Emerald Ensemble September 2017 the Two Elizabeths Program Notes
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Emerald Ensemble September 2017 The Two Elizabeths Program Notes with Texts and Translations Dance, clarion air (1952) Michael Tippett (1905–1998) O Lord, give thy Holy Spirit (after 1566) Thomas Tallis (c.1505–1585) Weep, O mine eyes (1599) John Bennet (c.1575–after 1614) Mitte manum tuam (2006) James MacMillan (b.1959) Fair Phyllis I saw sitting all alone (1599) John Farmer (c.1570–c.1605) O Lord, the maker of all thing William Mundy (c.1528–1591) O Care, thou wilt despatch me (1600) Thomas Weelkes (1576–1623) The Song Sung True (2013) Judith Weir (b.1954) 1. Sing — 2. Song — 3. Orpheus — 4. Folk Music intermission Lullabye for Lucy (1981) Peter Maxwell Davies (1934–2016) Come, blessed bird (1601) Edward Johnson (fl.1572–1601) O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth (c.1570) William Byrd (c.1540–1623) Arise, awake (1601) Thomas Morley (1557/8–1602) Choral Dances, from Gloriana (1953) Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) 1. Time — 2. Concord — 3. Time and Concord — 4. Country Girls — 5. Rustics and Fishermen — 6. Final Dance of Homage The Hills (1953) John Ireland (1879–1962) Andrew Turner, from Five Epigrams (1960) Nicholas Maw (1935–2009) White-flowering days (1953) Gerald Finzi (1901–1956) 1 Dance, clarion air (1952) Michael Tippett (1905–1998) So often we hear stories of wunderkind composers who wrote masterpieces in their teens and twenties—folks like Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Brahms, Prokofiev, Walton, Britten—that we forget about the slew of brilliant composers who were relatively late bloomers, among them Haydn, Bruckner, Mahler, Elgar, Janáček, Vaughan Williams, Pärt, and the present example, Michael Tippett. Some in that latter category needed extra training or world experience, some underwent major stylistic awakenings, and some required a special external motivation to spark their genius. Tippett belongs in all of those camps. May he be an exemplar for all those still struggling to achieve their dreams, whatever their age. He certainly had no lack of training, studying piano in his youth and deciding early to become a composer. He attended the Royal College of Music in London. In his twenties he led amateur music- making in the Surrey town where he lived, and he taught at London’s Morley College, whose student body consisted (and still does) of working-class adults. And indeed, for a professionally trained musician there is nothing better for world experience than to teach music in a practical setting to volunteers. He grew dissatisfied with his own compositions, and thus returned to the RCM for supplemental training. His external motivation sparked in the late 1930s and ‘40s, as the preface to war and then the Second World War itself sparked his pacifism and deep sense of social justice; he even served three months in prison as a conscientious objector. His wartime oratorio A Child of Our Time (1941) was the first work that coalesced the experience, the training, and the inspiration into a major masterpiece. Tippett had arrived. Soon more works of genius followed, notably the First Symphony (1945), the Third String Quartet (1946), the Suite in D (1948) written for the birth of Prince Charles, and the song-cycle The Heart’s Assurance (1951) for Peter Pears. Upon the imminent coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, ten composers were asked to write a modern madrigal for a choral volume entitled A Garland for the Queen. Tippett had worked extensively with Renaissance English madrigals in Surrey, and had composed four fine madrigalian works in the mid- ’40s, so he was a logical if not intuitive choice. The composers were equally divided between the post- Romantic folks whose styles became formalized before the War (Vaughan Williams, Ireland, Bax, Howells, Finzi), and edgier composers who were, as the critics believed, moving British music forward (Bliss, Berkeley, Rawsthorne, Rubbra, and Tippett). Two contributions have really become standard repertoire—those of Finzi and Tippett (Finzi’s and Ireland’s works are also heard in this concert, and discussed below). All ten were first performed by the Cambridge University Madrigal Society at London’s Royal Festival Hall on June 1, 1953, the night before the coronation. Tippett set Dance, clarion air for five voices, a configuration much beloved of madrigalists of yore. He begins with striking fanfares and occasional introspective echoes from a semi-chorus of soloists. Subtle text-painting comes here and there, such as the gentle rocking of “stones on the shore, swept … by the ocean”, the grand chord for the “crown”, and the gradual expanding of “morning light” into a glorious “morning throne”. The airy, bubbly sound-world of Dance, clarion air is comparable to that of his recently completed opera The Midsummer Marriage (1952). When that work was premiered three years 2 later, it marked the moment when Tippett solidified his reputation as second only to Britten among English composers. Not bad for a late bloomer. Dance, clarion air, Shine, stones on the shore, Swept in music by the ocean, Shine, till all this island [is] a crown, This island and [these] realms and territories, Rememb’ring all than human is, Sound with love and honour for a Queen. O morning light, enfold a morning throne. — Christopher Fry (1907–2005) O Lord, give thy Holy Spirit (after 1566) Thomas Tallis (c.1505–1585) Few church musicians have endured such a tumultuous series of strictures as did Thomas Tallis, the supreme English composer of the mid-sixteenth century. When Tallis began his career at the Benedictine priory in Dover in 1530/1, King Henry VIII was in the process of severing the Catholic Church in England from its connections to the pope in Rome. Even after the formal dissolution in 1534, English worship followed standard Catholic norms: texts were frequently in Latin, and compositional styles continued essentially unchanged. After brief periods at St. Mary-at-Hill in London, Waltham Abbey in Essex, and Canterbury Cathedral, Tallis gained a post at the Chapel Royal in 1544. This was the king’s personal chapel, the most prestigious group of musicians in England. Tallis thus found himself at the musical center of decades of religious controversy. After Henry’s nine-year-old son, Edward VI, became king in 1547, Protestantism gained a firmer hold. Liturgical worship was performed in English and church music became simpler in construction. Edward became fatally ill in 1553, and his eldest sister, Queen Mary I, assumed the throne. She vigorously attempted to restore England to Catholic worship, going so far as to marry the Catholic King Felipe II of Spain and to order the deaths of prominent dissenters. “Bloody” Mary died in 1558, the crown falling to her half-sister, Elizabeth I, who slowly and steadily established England as a Protestant state. Amid all of these changes, Tallis adapted his compositional style to suit the dictates of each monarch, excelling at every step. He deftly rose in prominence at the Chapel Royal, gaining the illustrious post of Organist in 1570. Scholars now believe that Tallis was at heart a recusant Catholic, thouhg this assertion is based on mostly circumstantial evidence. In any case, his personal beliefs never obstructed his always professional music-making. If it weren’t for the publication date of its text (1566), O Lord, give thy Holy Spirit could date from Tallis’s Edwardian period. Like his most famous anthem, If ye love me, it is cast in ABB form—the second main section is repeated—which was prominent during Edward’s reign. Gentle imitations, or re-statements of 3 the musical material, ensure that the words are heard clearly, as does the syllabic setting, with almost always just one note per syllable. O Lord, give thy Holy Spirit into our hearts, and lighten our understanding, that we may dwell in the fear of thy name all the days of our life: that we may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. — from Lidley’s Prayers, 1566 Weep, O mine eyes (1599) John Bennet (c.1575–after 1614) Virtually nothing is known of the life of John Bennet. He may have been from the northwest of England. His volume of madrigals, published in 1599, describes him as “a young wit”, but how young is pure conjecture. After his contributions to Thomas Ravenscroft’s A Brief Discourse in 1614, absolutely nothing at all is known. More’s the pity, because his surviving music shows an innately musical mind at work. Weep, O mine eyes is perhaps his most famous madrigal. It establishes the opening sonority—a simple A-minor triad—delicately, one pitch at a time. The gently falling line that follows serves two purposes: more generally, it depicts the text’s weeping tears, but specifically it quotes John Dowland’s then hugely popular lute-song, Flow my tears, which first appeared in print three years earlier. There are smooth lines and delicate suspensions, when one pitch hangs on from a previous chord, creating a brief dissonance. Text-painting is nuanced and rare (note the rising lines for “swell so high”). The falling Dowland motive returns at the final line (“O when”). Weep, O mine eyes, and cease not. Alas, these your spring-tides methinks increase not. O when begin you to swell so high that I may drown me in you. Mitte manum tuam (2006) James MacMillan (born 1959) James MacMillan can be described quite simply: he is Scottish, he is Catholic, and he is pacifist. Nearly every work he has composed incorporates at least two of those characteristics. In this case, we hear the first two. His Scottishness is clearly audible in the frequent “Scotch snap” ornaments, or grace notes that sound on the beat rather than before it.