Directed by Robert Oliver; comprising Baroque Voices (director: Pepe Becker) and Academia Sanctae Mariae (led by Gregory Squire)  

Music by Henry and William Lawes, John Jenkins, Richard Dering, Thomas Tomkins, Matthew Locke  

St Mary of the Angels, Wellington; Sunday 22 November 2009

I found myself unusually intrigued by the last concert of Musica Sacra’s 2009 series, dwelling on the music of the Civil War period in England in the mid-17th century; for interest in English music has tended to wane with the death of the composers who were active in Elizabeth’s and James I’s reigns, such as Orlando Gibbons, Peter Philips, Thomas Campion, John Dowland…   

Though this concert included music from both before and after those 20 years of strife and the subsequent Commonwealth – the 1640s and 50s (Richard Dering was dead by 1630 and Matthew Locke was born in 1630 and lived till 1677), most of the music was touched in some way by either the gathering clouds or by the strife itself. Catholic liturgical music was banned and most musical composition was directed towards domestic music; the Puritans did not object to music per se.

Those central to the years of the Civil War were John Jenkins who lived from 1592 till 1678, and Henry and William Lawes (though William was killed in battle in 1645).

The older brother, Henry, is presumably well known to Wellingtonians as a result of the very rich Milton collection in the Turnbull Library which has been expanded to encompass Milton’s literary, musical and political contemporaries. Milton’s masque Comus was written to be set by Henry on commission from the Earl of Bridgewater. Though his music was lost, an adaptation of Comus was later set by Thomas Arne and was very popular; that version was performed in Wellington a few years ago by an opera group, Brio, led by Lesley Graham.

Milton wrote a Sonnet, his No 13*, in praise of Henry Lawes for completing a certain play. It first appeared as the introduction to Henry and William Lawes’s Choice Psalms of 1648.

Henry Lawes’s setting of Psalm 9, ‘Thee and thy wondrous deeds’ opened the concert: a setting for five voices, strings and organ, which set the tone for the evening. It began with Pepe Becker, at her peak, a pure yet warm soprano, so fluid and brilliant that one feared she would outshine the other singers. But they did match her in their different, perhaps not quite as remarkable, ways; in duet with her, tenor John Fraser held his own, and both Jane McKinlay and alto Andrea Cochrane established themselves confidently in solo passages as well as in the several trios involving two or three women.   

Bass David Morriss in particular has emerged with greater confidence and his lower voice has gained splendid strength; in Locke’s ‘Ad te levavi’ (Psalm 122), and elsewhere, he impressed with skillfully decorated lines.

The programme took the form of Psalm settings and several Latin motets with continuo, by Dering (most of whose life was spent outside England) and Locke; these were interspersed with readings by Morriss. Although the amplification made some words hard to catch, they were amusing and pertinent, especially those from Nicholas L’Estrange’s collections of anecdotes (generally the decent ones, which are in the minority) and his brother, Roger’s Truth and Loyalty Vindicated.

One related a protest by ‘One Mr Saunders’ who remonstrated with people talking during an instrumental performance: “This is not vocal music,” he is reported crying out.

The two groups involved in Musica Sacra are alike in their sensitivity to the style of the music they play and achieve a degree of harmony of tone as vocal and instrumental ensembles that is remarkable. The three women, sopranos Becker and McKinlay, and alto Cochrane, created an especially beautiful blend in the Matthew Locke motet ‘Audi Domine’; but the five together achieved almost as much perfection.

The instrumental ensemble accompanied, in various configurations, sometimes both violins, Greg Squire and Shelley Wilkinson, Robert Oliver on bass viol and Douglas Mews on the chamber organ; sometimes the organ alone. As well as contributing an ultimate polish and balance to the singing; they played several purely instrumental pieces such as a Fantasy Suite by John Jenkins (involving demanding virtuosity) and two sonatas by William Lawes for all the instruments.

Mews played a solo piece for organ by Thomas Tomkins which gave the concert its name: A Sad Pavane for These Distracted Times; Tomkins’s life extended from the last 20 years of Elizabeth’s reign till 1656. He was a Royalist and the Pavane was composed a few days after the execution of Charles I in 1649; sounding from a somewhat earlier, happier time, this was a beautiful, intelligent performance, its tone elegiac and lamenting.

Even if interest in the less familiar music of the past is driven to some degree by the frustrations felt by audiences at much of the music of the past century, the benefits are huge; as with this concert, the explorations are not only unearthing less-known music of famous composers and obscure composers who were the links between many of the greats, but are also bringing to life music from totally neglected periods such as the early 17th century.

We are so lucky to live in a period when so much musical exploration is happening, unprecedented in any earlier time. For none of the composers in this concert was familiar to any but the musical historian till recently, and all are worth getting to know. 

 

*John Milton’s Sonnet No XIII (to Henry Lawes)

 

Harry whose tuneful and well measured song

First taught our English Musick how to span

Words with just note and accent, not to scan

With Midas Ears, committing short and long;

 

Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng,

With praise anough for Envy to look wan;

To after-age thou shalt be writ the man,

That with smooth aire could’st humor best our tongue.

 

Thou honour’st Verse, and Verse must lend her wing

To honour thee, the Priest of Phoebus Quire

That tun’st their happiest lines in Hymn, or Story.

 

Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher

Then his Casella, whom he woo’d to sing,

Met in the milder shades of Purgatory. 

 

 

Choral Music by Rorem, Copland, Ives, Barber,

Randall Thompson, Virgil Thomson

Cantoris

Heather Easting (organ)

Schola Sinfonica Players

Rachel Hyde (conductor)

St.Peter’s Church, Willis St., Wellington

Saturday 21st November, 2009

Cantoris concluded a rich and satisfying musical year working with current musical director Rachel Hyde by giving us a programme entitled “American Journey”. All but one of the works on the programme were composed during the twentieth century, the exception being Charles Ives’s setting of Tennyson’s “Crossing the bar” (1891). If one was looking for some kind of unifying spirit with which to tie the constituent parts of the concert together, it would be a sense I felt of the music having in almost every case been written to reach out to ordinary people. The exception was the Samuel Barber work Reincarnations, a set of three choral madrigals written in 1940 for the composer’s own Madrigal Chorus at the Curtis Institute of Music, complex, organically-conceived music, demanding for performers and more than usually challenging for listeners. Although the choir struggled at times with this work to maintain pitch, hold ensemble tightly and keep a pleasing tonal quality, it was nevertheless a rewarding piece to tackle, with many telling moments conveyed, such as in the second song, a setting of James Stephens’ poem about a hanged agrarian activist, where repeated cries of the martyr’s name, “Anthony” accompanying the verses generated a lot of power and feeling.

More characteristic of the concert’s general ambience was the opening “hymn anthem” written by Ned Rorem in 1955, a composer whose activities in different spheres would put most people’s creative output to shame in terms of volume, variety and interest. Sing my soul his wondrous love is the first of a set of three similar works dating from early in Rorem’s career, hinting at an interesting half-genre between hymn and motet, a gentle, sensitive setting of an Episcopal Hymn dating from 1841, beautifully “turned” by the choir under Rachel Hyde’s direction. In a not too dissimilar vein was Aaron Copland’s Four Motets, settings of Biblical texts written in 1921, the choir enjoying the “hummed” vocalisations in the first setting Help Us O God, and expertly negotiating the tricky key-changes (Thou O Jehovah, Abideth Forever) and the variation of metre (Have Mercy On Us O My Lord) in  the two central pieces, before capping the set off with the full-throated Sing Ye Praises To Our King, even if the singers’ attack had lost a bit of its “ping” by the end.

Charles Ives’ Crossing the bar, the oldest piece in the concert, sets some interesting harmonic modulations on the back of the basic key of C Major, such as those at the words “Twilight and evening bell”, out of which swells a great flood of emotion for the lines “….may there be no sadness of farewell”, nicely encompassed by the singers, as was the exultation at “I hope to see my Pilot face to face” and also the gentle, ruminative repetitions of the final “When I have crost the bar….” After this came what the programme notes styled as an American choral classic, Randall Thompson’s Alleluia, given a properly exultant reading, but paying due attention to gentler detail, such as the undulating accompanying passages in thirds, beautifully controlled. Conductor Rachel Hyde added a spontaneous percussive element to the excitement of the work’s climax, before gathering in the strands once more for a rapt “Amen” at the close.

Returning to Ned Rorem’s music after the interval was a delight, the 3 pieces taken from a larger, 15-part work, in which they form unaccompanied interludes. Most obviously striking was the first of the three, whose sexual imagery persuades as much as it initially startles: – “nothing at all to talk to and make love when I awake”, the choir’s voices shaping the phrases with delightful relish; and then responding more urgently to the quicksilvery Father, Guide and Lead me and the epigrammatic Creator Spirit,please….. which followed. I liked also the direct simplicity of Virgil Thomspn’s Oh my deir hert, hymn-like with a humming accompaniment, music for which this sort of programme was devised.

The “other” Thompson (Randall) made a reappearance, with his work Frostiana, settings of the work of one of the truly iconic American poets, completed in 1959. The composer set seven of Robert Frost’s poems altogether,from which set four were chosen for presentation here. Originally for piano accompaniment, Thompson orchestrated the settings after the poet’s death (there exists contradictory evidence regarding the poet’s attitude towards the musical settings of his verses – perhaps Thompson’s reticence while Frost was still living provides a clue!). Several young players from Rachel Hyde’s own Schola Sinfonica accompanied the choir, and sustained their rhythms and tones well throughout, the lovely quasi-oriental instrumentals at the end of the first setting The Road Not Taken being particularly well-realised. At the end, the programme featured the youngest composer’s work, Matthew Harris (b.1956), exerpts from three books of Shakespeare songs from various plays set by the composer. A very “American” use of wordless “do-do-do” vocals coloured the second setting, Tell Me, Where is Fancy Bred, and as well the last of the four O Mistress Mine featured a soloist with an ear-catching “popular song” manner. I also liked the “Hey nonny-no” motif of It Was a Lover and His Lass, used rather beguilingly as a rhythmic carriage for the song, while the choir’s forthright tones and rhythmically confident delivery of the opening Take, O Take Those Lips Away was carried through the companion settings and made for a most rewarding evening’s singing and listening.

Nota Bene handle Ghosts, Fire, Water: Conductor: Robert Oliver

Music of the elements, from Renaissance England and [reactionary] New Zealand. With Donald Nicolson (piano and organ), Rachel More (actor)

St Andrew’s on the Terrace, Sunday 20 September

It was an imaginative theme but, as so often, musicians seem only dimly aware of the importance of lighting and atmosphere in creating that last but important element in giving their audience a good time. The bright, shiny surfaces of the church and a zillion watts of light were enough to discomfort the most sophisticated and determined ghost.

I tried shutting the eyes but it didn’t make a difference.

In the same way that the character of designs, costumes, lighting, physical credibility of the singers is as important (nearly), as the musical performance in an opera production, so the visuals are significant in any live performance (otherwise I’d stay home and listen to a CD).

The idea of this programme was interesting; it took the choir out of its more common sort of programme, which has been rather more varied, covering most genres and eras of vocal music. But was a full evening of renaissance music a bit much from such an ensemble, even with a novel theme – the elements – guiding it and a baroque and renaissance expert at the helm?

Yes; by the end of the concert, I felt it was. The director and choir were obviously conscious of it, as the concert was punctuated by poetry and both halves ended with pieces by New Zealand composers. The last item, Douglas Mews (Senior) Ghosts, Fire, Water, which gave its name to the concert, was as typically intriguing and surprising as that underperformed composer usually is; nevertheless, I felt that the music, for all its atmosphere, was rather the handmaid to the words, by James Kirkup, inspired by his seeing the Hiroshima Panels.

The piece by Jonathan Crehan (Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire – his own words), accompanied by the piano, well written for the voices, conventionally modern in its syncopations, suggested that Crehan might have had a bigger ensemble, such as the National Youth Choir, in mind.

The concert opened with the other main theme – settings of the texts ‘Veni sancta spiritu’ and ‘Veni creator spiritus’, first an anonymous plainchant Apart from the recurring theme of the elements which even found material in a mass by John Taverner (The Western Wind).

Its parts were separated by a variety of motets and songs as well as poems by Tudor poets and others such as Longfellow, Blake, Frost and Emily Dickinson; most of the words in the  second half were from Shakespeare, as you’d expect, from The Tempest and ‘Blow, blow, thy winter wind’ from As You Like It. ‘The Quality of Mercy’ speech from The Merchant of Venice seemed a stretch in relation to the theme.

The poems provided a context for the music; or was it the other way round? The connections were, naturally, more intellectual than instinctual: Joyce scholars might have rejoiced in the echoes between the water in his poem and the Palestrina motet ‘Sicut cervus’, but the reality was arbitrary; was its place strengthened by Joyce’s musical talent and sensibilities? Rachel More read the verses, with a clear voice, though she did not always capture the tone of the subject, her voice tending to follow the same falling cadence at every phrase end.

There was more interest and variety with the use of several capable soloists from within the choir, notable were Jane McKinlay and Katherine Hodge and bass Chris White who, sometimes with others, sang as a quartet or quintet. Hodge’s voice was a fine match for the Mews piece.

The final note of variety came with a two-section piano piece by Pepe Becker, Aquarius (aqua L. = water, you see), played with considerable insight by Donald Nicolson.

But whatever the verbal and conceptual notions that drove the programme, the sheer variety of words and music, choral ensemble and solos, complex polyphony (Dufay or Palestrina) and the casual effect that slightly misfired in ‘When that I was a little tiny boy’, it was a good evening.

English anthems and motets, including Byrd’s Mass for Three Voices and Purcell’s ‘Rejoice in the Lord alway’

Hugo Janáček, Alastair Carey, Gregory Skidmore (the Clerkes); Pepe Becker (sopano), Robert Oliver (viol), Douglas Mews chamber organ)

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Wednesday 19 August 2009

The former tenor and director of The Tudor Consort, Alastair Carey, who left Wellington to pursue a career in England found his way into the choir of Christ Church (it does not employ the word ‘college’, though it is one), Oxford. The choir is one of the several distinguished university choirs which include, variously, professional singers – ‘lay clerks’, boy choristers and undergraduates; it is the choir of the college after which Christchurch was named because John Robert Godley, one of the city’s founders, had studied there.

Carey teamed up with two of his colleagues, all of whom have also performed with other notable choirs in several countries, to take advantage of this connection; and the three singers had sung in Christchurch before arriving in Wellington.

As the backbone of the first half of the concert, they used Byrd’s Mass for Three Voices, punctuating it with anthems and motets by other Tudor and Restoration composers.

The impact of the three voices in their first piece, Sheppard’s ‘In manus tuas’, was revelatory, producing a sound of superb blend and stylish elegance, of a polish and finesse that is not common. The baritone, Gregory Skidmore, had a voice of particular beauty, and in the Gloria of Byrd’s Mass, it emerged, additionally, with robust energy.

Most of the intermediate pieces were by Dowland: songs of loss and distress, which provided an unleavened sequence of suffering and lament. Purcell’s two anthems, ‘Lord, what is man, lost man?’ and ‘What hope remains now he is gone?’ did little to lift the air of self-pity and tragedy, beautiful though they were. However, variety was present as most of the songs – as distinct from the a cappella mass – were accompanied by Robert Oliver on the bass viol with Douglas Mews on the chamber organ.

Carey himself took a solo role in Purcell’s ‘Flow my tears’, with organ accompaniment, producing attractive, sustained lines in a tone of subdued lamenting.

The second half moved forward a century, apart from the rather charming lullaby, ‘Quid petis, O fili’ by the shadowy Richard Pygott, to consist mainly of Purcell. In the Purcell songs, the three men were joined by soprano Pepe Becker whose voice was sometimes obscured by other more prominent parts, but often her striking timbre made an impact, for example in Purcell’s ‘Hear me, O Lord’ when voices and the instruments sounded in turn, creating an interesting narrative and texture. While in the next song, ‘Thy word is a lantern’, counter-tenor Hugo Janáček and Becker created diverting rhythms and varied timbres. The music was now distinctly more modern, the composer paying attention to vocal and instrumental timbres for their own sake.

A hymn, ‘O Lord my God’, by Purcell’s predecessor, Pelham Humphrey, who had an even shorter life than Purcell (he died at 26), drew attention to a great talent. New Grove remarks that Pelham’s personality ‘embodied much of the spirit of the Restoration court … a minimal respect for institutionalized morality…’. The hymn provided a long and impressive duet between tenor and baritone in quite adventurous style.

The familiar ‘Rejoice in the Lord alway’, introduced by a striking organ prelude, brought the bracket of Purcell to an end. The concert itself then moved into the 18th century to end with Boyce’s ‘The heavens declare the glory of God’, signs of gallant style, the singers proving equally comfortable in this very different music, with a bold passage from the baritone and Pepe Becker’s soprano rising clearly above the male voice textures.

Cantoris  (Music Director – Rachel Hyde)
Music by Schumann, Ravel, Body,
Brahms, Britten

St Peter’s Church, Willis St.,

Saturday 8th August 2009

As was the case with Cantoris’s previous concert “Amaryllis and Absalom”,  both the venue, the gorgeously-appointed St.Peter’s Church on Willis St, and a beautifully laid-out booklet programme containing commentaries and texts of the song-settings, admirably set the scene for the choir’s most recent exploration of  the choral repertoire, an attractive programme entitled “Simple Song”. Cantoris director Rachel Hyde welcomed us to the concert and talked briefly about each bracket of songs and of some of the things she and the choir were attempting to realise in their performance. The four Schumann works for double choir which opened the programme were a pleasing choice, the singers quickly able to demonstrate their technical skills and expressive range with nice melodic work in thirds, good dynamic control and a living, breathing flexibility of pulse throughout. I particularly enjoyed the second piece Ungewisses Licht, a piece describing a lonely traveller’s journey through the storms of intense privation towards a distant beckoning light, the singers nicely and truly differentiating the major/minor oscillation of “ist es die Liebe, is es der Tod?” at the end.

Ravel’s gorgeous Trois Chansons are settings of texts by the composer, his only work for unaccompanied choir. The women’s voices tended to overshadow the men’s throughout, carrying the argument, except for the tenor line in the second song Trois beaux oiseaux, which was nicely focused and sensitively delivered. Again in the third song, the riotous Ronde, the women’s voices nicely captured the fantastic character of the setting, the voices relishing the rhythmic and colouristic possibilities given by the grotesque made-up names of the creatures of the Ormonde Woods. Still more “invented” language was brought into play by Jack Body, with his Five Lullabies 1988-89, music whose inspiration stemmed from the composer’s encounters with various exotic cultures, the sounds of both language and music being brought into play. Body makes the point that lullabies might not be always sung for the purpose of sleep; and while several of the settings did produce a mesmeric effect, the fourth sounded more like a “work-song”, energetic and invigorating. The fifth setting returned our sensibilities to the world of dreams, using the Filipino word “calumbaya”, the music filled with haunting, Sibelius-like held notes, as if sounding from a magical island, the divided choirs setting a beautifully-floated sonic backdrop around a more energetic striving figuration in the foreground, creating something altogether rich and strange – very nice.

Brahms used selections from a particularly rich vein of German Marian poetry, called thus after Mary, the mother of Jesus, and also Mary Magdalene, who was one of Jesus’s followers – the poetry uniquely combines a folk tradition with religious symbolism, a point made by Rachel Hyde when stressing the importance of language and its clarity and colour in performance. The songs made a telling contrast after the attractive astringencies of Jack Body’s music, the choir making the most of its storytelling opportunities with progressions such as the angel’s annunciation to Mary of her impending motherhood in the opening song Der englische Gruß. Perhaps not surprisingly, parts of the music have a Mahlerian melancholy, the opening of  the second Marias Kirchgang having something of the fatalistic tread of Mahler’s Lieder und Gesänge, as does the sixth Magdalena, relating the Magdalene’s discovery of Christ’s empty tomb, music with “haunted” harmonies and dynamics. Strong, atmospheric singing throughout.

Benjamin Britten’s Five Flower Songs gave us the lightness and buoyancy we needed at the concert’s end, the voices relishing the piquant skills of the composer’s varied responses, from the opening strongly-focused lines of Daffodils, through the tricky fugalities and finely-wrought dying fall of Four Sweet Months and the jagged, droll-sounding Marsh Flowers, to the delicately-etched harmonies of Evening Primrose, with its sun-drenched death-knell at the end. And with the most engaging syncopations and antiphonal cross-stitchings of the saucy Ballad of Green Broom to finish, the choir was able to conclude its concert with a spring and a smile and an exhalation of pure pleasure, the acclaim of its audience at the end richly deserved.