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Circle Singers : Program Notes for December 2005
Tomas Luis de Victoria, born in Avila, was Spain's most illustrious composer of the Renaissance. As a young man he went to Rome to study with Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Ordained a priest in 1571, he succeeded Palestrina as the Maestro di Capella of the Collegium Romanum. He returned to Spain in 1586, where he was named chaplain for the Empress Maria, widow of Maximilian II. The mid-sixteenth century Counter Reformation in Italy had a profound effect upon liturgical music. The Council of Trent sought to purge church music of secular influences, noisy instruments, and complicated polyphony that obscured texts. Legend holds that Palestrina composed the Mass of Pope Marcellus to demonstrate a style of polyphony with smooth melodic lines, regular rhythms, and simple counterpoint that was reverent in spirit and textually clear. Each voice has its own independent, clearly heard line flowing in a continuous rhythm. There are overlapping entrances as each phrase presents a new melodic motive. Victoria writes in the style of Palestrina, yet with a vibrant mysticism that is thoroughly Spanish. His Missa O Magnum Mysterium takes its opening Kyrie motive from his own motet of the same name. The Sanctus section of the Missa repeats this motive in an altered form. All movements are written for four voices except the Agnus Dei, which has five, the two upper voices singing the same melody in a strict canon at the unison two measures apart. Singing voices played the starring role in the church of the Middle Ages. The crucial service of the Mass celebrated the Eucharist, the partaking of the bread and wine symbolizing the sacrifice of the Savior. The Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Benedictus, and Agnus Dei were chanted in each service, with the exception of the Gloria, omitted in the season of Lent. In addition to the Mass, each weekday the monastic orders observed services called offices, from early morning until late in the evening. Certain chants were regularly included in particular offices, and some were reserved for special occasions. A special chant for the office of Vespers on Christmas Day, Hodie Christus Natus Est is featured in several different settings throughout this concert. The earliest liturgical music was in the form of chant, a single unaccompanied melodic line. The Singers perform a Hodie chant that dates from the Middle Ages. Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, a Dutch composer from Amsterdam, wrote thirty-nine liturgical motets found in his Cantiones Sacre of 1619. Interestingly, he also was an important composer of 153 Protestant Psalm settings. His Hodie setting for five voices is in the German Renaissance polyphonic tradition, yet it shows the influence of the lively Italian madrigal style. Written in a major mode, it is characterized by varied repetitions of melodic phrases and close imitative motives. Each phrase of the text is opened with a statement of the Hodie motive in a triple meter by the tenor voice. In alternate entrances, this motive is inverted. Following the repetition of the motive by the other voices in the first section, the rhythm becomes duple, with rapid imitations in the upper four voices over a slower-moving foundation in the bass. Each phrase of text incorporates this basic formula and concludes with a lively Noe or Alleluia refrain, with the final refrain a combination of the two. The Hodie of Giovanni Gabrieli reflects the Baroque grandeur of the beautiful St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice. Venetian composers loved to fill the galleries of St. Mark's with antiphonal choirs, and Gabrieli was the master of this style of polychoral composition. This Hodie is set for two choirs, who sing antiphonally and together in a basically homophonic style. Gabrieli is bringing the Renaissance to a close and welcoming the Baroque. While key structures are still in the future, the Hodie is filled with lush triadic harmonies. The Renaissance is reflected in frequent motives in imitation and in contrasting duple and triple rhythms. We can hear the rich colors and vast spaces of the Cathedral in this sparkling setting. Now we come to a contemporary Hodie by Donald McCullough, who is in his ninth season as music director of The Master Chorale of Washington. We will hear echoes in this work of the Hodie by Gabrieli. The six voices of the chorus enter with majestic triadic harmonies, singing the first phrase of the text. Written in four contrasting sections, the second phrase is set in a lively tempo with antiphonal effects between the high and low voices. As in the Gabrieli, we hear contrasting duple and triple rhythms. We also hear contemporary harmonies with added notes to triadic chords and an avoidance of classical tonal progressions. The opening section is reprised with the Gloria in excelsis; then the theme of the second section is echoed in the final exultant Alleluia. The men of Circle Singers sing the antiphon, Alma Redemptoris Mater. This chant is one of the four antiphons to the Virgin Mary, and are known as the Marian Antiphons. In the Middle Ages, an antiphon was originally a text set to a free melody, which alternated with the verses of the Psalms. Antiphons soon lost their original function and were sung independently. The four Marian Antiphons date from the eleventh century, with the Alma Redemptoris Mater perhaps the oldest. They are still sung today as they were then, to close the daily monastic offices, such as Vespers and Compline. This antiphon was very popular, and Chaucer gave it an important role in The Prioress's Tale. He even once called it an anthem, providing evidence that the Protestant anthem evolved from the Gregorian antiphon. Spanish Renaissance composer Francisco Guerrero centered his professional life on the Cathedrals of Seville and Málaga. His writings are noted for serenity and gentle lyricism. His Sacred Villanescas derive from a form of Italian part song: a folk-like counterpart to the more intricate madrigal. This style provides an apt expression of this intimate revelation of the love a small baby brought into the world. A friend of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gerald Finzi composed in England in the mid-twentieth century. Born of Jewish parentage, he claimed to be an agnostic, yet his spiritual nature and deep desire for peace in the world find expression in his portrayal of sacred tests. This Magnificat, Mary's canticle of praise to God sung in the Vespers service, is in the tradition of late nineteenth-century Romanticism and early twentieth expressionism. It opens and closes with a D major key center, but in between there are sudden and often chromatic modulations to remote keys, which are used to express varying moods in the text. The thematic setting of the opening phrase, "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour," recurs throughout the piece as a unifying thread. Each phrase of the piece receives a new melodic theme presented in a variety of textures, from the full sonorities of eight voices to single lines by the various voice parts. Romantic harmonies and dynamic contrasts heighten the emotional content of the text. Finzi avoids traditional tonal harmonic progressions and uses major and minor modes of the same key. This beautiful song of joy and praise ends with a hushed and gentle "Amen." Born in 1955, David Conte is a professor of composition and conductor of the Conservatory Chorus at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. His Ave Maria reflects a move away in the late twentieth century from the atonal and dissonant music of earlier years back to a more Romantic and tuneful style. This song of praise to Mary, an antiphon for the Feast of the Annunciation, begins in an F-sharp minor/modal key, then moves to F-sharp major. The piece ends in the related key of B major. It is characterized by a simple and lyrical chant-like melody, undergirded by contemporary harmonies with gentle dissonances. A group of lovely carols enhancing this Christmas concert include two arrangements of "Silent Night." David Conte harmonizes this melody simply, but with unusual non-tonal harmonies that create a very different "feel" for this familiar carol. Associate Director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Mack Wilberg's arrangement for a solo tenor voice and men's chorus is rich with Romantic harmonies. Donald McCullough gives us a joyous "Angels We Have Heard On High," with a bell-like accompaniment. Eleanor Daley has written a simple lullaby, "Dormi Jesu!" for solo soprano, undergirded by the chorus. She brings variety with a contrasting middle section in a different key and with a descant in the final verse. The carols are completed with the familiar and lovely "O Holy Night" and David Willcocks's "O Come All Ye Faithful" for us all to sing together!
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