The Tallis Scholars Director Peter Phillips
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Thursday, April 6, 2017, 8pm Zellerbach Hall The Tallis Scholars Director Peter Phillips Soprano Alto Tenor Bass Amy Haworth Caroline Trevor Steven Harrold Tim Scott Whiteley Emily Atkinson Simon Ponsford George Pooley Simon Whiteley Charlotte Ashley Gwen Martin PROGRAM Hieronymus PRAETORIUS (1560 –1629) Magnificat IV Orlando GIBBONS (1583 –1625) Magnificat (“Short”) Arvo PäRT (b. 1935) Magnificat John SHEPPARD (1515 –1558) Our father John TAVENER (1944 –2013) Our father (1999 version) Igor STRAVINSKY (1882 –1971) Otche nash Giovanni Pierluigi da PALESTRINA Pater noster (a 5) (c. 1525 –1594) Jacobus GALLUS (1550 –1591) Pater noster (a 8) INTERMISSION Chant Ave Maria Jean MOUTON (1459 –1522) Ave Maria—virgo serena STRAVINSKY Bogoroditse devo PäRT Bogoroditse devo GIBBONS Nunc dimittis (“Short”) Johannes ECCARD (1533 –1611) Maria wallt zum Heiligtum PäRT Nunc dimittis Andres DE TORRENTES (1520 –1580) Nunc dimittis Gustav HOLST (1874–1934) Nunc dimittis PROGRAM NOTES he Ave Maria, Pater Noster, Magnificat, Contrast, for example, the athletic, dance-like and Nunc Dimittis between them ex - emphasis of the opening of the Magnificat, Tplore the full emotional gamut of the with the sustained, legato phrase that begins Christian experience. These four core texts of the Nunc Dimittis. Mary has rarely seemed as Christianity take us from birth to death, and youth ful in her joy as she does in Gibbons’ celebrate God as both father and infant, Mary hands, nor Simeon’s rapture (“For mine eyes as virgin and mother. There is joyful anticipa - have seen thy salvation”) more simple in its tion here, but also calm acceptance; we find conviction. The gradual scalic flowering of the ourselves looking both forward to a life yet to “Amen” of the Nunc Dimittis is surely one of the come and backwards over a life already lived. contrapuntal high points of its age. From simplest plainchant monody to elabo - Few composers are more texturally aware rate polychoral polyphony, composers have or demonstrate a greater sense of aural drama responded to these touchstone texts in their than contemporary Estonian composer Arvo different ways. Tonight’s program explores the Pärt. Derived from his studies of Gregorian scope and diversity of these responses in works chant, Renaissance polyphony, and Russian from the Renaissance and 20th century. Orthodox music, Pärt’s signature technique— We open with three contrasting settings a reverberant choral homophony he terms of the Magnificat—Mary’s song of joy at the “tintinnabuli”—places his voices in a con - Annunciation. Each finds echo at the close of stantly shifting yet strangely static harmonic the concert in the corresponding setting of the relationship. With any conventional sense of Nunc Dimittis, framing the evening with the harmonic trajectory negated, it is through var - two familiar canticles of the Anglican rite of ied vocal textures that he achieves his medita - Evensong, or the Catholic services of Evening tive musical drama. Prayer and Compline. Here in his Magnificat he places a solo so - One of the earliest German composers to prano voice chanting on a single pitch against employ Venetian polychoral techniques in his a series of homophonic choral ensembles, cre - music, Hieronymus Praetorius showcased ating a contemporary take on the Renaissance the style at its animated and expressive best in fauxbourdon technique of harmonized chant. his nine alternatim Magnificat settings. The The Nunc Dimittis by contrast sees Pärt’s Mag nificat Quarti Toni embraces the ambigu - voices deployed in rather more flexible units, ous tonality of this “fourth tone” (the Hypo - sustaining by turns a rocking dialogue between phrygian mode), coloring what we might now upper voices over chanted mens-voice pedal think of as a minor key with rhythmic energy notes, and latterly a denser chorale-like ho - more suited to the jubilant text. It also boasts mophony, collapsing ultimately back into the perhaps the most striking opening of any Prae - familiar waves of echoing sound for the Gloria. torius work—an arresting bit of chromatic We return to the Renaissance for the Pater writing that keeps the ear guessing—as though Noster, or Lord’s Prayer, heard first in a setting the joy of this text is so great that the composer of exquisite delicacy by English composer John cannot find adequate expression in conven - Sheppard. With its vernacular text, we can tional harmonic gestures. assume that the work dates from the reign of Although perhaps best-known now for his Edward VI and its new demand for music for expressive madrigals, Orlando Gibbons was an Protestant liturgy. Clarity of text was para - accomplished and prolific composer of sacred mount—a reaction against the “popish ex - works. While his Second Service showcases cesses” of the Catholic rite—and led composers some of the finest verse writing of late Tudor to favor the translucent, five-part texture heard England, his earlier Short Service finds its in - here. Modal harmonies add interest and color terest in the textural manipulation of full choral to a treatment whose rocking imitation and forces. Gibbons the madrigalist is quietly evi - pulsing, dotted rhythms establish a single dent here in the stylistic articulation of his texts. mood of affirmation and spiritual security. Opposite: Peter Phillips. Photo by Albert Roosenburg. PROGRAM NOTES Affirmation is a little harder-won in two song original, the text is then repeated tonight contemporary treatments of the same text. in a sequence of polyphonic settings. While offering moments of glowing, consonant The Marian imagery of the Ave Maria draws warmth in his four-part setting, John Tavener the smoothest of polyphony from the French complicates his prayer with the smudged doubts Renaissance composer Jean Mouton. Two sim - of passing notes and suspensions, rooting his ple motives (one rising, the other falling) setting in the muddy complexity of human form the melodic basis of this five-part work, imperfection. This is a work that reaches for the giving it a characteristically organic sense of divine while never losing touch with the earthly. wholeness. Use of upper and lower voices suf - After experiencing a miraculous moment of fice to create textural contrast within the imi - healing in 1925, Igor Stravinsky returned to tative flow until the text’s climax in a threefold the Russian Orthodox Church (also, inciden - address of the Virgin—“O Maria Dulcissima/O tally, the faith shared by Tavener) he had aban - Maria Piissima/O Maria Sanctissima”—where doned in his youth. The result was a sequence sudden homophony interrupts the flow with of liturgical choral works, including this minia - an appeal to Mary, all the more touching for its ture four-voice setting of the Pater Noster. sudden plainness. The text here is heard in Slavonic, chanted in The moving underlying parts of Stravinsky’s traditional recitative style, and references but Ave Maria turn this prayer almost into a cradle never quotes chant melodies. With a limited song. “I can endure unaccompanied singing in harmonic palette Stravinsky creates a single- only the most harmonically primitive music,” mood work of mournful beauty, throbbing with the composer wrote—a pronouncement amply never-fully-resolved uncertainties. borne out here. Any narrative quality in the text Palestrina’s Pater Noster setting typifies the is negated by a meditative setting that restricts polychoral style of 16th-century Rome. A world its harmonic language and range to the absolute away from the ascetic purity of Stra vinsky or minimum, creating a deliberately naïve piece of even Sheppard, Palestrina’s setting delights in musical sophistication. the richness and echoing sonority of his double- Texture is also at the fore in Arvo Pärt’s choir forces. Athough reaching an impassioned “Bogoroditse Djevo”—an unusually rhythmic climax at the contemplation of “debitoribus nos - and jubilant work from the minimalist com - tris” (“our trespasses”), the scale and grandeur poser. Passages of declamatory homophony are of the “Amen” suggests a certainty of redemp - set against chanted sections of highly rhythmic, tion absent from the contemporary settings. recitative-like accompaniment in this exhilarat - From Rome to Venice, in Jacobus Gallus’ ing paean to the Virgin. (also known as Jacob Handl) Pater Noster. Johannes Eccard worked as Kappellmeister Marrying the older Franco-Flemish imitative to Elector Joachim Friedrich of Brandenburg in style with the antiphonal writing of the Vene - Berlin, and is chiefly known for his role in de - tian tradition, Gallus creates a fluid and lovely veloping the genre of Lutheran Chorale. So in - musical prayer. Upper voices are pitted against fluential was his work that the chorales of Bach’s lower, exchanging phrases that echo, embellish, St Matthew Passion owe their form to Eccard; and complete one another. The work concludes Brahms, as well, was known to revere the com - with one of the loveliest Amens of the period— poser. Balancing a simple clarity in his poly - a florid seal on this elegant motet. phony with a sensitivity to word-setting that • • • took Lassus as its model, Eccard’s music is repre - The Ave Maria—the second Antiphon hymn sented tonight by one of his fine chorale motets. during the Festival of the Annunciation—was “Maria wallt zum Heiligtum” describes a popular chant among 16th-century com - Mary’s visit to the temple to present the infant posers, chiming particularly with the revival in Jesus to Simeon. Despite its six-part texture, the Marian worship during the early years of the motet’s delicate harmonization ensures that the Counter-Reformation. Heard first in its plain - words remain the focus, shaded by the com - PLAYBILL PROGRAM NOTES r e t t u R k c i N The Tallis Scholars poser’s textural manipulations. The climactic polychoral writing, including a rhythmic “lumen moment, when Simeon recognizes Jesus as “the ad revelationem,” and the vibrant exchanges of light of the world,” is beautifully simple—an oc - the Gloria that grow into a pealing “Amen.” tave leap in the soprano line sees it flower ex - —Alexandra Coghlan, 2015 pansively above the accompanying voices.