Plainsong to Polyphony

BRIGHTON EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL 2017 PLAINSONG TO POLYPHONY BREMF Consort of Voices Deborah Roberts director The Lacock Scholars Greg Skidmore director BREMF Consort of Voices, The Lacock Scholars PLAINSONG TO POLYPHONY St Bartholomew’s Church, 7.30pm Saturday 28th October Event 11 THE PROGRAMME THE MUSIC Should you wish to applaud, please only do so at the end of each half of the concert Processional chant Alternatim Josquin des Prez 1450–1521 England and the Sarum rite A solis ortus cardine (hymn for the Nativity) Nymphes de bois (Déploration de Johannes Jacob Obrecht 1457–1505 Ockeghem) Sarum chant Organum Salve Regina Kyrie trope: Orbis factor Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, Cantus firmus: Grant them rest O Lord and Creator of the world, eternal king, have Anon c.900 our sweetness and our hope. let perpetual light shine upon them. mercy on us. Sancte Bonifati (first piece of notated We cry to you, poor banished children of polyphony) Eve. We sigh, mourning and weeping in Wood-nymphs and goddesses of the Robert Fayrfax 1464–1521 Saint Boniface glorious martyr of Christ… this valley of tears. Turn, most gracious fountains, skilled singers of every nation, Magnificat Regale advocate, your merciful eyes toward us turn your voices to cries and lamentation, My soul does magnify the Lord. Léonin fl.1150s–?1201 and after this our exile, show unto us the that the earth must cover Ockeghem, the Haec dies blessed fruit of your womb, Jesus. true treasurer of music. Put on the clothes Thomas Tallis c.1505–1585 This is the day O kind, loving and sweet Virgin Mary. of mourning, Josquin, Pierre de la Rue, Dum transisset Sabbatum Brumel, Compère, and weep great tears When the Sabbath was past, Mary Pérotin fl.1200 Chant from your eyes, for you have lost your good Magdalene, and Mary the mother of Viderunt omnes Regina caeli father. May he rest in peace. Amen. James, and Salome brought sweet spices All the ends of the earth have seen the Queen of heaven rejoice, alleluia. to anoint him. Alleluia. salvation of our God. For He whom you bore is risen, alleluia. Jean Richafort c.1480–c.1547 Kyrie from Requiem (in memoriam Josquin Processional chant The motet style Heinrich Isaac 1450–1517 Desprez) Salus aeterna (sequence for the first Regina caeli Sunday in Advent) Guillaume de Machaut c.1300–1377 Jacobus Vaet 1529–1567 Saviour eternal, life of the world unfailing... Kyrie from Messe de nostre Dame INTERVAL Continuo lacrimas (elegy on the death of Clemens non Papa) Tallis Fauxbourdon Spem in alium Nicolas Gombert 1495– c.1560 Cantus firmus: as above I have never put my hope in any other but Regina caeli a 12 Guillaume Dufay c.1397–1474 you, O God of Israel. Ave maris stella (alternatim with chant) Pour out in a continuous flow your tears, Chant and the Requiem Hail star of the sea. singers, for the praise and glory of your (Paraphrase and Cantus firmus) choir has departed. Too inclement is the Isorhythm violence of Fate, which refuses to spare Johannes Ockeghem 1410/1425–1497 so clement a one harsh blows. But all- Introit from Missa pro defunctis John Dunstable c.1390–1453 powerful God Himself will help Clement to Grant them rest O Lord and let perpetual Veni sancte spiritus conquer death, whom death has laid low. light shine upon them. Come Holy Spirit / Come creator Spirit… 3 THE MUSIC THE MUSIC Any trip through more than 500 years dove. Basically, and oversimplifying a lot, Fast forwarding to the 12th century and of music is going to leave a lot out! The most of the melodies we still use today had the Notre Dame school of composers How did polyphonic music start? When history of polyphony is highly complex and been notated by the 9th or 10th centuries. represented by Léonin and Pérotin, we did people realise that different lines full of gaps in our knowledge, especially see that organum had become a highly It is a truism to say that what we know when it comes to performance practice sophisticated form. The chant is written in of music could work together to create about history depends upon what survives and the techniques of improvisation. It also very long and slow notes with dazzling lines a whole that can vastly exceed the from the past, and that is certainly the differed within various European countries. above it moving at comparatively lightning sum of the parts? Did it even begin Even the plainchant melodies on which case with music. Beautifully bound and illuminated manuscripts are generally all speed. Haec dies is in just two parts and the accidentally when some singers strayed almost all of the earlier polyphony was chant line is so stretched out that only the based were far from standardised, nor were the music that survived from medieval from their single line of plainchant and times, for in the days before the mass notes of the first word are actually sung. We the practices of improvised or composed will precede the piece by singing the chant made concordant sounds? We will polyphony that we have grouped under production of paper everyday documents would have been re-used or recycled. It melody of that single word. The slightly probably never know, but even within broadly acknowledged headings. With later Pérotin wrote music in up to four those caveats, we dare to present this is therefore especially exciting when new the last three years, a piece of music discoveries are made. parts, but still with a mostly static chant line survey highlighting just a few pieces from serving more as a drone. Viderunt omnes is clearly in two parts has been discovered a truly massive repertoire, and will try to The earliest harmonisations of chant an extensive piece with three fast moving dating back to the 10th century, at provide here a few guidelines to help your melodies, known as organum would polyphonic lines changing syllable so rarely ears pick out the golden thread of ancient least 100 years earlier than anything originally have been improvised. In its that in the whole of the first section only chant melodies woven throughout. earliest form organum consisted in just two words are sung. In order to get through previously known. Tonight’s concert will What is the origin of chant itself? The adding an extra voice one fifth or fourth more of the text, verses in plainsong look at some of the earliest polyphony, singing of sacred texts could well date from the chant melody. Eventually the alternate with the polyphony. all of it based on plainsong melodies, back to the earliest Christian churches and second voice became more independent but no written examples had been found Guillaume de Machaut, active in the 14th and take a trip through the centuries may even have been influenced by ancient century, was part of a movement known Greek and Jewish practices, but little is dating any earlier than the 11th century illustrating some of the ingenious ways until just three years ago. An Italian PHD as Ars Nova and was the first composer actually known. The history of chant is a from whom a fully composed mass survives. in which ancient chants were woven highly complex tree with different branches student, Giovanni Varelli was working an internship at the British Library when he By this stage rather more attention was into the evolving structures and forms of evolving in different parts of the Christian being paid to word setting and a form that world, but to prune a very long story, what came upon a manuscript that had not been polyphony. From a single line of music, noticed previously, probably because of epitomised that was the motet. In origin, eventually dominated and brought some the word meant little more than a piece in we will work towards a piece that is the strangeness of the notation. Varelli, a standardisation of melodies was known as several parts with often different texts or not based on any chant melody at all, Gregorian chant. Whether or not Pope notation expert, recognised this as two- part music with no stave, dating from the even languages, frequently set over a tenor Thomas Tallis’s extraordinary 40-part Gregory I, reigning in the late 6th century, line ‘holding’ the chant. In his mass Machaut had anything to do with the melodies is early 10th century. This is not just a string motet Spem in alium. of parallel intervals, but independent parts. used two styles of writing: the more flowing debated, but images portray him receiving conductus with much parallel movement them from the Holy Spirit in the form of a 4 5 THE MUSIC THE MUSIC and rapid declamation of the text, used Dunstable sits very much on the cusp of composed settings right up to modern Jacobus Vaet, writing more than a more in the longer movements such as the the early Renaissance showing not only times. The Missa pro defunctis of Ockeghem generation later used the same technique Gloria and Credo, and a more elaborate and a building of complexity, but also an is thought to be the earliest polyphonic and Introit chant in his own elegy on the rhythmically complex style taken from the increase in the potential number of vocal setting to survive. It uses a paraphrase death of Clemens non Papa in 1555/6, motet. The Kyrie is a good example of this. parts. In the next generation of composers, of the chant melody set very audibly in the Continuo lacrimas. Born in the Netherlands, this became far more common, as did top line and the other voices make much Vaet eventually worked as a much-valued By the time we reach the 15th century, a more free way of incorporating chant use of parallel fauxbourdon writing.

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