Music Notes 2016 – The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany: Sexagesima
Lent is creeping up on us! The mini-season of the “gesimas” – the three Sundays that
precede Ash Wednesday – which used to be treated as a quite significant period of
time for getting ready for the Lenten fast, began last Sunday with Septuagesima, and
will culminate in Quinquagesima next Sunday. The latter at least has an accurate
description, because there are 50 days (if you include the start and end days) from
that day to Easter Day, so when you get to Quinquagesima, you really know what
lies ahead. This Sunday, Sexagesima, fibs slightly in its title, because it is not really
sixty days to Easter, nor was it seventy last week, but the terms are simply not to be
taken literally. Of course, the most important thing for most people about this period
was and is Carnival. The UK doesn’t quite do carnival in the way that other parts of
the world do, including much of Europe, but we do have the thrills of pancake
making on Shrove Tuesday still ahead of us, for those who remember to do this or
who care about using up the ingredients before Ash Wednesday and then not
touching them again, oh dear me no, until we get to the great Festival of Easter…
At the Solemn Eucharist, we will hear a mass setting and a motet by Hans Leo
Haßler (1564–1612) – the ß in his name, which is intended to indicate a longer vowel
beforehand, stands in effect for a double-s for English readers, and indeed is written
out as “ss” by German speakers in Switzerland, who love not the ß. Haßler came
from a musical family, and his father was also a church musician. When he was 24,
he decided to go to Italy, and in particular to Venice, where he met and befriended
Giovanni Gabrieli, leading to a period of study with the famous Andrea Gabrieli,
Giovanni’s uncle. This exposure to the Italian school was substantially to affect his
own compositional style after his return to the Germanic states a year later. This
synthesis proved successful, and as a prolific composer and a much-respected
organist, his reputation rose continually. Ultimately, he moved to Dresden, where he
worked at the court of the Elector Christian II. The cross-fertilization of the German
and Italian schools – which continued apace, since many German composers
followed Haßler’s example and visited Italy to study there – was not insignificant.
These notes have often referred to the procession of Flemish and Spanish composers
who were drawn especially to Rome in the mature Renaissance period, taking their
experiences home with them to develop a distinctive language inflected by what
they had learnt from the great Italian composers. This trend is also extremely
pronounced when we come to the German states’ composers from Haßler onwards.
We can also see the outworking of this when Johann Sebastian Bach arranged the
Italian master Vivaldi’s Concerti for organ. Because of its dominance in this area from
the Baroque period onwards, it is easy to think of Germany as the capital country of
classical music. Nevertheless, one sees all over Europe the power that the magnetic
effect of the Catholic Church’s centre in Rome and in other great centres such as
Venice exerted on composers. Without this, would things have developed in
Germany in the way they did? It seems unlikely.
Haßler, who was himself a Lutheran, spent some time working for a nobleman in
Augsburg, even though it was a strongly Catholic area. Rather as with Byrd and
Tallis in England, he made the usual musician’s compromise with context and duly
wrote much catholic music, as evidenced by his collection, Cantiones sacrae de festis
praecipuis totius anni – Sacred songs for the principal feasts of the whole year, published in
Augsburg in 1591. He also wrote mass settings, and his Missa Secunda, published in
1599, will be used at the Solemn Eucharist. The American publisher Belwin has an
edition of this piece that can be obtained through the Alfred Music website, and it is
referred to there as a “Choral Worship Cantata”, which is a little bizarre for purists,
but nonetheless manages (one fears only inadvertently) to make a reference to
Haßler’s Lutheran roots…
The compositional procedure is interesting. This is Latin church music seen through
the eyes of someone who studied with the Venetian master Andrea Gabrieli
alongside the “young buck” Giovanni. The Latin tradition – the kind of music we
might associate with Palestrina or Lassus – gets a nod by means of each section of
the music beginning with imitative entries: in other words, the voices enter one after
the other with pretty much the same melodic material sung by each part. In a
relatively short movement, such as the Kyrie, there isn’t much scope to do more than
this, but in a lengthier movement such as the Gloria, these imitative entries, which
are knitted together in what we call counterpoint, are then contrasted with block
chordal sections with great rhythmic impact. It’s not that Palestrina didn’t include
this kind of contrast as well – he did – but the rhythmic urgency that Haßler picked
up from the Venetian school is so much greater. This is in many places self-evidently
extremely vigorous music. Moreover – and here is the biggest thing – this music is
self-consciously in diatonic keys, whereas the Roman school was still essentially
writing in the medieval modes. We could go into this in more detail, but I’d like to
try to keep your attention, so suffice it to say for now that diatonic keys are the system
we are familiar with now (like scales on the piano), while the medieval modes were
an early system of scales that gives, say, plainchant its often somewhat mournful
quality.
The motet at the Offertory is Ave Regina Cœlorum à 8 by Haßler’s teacher and mentor
Andrea Gabrieli. If you go searching for it online, you might be forgiven for feeling
confused as to whether this is a choral piece or written for a group of trombones.
Clearly the truth is both, because this work for eight voices is for two spatially
separated choirs (rather further apart than our choir stalls permit), with groups of
supporting instruments doubling the parts. With the bright number of voices and
instruments, the result would have been a rich blend of voice and brass. Because of
the spatial separation, there was a degree of rhythmic disconnect inevitable in
performance, and this is perhaps one explanation for the development of a style of
different sections, some of which launch themselves off in quite new, even
dislocating rhythmic material. The motet in fact begins rather broadly with all the
voices singing together (or as together as the spatial separation would have allowed
– the slight disconnect between them just adding to the richness, rather as the light
glancing off the differently faceted mosaics in the Basilica of San Marco in Venice
produces an iridescent visual richness). Then the choirs begin to swap the material
between them. Typically, each new section begins with a kind of syncopated entry
that jumps in before the other choir has quite finished, thereby ensuring a safe
overlap, to take account of their not necessarily being quite together. On other
occasions, there is a clear, clean break, or the choir that starts switches metre, as
happens at the words Gaude gloriosi, where the music abruptly and unexpectedly
launches off into triple time for a stretch.
There is a kind of vigour to this music that one might speculate reflects the vigour of
the highly commercial City of Venice. Just as the Venetians were very inventive in
their business activities, so in the Basilica the composers sought out a more dramatic
language for their musical expression, which itself took place within a spectacular
interior owing much to decorative ideas imported from all over the then known
world, and especially from the East. Just for a moment of armchair speculation, one
might note that the developments in choral style, harmony, and tonality that took
place in Venice found their way through individuals such as Haßler into the heart of
the German baroque. It seems interesting that this found its highest expression in
Johann Sebastian Bach, another composer of music that seems to have an underlying
vigour even when calm or melancholic, who spent such an important part of his
career in another commercially vigorous city, Leipzig.
For Evensong, Rupert has rather cleverly given us German music that owes part of
its musical language to the Venetian influences described above. Generally speaking,
we hear the canticles in English at Evensong, and just occasionally in Latin. Rather
excitingly, this week we will have them in German, which will give some people the
challenge of working out when one bows for “and holy is his name”. (The answer is
at des Name heilig ist, and if you want to know how the Gloria begins, it is with the
word Ehre…).
The Magnificat (or rather, Meine Seele erhebt den Herrn) is by Heinrich Schütz (1585–
1672). He was one of the most important composers to pre-date Bach (who was born
thirteen years after his death). He was born to an innkeeper father in Köstritz, which
was important because his big break was when he was heard singing by Landgraf
Moritz von Hessen-Kassel, while the latter was staying at the inn. In fact, the
Landgraf was so impressed that although Heinrich’s father initially refused to allow
his son to be trained musically at his noble guest’s court, the Landgraf pressed the
case repeatedly until he obtained his consent. This was the crucial development that
set Heinrich on the path he took for the rest of his life. Then, from 1609 until 1612 he
went to Venice and studied with Giovanni Gabrieli, who was not only a teacher to
him but an important friend. So, we are back with the extraordinary influence of
Venice on the development of the German baroque in music. Back in the German
states, he went to live and work in Dresden in 1615, where Haßler had been such an
important figure until his death three years previously. It goes without saying that
the earlier composer’s influence must also have been all around him.
Schütz actually composed six settings of the Magnificat that we know about, but only
four – one in Latin and three in German – have survived to today. This one, referred
to by the catalogue number SWV426, was probably written around 1625, and was
composed for a standard four-part choir with continuo accompaniment. His pupil,
Christoph Kittel, who was an organist but also a music publisher, included this
setting in his publication Zwölf geistliche Gesänge (Twelve Sacred Songs), which came
out in 1657. Kittel described the collection as being To the glory of God and for use by
Christians in churches and schools.
The Nunc Dimittis or Herr nun lästu deinen Diener is sung to a setting by Andreas
Hammerschmidt (1611–1675), another important Bach precursor. In his case, he died
ten years before Bach was born. The crucial thing about this is to realize that the
developed Baroque school of music was well established before Bach was even born.
By the time he was in his most mature period, Bach was, therefore, really quite oldfashioned, and the rest of the world was moving ahead without him. Usually when
this happens, the composer in question is quickly ignored. Of course, in Bach’s case,
this proved simply impossible to do. But back to Hammerschmidt… He might be
familiar to you from the occasions on which his Christmas piece Alleluia, Freuet euch
has been sung at carol services and around the Christmas season – a piece sometimes
known as The Hammerschmidt Flyover. He was born in the tiny town of Brüx – a place
of which you may well never have heard – but for various reasons by the age of 15
was living in Freiberg in Saxony.
We don’t in fact know a great deal about his musical education, but whoever taught
him did a fine job, because he was to become one of the most influential composers
of his generation, with considerable mastery of what is referred to as the concertato
style, which simply means that groups of voices are pitched against each other in
contrasting sections, much as we have seen was the case in the Venetian School. The
interesting things is that, while Haßler and Schütz had direct experience of this in
Venice, there is no indication of Hammerschmidt learning his craft anywhere near
there. But whoever taught and influenced him must surely have had some kind of
connection with this, because Hammerschmidt shares this general approach with
Schütz.
This setting is for six voices with continuo, and although it is for a single choir,
rather than contrasting forces, Hammerschmidt splits the texture up repeatedly into
little units of voices who play off against one another in a manner that will be
familiar to us from today’s music. By the standards of most settings of this text it is
surprisingly chunky – 127 bars, and that is without the Gloria, for which there is no
point in listening out, because he didn’t compose one.
For the anthem we go back a little earlier, and to a different influence. It is Maria
wallt zum Heiligtum (Mary made a pilgrimage to the Temple) by Johannes Eccard (1553–
1611). Born in Mühlhausen, he went aged eighteen to München, where Orlandeo de
Lassus was in post at the court of Albrecht V, Duke of Bavaria, whose goal it was to
create a musical establishment to rival any in Italy. Eccard studied there with Lassus,
and his mastery of choral and contrapuntal style clearly owes much to his illustrious
teacher and his rich inventiveness. Lassus was originally from the Netherlands, and
so would have known and sung the music of that area before he was swept off to
what we now know as Italy, much in demand because of his beautiful singing voice.
Later, he worked in Rome and knew Palestrina and Victoria there before eventually
settling in München. So, his influences alongside his own genius came from that
background. And yet here is the thread that joins him and Eccard into today’s story:
in 1562, Andrea Gabrieli had gone to München to study with Lassus, followed
almost certainly later by his nephew Giovanni. Eccard was only 9 years old at the
time, so there is no direct connection there, but we can at least say that Eccard and
the Gabrielis learnt from the same master, and the music of this Sunday will have
shown us what this led to.
Eccard wrote Maria wallt zum Heiligtum as a six-voice motet for the Feast of the
Presentation of Christ in the Temple, otherwise known to us as Candelmas, which is
on February 2nd – a Tuesday this year, so we are looking into the coming week with
this anthem. Alas, this feast also marks the real end of the season of Christmas, and if
you have decorated your home for the Epiphany with gold in honour of the season,
it will then be time either to return it to the bank vault, or if your approach is more
symbolic, just put it away wherever you keep it until next year. We are into the
Gesimas and Lent is breathing down our necks…