St. Matthew Passion by Richard Davy Featuring Guest Soloists Jeffrey Strauss & Owen Mcintosh
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QClevelanduire Ross W. Duffin,Artistic Director THE St. Matthew Passion BY Richard Davy featuring guest soloists JEFFREY STRAUss & OWEN MCINTosH APRIL 8 & 9, 2017 Akron, Cleveland & Cleveland Heights ross w. duffin artistic director We rejoice in the opportunity to present you with this exquisite music from the late 15th century. The reconstructed St. Matthew Passion by Richard Davy is an example of the old-music-made-new that is Quire Cleveland’s signature. It illuminates how music has been an expression of faith — and so much else in life — since the earliest days of humans. What is life without music? Nowadays, everyone can chose their own “mix tape,” listening to the music that pleases / moves / energizes / calms them best. In concerts like this one — generously supported by the citizens of Ohio through the Ohio Arts Council and the citizens of Cuyahoga County through Cuyahoga Arts & Culture — Quire offers you a rare experience of music that you may never have heard before. It is part of our shared culture, with an undeniable and timeless beauty. For the past 9 seasons, Quire Cleveland has presented the earliest AND the latest choral music in repertoire dating from the 12th century to the 21st. Next season, 2017–18, is Quire Cleveland’s 10th Anniversary Celebration! Exciting plans are afoot & are announced on the penultimate page. Check our website quirecleveland.org for the latest developments. Meanwhile, we invite YOU to join in the Quire — SING in the shower • HUM around the house CROON in the car • WARBLE at work YODEL in the yard • BELT at the bar HARMONIZE with humanity — and always keep a song in your heart! Beverly Simmons Executive Director & Alto Thank you for coming! Performing for you gives us joy in singing. But we have these small requests: • Please turn off cell phones & other noisemakers. • Please refrain from photography and audio/video recording. • If you’re suffering from a cough, DO help yourself to the cough drops available from the Qushers and DON’T sit near a microphone. QClevelanduire Ross W. Duffin, Artistic Director April 8, 2017 St. Bernard Parish, Akron April 9, 2017 Historic St. Peter Church, Cleveland St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Cleveland Heights PROGRAM the concert will be performed without intermission The St. Matthew Passion Richard Davy (ca.1465–1538) Ah, gentle Jesu! Sheryngam (fl.1500) QUIRE CLEVELAND Ross W. Duffin, Conductor Owen McIntosh, Evangelist Jeffrey Strauss, Jesus Soprano: Margaret Carpenter Haigh, Donna Fagerhaug, Christine Jay, Elena Mullins, Gail West Alto: John McElliott, Joseph Schlesinger, Beverly Simmons, Jay White Tenor: Evan Bescan, Nathan Dougherty, Bryan Munch, Corey Shotwell Bass: Daniel Fridley, Nathan Longnecker, Brian MacGilvray, Michael McKay ABOUT QUIRE CLEVELAND Quire Cleveland is a professional chamber choir established in 2008 to explore the vast and timeless repertoire of choral music over the last 9 centuries. Quire’s programs introduce our audiences to music not heard in the modern era—including modern premieres of works newly discovered or reconstructed—breathing life into the music of our shared heritage. With highly-trained professional musicians—who collectively represent 500 years of choral singing—the ensemble has earned both popular and critical acclaim. Quire contributes to the artistic life of our community in unique ways, including collaborations with such organizations as the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Composers Guild, Music & Art at Trinity, CityMusic Cleveland, Summit Choral Society, and The Cleveland Foundation. Now in its ninth season, Quire Cleveland has presented more than 60 concerts and produced six CDs of music from the 12th to the 21st centuries. Artistic Director Ross W. Duffin, a prize- winning musicologist, creates unique editions for Quire, and plans programs that are appealing and accessible, showcasing the beauty of the music and the glorious sound of voices raised in harmony. In addition to live and recorded broadcasts on classical radio, Quire has also recorded music for Oxford University Press. An education program, initiated in 2014, offers workshops and lectures. With concert videos posted on YouTube, Quire Cleveland’s reach has indeed been worldwide, attracting over 600,000 views from 210 countries. ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Quire’s founding Artistic Director, Ross W. Duffin, is an award-winning scholar, specializing in the performance practice of early music. Director since 1978 of the nationally recognized Historical Performance Practice Program at Case Western Reserve University, where he is Fynette H. Kulas Professor of Music, he has trained and nurtured some of today’s leading performers and researchers in the field. His weekly radio show, Micrologus: Exploring the World of Early Music, was broadcast on 140 NPR stations throughout the United States. His books, How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care) and Shakespeare’s Songbook (both published by WW Norton), have gained international renown. In addition to many of the works on this concert, Ross has edited Cantiones Sacræ: Madrigalian Motets from Jacobean England (A-R Editions), which Quire recorded complete as Madrigalian Motets (qc103); A Josquin Anthology; A Performer’s Guide to Medieval Music; and the St. Matthew Passion by Richard Davy, which is being recorded in concert, to be issued next season as a CD. He has sung with Apollo’s Fire since its inception in 1992. GUEST SOLOISTS Acclaimed as a “lovely, tender high tenor” by the New York Times, Owen McIntosh has enjoyed a diverse career of chamber music and solo performance—ranging from bluegrass to reggae, heavy metal to art song, and opera to oratorio. A native of remote Northern California, Owen has shared the stage with the country’s finest ensembles including Apollo’s Fire, Blue Heron, Boston Baroque, Carmel Bach Festival, Les Canards Chantants, New Vintage Baroque, Staunton Music Festival, TENET, Trident Ensemble, True Concord, San Diego Bach Collegium and the Grammy-nominated Choir of Trinity Wall Street. Among Owen’s recent solo engagements are: Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte with Boston Baroque, Haydn’s chamber opera L’isola Disabitata with the American Classical Orchestra, Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 with Apollo’s Fire and Green Mountain Project, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with Grand Rapids Symphony, Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria with Opera Omnia and Boston Baroque, and the Evangelist in Bach’s St. John Passion with Tucson Chamber Artists. This season, Cleveland audiences have enjoyed hearing Owen McIntosh sing with Apollo’s Fire and Les Délices, as well as Quire Cleveland. Jeffrey Strauss, baritone, an “authoritative artist” (Plain Dealer) whose performances have been praised as “captivating” (Chicago Tribune) and “serenely beautiful” (New York Times), has appeared with numerous period- instrument ensembles. These include Apollo’s Fire, The Consort of Musicke with Emma Kirkby, the Taverner Consort under Andrew Parrott, Tafelmusik, the Handel & Haydn Society (Boston), Seattle Baroque, Tempesta di Mare (Philadelphia), and the Newberry Consort (Chicago). He made his concert début at the age of 17 with the Buffalo Philharmonic and studied voice with Elsa Charlston in Chicago, Yvonne Rodd-Marling in London, and Gérard Souzay in Paris. An accomplished stage actor, favorite projects include the title role in Monteverdi’s L’ O r f e o , Jesus and Pilate in the J. S. Bach Passions, Méphistophélès in Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust, and Apollo in Handel’s Apollo e Dafne. His 2014 portrayal of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof was hailed by the Buffalo News as “masterful.” Jeffrey Strauss’s CD recordings with Apollo’s Fire include the MonteverdiVespers of 1610; Handel’s Messiah; Sephardic Journey, which debuted in February 2016 at #2 on the Billboard World Music chart; and Bach’s St. John Passion, released this year. NOTES We know very little about the composer Richard Davy. He was a student at Magdalen College, Oxford around the time it opened its doors on the present site, and he was informator choristarum (master of the choirboys) there from 1490–92. After that, we’re not sure. He may have worked at Exeter Cathedral, may have worked for the Boleyn family, and he probably ended his days at Fotheringhay, famous as the later site of the trial and beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots. But that’s all we know. Davy’s setting of the St. Matthew Passion is the earliest by a known composer. It is preserved in the Eton Choirbook, a splendid music manuscript from the early 16th century, mostly containing motets in honor of the Virgin Mary, one of which is described as composed in a single day by Davy while he was at Magdalen College. At the very end of the book is this very unusual piece—out of the norm, not only for this manuscript, but for musical composition in general up to that time. Following the tradition of Passion performance in the Middle Ages, Davy’s Evangelist and Jesus sing their parts using Sarum chant for the Passion, which is to say, according to the Rite of Salisbury, which was preferred over the Roman Rite in England up to the Reformation in the mid-16th century. The sayings of everyone else—the disciples, Peter, Judas, Pilate and his wife, the Pharisees, the Centurion, and the crowd (the turba)—are set by Davy in polyphony, with four voice parts. The music style of the Eton Choirbook demonstrates clearly that the brilliant English choral writing we know, from Byrd to Purcell to Howells to Mealor, was already flourishing in the early Renaissance. There are soaring treble lines, originally written for boy sopranos—high above the alto—vibrant syncopations, and flashes of florid writing with rare, but highly effective, homophonic passages (where all the voices sing the same rhythm). It’s truly an emotional and dramatic rendering of the Gospel for the Passion. Unfortunately, the pages containing the beginning of the piece in the Eton Choirbook have been lost, and of the forty-two original short movements, the book as it survives lacks the first eleven movements completely, and has only alto and bass voices for the next twelve.