Cappella Romana presents VENICE IN THE EAST: Renaissance Crete & Cyprus Wednesday, 8 May 2019, 7:30 p.m. Touhill Performing Arts Center, University of Missouri, Saint Louis Friday, 10 May 2019 at 7:30 p.m. Alexander Lingas Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver, British Columbia Founder & Music Director Presented by Early Music Vancouver Saturday, 11 May 2019 at 8:00 p.m. St. Ignatius Parish, San Francisco Spyridon Antonopoulos John Michael Boyer Kristen Buhler PROGRAM Aaron Cain Photini Downie Robinson PART I David Krueger Emily Lau From the Byzantine and Venetian Commemorations of the Paschal Triduum Kerry McCarthy The Crucifixion and Deposition Mark Powell Catherine van der Salm Venite et ploremus Johannes de Quadris David Stutz soloists: Aaron Cain, Mark Powell Liber sacerdotalis (1523) of Alberto Castellani Popule meus Liber sacerdotalis soloist: Kerry McCarthy Sticherón for the Holy Passion: Ἤδη βάπτεται (“Already the pen”) 2-voice setting (melos and “ison”) Manuel Gazēs the Lampadarios (15th c.) soloists: Spyridon Antonopoulos, MS Duke, K. W. Clark 45 John Michael Boyer Traditional Melody of the Sticherarion Mode Plagal 4 Cum autem venissent ad locum de Quadris Liber sacerdotalis soloists: Aaron Cain, Mark Powell O dulcissime de Quadris Liber sacerdotalis soloists: Photini Downie Robinson, Kerry McCarthy Verses of Lamentation for the Holy Passion “Corrected by” Angelos Gregoriou MS Duke 45, Mode Plagal 2 Sepulto Domino de Quadris Liber sacerdotalis The Resurrection Attollite portas (“Lift up your gates”) Liber sacerdotalis celebrant: Mark Powell Ἄρατε πύλας (“Lift up your gates”) Anon. Cypriot (late 15th c.?), MS Sinai Gr. 1313 Attollite portas … Quem queritis … Liber sacerdotalis Χριστὸς ἀνέστη (“Christ has risen”) Cretan Melody as transcribed by Ioannis Plousiadenós (ca. 1429–1500), MS Dionysiou 570 Venetian Paschal Greeting: Surrexit Christus! Liber sacerdotalis Thank you for attending today! celebrant: Mark Powell Χριστὸς ἀνέστη Cantus grecus Christus surrexit, MS Faenza 117 Learn more about Cappella Romana’s programs at cappellaromana.org INTERMISSION Please ensure all electronic devices are switched off. Part II on page 3 3 PART II New Greek Chants of the Eucharist Gloria in excelsis, sung in Greek Gazēs and Plousiadenós Mode 1 The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, sung in Greek The “New” Cantors of Crete Alexander Lingas MS Sinai 1552, Mode Plagal 4 Founder & Music Director Communion Verse for Easter: Σῶμα Χριστοῦ μεταλάβετε Ioannis Laskaris (15th c.) (“Receive the Body of Christ”) Mode Plagal 2 “Nenano” Spyridon Antonopoulos John Michael Boyer Communion Verse: Ὁ ἑωρακὼς ἐμέ An Old [Cretan] Melody Embellished by Kristen Buhler (“One who has seen me”), John 14:9 Hieronymos Tragodistēs of Cyprus (16th c.) Aaron Cain MS Sinai Gr. 1313, Mode Plagal 4 Melanie Downie Robinson Byzantine Hymns to the Mother of God David Krueger Emily Lau A Tropárion from the 9th Ode of the Paschal Canon Hieronymos Tragodistēs Kerry McCarthy by St. John of Damascus: Ὢ Πάσχα τὸ μέγα (“O Great Pascha”) in polyphony Mark Powell Káthisma “as sung on the Holy Mountain” Angelos Gregoriou Catherine van der Salm MS Dionysiou 570, Mode Plagal 4 David Stutz Kalophonic Theotokíon for Cardinal Bessarion Plousiadenós soloists: Spyridon Antonopoulos, John Michael Boyer NEW CD of this program available tonight: “A sound world of unique beauty” gramophone “kept the audience holding their breath” crescendo, namur, belgium “simply, beautiful” the new york times “You’d have to have ice water in your veins to not be moved” willamette week Thank you for attending today! Learn more about Cappella Romana’s programs at cappellaromana.org Please ensure all electronic devices are switched off. 4 of the church of San Giorgio dei Greci. Cyprus fell to the Ottomans in 1571, followed by Crete in 1669, after which the Ionian Islands were the only Greek lands to remain continuously under Venetian rule (even as it sporadically regained footholds in the Peloponnesus). The arrival of Cretan refugees in the seventeenth century bolstered cultural life on VENICE AND HER GREEK COLONIES the larger Ionian islands of Corfu, Zante, Lefkada, From her emergence as a significant political entity and Cephalonia, which to this day retain Italianate in the sixth century under the rule of the Eastern linguistic, artistic, and musical traditions. Roman (“Byzantine”) Empire to the dissolution of The split that had occurred between the Roman her Serene Republic by Napoleon in 1797, the city Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches at the of Venice remained closely tied to the Greek East. beginning of the second Christian millennium Following the diversion of the Fourth Crusade to caused varying degrees of friction between Venice sack Constantinople in the year 1204, the Venetians and her Greek subjects. The Orthodox of Crete, for not only seized for themselves priceless treasures example, were allowed to retain their own lower that to this day adorn their Byzantine-style church clergy but forbidden to consecrate their own bishops, of San Marco, but also began to acquire colonies in placing them nominally under a Latin hierarchy. the Eastern Mediterranean. The empire amassed by Music, however, was not an area of significant Venice subsequently waxed and waned relative to the conflict (Lingas 2006) and the general trend over fortunes of its military and economic competitors time was toward greater religious toleration. that included Western powers such as the Genoese and the French, as well as the Byzantines, and— In the fifteenth century, religious tensions especially from the fourteenth century onwards—the temporarily relaxed when Venice and her colonies Ottoman Turks. served as waystations for the delegation of Byzantine civil and ecclesiastical officials, headed by Emperor Crete, acquired by Venice in 1204, was for over John VIII, that journeyed to Italy in an attempt four hundred years the Serene Republic’s most to reunify the churches at the Council of Ferrara- important and prosperous Greek colony. The island Florence (1438–39). Grand Ecclesiarch of Hagia developed a flourishing Greco-Italian Renaissance Sophia Sylvester Syropoulos, although personally culture that it came to share with Cyprus, control opposed to the Union of Florence, was among the of which passed in 1489 from the French Lusignan chroniclers to report occasions when Venetian hosts dynasty to the Venetian Republic. Meanwhile, Venice and Greek Orthodox travelers experienced the herself came to host a prominent Greek minority worship of the other in a positive way. Syropoulos, that had gained a measure of cultural and religious for example, expressed admiration for a celebration autonomy in the sixteenth century with the building of Latin vespers at the Venetian monastery of 5 San Giorgio on 23 February 1438, attended by in both learned and folk poetry, and set to music Ecumenical Patriarch Joseph II. After the council the stylistically resembling Greek folk song. Venetians warmly received a full celebration of the Even stronger congruences between Greek and Latin Byzantine Divine Liturgy at San Marco in September practice under Venetian rule are apparent in the 1439. While the Union of Florence ultimately failed ceremonies marking the Resurrection of Christ on to reconcile the churches, it retained some notable Easter morning. As in the Byzantine rite, it was the Greek supporters. Prominent among these was the custom in Venice for an outdoor procession to be former Metropolitan of Nicea, Bessarion (1403–72), confronted by the closed doors of an empty church. an intellectual who became a Cardinal of the Roman In Castellani’s Liber sacerdotalis the opening of the Church and in 1468 donated to Venice his valuable doors is heralded by the proclamation of verses from collection of books, now contained in the Biblioteca Psalm 23 (lxx), a text traditionally employed in both Marciana. the Byzantine and Roman rites for the consecration The music on this program witnesses to interactions of churches. The use of this text on Easter morning between Greeks and Latins within the shared cultural was also known in Byzantium, where it was listed in space of Venetian rule. It begins by demonstrating the fourteenth-century manual of court ceremony the similar ways in which they enriched their by Pseudo-Kodinos as a practice not observed in the respective ancient liturgical traditions for the imperial palace. Although still excluded from most Paschal Triduum, the period from Good Friday Orthodox service books, “Lift up your gates” has in to Easter Sunday marking the Crucifixion and some regions remained a feature of Easter celebrated Resurrection of Jesus Christ. On Good Friday both according to the Byzantine rite until the present day, communities rendered Christ physically present— the Roman Catholics with a consecrated host and the Greek Orthodox through the Epitaphios, a cloth embroidered with an icon of the dead Jesus surrounded by angels—in rituals of burial and lamentation. The Latindepositio ceremony observed in Venice during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is contained in books compiled for use at San Marco, as well as in the Liber sacerdotalis (1523), edited by the Dominican Alberto Castellani and widely distributed in Northern Italy. As Susan Rankin (1997:171) notes, it involved an “extremely elaborate” procession that allowed much of the city’s population to participate alongside “the ducal retinue, clerics of St. Mark’s, and foreign ambassadors.” On this program we offer excerpts of two-voice music for these devotions in the Liber sacerdotalis by Johannes de Quadris, a composer active at San Marco during the second quarter of the fifteenth century. This music is echoed by the simple polyphony of his contemporary Manuel Gazēs, a cantor and composer who served in the Byzantine imperial chapel before retiring to Crete. The Latin laments of the Virgin Mary for her crucified Son find a Greek counterpart in a manuscript of Byzantine liturgical music recorded by the Cretan composer Angelos Gregoriou, a pupil of Gazēs. Provided in addition to the traditional chants for the Passion, this lament is a poem cast in fifteen-syllable verse, a meter employed Ἄρατε πύλας (Lift up your gates) 6 ex MS Sinai Gr.