Monteverdi Programme For

welcome pacific musicworks ensemble I will never forget the first Stephen Stubbs time I participated in a full music director & lute performance of the Monteverdi Joseph Adam Vespers. It was one of a handful organ of pivotal moments in my life Maxine Eilander so far when I felt that I was harp not really in control of my own Tekla Cunningham & Linda Melsted destiny. It might sound like violins hyperbole, but my experience Laurie Wells & Romeric Pokorny is that this is a work of such violas persuasive power, architectural Photo credit Jan Gates brilliance and raw beauty, that it literally changed the course William Skeen cello of my life. Christopher Jackson was the conductor of the Studio de Musique Ancienne de Montréal on that occasion Moriah Neils and I remember the joy, fascination and pure enthusiasm he bass managed to communicate to everyone involved. I was totally Bruce Dickey & Kiri Tollaksen hooked and felt so compelled and intrigued with how this cornettos work made me feel, that 25 years later, I am still spending Greg Ingles, Erik Schmalz and Mack Ramsey my time convincing anybody who will listen, that there is no sackbuts music that will make them feel luckier to be alive. Christopher Jackson died on September 25th, 2015, after a long and extremely influential career as a master of renaissance and baroque music. His inspirational work with the SMAM and as Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Concordia brought him into regular contact with hundreds of young and vancouver chamber choir aspiring musicians over the years. I will be forever grateful to him for first introducing me and many others to this wondrous music, as well as for instilling in me a desire to perform and promote art that still has the amazing power to transform lives over 400 years later. Though Christopher will be sorely s o p r a n o s t e n o r s missed, his artistry, humility and enthusiasm have had such a profound effect on so many people, that it is hard not to look Kathleen Allan Ian Bannerman back upon his life as anything other than a gift. Beth Buono Gordon Crozier Thank you to Stephen Stubbs, Pacific MusicWorks, Jon Christina Cichos Tom Ellis Washburn and the Vancouver Chamber Choir for working Krista Pederson Carman J. Price together with EMV to bring this incredible music to life. For Lorraine Reinhardt Grant Wutzke those of you hearing this work for the first time, I hope it conveys the same sense of awe, bewilderment and happiness to you that it continues to do for me. a l t o s b a s s e s – Matthew White, Martina Govednik Steven Bélanger Artistic Director, Hilary Ison Cameron Haney Early Music Vancouver Fabiana Katz Winston Lanyon Dolores Scott Paul Nash Karyn Way George Roberts 2 | Early Music Vancouver & Vancouver Chamber Choir ÷ 2015-16 Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 the artists programme Stephen Stubbs MONTEVERDI VESPERS OF 1610 music director Pacific MusicWorks VERSICULUS & Deus in adiutorium meum / RESPONORIUM Domine ad adiuvandum - sex vocibus et sex instrumentis vocal soloists: Jolle Greenleaf PSALMUS 109 Dixit Dominus - sex vocibus et sex instrumentis soprano Catherine Webster CONCERTO Nigra sum - motetto ad una voce soprano PSALMUS 112 Laudate pueri - à 8 voci sole nel organo Laura Pudwell alto CONCERTO Pulchra es - à due voci Reginald L. Mobley alto PSALMUS 121 Lætatus sum - à sei voci Charles Daniels tenor MOTET Duo Seraphim - à sei voci... a tre voci Zachary Wilder tenor PSALMUS 126 Nisi Dominus - à dieci voci Ross Hauck CONCERTO - prima ad una voce sola, poi nella fine à 6 voci tenor Audi cœlum Douglas Williams bass-baritone INTERVAL Charles Robert Stephens bass-baritone PSALMUS 147 Lauda Ierusalem - a sette voci Vancouver Chamber Choir SONATA Sonata sopra Sancta Maria ora pro nobis - à 8 The instrumental ensemble of HYMNUS Ave maris stella - à 8 Pacific MusicWorks Magnificat: i Magnificat - à sette voci e sei instrumenti ii Et exultavit - à tre voci iii Quia respexit - ad una voce sola et sei instrumenti li quali suoneranno con più forza ch si può iv Quia fesit - à tre voci & doi instrumenti v Et misericordia - à 6 voci sole in dialogo vi Fecit potentiam - ad una voce & tre instrumenti vii Deposuit potentes - ad una voce & due instrumenti viii Esurientes implevit - à due voci & quattro instumenti ix Suscepit Israel - à tre voci x Sicut locutus est - ad una voce solo & sei instrumenti in dialogo xi Gloria Patri et Filio - à tre voci – due de lequali cantano in Echo xii Sicut era in principio - tutti gli instumenti & voci, & va cantato & sonate forte Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 Early Music Vancouver & Vancouver Chamber Choir ÷ 2015-16 | 3 programme notes The 1980s were also the years when Joshua Rifkin challenged more than a century of performance practice by asserting that Bach’s “choral” works had been written for solo voices, not choruses in the modern sense. Considered highly controversial at the time, Rifkin’s ideas are now almost universally accepted as the norm for baroque music. The main clue in writing that was intended for solo voices is the degree of figural independence of the lines and the virtuosity required in performance. Monteverdi, even more clearly than Bach, demands that virtuosity within movements that might otherwise be thought to Claudio Monteverdi be “choral” in the modern sense of the word. Specifically – by Bernardo Strozzi, c. 1630 concerning Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers, Andrew Parrott’s article in Early Music Magazine in 1984 changed another Anyone who sets out to perform Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers aspect of performance expectations. Parrott argued that in the early 21st century is in the lucky position of standing the use of certain constellations of high clefs (chiavetti) on the shoulders of giants. First and foremost that musical implied transposition downward of a fifth or a fourth. This giant, Monteverdi himself, whose powerful and individual insight brought the Magnificat and Lauda Jerusalem into voice still speaks so clearly across the intervening centuries; line with the rest of the work in terms of tessitura and but also those adventurous souls who pioneered the revival of helped to make a cohesive performance of the whole work the instruments and techniques which over the last 50 years possible. have made it ever more possible to hear the sonorities that These new notions informed the annual performances of the Monteverdi would have known. The work itself has become Vespers that began at Leiden’s Pieterkerk in The Netherlands one of the most performed and beloved masterpieces from in 1998 under my direction, with an ensemble of marvellous the 17th century. soloists, my instrumental ensemble Tragicomedia, and Bruce My personal experience with the Vespers goes back to my Dickey’s wind band Concerto Palatino. Over the past 10 years hometown of Seattle on the eve of my departure for Europe there has been an evolution in my own Vespers performances in the late 70s. I had only had a chitarrone for a matter of based on my relocation to my native Northwest. It is also weeks, and this was my first outing with that extinct giraffe- based on the development over the same period of ever more like instrument. I fell in love permanently with both the singers and players in North America able to do full justice to instrument and Monteverdi’s music. the demands of the score. We are very lucky to have Bruce During the 80s, as a freelance lutenist living in Germany, I Dickey, the undisputed leader in the revival of the cornetto, was often called upon to play in the Vespers with various local and Charles Daniels, the English tenor who is one of the choir directors who would hire outstanding tenor soloists and leading Monteverdi singers of our time, but we are also happy a few professional specialists of the cornetto and chitarrone and lucky in the fact that all the other players and singers are (Bruce Dickey and myself amongst others). now resident on this continent, and predominantly from the Northwest. There were also many performances under the direction of Jürgen Jürgens in Hamburg. As the founder of the Monteverdi- After Northwest productions in 2010 and 2012, I am delighted Chor and the editor of Universal-Edition’s widely-performed to be performing the Vespers here again for the third time, 1977 edition of the Vespers, Jürgen (who died in 1994) was but now, expanded to include a ripieno choir – the Vancouver responsible for making the work more widely known and Chamber Choir. The concept of a ripieno choir for this work popular. makes it possible to underline the grand effects of those portions of the score which, in contrast to the solistic fugal But by the 1980s his “Monteverdi” choir had reached sections, make all the voices express the words together. It mammoth proportions. These performances varied in quality, is an analogous effect to unleashing the full power of all the but left me and my fellow professionals with the conviction organ’s ranks for the grand chordal moments. that Monteverdi could not have intended these pieces for performance by large amateur choirs. – Stephen Stubbs 4 | Early Music Vancouver & Vancouver Chamber Choir ÷ 2015-16 Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 texts & translations Deus in adiutorium Deus in adiutorium meum intende. O God, turn to me in my adversity. Domine ad adiuvandum Domine ad adiuvandum me festina. Make haste to help me, Oh Lord. Psalm 69 (70:2) Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto: Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: sicut erat in principio, et nunc et semper, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, et in sæcula sæculorum.

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