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Home , Coronation anthem, Henry Purcell, I was glad, Psalm 128, Verse anthem

The Cathedral of St John the Evangelist Helen D. Schubert Concerts Cleveland Ohio

Henry Purcell: Hear My Voyce & for the segal

beth Ross W. Duffin,Artistic Director

Friday, 6 October 2017

The Cathedral of St John the Evangelist Most Reverend Nelson J. Perez, Bishop of Cleveland Reverend Sean Ralph, Administrator Mr Gregory Heislman, Director of Music Quire Cleveland Ross W. Duffin,Artistic Director

Henry Purcell: Hear My Voyce Psalms & Anthems for the Chapel Royal

All Works by Henry Purcell (1659–1695) Please hold your applause until the end of each half.

I will sing unto the Lord (Psalm 104) Jehova quam multi sunt hostes mei (Ps. 3) Blow up the trumpet in Sion (Joel 2) Beati omnes qui timent Domini (Ps. 128) Remember not, Lord, our offences Litany( ) Funeral Sentences Man that is born of woman (Job 14) In the midst of life () Thou knowest, Lord BCP( )

— intermission —

O God, thou hast cast us out (Ps. 60) Lord, how long wilt thou be angry (Ps. 79) Miserere mei

Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts BCP( ) O Lord God of Hosts (Ps. 80) Hear my prayer (Ps. 102)

Save me, O God (Ps. 54) O be joyful in the Lord (Jubilate) (Ps. 100) (Ps. 122) About Quire Cleveland Quire Cleveland is a professional chamber established in 2008 to explore the vast and timeless repertoire of choral music over the last 9 centuries. Quire’s programs introduce audiences to music not heard in the modern era — including modern premieres of works newly discovered or reconstructed — breathing life into the music of our shared heritage. With highly-trained professional musicians — who collectively represent 500 years of choral singing — the ensemble has earned both popular and critical acclaim. Now in its 10th season, Quire Cleveland has presented more than 60 concerts and produced seven CDs of music from the 12th to the 21st centuries. Artistic Director Ross W. Duffin, a prize- winning musicologist, creates unique editions for Quire, and plans programs that are imaginative, appealing, and accessible, showcasing the beauty of the music and the glorious sound of voices raised in harmony. In addition to live and recorded broadcasts on classical radio, Quire recordings have been included in the Oxford Recorded Anthology of Western Music (OUP) and Listening to Music (Schirmer). An education program, initiated in 2014, offers workshops and lectures. Quire Cleveland’s concert videos posted on YouTube have had a global reach, attracting more than 680,000 views from 210 countries.

Personnel

Sopranos: Sarah Coffman, Donna Fagerhaug, Megan Kaes Long, Elena Mullins, Lisa Rainsong, Gail West Altos: John McElliott, Joseph Schlesinger, Beverly Simmons, Jay White Tenors: Evan Bescan, Nathan Dougherty, Bryan Munch, Corey Shotwell, Brian Wentzel Basses: Ian Crane, Daniel Fridley, Nathan Longnecker, Brian MacGilvray, Michael McKay, Daniel Singer Organ: Peter Bennett

Ross W. Duffin, artistic director Quire Cleveland’s founding Artistic Director, Ross W. Duffin, is an award-winning scholar, specializing in the performance practice of early music. Director since 1978 of the nationally recognized Historical Performance Practice Program at Case Western Reserve University, where he is Fynette H. Kulas Professor of Music and a Distinguished University Professor, he has trained and nurtured many of today’s leading performers and researchers in the field. His weekly radio show, Micrologus: Exploring the World of Early Music, was broadcast on 140 NPR stations throughout the United States. His books, How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care) and Shakespeare’s Songbook (both published by W. W. Norton), have gained international renown. In addition to many of the works on this concert, Ross has edited Cantiones Sacræ: Madrigalian Motets from Jacobean (A-R Editions), which Quire recorded complete as Madrigalian Motets (qc103); A Josquin Anthology; A Performer’s Guide to Medieval Music; and the St. Matthew Passion by Richard Davy, recorded by Quire Cleveland for a CD just released (qc107). Texts & Translations

Psalm 104 6. The Lord from out of Sion shall so bless thee: that 33. I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live: I will thou shalt see Jerusalem in prosperity all thy life long. praise my God while I have my being. 7. Yea, that thou shalt see thy children’s children: and 34. And so shall my words please him: my joy shall be in peace upon Israel. the Lord. 35. As for sinners, they shall be consumed out of the Anglican Litany (Book of Common Prayer) earth, and the ungodly shall come to an end: praise Remember not, Lord, our offences, nor the offences of our thou the Lord, O my soul, praise the Lord. forefathers: Spare us, good Lord, spare thy people, whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood, and be : Jehova quam multi (Tremellius ) not angry with us for ever. Spare us, good Lord. 1. Lord, how are they increased that trouble me: many are they that rise against me. Anglican Burial Prayer at the Graveside 2. Many one there be that say of my soul: There is no (Job 14:1-2, BCP) help for him in his God. 1. Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to 3. But thou, O Lord, art my defender: thou art my live, and is full of misery. worship, and the lifter up of my head. 2. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth 4. I did call upon the Lord with my voice: and he heard as it were a shadow, and ne’er continueth in one stay. me out of his holy hill. 5. I laid me down and slept, and rose up again: for the In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek Lord sustained me. for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly 6. I will not be afraid for ten thousands of the people: displeased? that have set themselves against me round about. Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy 7. Up, Lord, and help me, O my God: for thou smitest and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter all mine enemies upon the cheekbone; thou hast pains of eternal death. broken the teeth of the ungodly. 8. Salvation belongeth unto the Lord: and thy blessing is Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts; shut not thy upon thy people. merciful ears to our prayer; but spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour, thou most Joel 2 worthy judge eternal, suffer us not, at our last hour, for any 15. Blow up the trumpet in Sion, sanctify a fast, call a pains of death, to fall from thee. solemn assembly: 16. Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble Psalm 60 the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the 1. O God, thou hast cast us out, and scattered us abroad: breasts: let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, thou hast also been displeased; O turn thee unto us and the bride out of her closet. again. 17. Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep 2. Thou hast moved the land, and divided it: heal the between the porch and the altar, and let sores thereof, for it shaketh. them say, Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine 11. O be thou our help in trouble: for vain is the help of heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over man. them: wherefore should they say among the people, 12. Through God will we do great acts: for it is he that Where is their God? shall tread down our enemies.

Psalm 128: Beati omnes () Psalm 79 1. Blessed are all they that fear the Lord: and walk in his 5. Lord, how long wilt thou be angry: shall thy jealousy ways. burn like fire for ever? 2. For thou shalt eat the labours of thine hands: O well is 8. O remember not our old sins, but have mercy upon us, thee, and happy shalt thou be. and that soon: for we are come to great misery. 3. Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine: upon the walls of 9. Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of thy thine house. Name: O deliver us, and be merciful unto our sins, for 4. Thy children like the olive-branches: round about thy thy Name’s sake. table. 14. So we, that are thy people, and sheep of thy pasture, 5. Lo, thus shall the man be blessed: that feareth the shall give thee thanks for ever: and will alway be Lord. shewing forth thy praise from one generation to another. Miserere mei 6. An offering of a free heart will I give thee, Have mercy on me, O Jesu, have mercy on me. and praise thy Name, O Lord: because it is so comfortable. Anglican Burial Prayer at the Graveside (BCP) 7. For he hath delivered me out of all my trouble: and Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts; shut not mine eye hath seen his desire upon mine enemies. thy merciful ears to our prayer; but spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour, : Jubilate Deo thou most worthy judge eternal, suffer us not, at our last 1. O be joyful in the Lord, all ye lands: hour, for any pains of death, to fall from thee. 2. Serve the Lord with gladness, and come before his presence with a . Psalm 80 3. Be ye sure that the Lord he is God; it is he that 4. O Lord God of hosts: how long wilt thou be angry hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his with thy people that prayeth? people, and the sheep of his pasture. 5. Thou feedest them with the bread of tears: and 4. O go your way into his gates with thanksgiving, and givest them plenteousness of tears to drink. into his courts with praise; be thankful unto him, 6. Thou hast made us a very strife unto our and speak good of his Name. neighbours: and our enemies laugh us to scorn. 5. For the Lord is gracious, his mercy is everlasting; 7. Turn us again, thou God of hosts: shew the light of and his truth endureth from generation to thy countenance, and we shall be whole. generation. 18. And so will not we go back from thee: O let us live, Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy and we shall call upon thy Name. Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. 1. Hear my prayer, O Lord: and let my crying come unto thee. 1. I was glad when they said unto me: We will go into the house of the Lord. Psalm 54 4. For thither the tribes go up, even the tribes of the 1. Save me, O God, for thy Name’s sake: and avenge Lord: to testify unto Israel, to give thanks unto the me in thy strength. Name of the Lord. 2. Hear my prayer, O God: and hearken unto the 5. For there is the seat of judgment: even the seat of words of my mouth. the house of David. 3. For strangers are risen up against me: and tyrants, 6. O pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper which have not God before their eyes, seek after my that love thee. soul. 7. Peace be within thy walls: and plenteousness within 4. Behold, God is my helper: the Lord is with them thy palaces. that uphold my soul. Glory be to the Father …

Quire Cleveland’s 10th Anniversary Season Upcoming Concerts Carols for Quire from the Old & New Worlds (9th annual) December 14, 15 & 16, 2017

Let the Heavens Rejoice! Celebratory Psalms for Voices & Instruments in collaboration with Les Délices • April 27, 28 & 29, 2018

10th Anniversary Season Finale: A Free Gift to All Music-Lovers May 26, 2018 @ 7:30 pm • Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist More information at quirecleveland.org Program Notes

Three years after his death in 1695 at the youthful age of 36, Henry Purcell was already being referred to as “Orpheus Britannicus” (the British Orpheus). He was, quite simply, one of the finest ever to set texts in English. His choral music is, by turns, heartfelt, dramatic, tender, and glorious, and we are pleased to offer this concert of some of his masterpieces. Many of Purcell’s sacred works are contrapuntal, a familiar Renaissance style, but his music presents other, unexpected challenges. One is the angular melodies that he uses in the service of his inimitable accentual and meaningful expression of the English language. Another is the harmony. “Yes, you really are supposed to enter on that note, even though it’s a minor second away from that other voice part.” After the euphony of most Renaissance polyphony, Purcell sounds downright dissonant, modern, avant-garde, crunchy. There is nothing like the thrill of singing sustained dissonances, however, as our Quiristers have discovered, to their surprise and delight.

Nowadays, Purcell is mostly known for his theater music, including his sole , & , but his “day job” was as musician and to the English royal court. For its private Chapel Royal, and at Abbey, he composed a great deal of exquisite church music, including in the unique English genre, the . English anthems from the 17th century fall into two general categories — full anthems and verse anthems. Full anthems are scored for the entire choir, for as many as eight or ten choral voice parts at once. Verse anthems, on the other hand, are scored for groups of soloists within the choral texture, alternating with sections for chorus. This gives many of our singers, as you will hear, the opportunity to sing one-to-a-part. Verse anthems originated in the early 17th century as consort anthems, where the voices were accompanied by melodic instruments, like or and . A few decades later, those instrumental parts were written for organ, and that became the new standard way of composing and performing them. Of the ten verse anthems on this program, several work without accompaniment but, for the others, we are using organ continuo.

One other general comment concerns the texts. Since many of the prayers in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer come from psalm verses and, furthermore, since the Book of Psalms was often published as an addendum to copies of the Book of Common Prayer in England, it is not surprising that most of the anthems on tonight’s program have texts taken from these familiar verses. With their imagery of singing and crying out, of celebrating and making music, the psalms have been timeless and fruitful lyrics for musical settings throughout the centuries for many faiths, from the daily chanting of psalms in earlier centuries, to the 15th-century polyphonic settings of Josquin, all the way to the Chichester Psalms of Leonard Bernstein and, no doubt, to composers working today. Purcell’s settings are extraordinary and varied. He astonishes with the range of emotions he conjures, from simple quiet devotion to torment and anguish; his musical setting of these lyrics is eloquent and heartfelt, at every turn.

We begin with I will sing unto the Lord, a in which blocks of choral sound alternate with gentler soli sections amid varying meters. TheCantate Domino text is well known as the beginning of Psalms 96, 98, and 149, but here Purcell finds a related and essential psalmodic lyric at the end of Psalm 104.

Jehova quam multi is, at first glance, a motet — basically an anthem in Latin. But Purcell chose an extremely unusual source for his setting of Psalm 3: the psalter from the protestant humanistic Latin , translated by Immanuel Tremellius and first published in England in 1580. Tremellius was a Ferrarese Jewish convert to Calvinism, who became Professor of Hebrew and Greek at Cambridge during the reign of Edward vi. Not many musical settings of Tremellius psalms survive, so it’s interesting to find Purcell setting this one a hundred years after the original publication. The setting is striking for its use of two extended solos for tenor and bass, rather than the more typical groups of solo singers.

Groups of solo singers abound in the next anthem, Blow up the trumpet. In fact, some parts of the piece sound like sections of dialogue between groups of singers. It is curious to find Purcell setting this text about the people being ruled by heathen. It may have been written by the 18-year-old composer in 1677, when the French navy was active and successful, causing alarm in England.

Also dating from that period is the Latin-texted Beati omnes, written in verse-anthem style with extended solos for bass and soprano. Vulgate , from which the text is taken, is known especially as the proper psalm for weddings. But since a Latin liturgy was not sanctioned in the English church at the period, the piece is thought to have been written for domestic devotion. However, it has been dated as early as 1677, which is the year the Princess Mary married Prince William of Orange, and since they were married in the small chapel at St. James’s Palace instead of in a larger public ceremony, they might have sneaked a Latin motet into the ceremony. The extended“Alleluia” ending is spectacular.

Remember not, Lord, our offenses is one of Purcell’s few full anthems. Scored for five voices, it is a setting of a text from the Order for the Visitation of the Sick from the Book of Common Prayer. Man that is born of woman is another verse anthem with several sections for groups of soloists. The text includes two verses from the , but the collected lines are from the Anglican burial service. Here, Purcell pits a kind of calm resignation against the anguish evident in the rising chromatic passage at “the bitter pains of eternal death.” Also notable is the effective and pathos-laden descent at the words “to fall from thee,” at the end. Written when Purcell was 20 years old or less, it’s an extraordinary work — difficult, emotional, and beautiful.

O God, thou has cast us out is also a comparatively early work. It is mostly “full” (i.e., for full chorus) in six voice parts, but in the middle features a verse section for soloists. One curious aspect is Purcell’s thoughtful selection of verses from Psalm 60, setting the first two, but then skipping to the 11th and 12th for the conclusion. The setting was written at an uncertain time for the nation, with the death of Charles ii and the accession of his brother, James ii. Some of that uncertainty, with an expression of hope for better times, seems to be reflected in this anthem.

Miserere mei is a domestic devotional work in Latin. The opening text occurs no fewer than eighteen times in theBook of Psalms, perhaps most famously at the opening of Psalm 51. This setting, however, is a brief prayer. Its4 -voice texture almost completely obscures the fact that it really consists of only two written voice parts, each one in canon an octave below — the tenor following the soprano and the bass following the alto. The exquisite dissonances of this work are over too soon — so much so, that we have decided to sing it twice!

Thou knowest, Lord is a setting of the same text that concluded Man that is born, earlier in the program. The two are musically so different that it seemed worth hearing this contrasting setting — so simple, and yet so beautiful. It was first performed on March 5, 1695, for the funeral of Queen Mary, and repeated at Purcell’s own funeral in November of that year, both in .

O Lord God of hosts is best described as a full anthem with verse elements: the 8-voice choral texture is interrupted by sections for soli. At the text, “Turn us again,” Purcell changes gears dramatically with a shift to the minor mode, then interrupts the text with a skip to a much later verse of the psalm for the conclusion — a grand, optimistic chorus, again in the major mode.

Hear my prayer has long been one of the most beloved works among singers of this repertory. Apparently written again for a royal funeral — that of Charles ii in 1685 — its emotionally charged lines weave through chromatic ambivalence and harmonic disagreement to a stunning and glorious climax. Every singer should get to perform this choral masterpiece at least once. Quire was fortunate to sing this work in 2011, under guest conductor Timothy Brown of Clare College, Cambridge, England.

Save me, O God is another psalm setting from the late , when Purcell was still in his teens. It uses a trio of low voices and then a trio of high voices, introduced, punctuated, and concluded by the full choir. The opening imitative section is answered by an actual canon for five voices at the end. One curious feature — reminiscent of J. S. Bach’s omission of some of the more inflammatory texts from the St. John Passion — is that Purcell uses the entire Psalm 54, except verse 5, which is perhaps the most belligerent and vengeful. The composer may have wanted to avoid too much distraction from the message of supplication and hope for redemption.

O be joyful in the Lord, also known as the Jubilate Deo, is a psalm that, along with the , was sung daily at Morning Prayer. Purcell composed a much grander setting of this text with instruments; the one we are singing is on a smaller scale, with two verses for groups of soloists, but otherwise full. It is an optimistic work, somehow, in spite of the highly chromatic imitative motive at the text, “It is he that hath made us.” There is also a canon at the 4-voice verse, with the soprano following the tenor in inversion up a 5th, and the alto a 12th above the bass, also in inversion. It is a lovely moment, in spite of its complicated compositional technique. The piece concludes with a resoundingGloria Patri: “Glory be to the Father.”

Our final piece,I was glad is most often described as a anthem for James ii, in 1685, but in fact, it is also a setting of verses from Psalm 122. Surviving only in a late-18th-century manuscript and there ascribed to Purcell’s elder colleague, , it is the only one of Purcell’s sacred compositions to have been excluded from the 1963 catalogue of his works. In 1977, however, musicologist Bruce Wood noticed that the description of the music for the 1685 coronation, printed two years after the event, mentioned a setting of Psalm 122, verses 1, and 4– 7 with the Gloria patri (exactly as in this work), and described as a “full Anthem” “Compos’d by Mr Hen. Purcel, a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal.” That was sung by the Westminster Abbey choir as the introit at the coronation, and can be none other than this glorious work.

— Ross W. Duffin