PROGRAMME
If you feel moved to applaud, please feel free to do so at the asterisks
Ave Maria – Josquin des Prez (c 1440 – 1521)
Gloria (Missa Bell’ Amfitrit’ altera) – Orlande de Lassus (c 1532 – 1594)
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Organ solo
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Sanctus (Missa Papae Marcelli) – Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c 1525 – 1594)
Congratulamini mihi – Tomás Luis de Victoria (c 1548 – 1611)
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Sancta Maria – John Dunstaple (c 1390 – 1453)
Regina caeli – Robert White (c 1538 – 1574)
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Haec Dies – William Byrd (c 1540 – 1623)
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INTERVAL
Salvator mundi – John Blow (c 1649 – 1708)
Jehova quam multi sunt hostes mei – Henry Purcell (1659 – 1695)
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Gloria and Et in terra pax (Mass in B Minor) – J S Bach (1685 – 1750)
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Organ solo: Prelude and Fugue in D, BWV 532 – J S Bach
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Sound the trumpet (Come Ye Sons of Art) – Henry Purcell
Hallelujah (Messiah) – G F Handel (1685 – 1759)
Dona nobis pacem (Mass in B Minor) – J S Bach
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The Renaissance period
The word “renaissance” literally means “rebirth” and, although it is difficult to look back and impose exact
dates on these sorts of things, in music it generally refers to the period from around 1400 to 1600 AD.
Taking a broad perspective, the Renaissance heralded the start of modern European history. The rediscovery
of the writings of ancient Greece and Rome fuelled a revival of interest in learning. The term “Dark Ages”
has generally given way to “Middle Ages” now, but it has been used by some historians to refer to the whole
period from the decline of the Roman Empire in the sixth century through to the Renaissance some eight or
nine hundred years later. In 1343, the Italian scholar and humanist Petrarch wrote: “When the darkness has
been dispersed, our descendants can come again in the former pure radiance”. Whilst it is not true to say that
these Middle Ages centuries were completely “dark”, there is certainly a lack of cultural and economic
achievement, compared with the prosperity and learning of ancient Roman and Greek times.
An important invention of the Renaissance period was the printing press which enabled people to share
knowledge as never before. Oceans were navigated using new compass technology, with Columbus
“discovering” the Americas; and Copernicus discovered that the sun, not the earth, was at the centre of the
universe.
Amidst all of this, the Catholic Church lost some of its grip on society. Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses began
the Protestant Reformation in 1517 at a time when science was already challenging church teachings and a
humanist spirit was developing. The intrepid curiosity of this Renaissance humanism informed artists of the
time and its effects can be seen in the sculpture and paintings of Michelangelo, the plays of Shakespeare and
in the music that you will hear in the first half of tonight’s concert.
So what characterises this music? Well, it might be best to look first at what does not characterise it. There is
little showmanship in terms of technical virtuosity required of the singers; there are few passages that stretch
the limits of performers’ skill. For that, we have to wait until the Baroque period which saw the invention of
genres such as opera, concerto and oratorio, all of which use their music as a vehicle to demonstrate the vocal
athleticism of the performers, many of whom were household names in a way that Renaissance performers
would never have been. Some writers make a comparison here with the ornate, often over-the-top decoration
of Baroque architecture, when compared with the relative plainness and simplicity of Renaissance buildings.
Josquin des Prez spent his early years in a region that is now in Belgium and France, before moving to Italy.
Composed in the late 1400s, his Ave Maria was one of the most famous pieces of its day, appearing at the
head of the first volume of motets ever printed. It lays out, in a primitive way, many of the ingredients of the
Renaissance style.
Josquin’s music uses a technique called imitation, where one part echoes the melody of another. You will hear
this at the very opening where first of all the trebles sing a phrase, then the altos sing the same music an
octave lower, then the tenors and finally, an octave lower again, the basses. The short themes themselves
remind the listener of Gregorian chant, with few big leaps and notes mostly moving up and down by step.
Variety is created by changing the number of voices singing. For instance, “Ave cujus conceptio” is sung first
of all as a duet with trebles and altos. This is taken over by an alto, tenor and bass trio. In the next phrase,
“caelestia terrestria, nova replet laetitia”, all four parts burst forth together, each with its own complex
melody; the musical lines ascend and overlap with each other, reflecting Mary’s joy filling heaven and earth.
At the next phrase, “Solemni plena gaudio”, all voices move together in a simple hymn-like style called
homophony, portraying the “solemn joy”. Each of these different techniques is a means to expressing the
nuances of the text which is structured around the five Marian feasts, her Conception, Nativity,
Annunciation, Purification and Assumption.
Like Josquin, Orlande de Lassus was of the Franco-Flemish school, having been born in modern-day
Belgium. He later went to Italy and then to Germany where he settled in Munich.
His Missa Bell’ Amfitrit’ altera dates from 1583, around a century after Josquin’s Ave Maria, and shows the
fully mature Franco-Flemish style. By this time, the early musical contrasts heard in Josquin’s Ave Maria, for
example in the use of just two or three voice parts for certain sections, had developed into widespread use of
two separate four-part choirs, often spatially separated, to create what is known as an antiphonal effect. The
two separate choirs would take it in turn to sing different sections, sometimes singing together. This
antiphonal style was prevalent in Venice where the particular layout of St Mark’s Basilica, with its two choir
lofts facing each other, led naturally to this technique. The Missa Bell’ Amfitrit’ altera is scored for two choirs
but absorbs this Venetan influence in a subtle way. Lassus tends to avoid straight contrasts between the two
choirs, preferring interplay between groups of singers drawn from each. It is therefore likely that in
performance he did not space his choirs too far apart.
The Reformation, Counter-Reformation and Council of Trent
In the 1500s, the Reformation sought to challenge what it saw as the corruption and lavish excesses of the
Catholic Church. The Catholic Church responded with the Counter-Reformation and the famous Council of
Trent which met from 1545 to 1563. Reforming Protestants used the new printing press technology to share
their ideas and galvanise the public into action in the same way that social media websites have been used
more recently to overthrow regimes as part of the Arab Spring. Whilst the reformers wanted people to have
more access to the Bible in their own languages (Luther himself making a German translation) the Council of
Trent issued a new version of the Vulgate Version, a fourth-century translation by St Jerome, in Latin. The
Church was clearly minded to address the reformers’ concerns in its own way.
The Council of Trent is often alleged to have decided that music had become too complex, with the words
becoming obscured, and that it had become too clever for the sake of cleverness in its dense counterpoint. It
supposedly decreed that a simpler style should now be adopted and dissonance was to be used sparingly. The
Council certainly discussed these matters but no edicts were ever formally issued as a result. Nonetheless,
plenty of senior church figures held these views, from long before the years of the Council, so it is safe to say
that there was a strong movement towards less overtly complex music in the second half of the sixteenth
century.
Different regions and different composers reacted differently to these Council of Trent sentiments. They
were taken seriously in Bavaria, where Lassus worked, as there was a strong influence from the Jesuits, a
society in the Catholic Church that was a key part of the Counter-Reformation effort.
The principles of clarity of text and lack of dissonance can be heard in the Gloria from Lassus’s Missa Bell’
Amfitrit’ altera, but are nowhere more clearly demonstrated than in the Missa Papae Marcelli by Giovanni
Pierluigi da Palestrina. Palestrina has been traditionally seen as the father figure of Renaissance polyphony
who, along with Lassus, brought to fruition the style inherited from Josquin and his contemporaries. He was
Italian and spent most of his life in Rome, serving as organist and choir master at both the Sistine Chapel and
at St Peter's Basilica.
There are various stories about how the Missa Papae Marcelli was a model response to the Council of Trent
but, in fact, modern scholarship has shown that the piece pre-dates any relevant Council discussions (and, of
course, no relevant edicts were formally decreed). Nonetheless, it fully embodies the spirit of the Council’s
thoughts on music, with its exceptionally bold, clear declamation of the text.
The angels who sing the words of the Sanctus are particularly masculine in this setting.
Tomás Luis de Victoria is the most famous Spanish composer of the Renaissance period. He stands
alongside Palestrina and Lassus as a major musical figure of the Counter-Reformation. Although he lived in
Spain at the start and end of his life, many of his working middle years were spent in Rome.
In Congratulamini mihi, a motet from 1572, there is still imitation, but things are now more complicated
than in the early Renaissance. Whereas Josquin’s Ave Maria, from around a century earlier, opened with the
parts entering at intervals of two whole bars apart, each singing the theme and then dropping out, Victoria
opens Congratulamini mihi with the voices entering at intervals of just half a beat so they pile up on top of each
other. He has the main theme sung by the first tenors, then the first trebles, then the basses and then the
second tenors; and, to enrich the texture further, the second trebles and altos come in with different material
as well.
Whilst this is a mature Renaissance style in full flow, it still owes much to the earlier style of Josquin and his
contemporaries. Variety is still achieved by using different small groups of singers. For example, the music at
“Qui diligitis Dominum” is sung first of all by the first trebles, second trebles and first tenors, as a trio; the
words are then repeated by another trio, this time of altos, second tenors and basses.
Perhaps the most overwhelming moment of the piece comes when the voices all join together to sing “placui
Altissimo” (“I have pleased the Most High”).
Having heard music from the mature Renaissance style, the next item in the programme goes right back to
the early days and to England. John Dunstaple was an English composer who bridged the gap from the
Middle Ages into the early Renaissance. Writing twenty years or so after Dunstaple’s death, the Flemish
composer and music theorist Johannes Tinctoris described Dunstaple as having inspired the “new art”,
claiming he was its “wellspring and origin”.
Sancta Maria comes out of the “faburden” (from the French “fauxbourdon” meaning “false bass”) style.
The music is built on a “cantus firmus” (literally “fixed song”) and the other two parts harmonise that main
melody, mostly at intervals of a fourth or a sixth and in parallel movement with the sweep of the tune. This
technique dates from the 1430s and was the seed from which the Renaissance style flowered. Sancta Maria
pre-dates the kind of imitation heard at the opening of Josquin’s Ave Maria: in this earlier music, the voices
work as a single unit, rather than picking up and echoing each other’s musical lines in the way that came to
dominate the Renaissance style.
The English Reformation
Whilst the authority of the Catholic Church was being challenged by Martin Luther on the continent, it was
also being challenged at around the same time, but for quite different reasons, by Henry VIII in England.
Henry wanted to have his marriage annulled in order to remarry with the hope of producing a male heir. The
Pope refused to grant an annulment and so Henry broke with Rome and formed the Church of England.
English supporters of Luther’s reformation ideas, which had spread quickly from the continent, were quick to
endorse Henry’s actions but for their own purposes.
As a result of England now having its own church, the Counter-Reformation and the Council of Trent, being
initiatives of the Catholic Church, did not impact English composers in quite the same way as they did
continental ones. English composers were more concerned with bread and butter issues of whether they
might be executed for their Catholic faith, rather than issues like whether the complexity of their music was
obscuring the text.
Robert White is the second English composer in tonight’s programme. He was appointed organist and
master of the choristers at Westminster Abbey in 1570 before dying, along with the rest of his family, in an
outbreak of the plague in 1574.
Like Dunstaple’s Sancta Maria, composed well over a century earlier, White’s Regina Caeli uses a “cantus
firmus” technique where a plainsong melody is sung slowly throughout. White effectively composed his piece
around the standard plainsong melody for the hymn Regina Caeli which is quoted strictly and continues
unbroken in the second tenor part. Whilst the cantus firmus style of composing was ubiquitous in the Middle
Ages, it was less common by the late sixteenth century. White quotes the plainsong melody in two-beat notes
rather than the traditional four-beat notes. This was a modern twist which injected a faster harmonic energy
to what could by then seem like a static and old-fashioned style. The piece is in a rich five-part men’s voices
texture with two altos, two tenors and one bass.
The final piece in the first half of tonight’s concert is from the late English Renaissance. Although Jesuit
missions came across the Channel to minister to the Catholic communities in England, the situation was
fundamentally different from that in the rest of Europe as the new Church of England had exclusive legal
hold.
Haec Dies comes from the celebrated 1591 collection Cantiones Sacrae (Sacred Songs) by one of England’s
greatest composers, William Byrd. Byrd was a devout Catholic whose working life was spent mostly under
the Protestant reign of Elizabeth I. All of his music is set in the context of the suppression of the Catholic
Church and the fear with which he, and fellow Catholics who chose not to flee to the continent, lived their
lives.
William Byrd drew on a mind-boggling array of different styles, old and new, from across Europe. Haec Dies is
perhaps most akin to a madrigal, a mainly secular form with heart-on-sleeve emotional expression of often
well-known poetry. This “spiritual madrigal” style was something the Council of Trent sought to encourage,
however the opening section of Haec Dies is an example of the sort of dense counterpoint it supposedly
sought to vanquish.
In Byrd’s time, the words of Haec Dies were widely thought to have been the last words of the Jesuit Father
Edmund Campion, quoted as he was on his way to be hanged, drawn and quartered for treason (trying to
minister to the then illegal Catholic community). The joyous text from the Psalms takes on a new poignancy
when heard as an affirmation of faith by a man about to be martyred.
INTERVAL
The Baroque period
In music, the Baroque period is usually said to run from about 1600 to about 1750. In some ways it continues
on seamlessly from the Renaissance but in other ways it has a whole new ethos.
The first thing to consider is the continued loosening of the autocratic hold the Catholic Church previously
exercised over society. Churches (not just the Catholic Church but now the Protestant ones as well) still
employed a great many musicians but more employment possibilities opened up from secular sources, such as
royalty, nobility and town councils. The fallout continued from the Counter-Reformation, with the Catholic
Church reacting to the reformers’ petitions for demonstrably scrupulous behaviour from church leaders. In
some ways the Catholic Church did look inwardly to try and improve but in other ways it sought simply to
reassert its power. The grand, imposing architecture of the Baroque period as seen, for example, in Bernini’s
piazza in front of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, carried a message of Papal authority and prestige the would-be
reformers could hardly miss. Perhaps mirroring the architecture, Baroque music was also ornamented and
embellished in a way that was much less common in the Renaissance period. Alongside this, playing and
singing techniques had developed so performers welcomed flashy music that would show off their virtuosity.
In the early seventeenth century, modern philosophy was born with Descartes and others. In the second half
of the century Voltaire, Spinoza and Newton were amongst those leading the “Age of Enlightenment”
movement which valued reason and a more empirical way of looking at the world above blind faith. In a
nutshell, people were more free than they had been in the Renaissance to fashion their own beliefs and world
views, and society became more secular.
At around the same time scientific methods as we know them today were being developed by Galileo and
then Newton, and artworks of vivid emotional intensity were being created by Rubens and Rembrandt. In
music, there were numerous pieces in new genres, from highly personal works like sonatas to large-scale
ostentatious ones like operas, from solo songs to cantatas, oratorios and passions.
The second half of tonight’s concert begins in England which, as previously discussed, was affected by the
Counter-Reformation in a different way from the rest of Europe. England had been a republic from the
beheading of Charles I in 1649 to the “Restoration” of the monarchy in the person of Charles II in 1660.
Music was all but destroyed under Oliver Cromwell’s republic years and this no doubt led to the enthusiastic
outpouring of creativity during the subsequent Restoration period. The Great Fire ravaged London in 1666
and Christopher Wren set about designing 52 new churches, including a new St Paul’s Cathedral.
Set against this backdrop, John Blow and his pupil Henry Purcell composed music for the Church of England
which had been restored along with the monarchy. Setting texts in Latin would not have sat easily in services
at the time, evoking a more Catholic feel, so Salvator mundi and Jehova quam multi sunt hostes mei were probably
intended for private, domestic use. Both feature use of a “figured bass” which was a widespread Baroque
technique that built the music up from a continuous bass line, usually played by at least one bass instrument,
such as a cello, supplemented by chords on a keyboard instrument or lute. Both works date from around
1680 and communicate the same raw human passion that might be found in art of the period.
Bach’s Mass in B Minor was described as “The greatest artwork of all times and all people” by a Swiss
publisher who discovered it in 1818. It is certainly a profound and extraordinary work, in terms of its
compositional technique, its invention and its power to move the listener.
Bach liked to squeeze every ounce of juice out of a musical idea. Where Purcell, Blow and others might have
constructed a piece from several short sections, possibly with no unifying musical material, Bach preferred to
develop one idea methodically on a substantial canvas. Most of his music makes a thoroughly argued and
profound statement. The Gloria and Et in terra pax that we will perform date from 1733 when Bach was
working at St Thomas’s Church in Leipzig. The sheer human expression of joy that comes through the lively
rhythms, virtuosic passages of semiquavers and acrobatic leaps is remarkable and utterly different from
anything in the Renaissance period. This late Baroque style had an immediacy that was worlds away from the
more ethereal music of Palestrina, Victoria and Lassus which was almost other-worldly in its beauty.
We go back in time to 1694 for the next piece which is a short duet from a larger work called Come Ye Sons of
Art composed by Henry Purcell to celebrate the birthday of Queen Mary II. It is originally scored for two
counter-tenor soloists but tonight will be sung by all of the Cathedral Choristers. Hopefully the drama of the
interplay between the two voice parts will not be lost. The figured bass can be heard bubbling along
underneath the vocal lines throughout.
Handel is, like Bach, a giant not only of the Baroque era but of the whole of classical music. His oratorio
Messiah is one of the most famous pieces of classical music and the “Hallelujah Chorus” will need little
introduction to most listeners. Although born in Germany, Handel spent a large part of his life living in
England, therefore leaving us a wealth of music in English, most notably Messiah. It was composed in an
intensive three-week period in 1741. You will hear the figured bass line underpinning much of the music in
the usual Baroque manner. Handel’s genius here is in setting up musical ideas that are so distinctive and
memorable that they can be stated separately and then immediately combined with complete clarity. After a
brief introduction and a few initial “Hallelujah”s, the first two themes are set up: a sustained, smooth melody
at the words “for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth”; and a short lively burst of “Hallelujah” which dances
around the first theme. Then, at “and he shall reign for ever and ever” the music jumps around whilst the
long held notes on “King of kings and Lord of lords” come through as they are simply static.
The concert ends with the final movement of Bach’s Mass in B Minor, the Dona nobis pacem. This movement
harks back to the Renaissance and to the music of Palestrina which Bach is known to have studied. The short
theme heard at the very start is present in almost every bar of the piece. You will hear the parts imitating each
other, essentially as they did in Josquin’s Ave Maria that opened tonight’s concert. There is a figured bass
which would not have been present in a Renaissance piece, and the emotional scope of the full-blooded
climax that Bach engineers would have been foreign to Renaissance ears, but many of the ingredients come
out of that tradition from some two centuries earlier. The work was originally for orchestra but, as Bach took
music from previous generations and made it his own, I hope he would have approved of Father Willis reworking the instrumental parts for a performance in Truro Cathedral 280 years after it was written.
Christopher Gray
June 2013