Bruckner Mass in E Minor Motets
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The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge Final Logo Brand Extension Logo 06.27.12 BRUCKNER MASS IN E MINOR MOTETS Academy of St Martin in the Fields Sir Stephen Cleobury THE CHOIR OF KING’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE For more than half a millennium, King’s College Chapel has been the home to one of the world’s most loved and renowned choirs. Since its foundation in 1441 by the 19-year-old King Henry VI, choral services in the Chapel, sung by this choir, have been a fundamental part of life in the College. Through the centuries, people from across Cambridge, the UK and, more recently, the world have listened to the Choir at these services. Today, even people who aren’t able to attend services in the Chapel have heard King’s Choir, thanks to its many recordings and broadcasts, and the tours that have taken it to leading international concert venues around the world. Despite its deep roots in musical history, the Choir has always been at the forefront of technological innovation, and records exclusively on its ‘impeccable’ own label. 2 BRUCKNER MASS IN E MINOR MOTETS The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge Academy of St Martin in the Fields Henry Websdale & Dónal McCann Organ Scholars Sir Stephen Cleobury conductor 3 CD 57:06 ANTON BRUCKNER (1824–1896) 1 ECCE SACERDOS MAGNUS | WAB 13 (1885) 6:04 MASS NO. 2 IN E MINOR | WAB 27 (1882) 2 I Kyrie 5:43 3 II Gloria 6:50 4 III Credo 7:58 5 IV Sanctus 2:42 6 V Benedictus 4:48 7 VI Agnus Dei 3:55 8 TOTA PULCHRA ES | WAB 46 (1878) 4:48 9 VIRGA JESSE | WAB 52 (1885) 3:17 10 LOCUS ISTE | WAB 23 (1869) 2:38 11 AVE MARIA | WAB 6 (1861) 3:05 12 CHRISTUS FACTUS EST | WAB 11 (1884) 5:18 4 SHADES OF THE PAST IN played out against a revival of interest in early music. In Catholic lands this found a focus in BRUCKNER’S SACRED MUSIC Cecilianism, a reform movement whose goal was to restore the dignity of church services after a period of perceived enfeeblement. As the leading Cecilian, Franz Xaver Witt, put it in an 1865 tract, this goal would be achieved only by a return to Gregorian chant and by emulating the counterpoint of Renaissance masters, Palestrina above all. Like the Nazarene school of painters, the Cecilians ‘A modern-day Palestrina’. This was the verdict sought to restore a lost connection between art of Max Auer, author of a 1927 study of Bruckner’s and religion. The objectives of Witt, and of the church music and founding president of the Cecilian Society he helped found in 1869, were International Bruckner Society. Many of the soon recognised by Pope Pius IX: in a breve entitled composer’s contemporaries saw his sacred music ‘Multum ad movendos animos’, issued in 1870 as steeped in earlier traditions; they noted – during the First Vatican Council, the church and, on occasion, mocked – his intense piety, authorities effectively took charge of sacred music. his unswerving devotion to the Catholic Church. Bruckner – like Liszt, who anticipated many But can we reasonably view the creator of nine of the Cecilians’ ideas – was not unsympathetic stylistically progressive symphonies, the musician to the cause. However, he – like Liszt – struggled who worshipped at the shrine of Wagner, as a with the fundamental conundrum at the heart of reincarnation of the paradigmatic composer of Cecilianism: how to reconcile an artist’s need for Renaissance church music? renewal with the Cecilians’ negation of historical Much of Bruckner’s life was spent in the service development. Bruckner’s compositions for the of the church. In fact, he claimed to have grown up church reveal this tension. Many respect Witt’s on church music. His earliest surviving work, written ideals: melodic lines frequently allude to plainchant, before he entered his teens, was a setting of Pange and the counterpoint is clearly informed by lingua; the last motet, Vexilla regis, was composed Palestrina (though recent scholarship has tended in 1892, not long before his death. The half-century to view Bruckner’s studies with the great theorist that divides these two pieces was filled with a long Simon Sechter and his exposure to Venetian sequence of sacred compositions including at least polychoral music in Sankt Florian Monastery eight masses, two requiems and forty shorter as more significant). On occasion, Bruckner was works, almost all based on liturgical texts. willing, when circumstances required, to write Bruckner’s career as composer of sacred works in a highly circumscribed quasi-Cecilian style – 5 one purged of all accidentals and most forms sacerdos a rondo-like structure. The scoring, of dissonance. too – eight-part choir, three trombones and Bruckner enjoyed close friendships with some organ – is unusually opulent for a motet, though of the major players in the Cecilian movement – it almost certainly reflects the text, a responsory most notably, Ignaz Traumihler, dedicatee of four associated with the entrance of a bishop. However, works and a hard-liner in matters of style. He the instrumental parts, as in many Cecilian was even awarded an honorary diploma by the compositions, tend to reinforce rather than Cecilian Society of Linz. Yet, in an unguarded complement the voices. And there are other moment, Bruckner is supposed to have labelled hints of reformist practices: the ‘Gloria patri’, for Cecilianism ‘an illness’. He also reputedly told the example, starts with a fragment of Gregorian Archbishop of Prague: ‘Palestrina – that makes me chant presented by all voices in rhythmically happy! […] But the Cecilians are nothing! Nothing! fixed form. Like Virga Jesse, Ecce sacerdos was Nothing!’ For their part, the Cecilians were wary written in 1885 to mark the centenary of the of great composers. They rejected Liszt’s Missa diocese of Linz. However, the premiere took place Choralis (1865), despite its unusually chaste style, in 1912, shortly after the motet’s first publication. and when Witt included Bruckner’s 1868 setting of The Mass in E minor, by way of contrast, shows Pange lingua in one of his publications, he edited the most sustained engagement with Cecilian out a dissonance, without permission, and to the principles in Bruckner’s longer compositions. understandable exasperation of the composer. At It was commissioned by Franz Joseph Rudigier, times it seemed as though something of a police Bishop of Linz, to mark the completion of the state prevailed in Cecilian circles: in some 3,300 Votive Chapel of the city’s New Cathedral. Bruckner reviews published between 1870 and 1906 in the had a strong attachment to Linz. He served as Fliegende Blätter für katholische Kirchen-Musik, the Organist of the Old Cathedral from 1855 to 1868, verdict of the Cecilian Society on virtually every new and he was deeply committed to the building piece of German and Austrian sacred music was project, having written a festal cantata, Preiset promulgated. Churches were expected to take note. den Herrn, to mark the laying of the foundation- It is hard at first to draw a clear line between stone in 1862. Rudigier was impressed enough Ecce sacerdos magnus and Palestrina. The motet by Bruckner’s Mass to award the composer an begins with an uncompromising open fifth and, honorarium of 200 Gulden and a burial place in throughout, there are violent harmonic shifts, the new building. The latter, however, proved often of a tertiary nature. Dynamics range widely worthless: the dedication of the cathedral, the and rapidly, creating moments of high drama – largest in Austria, did not take place until 1924, most memorably when the trebles rise to a top almost three decades after Bruckner’s death. B flat, a twice-repeated gesture that gives Ecce The E minor Mass was composed in 1866 and 6 premiered in September 1869. The first performance back to the quasi-operatic orchestral masses of took place on the square outside Linz Cathedral, the Viennese Classical tradition, one of the genres circumstances that explain the scoring for repudiated by die-hard Cecilians. The Agnus dei eight-part choir and an ensemble of fifteen wind lies somewhere in the middle: it reuses material instruments: oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, from the Kyrie, but presents it in more Romantic trumpets and trombones. This combination attire. Most remarkable is the Sanctus, which suggests the genre known as Militärmesse, and references Palestrina’s Missa brevis, first published for the premiere Bruckner used instrumentalists in 1570. In both works, the opening of the movement from one of Linz’s military bands as well as three is built on a pattern of falling thirds and descending vocal ensembles. The new work appears to have scales. However, the greater number of parts in taxed the singers. One member of the Frohsinn Bruckner’s setting allows him a spectacular series male-voice choir, of which Bruckner was director, of overlapping entries that could never have reported that it took them weeks to learn the been imagined by his Renaissance predecessor. Mass: ‘during the dog-days of August the men A modern-day Palestrina at work? and their female counterparts patiently endured As with the Mass in E Minor, Tota pulchra es what must have been more than twenty rehearsals was dedicated to Rudigier and, like Locus iste, it in the muggy hall, with Bruckner conducting in his was first performed in the Votive Chapel of Linz’s shirt-sleeves’. Their efforts were clearly rewarded: New Cathedral. The premiere, in June 1878, marked years later, Bruckner recalled the day of the the 25th anniversary of Rudigier’s enthronement premiere as ‘the most magnificent of my entire life’.