Tag: Renaissance

Sombre Music of the Low Countries from the Bach Choir

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Bach Choir of Wellington, conducted by Peter de Blois, with Douglas Mews (organ), Laura Barton (violin), Vivian Stephens (violin), Aidan Verity (viola), Lucy Gijsbers (cello), Michelle Velvin (harp), Jeremy Fitzsimons (percussion)

Music by Belgian and Dutch composers

St. Teresa’s Church, Karori

Sunday, 11 September 2016, 2pm

Most of this music made me feel low, like the countries.  Only Sweelinck (1562-1621) seemed to sparkle with life, and he was much the oldest of the composers performed, the others being all from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  I decided that I liked soulful music – but not doleful music.  After hearing two sombre works (first movement from Mahler’s 10th symphony and Berg’s violin concerto) the previous evening  from Orchestra Wellington, I was not in a receptive mood for music such as the choir sang, in a concert of over two hours’ length.

It was an ambitious programme of unfamiliar, and often difficult, works in modern idiom.  The relatively modern, large church has good acoustics, and the sound came over well, without undue reverberation from both choir and instruments.  The disadvantage was that all the performing took place in the organ gallery at the back of the church, behind the audience.  This meant we did not have the interest and stimulation of seeing the performers, which adds quite a lot to the enjoyment of music, especially when instrumentalists are involved.  Peter de Blois explained in his preliminary remarks that this was necessary because of the impossibility of moving the altar at the front of the church; thus there was not adequate space for the choir.

De Blois pointed out that the day was the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the US, thus the first part of the concert was about death, while the second dealt with resurrection.  Images, varying from statues to flowers to skies, were shown on a screen at the front of the church, but their relationship to the music being tenuous.  I did not find them a good substitute for seeing animated performers at their tasks.

The first composer we heard was Wietse Stuurman, born 1976; his Miserere mei Deus.  This involved, in addition to the choir, organ and strings, tubular bells.  The choir made a marvellous sound, and the effect of discords in the music was clear.  The organ part had splendid tunes, with a continuous pedal note.  The bell and organ became loud and insistent, but there was little variety of tonality in the piece, because of that note and bell.  The piece was mournful.  Although the words were reasonably clear, it was good to have the Latin words and translations for the whole programme, in addition to excellent notes.  The work was well performed, but didn’t ‘grab’ me, despite some interesting shifting harmonies.

Variations on ‘Mein junges Leben hat ein End’ by Sweelinck was a bright organ interlude, despite its title, especially after the second variation when a 2-foot stop was added.  More sounds and textures were added in other variations, before a return to quiet contemplation in the last one.  This was a most satisfying performance.

The next choral piece, a seven-movement Requiem, was by Huub de Lange (born 1955) and was set for choir and string quartet.  This would not have been easy to sing, but one or two voices tended to stand out at times, and top notes were not always hit squarely.  Otherwise, the choir produced lovely velvety tone.

I could not help thinking that Mozart, Schubert, Verdi and others knew how to make a Requiem Mass that was gorgeous, even animated, as well as solemn.  This one was monotonous; it needed more changes of tonality and mood.  However, there were some excellent dynamic effects, such as a fading pianissimo at the end of the Sanctus.  It was an innovative work and the choir and quartet made a good job of it, but the minimalist influences (remarked on in the programme note for the Stuurman work) made it boring to my ear.

Even the In Paridisum had a rather slow tempo and a minor modality, as did the unusually added Te Deum, which is a hymn of praise.  Yet it had doleful intervals of diminished and augmented seconds.  Its final Sanctus revealed a full choral sound, but it was not remotely jubilant.  The varying close intervals made great demands on the singers.

Sweelinck brought back some jollity, with variations on ‘Onder een Linde groen’ (Under a green linden tree), a secular piece.  It was delightful and uplifting, played with great contrasts of stops and between runs and detached chords. Use of reed stops in the finale reiterated the melody with different sounds.

Evert van Merode (born 1980) wrote his Stabat Mater dolorosa in 2013.  The men’s sound was good, but the women’s pitch was not always accurate; it was probably difficult to maintain it in this sort of tonality.  The harp had a dramatic part to play, but it didn’t always seem to fit with the other instruments (violin and cello).  For me, the best part musically was the concluding ‘Quando corpus…’ (When my body dies, grant that my soul is given the glory of paradise).

After the interval, the music was entirely by Flor Peeters (1903-1986), a Belgian organist and composer.  I still have the programme from his visit to New Zealand in the 1970s.  The Kyrie of his Missa Festiva had the men opening in sombre tones.  Despite the good acoustics, it was a drawback to clarity that they did not all pronounce the vowels in the same way.  Some of the choir tone sounded strained; there was a lot of difficult singing.  After the Kyrie, Mews played Peeters’s chorale prelude on ‘O Gott du Frommer Gott’, with a mellow tone and mood.

The splendid tenor introits to both the Gloria and the Credo were, I suspect, sung by de Blois himself.  At last, there was a bright mood in the declamatory Gloria.  Singing in the latter part of was without instruments, and the writing was not so taxing.  It came off well, especially the jubilant ‘Amen’.  It was interesting to hear the composer’s ‘Jesu meine freude’ chorale prelude which followed on the organ, since Bach’s settings as a motet and for organ are familiar.  It was more appealing than the mass, though there was little variation of volume or tone.

The first part of the Credo was appropriately loud, while the quieter section, Et incarnatus est, sounded splendid, apart from too many misplaced s’s from the choir.  The final section of the Credo was suitably exultant.  The Sanctus began a little flat, as did the Benedictus, and both continued that way intermittently, with less clear words and vowels.  I’m sure the singers were tired by this time.  An interposed chorale prelude ‘Ach bleib’ mit deiner gnade’ was played with gorgeous flute stops, and flowed in a Bach-like way.  The programme ended with the mass’s Agnus Dei.  This made a very pleasing finish, dying away at the end.

The concert was rather too long, but a tour de force from a good choir.  However, the choice of programme was challenging for both choir and audience, and the former was not consistent in its performance.  The instrumentalists were all strong, and Douglas Mews’s organ-playing was magnificent both in solo pieces and with the choir, where he was no mere accompanist.

 

 

English anthems straddling 1600 offer rich and satisfying concert from voices and viols

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

‘This is the Record of John’
English Verse Anthems for voices and viols
Music by William Byrd, Peter Philips, Thomas Campion, Thomas Tomkins, John Amner, Orlando Gibbons, John Ward

Baroque Voices (leader: Pepe Becker; and Anna Sedcole, Katherine Hodge, Jeffrey Chang, Phillip Collins, David Houston)
Palliser Viols (leader: Robert Oliver; and Lisa Beech, Sophia Acheson, Jane Brown, Sue Alexander, Kevin Wilkinson)
Douglas Mews (harpsichord)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 29 May, 7:30 pm

Verse anthems are the English equivalents of the Latin or French motet or Lutheran cantata.

They were not just an early music genre, but continued to be composed till modern times. The Bach Choir recently sang an English verse anthem, in Parry’s Hear my Words, Ye People. In Tudor times they were particularly prolific. All of the anthems and harpsichord pieces in this concert came from the Elizabethan and Stuart periods, though Tomkins survived into the time of Cromwell’s Protestant Commonwealth.

The concert began with compositions of a couple of less familiar composers whose music has barely escaped disappearance: John Ward and John Amner. Each opened with the gorgeous sound of the viol ensemble of two trebles, three tenors and Robert Oliver himself on the bass viol, followed by the entry of voices, their numbers varying between five and six. Both pieces could have been written by the same composer; perhaps designed for singing by amateurs, to create a cheerful, harmonious atmosphere in a salon where cultivated people could enjoy themselves. Some of the pieces could have been as part of the church liturgy.

One can imagine different settings for the various pieces presented, according to the subject, whether distinctly religious or not. If not for liturgical purpose, did listeners have to be silent during the performance? Did they clap after each piece ended?

Ward’s piece was slow and meditative and apparently not drawn from a Biblical source while Amner used words from a Psalm, I am for peace. Robert Oliver’s programme note provided interesting background to the likely settings and purposes of anthems over the years.

The concert was punctuated by three non-vocal pieces. The first of them, Passamezzo Pavan à 6, was by Peter Philips, for viols; it was more spirited than the preceding vocal pieces. Another anthem, probably by Ward, followed: Mount up my Soul, where the tenor had a prominent part. A further piece by Ward came after the interval: How long wilt thou forgive me, set at a steady tempo to charmingly fluent music, for the usual two sopranos and one each of the other three voices.

There was a set of three pieces by Thomas Campion, songs to his own words (he was an admired poet as well as composer), rather than anthems, though the first two had religious subjects, of a kind: Never the weather-beaten sail and Author of Light. One had to admit that the words were strikingly more poetic, imaginative and picturesque than one finds in 99% of routine Protestant hymns. The third song, Jack and Joan, was clearly for two single voices, Pepe Becker and Philip Collins (I assume), and displaying much more of a popular, folk song spirit.

The first of two anthems by Orlando Gibbons supplied the title given to the concert: ‘This is the record of John’. The notes did not reveal the source of the words; they presumably refer to John the Baptist. Though I am no Biblical scholar, the reference to the voice crying in the wilderness is from either Isaiah or John’s gospel; in the latter: “John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet: ‘I am a voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.'”. Thus it was probably intended for church use. Here, I had thought more could have been made of its narrative character, enlivening the direct speech quotations by a pause and change of tone between question and answer.

Gibbons’s second item was See, See the World Incarnate. Its musical character indeed supported Oliver’s rating it as a masterpiece; the alto’s voice was very distinct and the several vocal lines interwove engagingly. Although the musical invention continually held my attention, I was struck by what I felt was an odd, even inappropriate, relationship sometimes between the words and the music to which they were set, as if Gibbons was pursuing a musical idea regardless of the words’ meaning.

Thomas Tomkins was a near contemporary of Campion. His verse anthem, ‘Above the stars my savior dwells’, is a charmingly simple text, though richly set with soprano and tenor prominent through most of it, and employing a second tenor voice in the last couplet.

It was preceded by a Pavan and galliard à 6 by Tomkins, which, I might note here included all six viols plus the harpsichord of Douglas Mews, whose unobtrusive, carefully idiomatic playing was probably more important than that of any one of the viols. The pavan is a stately dance, the galliard somewhat quicker, and here was an opportunity to hear the generally impressive skills of each player.

The third instrumental piece was an organ Fantasy by Byrd which Mews played on the chamber organ. Though it began with only a pure flute stop, it became more complex in terms of registrations, harmony and canonical devices, ornaments and flamboyant scalic flourishes through its considerable length.

Finally, voices and viols joined for Byrd’s Christ is rising again – Christ is risen. But unfortunately, I had great difficulty in facing the need to leave before it, to catch a train, or have an hour’s wait for the next. It was especially painful in the light of the notes’ description of it as a “magnificent pair of verse anthems …a superb example of Byrd’s transcendent and unexcelled art”.

This was a most satisfying concert, confined, to be sure, to just one genre and one national school during hardly more than a half century, but bearing such evidence of the richness of English music, not to be seen again (apart from the momentary brilliance of Purcell) till the 20th century.

 

A thousand years of church music in well chosen programme for voice and organ

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

‘Today the Lonely Winds’: Sacred music for organ and voice
(St. James’s Church and Wellington Organists Association)

Anonymous items; pieces by Frescobaldi, Monteverdi, St. Bernard of Claivaux, Jacob Regnart, Buxtehude, St Thomas Aquinas and Langlais

Heather Easting (organ), William McElwee (baritone)

St. James’s Church, Lower Hutt

Sunday, 24 April 2016, 3pm

The title puzzled me a little; it was a beautiful day without wind, and the winds of the organ pipes had plenty of company – there were over 70 people present.

It was a very well thought-out programme, revealing thought on how to present it, and which physical positions the baritone should take up. The choice of items obviously involved quite a bit of research. The climax of the recital was Jean Langlais’s organ suite Suite Médiévale en forme de messe basse. The five movements were each based on a piece of liturgical chant that was included in the rest of the programme.

The organ had been wheeled into a position in the centre of the sanctuary, side-on to the audience. This made it possible for the latter to see the organist’s hands and feet in action, and made for better communication between the two performers when they were both involved in items.

The opening antiphon, Asperges me from the 13th century, was intoned by William McElwee most tellingly, out of sight, from the west side of the sanctuary. It was followed by a Frescobaldi Toccata decima on the organ. The organ had a very bright sound, and the piece involved intricate rhythms and ornamentation; a most attractive work. Pedals were used for the final two notes only.

McElwee then sang from the back of the church, and moved slowly forward: Kyrie fons bonitatis, a 10th century piece, in Phrygian, or third, mode. Next was a solo motet by Monteverdi (the programme note said for solo tenor or soprano, but McElwee managed it pretty well): O quam pulchra es, accompanied by organ. The baritone managed the highly ornamented style of music readily. The accompaniment was written for a bass instrument, probably theorbo. Although this meant it was written for the bass end of the range, there was no pedal part.

McElwee followed this with a hymn attributed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux (12th century): Jesus dulcis memoria, sung unaccompanied as he walked around in the sanctuary, as if processing into church.

A major work on the organ was next: Frescobaldi’s Cento partite sopra passacaglia, from 1637. Whether there were one hundred variations I could not tell, but this quite lengthy work is in three sections. The first was charming, played on flutes. Later, other stops were added – diapasons? But no pedals. The third section was more ornate, and quite long.

Another antiphon: Ubi caritas et amor, the melody possibly from the fourth century was sung initially from a separate room to the right side of the sanctuary (with the door open), and then from the pulpit – very effective. New to me was the name Jacob Regnart (~1540-1599), whose Auf meinen lieben Gott was sung with organ. Wikipedia informs me that he was ‘a Flemish Renaissance composer [who] spent most of his career in Austria and Bohemia, where he wrote both sacred and secular music.’

Next up was one of the major organ composers, Dietrich Buxtehude (~1637-1707). His delightful Chorale Partita is a collection of four dance movements based on the same chorale melody utilised by Regnart. Heather Easting used a different registration for each movement, and the pieces were lively and attractive. Another hymn came from St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Adoro te devote, sung mainly from the chancel steps.

Buxtehude appeared again, with a cantata Herr, Herr wenn ich nur Dich hab. Some of the vocal runs in this quite demanding work were not quite secure, but William McElwee’s tone was very pleasing. This was the first time we heard (and saw) the organist using the pedals.

After an eighth century hymn Christus vincit, a solemn chant used at the coronations of the Holy Roman Emperors sung from the chancel steps, the singer moved off to the west of the sanctuary. In this hymn, as elsewhere, his words were very clear.

Now came the major work in the recital, the Langlais Suite, Op.56 (1947). Skipping the nineteenth century (and most of the eighteenth), we were suddenly confronted with full organ, much pedal work, the use of all three manuals and the Swell pedal in the Prélude (Introit) to the Suite. Particularly telling was the use of the reeds on the upper manual. The second movement, Tiento (Offertory) had the melody played alternately on the pedals and on the Swell manual. Notable also was the use of the tremolo.

Improvisation (Elevation) was the third movement, featuring initially very soft music, but also frequent changes of registration. Méditation (Communion) followed. It had charming running motifs, then a medieval melody on the Great, with a 2-foot stop over the 8-foot. Again, there was considerable change of registration, and much variation, such as the melody being played on the pedals.

The final movement, Acclamations was certainly consistent with its title, being loud and resplendent. There were many brilliant episodes, grandiose themes, and harmonic clashes.

The variety of content, yet with a connected structure, made for a most interesting recital, as did the changes in periods and styles of music. It was not only a demonstration of singer and organist in good form, but also of the excellent organ at St. James’s Church. We had a marvellous conspectus of church music through more than 1,000 years in this well-designed programme.

 

Superb song tribute for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, from the resourceful Nota Bene

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

“The Cloud Capp’d Towers”: Shakespeare in the Land of the Long White Cloud

Nota Bene, directed by Peter Walls, with Nigel Collins (the Bard), Fiona McCabe (piano) and Joel Baldwin (guitar); vocal soloists from the choir

Salvation Army Citadel

Saturday, 9 April 2016, 7.30pm

Despite the title of the concert, the song referenced appeared in the printed programme as ‘The Cloud-clapped Towers’. Some of those in Christchurch certainly were, although the tall buildings on the cover of the programme represented Auckland and Wellington.

Joking aside, the programme presented was a marvellous conception by Peter Walls and Jacqueline Coats. Peter Walls has taken over as Nota Bene’s new musical director; he’s a busy man, having just at Easter directed the Tudor Consort in their Good Friday presentation, and travelling frequently to Hamilton to conduct the Opus Orchestra.

As a commemoration of 2016 being the 400th year since Shakespeare’s death, this was a superb tribute; the fanciful idea of Shakespeare dreaming of ‘Terra Australis incognita’ (including New Zealand) was perhaps a little too contrived, and unnecessary. New Zealand composers included in the programme needed no special pleading for their presence.

The many wonderful settings of Shakespeare’s inspiring words, plus dramatic speeches from some of the plays, made a satisfying and rewarding evening of words and music, in the acoustically alive Salvation Army Citadel. The disadvantage of this feature was that it picked up every sound and error.

Vaughan Williams’s marvellous Three Shakespeare Songs were interspersed through the programme: one at the beginning, one later on, and one at the end. The first, ‘Full fathom five’ from The Tempest, was sung from the gallery. There the men sounded rather sepulchral; the tone needed to be produced further forward and they needed the spontaneity of the women’s. The sound changed when the choir came downstairs to sing on the platform, where the men had their backs to the wall. The first speech was from the same play. Nigel Collins was costumed, and sat at first at a desk, complete with quill pen and inkwell; later he stood in various parts of the auditorium to deliver his lines, which he did with expression and understanding, revealing his skill in the actor’s art.

We moved to Othello, and the famous Elizabethan setting of ‘The Willow Song’, sung by Juliet Kennedy with Joel Baldwin accompanying on guitar. It was a pity not to have the originally-advertised Stephen Pickett playing ‘Renaissance lute, theorbo and guitar’, for greater verisimilitude. Juliet Kennedy sang the song attractively, but it was a little strange to have printed ‘Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee’ when the original is ‘his’, and that is what was sung. More words were printed than were actually sung.

Three Shakespeare Choruses by American composer Amy Beach (1867-1944) set words familiar from other composers’ settings. They were for women only and were inventive and very pleasing, involving complex interweaving parts. The third, ‘Through the house give glimmering light’ (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) featured lovely lilting rhythms. This time, more words were sung than were printed. It was good to have almost all the words printed in the programme, but Nota Bene could note well the recent Tudor Consort concert, for which the printed programme had been arranged so that it was unnecessary to turn the pages during the items, thus avoiding noisy rattling.

A speech from A Midsummer Night’s Dream was followed by the choir descending to sing from the platform; firstly three choruses from Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, a semi-opera derived from the afore-mentioned play, the first with soprano soloist Inese Berzina, and all accompanied by Fiona McCabe, stepping out from the choir to play the piano. Unfortunately, the piano was too loud for the soloist, though the choir’s singing was good. The second featured bass soloist John Chote.   His tone was sometimes on the raw side, and he was unable to produce effective tone from the low notes. The choral parts were very fine, and Purcell’s music bloomed beautifully.

The next, unaccompanied, section began with the second of Vaughan Williams’s songs: ‘Over hill, over dale’. It suffered from a poor start, the singers not being together, and appearing unconfident. After a bit, all was well. Following another stirring excerpt, this time from Henry IV, part II, music not setting Shakespeare’s words, but written by musicians who were the bard’s contemporaries, were performed: ‘Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth’, by Byrd and ‘What is our life’ by Gibbons. The former was an intricate piece, sung well, though the bass part was at times too dominant. In the latter, a small group was made up of good voices, but they did not always blend well. When they did, a fine sound was produced.

The men then disappeared, and after a splendid Caliban from Nigel Collins, the women sang Five Shakespeare Songs by David Farquhar. These characterful songs illustrated the bard’s words well, with music that evoked the moods. They were not easy, and very different in nature from the remainder of the concert. The final one, ‘Clown’s Song’ (“When that I was and a little tiny boy”) struck me as difficult to bring off unaccompanied, but it worked.

Following the interval, David Hamilton’s A Shakespeare Garland, set seven of Shakespeare’s texts on “botanical and/or seasonal” themes, six of them well-known. The composer’s 1999 composition set the words ‘in a variety of parody styles ranging from jazz to car-chase music.’ They differed markedly from their more familiar settings, especially ‘Hark, hark, the lark’ (Cymbeline) if compared with Schubert’s setting of the German translation. These songs were accompanied by guitar and piano, but I seldom heard the former due to the latter, despite sitting on the guitar’s side of the audience, and observing that the guitarist had a microphone and thus was being amplified.

‘It was a lover and his lass’ was sprightly, good fun. ‘Come buy of me’ (The Winter’s Tale) demonstrated Hamilton’s mastery of choral writing; a gorgeous song. The choir produced lovely resonance on the ‘m’ consonants. After a high-speed ‘Hark, hark, the lark’ came the much-loved Sonnet 18: ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’, sung by women only, with guitar; this was a delight. ‘I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows’ (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) was another delight, redolent with images from the bard’s wonderful words, most of which here and elsewhere could be heard clearly. This and the remaining two songs were accompanied.

‘When daisies pied’ (Love’s Labours Lost) was particularly jazzy, lively and fun – nothing like the well-known setting, which seems like a stroll in the park in comparison. The last song in the cycle, ‘Under the greenwood tree’ (As You Like It) was not the expected gentle pastoral setting. Again, I could not hear the guitar. Perhaps the men were tiring from so much standing; their tone was rather raw when singing loudly. They had their reprieve; after another oration from Nigel Collins (Lorenzo, The Merchant of Venice), the choir got to sit while two soloists gave us Shakespearean songs of quite different characters: Stephanie Gartrell (alto) sang with piano ‘Falling in love with love’ (Rogers and Hart’s 1938 The Boys from Syracuse) that again had only some of the words printed, but it was most effective, sung with clear diction.

Jeltsje Keizer sang with guitar ‘Take, O take those lips away’ (when will programme compilers realise the difference between the ‘O’ of invocation and the ‘oh’ of mild exclamation? I admit I have not consulted the First Folio! [I have, however, as proud owner of a facsimile edition; the learned Heminge – or Heming, Hemminge, or Hemmings – and Condell, the compilers and publishers of the First Folio, knew their ‘O’s from their ‘Oh’s, and it appears there as ‘Oh’ L.T.]). The programme gives it as ‘Anon.’, but both my Alfred Deller recording and Grove cite the composer John Wilson for this song from Measure for Measure. After a very moving speech by Lear on the death of Cordelia (King Lear), the choir sang ‘When David heard that Absalon was slain’ by Thomas Tomkins, continuing the theme of loss of a child. Some awkward harmonic clashes were negotiated with ease; this was complex contrapuntal writing, but sung exquisitely.

One of Prospero’s stirring speeches from Act V of The Tempest followed, and then a Latin motet by Byrd ‘O magnum misterium’ (usually spelt ‘mysterium’) made a glorious sound, though the basses again were a little too dominant at times. Nevertheless, it was a very fine performance. Douglas Lilburn’s setting of ‘The Willow Song’ followed, sung by Juliet Kennedy, accompanied on the piano. This song has received sundry arrangements; I have heard it on radio not infrequently, played on guitar. It was good to hear it with the words.

After a final oration from Prospero, we came to the wonderful song that named the concert. Although the choir was not quite together at the opening, the blend improved. This is surely one of the most gorgeous choral songs in the English language. The words are integral to the sound; obviously Vaughan Williams was much inspired by Shakespeare. It made an uplifting end to an evening’s entertainment of excellent quality.

 

A richly-informed austerity – music by Heinrich Schütz, from the Tudor Consort

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Heinrich Schütz: Musikalische Exequien (Funeral Music), SWV 279-281
Matthäus-Passion (St. Matthew Passion), SWV 479

The Tudor Consort, conducted by Peter Walls
Soloists: John Beaglehole (tenor), Simon Christie (bass-baritone), with Corinna Connor (cello), Jonathan Berkahn (harpsichord), Michael Stewart (organ)

Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul

Saturday, 25 March 2016, 7.30pm

Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) is perhaps largely known as a precursor of J.S. Bach, in the development of baroque music. Peter Walls, in his pre-concert talk, referred quite extensively to Johann Sebastian. Thus it came as quite a shock to discover how different Schütz’s music was from that of Bach. Schütz was born a hundred years before the great master, and like him, was involved in music for the Lutheran Church, despite his training with Giovanni Gabrieli in Venice, and later with Monteverdi. He spent much of his life employed as a musician at the court in Dresden, and it was for a nobleman at that court that he wrote the Musikalishce Exequien – commissioned during that person’s lifetime and completed with his approval of the settings.

The work is in three parts. The first, a concerto in the form of a German burial Mass consisted of Kyrie and Gloria in paraphrases in the German language, but with other texts incorporated in the Kyrie. The Gloria used chorales in addition to the Biblical texts. The second part was a Motet, ‘Lord, if I have but thee’, and the third, the Song of Simeon: Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace’, both sung in German.

The choir sang on this occasion from a position directly in front of the altar. This made it impossible for those of the audience seated in the nave to see them. No-one had told me, as some of those in the audience that I spoke to had been told, that the extra seating in the choir stalls section of the church was not only for the talk, but also for the performance. It would have been a much more involving experience to have been sitting nearer the choir. Since the church was very well filled, this would have affected others more than it did me.

The English translations of the words of the works performed were shown on a screen placed in the choir stalls. I could read the words (just) but those on the right side of the church, or further back than perhaps the eight or ninth rows would not have been able to (I sat in the fourth row). One problem was that the screen needed to be hoisted a good deal higher for those in the nave to be able to read the lower lines, though admittedly that would have been somewhat neck-craning for those closer.

The Funeral Music was accompanied by cello, harpsichord and organ (Peter Walls said that Schütz would have had a larger orchestra). I could usually hear the cello, seldom the harpsichord but usually the organ. This was a ‘house’ organ, borrowed from Mark Whitfield, Bishop of the Lutheran Church of New Zealand. It had an attractive sound, but in the main, that sound was rather muffled, probably due to the number of bodies between it and the nave.

A solo voice sang the introit, then all joined in, but that voice continued to be rather prominent for a time. When the women’s voices joined in the sound became much more resonant. The position chosen meant the acoustics of the cathedral were not delivered to their full effect. The result was greater clarity; both choir and solo voices were very fine, with splendid tone. There were a few notes off the mark soon after the beginning, but these were few indeed amongst such a plethora of near-virtuoso singing; I heard no more intonation wobbles.

The louder passages from the choir, and indeed from the soloists, were very striking. The motet was more of a solid choral piece, with echo passages and plenty of counterpoint (though less chromatic than Bach’s motets). The third part involved three soloists in addition to the choir; they sang from the Cathedral’s organ loft, under Schütz’s instruction that they should be elsewhere than near the choir. (How did they read their scores in the darkened church, away from the lighting?)

After the interval came the Passion. This was sung in German, unaccompanied, and only the opening and closing choruses, short compared with Bach’s in his Passions, deviated from the Biblical text. Apart from those two choruses, the work consisted of tenor recitatives expounding the texts, solos from Jesus (Simon Christie), and solo voices from the choir interjecting with the words of Peter, Pilate, Caiaphas, Judas, false witnesses, scribes elders, and the servants of the Chief Priest, plus the choir singing as the mob. These added vocal variety; no chorales or arias were included.

Having the English words on the screen assisted greatly in following the story. Some of the recitative sections were quite lengthy, for example the section covering the Last Supper and the arrest of Jesus, plus his interrogation before the Chief Priest. Since the singers could not be seen, this was at times an endurance test, given the hard seats.

However, all the soloists and the choir introduced variety and drama. Schütz hasn’t the drama of Bach, which is not to say that his St. Matthew Passion is devoid of drama, but Bach’s word-setting is without peer in this genre. Bach Collegium of Japan’s St. John Passion from the 2014 New Zealand Festival was on the radio earlier in the day, making it difficult to switch to the more restrained, plain style adopted by Schütz in his later years (as Wikipedia says, his style became simple and almost austere, but against this, he had sensitivity to the accents and meaning of the text). In particular I enjoyed (as did another listener, who asked for a repeat of this chorus) Bach’s setting of the words describing the Roman soldiers betting for Jesus’s garment; the cross-rhythms surely reflecting gambling’s unpredictable uncertainty.

Schütz’s work had more drama than the music heard in the first half, but on the other hand this was less underlined, being unaccompanied. This was a Passion in the original sense of the word, but not passionate in the modern sense. Schütz used word-painting, emotion and drama also, but of a more subtle and restrained kind, on the whole. The opening chorus featured lovely suspensions, between sumptuous chords.

The choir was effective and disciplined, their passages beautifully phrased. John Beaglehole (his performance a tour de force) and Simon Christie were characterful and accomplished; their voices, also those of the choir, carried well. Both intensity and grief were there in Christie’s tone in uttering the words from the cross. The words ‘Truly this was the Son of God’ were set with beauty and subtlety (as in Bach’s Passion). The final chorus was plaintively anguished, before a long drawn-out cry; the work ended with the Latin Kyrie, sung in an unaffected manner. It had an interesting and unexpected harmonic twist in the final chords.

It was distracting to see a young man in front of me making a video recording of much of the performance in video form, on his cellphone.

Monteverdi gets keen, sharp-edged and exciting treatment

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Claudio MONTEVERDI – Vespers of the Blessed Virgin of 1610
New Zealand Festival 2016

Concerto Italiano
Rinaldo Alessandrini (director)

Michael Fowler Centre,
Wellington

Saturday, 27th February 2016

There was certainly a festive spirit around and about the Michael Fowler Centre leading up to the performance on Saturday evening of Claudio Monteverdi’s resplendent Vespers of 1610, to be given by the highly-acclaimed visiting baroque ensemble Concerto Italiano with their director Rinaldo Alessandrini.

The performance fulfilled all expectations, managing even to transcend the venue’s drab, determinedly secular vistas and ambiences. My last encounter with this music “live” having been in the atmospheric precincts of St.Mary of the Angels Church here in Wellington, it took a while for me to supersede my resonant expectations and recontextualise the sounds made by Concerto Italiano – here, a far tighter, more focused sound-picture, emphasizing clarity and transparency ahead of any layered ecclesiastical context of listening.

Of course the focus and brilliance of the singing and playing drew me into the group’s very different sound-world before too long – and even though I would still have preferred a church setting in which to experience this work, I was ultimately carried away by the beauty, wonderment, excitement and depth of feeling of it all – things which go to make up the full force of the festival experience!

Having said all of this, it’s ironic that this work by Monteverdi, regarded as one of the cornerstones of the baroque vocal-and-instrumental repertoire, and on a par with similar iconic masterpieces such as Bach’s B Minor Mass and Handel’s Messiah, was written by its composer more as a kind of showcase of his composing talents than a public expression of personal faith. In fact, it appears to have been performed only once in the composer’s lifetime, and then, not for over three hundred years afterwards.

At the age of forty-three, Monteverdi wanted a change from being in the service of the Duke of Mantua, and so arranged for the publication of his Vespers in 1610 to advertise his wares as a composer. It didn’t land him the job he REALLY wanted (Master of Music at the Papal Chapel in Rome), but it helped get him something nearly as good – Master of Music at the prestigious St. Mark’s Church in Venice. The rest, as they say in the classics, is history.

So the 1610 Vespers represent Monteverdi as a composer of a number of different styles of sacred music which he had produced during his time in Mantua, and here put in the form of a single liturgical service. The scholarly arguments over what ought to go into the Vespers from Monteverdi’s publication for whatever  structural or liturgical reasons have raged about this music for years, ever since the work was taken up once again in the 1930s.  The upshot of all this is that there seems to be no one “correct” version of the work, and that every performance is therefore, as expressed by the writer of an article in the festival program about the music’s history, “a unique experience”.

Though comparisons with the previous performance I had heard in Wellington six years ago (referred to above) are largely academic for all of the above reasons, each one on its own terms proclaimed the music a masterpiece with stunning and often breath-taking conviction. From the earlier performance I continue to cherish things such as the performances of the two soprano soloists, who remain hors concurs in my experience – good though the female singers of Concerto Italiano were, neither put across the music’s beauty, colour, sensuality and even erotic impulse, to the same extent as did Pepe Becker and Jayne Tankersley in St.Mary of the Angels, especially in the vocal concerto Pulchra es, as well as in the Psalmus 147 Lauda Jerusalem, with interactions and dovetailing highlighting what the remainder of the singers were doing most delightfully.

My other enduring memory of the earlier performance relates to its physical setting, allowing a wonderful and engaging immediacy in overall effect for we in the audience/congregation – for me, greater than was to be had in the MFC – and a more atmospheric sound-picture in St.Mary’s giving both vocal and instrumental tones splendid resonance, as well as allowing for especially stunning antiphonal effects (though Concerto Italiano’s off-stage efforts were exquisite and magical in their own way).

So now, having satisfied my urge to relive some of the more memorable aspects of the work’s previous Wellington performance, I can now at last turn to the real point of this review and consider Concerto Italiano’s stimulating and satisfying rendition of the music. As I’ve said, it took me some time to get on the performance’s wavelength, but as each section took its turn to unfold, I found myself more and more drawn into the music’s world and that of the group’s strongly-focused realizations. Throughout the particularly arresting section featuring the motet Nigra sum, words taken from the biblical Song of Solomon and pertaining to the Virgin Mary, I was spellbound – here sung by a tenor and accompanied by a pair of theorbos (instruments similar to lutes but with lengthy fretboards and strings), the music achieved an intimate, heartfelt quality, ranging from passionate declamation to raptly-voiced wonderment on the part of the singer.

Though not quite matching the élan and physicality of the earlier performance I’d heard of Pulchra es, the singers gave their exuberant flourishes sufficient energy to make a stirring impression, before throwing themselves into the complexities of the coloratura of Psalm 121, Laetatus sum, the music’s rollicking pyrotechnics concluding with a Gloria. The men’s voices then purposefully tackled another motet, Duo Seraphim, the singers relishing the piece’s fantastically rapid note-repetition, before combining with the rest of the ensemble to deliver the Psalm 126 with grandeur at first, and then energy, as the music switched engagingly to three-four time – a great first-half closer!

We enjoyed the onstage/offstage echoes of the tenors’ exchanges during the motet Audi coelum, the music having a luscious, exotic “feel” about it, a mood which the entry of additional voices and a quicker tempo set upon its head in the tumult which followed, the harmonies of the music taking on a lovely ongoing, “rolling” quality. And I so enjoyed the deftness of the music’s interweaving during the following Lauda, Jerusalem, Dominum, the syncopated figurations generating tremendous “schwung” – well, its Venetian equivalent, anyhow – finishing with a hymn-like grandeur of utterance, again, with a rolling, surging “Amen” that was a thrill to experience.

What gorgeously rich harmonies were floated, hymn-like, for our pleasure at the beginning of Ave maris stella! And how tenderly both strings and brass by turns contributed gently-voiced, dance-like reprises to the verses! This was, however, but a prelude to the splendors of the Magnificat which concluded the work, beginning with grand declamations and passages of florid vocal decoration intensifying the radiance of the opening words, and concluding with a Gloria which built upwards from an amazing “statement-and echo” sequence between two tenors into a mighty peroration from both singers and instrumentalists, effectively giving the lie to my opening impression of a certain smallness of scale from the brass. The trombones, especially, contributed a truly awe-inspiring sonority to the panoply of sounds ringing through the auditorium.

At the work’s end Alessandrini and his singers and players were treated to a standing ovation, as well they might have been – a truly festive occasion!

The Tudor Consort 30th anniversary with founder Simon Ravens

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Thirtieth Anniversary concert
The Tudor Consort directed by Simon Ravens; Douglas Mews (organ)

John Taverner: Missa Gloria tibi trinitas
John Sheppard: Adesto Sancta I and II and Libera Nos I and II
Robert Johnson: In Nomine (organ)
Simon Ravens: Outwitted I and II

Cathedral of Saint Paul, Wellington

Saturday 13 February, 7:30pm

Simon Ravens was an English choral musician who, while an undergraduate, had become the conductor of an early music choir at the University of Wales; he came to Wellington in 1985 where he sang with the choir of Saint Paul’s Cathedral. He was soon taken with the idea of forming his own choir that would specialise in Renaissance music. It was named The Tudor Consort, modelled to some extent on famous ensembles such as The Tallis Scholars, and almost immediately, through Ravens’ knowledge and enthusiasm, won itself a rather special place in the New Zealand choral scene. In fact, it probably played a rather important role in the remarkable flourishing of choral music, and particularly Medieval and Renaissance music, that occurred in Wellington in the following 20 years or so.

Concerts by The Tudor Consort commonly filled the Anglican Cathedral, and other spaces, coming to specialize in performances that attempted a liturgical reconstruction of sacred music, to recreate the atmosphere and character of the music’s original context. They included memorable performances in the beautiful Erskine chapel in Island Bay, and an enactment of the French medieval Play of Daniel.

After Ravens returned to England in 1990, the choir determined to continue and with a succession of local choral specialists has managed to do just that over the following 25 years. In 2006, the choir staged a three concert festival to celebrate its 25th birthday in St Mary of the Angels and in the great hall of the former National Museum, one of them conducted again by Simon Ravens.

Ravens returns to celebrate 30 years’ survival, in fact triumph, if we are to accept Ravens’ flattering comment in his pre-concert talk, that the choir is even better than he left it 25 years before. This time, no liturgical reconstruction, no particular attention to atmospheric lighting (though it was convenient to be able to read the texts in the programme, even though the Latin was pretty-much muddied in the acoustic).

The concert was underpinned by Taverner’s masterpiece, Missa Gloria tibi trinitas. Taverner is perhaps the earliest of the Tudor composers whose names are reasonably familiar. Born about 1490, his adult life fell within the reign of Henry VIII. The mass has four parts – Gloria, Credo, Sanctus (and Benedictus) and Agnus Dei – there is no Kyrie, as it was not regarded as part of the ordinary of the Mass before the Reformation. The performance was punctuated with the original plainsong Gloria tibi Trinitas, and two settings of the motet Adesto Sancta Trinitas by John Sheppard who was some 20 years Taverner’s junior, as well as Sheppard’s Libera nos; and very interestingly, Ravens’s own settings of an epigram by American poet Edwin Markham, Outwitted.

The other interesting contribution was the organ interludes – two settings of In Nomine – played by Douglas Mews.

At this point I might comment that while the programme gave texts in both Latin and English, it offered little background about the pieces apart from the oblique remarks in Ravens’ overview of the music which dwelt mainly on the problem of performing and hearing music written in a very different era from our own. So there is much to be gained from pulling out reference books and exploring websites to gain better appreciation of what one had heard.

Outwitted opened the concert. It embodied a pithy, humane lesson: “He drew a circle that shut me out / Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. / But love and I had the wit to win / We drew a circle and took him in.” Advice perhaps for dealing with forms of fanaticism and cruelty today… Though its message is probably clear and pungent enough, the quasi-polyphonic setting, with voices used in striking combinations, demonstrated the rich possibilities of a centuries-old form to enhance a message for today.

The plainchant antiphon followed, nicely preparing us for the far more complex sounds of the Taverner mass. It is interesting that this wonderful mass by Taverner, so complex and musically elaborate, was written before the great works of Tallis and Byrd and all the better known English composers of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period. Written for six voices – treble, alto (called ‘mean’ in the literature), two countertenors, tenor and bass – it is a work that offers challenges of all kinds to a conductor and singers; the mastery of balances between the parts and the sheer virtuosity demanded. Though the six voices (the choir consisted of 20 singers) weaved around the chant with wonderful skill, creating transcendent harmonies, each remained splendidly distinct.

One of the recurring delights, if not sources of wonderment, was the sustained high register demanded from the counter-tenors, with two voices in particular emerging as striking soloists – Richard Taylor and Phillip Collins – as well as from the trebles who are also required to maintain long, brilliant and very high passages. Soloists from the trebles and altos were also vividly conspicuous, though never detracting from a seemly liturgical spirit – Jane McKinlay, Anna Sedcole and Andrea Cochrane. There seemed to be something very modern in Taverner’s ability to create music that was not just technically impressive but also generated through long spans of polyphonic inspiration, an emotionally exciting response in the audience (if I may suggest that others responded as I did).

After the Gloria, Mews played Taverner’s In nomine and in the second half, after the Sanctus of the Mass, a second In Nomine by Robert Johnson. Though arguably not an instrument well adapted to music conceived for a Renaissance organ, he chose stops that were clear and sharply varied, and avoided generating anything resembling the tumult of a great Romantic organ.

The In nomine is curious. I read in Peter Phillips’s notes accompanying the Tallis Scholars’ recording of Taverner’s music, the following: “Originally in a spirit of wanting to flatter Taverner by copying him, composers of every generation up to that of Purcell, and including Purcell himself, tested their contrapuntal techniques by basing music on the ‘In nomine’ section of the Benedictus of Taverner’s Missa Gloria Tibi Trinitas (‘Benedictus qui venit IN NOMINE Domini’)”.

John Sheppard’s two settings of Adesto Sancta were sung between parts of the Mass, comprising verses alternately in plain chant by men’s voices and polyphony: not as elaborate as Taverner though the polyphonic verses were delivered with great brilliance. His two settings for six voices of the Libera Nos, in which Ravens’ beat marked the slow minims of the music reflecting the plaintive nature of the words, concluded each half of the concert.

Though the Tudor Consort has enlightened and entertained Wellington audiences with revelations of early music (as well as music of other periods) for thirty years, for this special anniversary concert Simon Ravens chose works, most notably the great Taverner mass, which are important and mark a return to the heartland of the choir’s origins: perfectly appropriate for such an occasion. These memorable and moving performances fulfilled the hopes and intentions of the choir and its inspiring founding director and will undoubtedly rate as one of 2016’s musical highlights.

 

Audience rapture with splendid performance from Tudor Consort

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

The Tudor Consort conducted by Michael Stewart

Tomás Luis de Victoria: Officium Defunctorum
Alonso Lobo: Motet: Versa est in luctum

Sacred Heart Cathedral

Saturday, 31 October 2015, 7.30pm

The Tudor Consort is noted not only for wonderful singing; it is also noteworthy for its innovative programming.

This time, an almost full Sacred Heart Cathedral heard music of Victoria. It is not infrequently that we hear short choral works by this composer, but a Requiem Mass extended by liturgical items such as the Collect, the Epistle, the Gospel and others, was new. These liturgical movements were either plainsong settings (Gregorian chant), or were chanted on one, or a series of notes. The programme was utterly appropriate for Hallowe’en, i.e. the day before All Saints’ Day, and two days before All Souls’ Day.

The choir of 17 members sang first from the crossing, i.e. the aisle across the church directly in from the door, between the front two-thirds and the rear third of the church. The choir was arranged as two choirs, facing each other. This arrangement made it easy for those in the rear part of the church to hear clearly.

In a radio interview during the week, Michael Stewart had told Eva Radich that the music was easy to sing, but the hard part was demonstrating the drama and intensity where required. The entire concert was sung in Latin, unaccompanied, and texts and translations were provided in the printed programme. Although advertised as a candlelight performance, there was sufficient other light to enable the programme notes and translations to be read easily.

The choir was immediately impressive, with great attack, pungent voices, words clear, and each part having equal weight, in this version of words from the Biblical book of Job. For the second movement, the hymn ‘Placare Christus servulis’, the voices formed as one choir; the attack was not quite so secure here, as the singers processed forward, the males intoning the hymn in unison.

Now at the sanctuary steps, the treble voices began the ‘Requiem aeternam’ Introit in unison, followed by all the voices in rich and diverse harmony. There was some fine tenor sound, but the blend was excellent. The music was ethereal at times, with very high writing for the sopranos, yet substantial too. I found the concert full of such dualities.

The Kyrie followed, featuring wonderfully sustained long-drawn-out syllables. The unanimity of tone and dynamics was remarkable. Then the chanted Collect, where the solo voice was not totally secure, but the voice chanting the Epistle was better.

After this came the Gradual, with the opening words of the Requiem. This musical setting had quite a different character from the earlier sung movements. The women’s chanted parts were very clear. The Tract which followed had the men chanting in perfectly timed unison, the extraordinary melisma (decoration of the syllables) being an absolute delight.

The Sequence consisted of the long thirteenth-century hymn ‘Dies Irae’, by Thomas of Celano (c.1200–c.1265), who was an Italian friar of the Franciscan Order, a poet, and the author of three hagiographies about Saint Francis of Assisi. It began with robust chanting from the men, then the trebles joined in, still in unison. Maintaining such extended unison is not easy, but these singers make it seem so. There was plenty of expression, releasing the drama inherent in the words of the poem.

After the interval, the Gospel was chanted, then in the Offertory, the women intoned before all joined, all six parts singing in rich polyphony. There were splendid contrasts from fortissimo to pianissimo, and careful and uniform articulation of syllables. Beautiful chords brought the movement to a conclusion.

After the chanted Preface, the Sanctus revealed gorgeous harmonies. The singing here was in blocks of sound rather than polyphony. The Antiphon was chanted, to be followed by a multi-part Benedictus. This was again very different from earlier music, and most impressive. The precentor for the Pater Noster used many different tones in the chant, rather than chanting on one note, or just a few.

Agnus Dei utilised simple intervals to start with, then became increasingly complex. The Communion that followed was notable for magical interweaving of parts. It was solemn yet joyful. The purity of the treble voices was amazing.

The Post-Communion had a more plaintive tone, but assured also. The music was resonant, but in this building does not become too resonant. For the Absolution, the choir moved to stand behind the altar, in the sanctuary. It was followed by ‘Libera Me’ characterised by rich textures, sonorous cadences and complex polyphonic lines. The second and third verses employed fewer voices. Then in the fourth, the spread of voices from top to bottom of the stave was remarkable. The first verse was repeated, with its broad, grand setting. The Kyrie at the end was beautiful, with delicious chords from all the moving parts together.

The final ‘In Paradisum’ chant was simple and effective, and it was followed by Lobo’s polyphonic Motet. It was contemplative, with fully sustained tone that was pure, yet had character and warmth, the singing reverential yet rich and robust. There were wonderful suspensions and cadences.

In all, this was a splendid performance, and apart from very occasional stridency in the tenors, most accomplished. The music was uplifting and inspiring; the audience was rapt (here, this word is not hyperbole) and showed enthusiastic appreciation.

 

Audience delights in evocative, danceable music from the age of Shakespeare from Robert Oliver’s consort of viols

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Palliser Viols (Lisa Beech, Sophia Acheson, Jane Brown, Andrea Oliver, Robert Oliver)

Antony Holborne: Patiencia (Pavan), The Honie-suckle (Almain), The Fairie Rounde (Coranto)
John Ward: Fantasy à 5
Orlando Gibbons: In Nomine à 4
William Byrd: Fantasy à 4
Tobias Hume: Captain Humes Pavan, Souldiers Galiard
John Jenkins: Fantasy à 5 no.1
William Brade: Paduana, Canzon, Galliard

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 2 September 2015, 12.15pm

The name Palliser Viols had not meant anything to me, but it turned out to be a group led by that master of early music, Robert Oliver.

The brief but excellent programme notes confirmed that all the composers were English, and that the reason why William Brade’s music was published in Hamburg was because he spent his career in Denmark and Germany.  Nevertheless, a certain sameness in the music doubtless derives from the composers all being English, flourishing in the days of Queen Elizabeth I, some into the next decades.

This group of players is highly competent, and there was none of the out-of-tune playing one sometimes hears from groups playing these instruments.  One way of overcoming this fault is, of course, to tune the strings frequently, since being made of gut, they go out of tune much more readily than do modern steel strings, and this was done.

To modern ears the music seems very genteel, with neither very loud or very quiet sounds.  However, this certainly does not mean that there is no light and shade – there is plenty, but it is more subtle than modern instruments tend to be. There were charming sounds, immediately evocative of Elizbethan times, people, costumes, and especially dance.  This music should be danced to, or heard over a meal and conversation.

In this concert we heard two treble viols, two tenor and a bass, all six-stringed.  There was a mixture of dances, beginning with a slow Pavan, then to a more lively, danceable Almain followed by an even jollier Coranto, all by Antony Holborne (c.1545-1602).

The next three pieces were instrumental, rather than dances.  John Ward (1590-1638) wrote a rather wistful, even sad Fantasy, that was played very expressively.  The varied harmony and the movement in the bass line gave it character.  The Gibbons piece featured counterpoint and was a plaintive piece with much use of the minor mode, whereas Byrd’s was rather more straightforward, though very pleasing to the ear.

The two Hume pieces were for solo bass viol.  The first, though a Pavan, incorporated fast passages for the player, which decorated the basically slow dance melody.  The second was a much faster dance, putting considerable demands on the player, who had to negotiate the six strings at speed.  This involves pushing the instrument forward when the lowest string is to be played; otherwise the knee might be bowed rather than the string.  There were delightful variations on the melody, and plenty of chords demanding multiple-stopping of the strings, in addition to fast finger-work.

The entire ensemble played the remaining bracket.  (Why do audiences insist on applauding almost every piece, however short, instead of waiting until the end of each of the brackets clearly shown in the printed programme?)  The Jenkins Fantasy involved much interplay of instruments, whereas the first Brade piece was much more smooth and chordal, though with decoration later.

The final Canzon and Galliard were both happy pieces, quite quick.  The Galliard in particular was asking to be danced to.

All the performers were thoroughly able, and created a programme much appreciated by the audience.

 

Moving performances of three Tudor composers by The Tudor Consort

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Tudor Consort conducted by Michael Stewart
Music by three Tudor composers

Robert Wylkynson: Salve Regina and Jesus autem transiens – Creed (Credo in Deum à 13)
John Sheppard: The Lord’s Prayer; I give you a new commandment; Libera nos’, salva nos (I) and (II); In manus tuas; Media vita in morte sumus
Thomas Tallis: If ye love me, keep my commandments; In manus tuas

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart

Saturday 6 June, 7:30 pm

The Tudor Consort returned to its origins with this concert at the Catholic Basilica (as we used to call it). Its focus was on 500 years ago, and two anniversaries. Robert Wylkynson died that year and John Sheppard was born – both approximatrions. Putting it in historic perspective, as Michael Stewart made short introductory remarks that set the scene, Henry VIII had just come to the throne, after his father, the first Tudor king Henry VII died, in 1509.

Wylkynson was a contemporary of early Renaissance composers like Ockeghem and Josquin des Prez and ?lesser English composers like Robert Fayrfax and William Cornish. His career fell largely during the reign of Henry VII (who won the throne with the Battle of Bosworth in 1485), when Catholicism was still the established religion. Though Protestant movements had been challenging many of the doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church for a couple of centuries – for example with translation of the Bible into vernacular languages. Thus his music is suffused with elaborate polyphony, prolonged melismata, in Latin of course.

Though both Tallis and Sheppard were and remained Catholics, both accommodated themselves to the fairly mild musical demands of Henry VIII’s reign, but had to make much more radical changes during the six years of Edward VI’s reign from 1547. He imposed the far more rigorous (and violent) laws of a more thoroughgoing Protestantism, in both doctrine and liturgy, where Latin was decidedly out. Sheppard died at about the last year of Mary I’s reign (1553 – 1558), when determined Catholicism sought to regain lost ground.

Three of the Sheppard anthems and one of Tallis’s were in Latin, so probably pre-1547, while the English settings of the two composers, The Lord’s Prayer, If you love me and I give you a new commandment were written after Edward’s accession.

So it was Wylkynson’s fine Salve Regina that opened; the first words an arresting exclamation, which quickly calmed with a brief solo soprano that led on to the gentle prayer-like, sentimental if you like, body of the poem. They took care with the expressive dynamics available between the subdued men’s parts and the rest, delighting in their command of a lot of high-lying music for the sopranos. There were many details, involving individual voices, and smaller groups within the choir that I’m sure held the audience’s delighted attention.

It was interesting to compare the expansive and rich sounds of this choir, so beautifully adapted to this acoustic with the less comfortable sounds of the Wellington Youth Orchestra a week before, in a space not designed for them.

The second of Wylkynson’s only four surviving works was the Creed, or Credo, the words looking the same as the Credo of the Mass. This one a canon setting for thirteen male voices: Christ moving among the twelve apostles who were ranged around a bare white cloth-covered table; Michael Stewart himself sang Christ. A 1300 reproduction of the apostles illustrated the piece in the programme, with balloons around the relevant words of each. This too was a much more than plain, hymn-like setting, plenty of rhetoric and dramatic detail, clearly conceived to keep the congregation turned on.

That ended Wylkynson’s contribution. Then came English motets, or anthems I suppose, two by Sheppard and one by Tallis. As well as the diktat demanding the liturgy in English, came the edict against fancy musical setting, burdened with decoration and elaborate polyphony. The change was almost shocking: one note to a syllable which meant you get through the text much faster, and the loss of the magic wrought by an only partly understood language. (No doubt a heretical remark, but I suspect shared by many atheists as well as believers).

So we had, not Pater Noster, but ‘Our Father’, and I give you a new commandment by Sheppard, both sung by a reduced choir of around ten, of men and women, again including Stewart as leader and singer. And they were more straight-forward with less variety of dynamics and colour but beautifully balanced and expressive.

In between came Tallis’s beautiful If you love me, keep my commandments, evidently widely known and performed, witness Wikipedia. Though spare in its numbers of voices, detail and clarity made up for volume and density.

Latin returned for the rest of the concert: two settings by Sheppard of Libera nos, salva nos, probably from before 1547. This was the full choir, the harmonies were still rich and dark, the polyphony elaborate, over the bass that pronounced the original cantus firmus, revelling in the Catholic permissiveness; the other setting was shorter, stylistically similar.

Then two settings, one each by Tallis and Sheppard, of In manus tuas, described for those erudite in Catholic liturgy, as ‘a responsory for the late evening service of Compline’ (Compline is the last office of the day in monastic ritual). Here the choir was again stripped back to about 10, and though in Latin, was a more economical and simply moving. The Sheppard version was a little more lyrical, emitting more warmth, more variety in the use of various parts of the choir, men and women separately at times, much of it calm. The men alone brought it to a hushed conclusion.

The biggest work on the programme was Sheppard’s Media vita in morte sumus. It is a Latin antiphon which the composer has embedded in the separate Nunc dimittis, a traditional ‘Gospel Canticle’ of Night Prayer (Compline).

Stewart’s programme note quoted the surmise that its length and emotional intensity suggested something more than mere liturgical purpose; perhaps for a memorial service. So it moves majestically, in meandering harmonies, where certain words, the Responses themselves, were sung with compelling force: ‘Sancte Deus’ …’Sancte fortis’ … ‘Sancte et misericors Salvator’ …  The Nunc Dimittis stood in sharp contrast, sung in plain chant, before the return to the second part of the antiphon which resumed the sustained sense of religious ecstasy of the earlier part. There was a certain sameness after a few minutes, but then a realisation of the unique strength of the composition and its likely impact on listeners in the 16th century.

At the end of this moving performance the choir sang a tribute to Jack Body who had died a fortnight earlier: the fifth of his Five Lullabies, written in 1989.