Membra Jesu Nostri

CORO The Sixteen Edition CORO The Sixteen Edition Victoria Heinrich Schütz The Mystery of the Cross Musikalische Exequien Dietrich Victoria: “The sombre colours the most outstanding of Schütz's moving Buxtehude composer of the funeral music are Renaissance finely brought out in this collection.” “Music Christophers was the guardian born to conduct.” bbc radio 3, Membra cd review cor16021 cor16036 Handel J. S. Bach Jesu Messiah 3 CDs (Special Edition) Cantatas 34, 50, 147 Carolyn Sampson “…a pleasure to listen Catherine Wyn-Rogers to when played and Nostri Mark Padmore sung as well as this.” Christopher Purves the independent “…this inspiriting new performance becomes a first choice.” The Sixteen HARRY CHRISTOPHERS the sunday times cor16062 cor16039 To find out more about The Sixteen, concert tours, and to buy CDs visit www.thesixteen.com cor16082 or some people, the cyclic title Fof these cantatas by Buxtehude might conjure up a rather morbid JANE COE (1953–2007) picture. However, this meditation on Jane Coe was principal cellist the Passion, in which each of the of The Sixteen for twenty years seven cantatas contemplates parts of and we are fortunate enough Christ’s body on the cross (feet, knees, Borggreve Marco Photograph: to have recorded many CDs hands, side, breast, heart and head), is full of beauty, hope and invention. on which you can hear Jane’s exquisite playing. This disc, It is very much a chamber work and which she loved dearly, is requires a certain intimacy between performers. In the year 2000 I was very fortunate to have five choir members dedicated to her memory. who were just about to embark on exciting solo careers. They possessed that all-too-rare quality of not only being able to deliver solo arias with great style and aplomb, but they could also perform the choruses with great sensitivity, violin 1 David Woodcock being able to blend instinctively with each other. The Sixteen violin 2 Walter Reiter However, none of this could be done without the awareness and inventiveness cello Jane Coe of the instrumentalists who shadow every nuance remarkably. From the resonant chamber organ Paul Nicholson sonority of the quintet of viols, which only appears in one cantata, Ad Cor, theorbo Elizabeth Kenny symbolising our love for Christ as well as Christ’s love for mankind, to the • soprano 1 Carolyn Sampson treble viol Richard Campbell delicate subtlety of the two violins and the totally inventive spontaneity of the continuo, we were able to convey Buxtehude’s work in an intimate yet overtly soprano 2 Libby Crabtree treble viol Susanna Pell spiritual and prayerful manner. counter-tenor Robin Blaze bass viol Imogen Seth-Smith tenor James Gilchrist bass viol Reiko Ichise bass Simon Birchall great bass viol Richard Boothby 2 3 cm Salve latus – soprano 1 1.16 Membra Jesu Nostri Dietrich Buxtehude (c.1637-1707) cn Ecce tibi appropinquo – alto, tenor, bass 1.16 A cycle of seven cantatas, as a meditation on the body of Our Lord Jesus Christ co Hora mortis – soprano 2 1.14 cp Surge, amica mea – chorus 1.57 Cantata i: Ad pedes (To the feet) 1 Sonata 0.49 Cantata v: Ad pectus (To the breast) 2 Ecce super montes – chorus 1.10 cq Sonata 0.44 3 Salve mundi salutare – chorus 0.45 cr Sicut modo geniti – alto, tenor, bass 2.36 4 Clavos pedum – soprano 1 1.23 cs Salve, salus mea – alto 1.31 5 Dulcis Jesu – bass 1.26 ct Pectus mihi confer mundum – tenor 1.30 6 Ecce super montes – chorus 1.16 cu Ave, verum templum - bass 1.29 dl Sicut modo geniti – alto, tenor, bass 2.42 Cantata ii: Ad genua (To the knees) 7 Sonata 0.58 Cantata vi: Ad cor (To the heart) 8 Ad ubera portabimini – chorus 1.39 dm Sonata 1.56 9 Salve Jesu – tenor 1.06 dn Vulnerasti cor meum – soprano 1 & 2, bass 2.04 bl Quid sum tibi responsurus – alto 1.07 do Summi regis cor – soprano 1 0.45 bm Ut te quaeram – soprano 1 & 2, bass 1.06 dp Per medullam – soprano 2 0.46 bn Ad ubera portabimini – chorus 1.45 dq Viva cordis voce clamo - bass 1.17 dr Vulnerasti cor meum - soprano 1 & 2, bass 2.11 Cantata iii: Ad manus (To the hands) bo Sonata 0.51 Cantata vii: Ad faciem (To the face) bp Quid sunt plagae – chorus 1.55 ds Sonata 0.42 bq Salve Jesu – soprano 1 1.38 dt Illustra faciem tuam – chorus 1.30 br Manus sanctae – soprano 2 1.37 du Salve, caput cruentatum – alto, tenor, bass 1.38 bs In cruore tuo lotum – alto, tenor, bass 1.38 el Dum me mori est necesse – alto 1.38 bt Quid sunt plagae – chorus 2.05 em Cum me jubes emigrare – chorus 1.18 en Amen 1.44 Cantata iv: Ad latus (To the side) bu Sonata 0.28 Total running time 61.23 cl Surge, amica mea – chorus 1.53 4 5 elements are set in the German vernacular. romantic, view that North German musicians Membra Jesu Nostri Dietrich Buxtehude Such was the growing sense, as the century were sealed in a prodigious cultural vacuum onsidering Dietrich Buxtehude’s sacred to that of a parochial loft-bound organist progressed, of the German language as the – yet more fuel for Bachian hagiography. Cmusic as a spring in the foothills of Mount whose achievements can be viewed principally prime means for setting music. ‘Membra’, Buxtehude’s easy assimilation of Italian Bach is inevitable given Bach’s peerless stature: as refining Bach’s notion of stylus phantasticus though, was clearly a unique assignment for musical style reveals that pre-Bach North inadvertently, an Olympian reputation invites (the free-wheeling, virtuosic toccata style) Buxtehude. Gustav Düben, whose collection Germany was in fact well acclimatised to avalanches to smother the achievements of and chorale paraphrases or preludes. Such has so miraculously survived, is the sole both southern musical languages and dialects. distinguished forebears. Such a dramatic claim a notion was encouraged in the nineteenth dedicatee as the autograph tablature reveals: To support this (Düben’s collection aside), is not too wide of the mark if one peruses the century by both Johannes Brahms’ and ‘to a foremost man…most noble and honoured Italian musicians were regularly employed Düben Collection in Uppsala, Sweden, a Phillip Spitta’s admiration for ‘Buxtehude the friend, Director of Music to his Most Serene in courts and ecclesiastical posts throughout resource containing reams of seventeenth organist’; the only modern monograph, by Majesty, the King of Sweden’. Düben was the country, and many Germans, other century North German masterpieces, Kerala Snyder, entitled ‘Organist in Lübeck’, also well-placed in his kapellmeister role in than the famous Schütz and Rosenmüller, including a range of fine proto-cantatas by hardly reflects a sophisticated command of a Stockholm to seek out music and musicians, studied in Italy. All this, before one ventures Buxtehude and forgotten contemporaries. mesmerising range of past, current and even both from the trade-routes of the Hanseatic to observe the Mediterranean breeze on Buxtehude, however, was not entirely buried prescient vocal genres. ports as well as from his regular travels south. the ruddy complexion of Buxtehude’s in the wake of Bach’s ascendancy. His death His collection contains one thousand three scores. As Geoffrey Webber points out, the in 1707 brought eulogies and epithets such Amongst Buxtehude’s 130-odd surviving hundred sacred works in which Buxtehude is influence of the Italian strophic aria style on as ‘world-renowned, incomparable musician sacred works, there exists the fullest prominent with over a hundred such pieces. Buxtehude can be specifically traced in the and composer’ (Johann Caspar Ulich). We compass of concerto-motets, chorale settings It is even conceivable that Düben may have detailed melodic figures of Giovanni Bicilli’s can safely say, also, that the discriminating and varied strophic arias, as well as vocal commissioned some of Buxtehude’s cantatas. ‘Gloriosum diem colimus’, unashamedly young Bach did not disappear to Lübeck in concertos employing all the textural and super-imposed on ‘Surge amica mea’, the 1705 – incurring the wrath of his Arnstadt tonal developments of the late seventeenth Düben was particularly attracted to Latin fourth cantata in ‘Membra’. employers in the process – to hear century. To acknowledge Buxtehude as the texts, no doubt forged by a special interest in Buxtehude’s music for anything other than outstanding German composer between Italian music and his knowledge of both the ‘Membra Jesu nostri patientis sanctissima’ guaranteed and supreme nourishment for his Schütz and Bach, one need look no further Monteverdi and Carissimi – Venetian and (Most Holy Members of our Suffering Jesus) own artistic formation. Whilst Bach clearly than his cycle of seven cantatas, Membra Roman respectively – generations of vocal is a Passion-meditation, contemplating seven understood and admired Buxtehude for his Jesu Nostri (BuxWV75). This work, dating music. Buxtehude, on the other hand, was no different parts of Jesus Christ’s body on the breadth of experience and vision, more recent from 1680, is a sui generis example in the cosmopolitan. He stayed in Lübeck for over cross: feet, knees, hands, side, breast, heart commentators have – as scholar Christoph composer’s cantata oeuvre since all his other thirty years, rarely travelled and never visited and head. The majority of the Latin text Wolff reminds us – streamlined his influence extended pieces combining concerto and aria Italy, thus promulgating the erroneous, if is drawn from a popular medieval poem, 6 7 ‘Salve mundi salutare’ which Buxtehude may where musical diversity reigned supreme, from C minor via related keys, returning to heart’ confirms Buxtehude as a master of acute have compiled himself through an edition Buxtehude made no conscious choice of the dark smouldering intensity of the opening dramatic timing in the patient manipulation entitled Domini Bernhardi Oratio rhythmica how indigenous or ‘foreign’ his musical key for the final cantata.

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