adams.
Walking with God is dominated, in contrast, by the male voices, a dark-hued riposte to the bright cheerfulness of the preceding movement. Cowper’s poem, so familiar as a comfortable Anglican hymn, is here reimagined as a raw and angry dark night of the soul. Beset by doubt and uncertainty, the pilgrims sing in ornate and anguished tones, thoughts of the dove of peace offering a brief moment of balm, and leading to a quiet and unsure conclusion.
St. James was noted for his performance of miracles, and in the fourth movement Walt Whitman tells of his apprehension of the divine in the everyday in a poem that is truly sacred in the broadest sense. Linguistically rich and full of ritualistic repetition, Whitman’s vision is set to some of the lushest music in the piece, its polyphonic intertwinings both meditative and sensual.
In Emily Dickinson’s Our journey had advanced the end destination is almost certainly death (as was her wont) but that “God at every gate” may equally be found at the shrine of St. James. The movement is simple and quiet, for the most part, its bare homophony briefly overlaid with filigree in the second verse.
In a kind of other-wordly interlude, the whispered field of stars that is the sixth movement supports a solo soprano cantilena that also longs for those “heavenly citadels among the stars.”
And then, at last, we reach our destination—the Basilica of St. James—and “O how glorious is the kingdom” indeed! 2011 is the 400th anniversary of the death of the great Spanish composer Tomás Luis de Victoria, and here his iconic 4-part motet is elaborated by a further four polyphonic voices, its long concluding pedal-point launching the final peroration, an exuberant and jubilant hymn to St. James. Bedecked by virtuosic cello roulades and chiming bell sounds, the piece ends, exhausted but uplifted, in a clanging paean of fortissimo ecstasy.
