NEWSLETTER: 21 June 2020

THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING THIS YEAR

The Board met via Zoom on Friday this week, mainly to begin to develop our plans for re-starting. There will be a detailed message about this coming out to members in the next few days. We also discussed how to manage the annual round of constitutional business that we normally transact at the Annual General Meeting. Under normal circumstances, our next AGM would be in mid-October. After checking the guidance from the Charity Commission, we have decided: We will not hold an AGM at the normal time in mid-October this year. Instead, we’ll organise one as soon as possible in 2021. The Constitution requires us to hold one by 22 January next year, but the Charity Commission recognises that it may not be possible for all charities to observe the normal timetable.

We will prepare the annual report and the annual accounts to the normal timetable. We’ll circulate them to members by email by 19 October, and invite comments. The Board will then meet in November to consider the responses, and the outcomes will be reported back to members by the end of November. We will delay the appointment of trustees until we can hold a normal AGM. The Constitution requires one third of trustees – that’s three people in our case – to resign each year. All those who stand down will be eligible for re-appointment

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Pressure Mounts to Restart Live Music and Choral Singing

If you have not already seen this, Juliet has shared the following link to an article in The Guardian on Thursday 18 June. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jun/16/covid-19-has- silenced-choirs-we-must-find-a-way-to-restart-singing-together Glenys draws your attention , if not already aware , to Simon Halsey whose name appears after such as John Rutter . He was once Musical Director of MK Chorale !

There is also a government petition to sign here: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/320711

This link is also published to the choir’s Facebook site to hopefully swell the numbers who have signed .

The Dream of Gerontius Rehearsal Links & Warm Up

Video 1 https://youtu.be/T8yhEVv-lRE

Video 2 https://youtu.be/nLhI6QUHUBY

Video 3 https://youtu.be/_mRy-GzIxC4

These links are easily available in the Member Area of our web site https://mkchorale.org.uk alongside a downloadable copy of the full score.

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Covid Charity Book Sales of Sally’s book – as promoted in our last two newsletters - could be better. Remember this will raise funds for both Willen Hospice and the choir .

A second edition is underway so you can place your advance orders with Sally NOW!

There is an easy access purchase link in the Member Area of our web site: https://mkchorale.org.uk

This link is in the Newsletter section and can also be found on the Support Us page.

Something Silly!

See who you can spot!

And do not overlook the outtakes at the end. https://youtu.be/WKWdxi9QKPs

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Alex Aitken's Potted History of Music

Hi! Really glad that so many are enjoying this rather mad survey of the history of music . I'm even more delighted that some are looking things up to read up further - exactly the point. Hope you've all had a good week; enjoy the sunshine this week!' Alex.

Part III: The Early Renaissance (c.1400-1500)

Welcome to the Early Renaissance – a mad time where quite a lot happens. So here’s hoping you’re sitting comfortably. Good. Then we shall begin. European composers begin to be influenced by the Renaissance in other arts, as well as by mythology, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy (Plato’s work has just re-emerged), and the anti-ecclesiastical rise of humanism (personal fulfilment from pursuing intelligence). A heady time full of thinking and thoughts, with an excess of tutting at more basic medieval ways. England realises it needs to catch up musically, so Leonel Power proudly holds his music aloft, collating his pieces in the Old Hall manuscript, many of which celebrate last week’s win at the Battle of Agincourt. Power follows Machaut’s lead and composes cyclical masses all linked by a common musical theme, or all beginning with the same theme (called a head motif). Adam Lay Ybounden and other macaronic texts and carols start to be penned, swiftly followed by the printing press being invented by Gutenberg in 1439, allowing music and theory treatises to spread quicker than peasants could run for Mr Chippy’s potato cart (whose arrival was announced by a minstrel playing Greensleeves ). The texts of Marian antiphons begin to be embedded in English compositions, and John Dunstaple (of Dunstable wahey represent) and Walter Frye (of Ely *bleat*) combine the French bourdon with the imperfect consonances of the third and its inversion the sixth. So FINALLY the third is incorporated into music; the result is so good that the French Burgundian School (Dufay, Binchois, Busnois) start to copy this panconsonant (triad-based) ‘contenance angloise’ (‘English manner ’, not a custard) in their virelais, rondeaux, ballades and bergerettes, and so the third and the sixth spread through Europe, along with a renewed sense of optimism that some more harmonies exist and plague has gone. Hoorays. What an exciting set of things for a first paragraph. Are you doing ok? Good . Onwards! 4

Printed English music now disseminates widely, helped by the Hundred Years War and a strong south-easterly breeze, and English carols begin to be written for feast days (also known as festal days). Common voice types by now are the superius (‘above’), contratenor altus (‘against the tenor above’), and contratenor bassus (‘against the tenor below’); sadly all sung by men and boys because we haven’t yet quite reached that eureka moment where we realise women can sing very well too. Sigh. The contratenor gradually becomes the countertenor with small linguistic changes; they are famed for their purity of tone, ethereal quality, lack of beard growing skills, and a giggle that alarms nesting blackbirds. Vocal melodies are now ornamented by ‘division’, which involved dividing the notes into smaller faster notes in the moment (i.e. improvised). The clavichord begins to be mentioned and LOUD INSTRUMENTS start to be used for courtly dance music (the basse danse, saltarello and tordion become the fashionable dances). Music divides more neatly into secular and sacred, with instruments not used for sacred music because the voice was the purest expression of the human soul (except for the portative organ and church organ which had now proved its ability at disguising sneezes, snores and burps). Most music was vocal and in the style of the chapel music, or ‘a capella’ in Italian. Masses begin to be written with a unifying cantus firmus (‘fixed chant’) throughout, and the motet transforms from the medieval isorhythmic motet, with the same repeated rhythms repeated rhythms repeated rhythms repeated, to a more polyphonic and intricate affair. Suave. Fauxbourden (named after the French for ‘false weight’/drone) becomes a thing with each chord having a fourth between the top and middle notes, and the third at the bottom, derived from the English medieval discant style and Dunstaple’s music. Gosh this is exciting isn’t it.

More masses, motets and magnificats are composed at an alarming rate, being more polyphonic in style and emphasising treble- dominated melodies that frequently ended with what was later termed an ‘under-third’ cadence (having the intervals of a 6th, 5th and 8ve between melody and bass). The bass drop (not yet a feature of club music) of a fifth now becomes more common at the cadence (Latin for ‘falling’, because the momentum of the melody falls), creating an authentic cadence.

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After this success, the first instances of what became known as the plagal cadence appear (named after the Greek plagos for 'side’ because the two upper voices move in thirds alongside each other in parallel motion towards the same bass note). Melodic lines were now smoother than Henry VI’s forehead, but still modal, and gymel start to appear, where one upper voice part is temporarily divided into two different melodic strands before joining them again (it’s unknown whether this was also sung by a divided person). The psaltery has a keyboard bolted onto it to produce a virginal (a smaller clavichord) which becomes particularly popular in English courts as an alternative to knitting and splat the flee-ridden rat.

Enter Dufay [Stage Left], who writes some of the most beautiful music heard so far, including his motet Nuper rosarum flores for the consecration of Florence cathedral in 1436, with musical proportions that mirrored the architectural proportions of the Temple of Solomon. King’s College Cambridge is also founded in 1441 by Henry VI in between battles. Ockegham appears looking like a dad at a fancy dress party, but writes in a more flowing style, particularly in his masterpiece Missa prolationum and in the first polyphonic requiem mass (Missa pro Defunctis). Various of his masses are enshrined in the Chigi codex because they are so good. Ockegham and his Flemish contemporaries write increasingly complex counterpoint which, over time, blends with the more homophonic style of secular Italian lauda and frottole, and BINGO: a type of music where vertical harmony is now a byproduct (and less important than) of the more important horizontal counterpoint . Isn’t this fun. Time for tea whilst we divide up some more land for people who don’t deserve it.

After Walter Frye’s successes at writing motets, Obrecht’s contrapuntal extravagance eclipses it by using cantus firmi and retrograde melody fragments (boffin). Josquin des Prez then arrives in a blaze of glory with a flypast of radishes, blending the Franco- Flemish sacred style with Italian secular music, signing his name as an acrostic in the motet Illibata Dei virgo nutrix, and writing some of the earliest musical cryptograms in the form of the soggetto cavato mass. In a further flourish of his nib, he masters the principle of the canon whilst simultaneously firing the same musical fragment around the choir without hurting anyone. Show off. He also writes paraphrase and parody masses, which steal other people's melodies 6

and embed them to see if congregations wake up (examples include Missa pokerface, the Missa Will Missa Will Rock Thee and Missa Titanium). The Burgundian School is renamed the Franco- Flemish School (with academy status, a new logo and a better staff room and coffee machine), and des Prez christened ‘the master of notes’ by Martin Luther. That’s nice. The new style of polyphony is later christened ars perfecta (‘perfect art’) for rather obvious reasons. Musicians and their music begin to skip freely across Europe, aided by better roads, loads of printing presses, more inns, and the invention of the skipping rope.

Italy (TA DAAAA) flourishes as the centre of the Renaissance, attracting musicians from across Europe thanks to the emerging wealth and education of the upper and middle classes, Botticelli’s paintings, and the pizza and a vino for three florins deal. Italian nobles patronised the arts (by both throwing money at musicians and painters and talking to them in words of one syllable or fewer). Italian styles of composition and word of Giuseppe’s spag bol spread across Europe as musicians return from their Italian escapades, slightly more drunk and slightly more round. Meanwhile back in France Mouton writes some stunning magnificats and motets using imitation and canon, culminating in his masterpiece Nesciens mater. The main unit of pulse becomes the semibreve (‘half short’ in Latin), although bar lines have yet to be invented in their modern form. Tempus perfectum and imperfectum still reign supreme (with their O and C time signatures), but music is now written down on paper rather than vellum, resulting in more white notation to avoid fifteenth-century-felt-tip-pen-wrinkle and happier cows. There is an increased use of musica ficta (‘false’ or ‘fictitious’ music/notes that were not found on Guido’s hand – later known as accidentals), but none of this was written down because it should have been obvious to the singer, and if it wasn’t then they received loud tuts from their peers and were slapped with a wet fish (that was then released again, very confused). Texts begin to be substituted in to existing music (contrafactum), and dissonances begin to arise out of suspending (i.e. temporarily stopping) a musical line whilst other lines continue underneath it . OOOH extra emotion . Useful. Deep breaths for the next gallivant through musical time…

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Pierre de la Rue appears and adds settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah to the existing forms of the canon, magnificat, mass, chanson and motet, and decides to write bottom Bbs way before Rachmaninov did, expanding the texture to five or six voices simultaneously, and showing off by writing canons where each voice part has different note values. (‘de la Rue’ means ‘smug git’ in French.) He then writes a requiem mass to rival Ockegham’s in both beauty and complexity. By now both secular and sacred music influenced each other, since most composers were writing in both styles with different hats on (pointy and silly). Instrumental ensembles now had to sound as homogenous as vocal music, and hence instruments begin to be matched for their timbre (e.g. flutes with oboes or chests/consorts of viols), or deliberately unmatched (broken consorts). Musical quodlibets (Latin for ‘whatever pleases’) appear, mixing different melodies all at once for dramatic effect (later used in One Day More from Les Misèrables). Keyboard and lute music is now written down in tablature which, like modern guitar tab, only specifies finger positions instead of pitch. Organ noodling pre-service starts to be written down as the first instrumental preludes (praeambula) around 1450, and the ricecar (from the Italian ‘to search out’) appears as an instrumental version of the Latin motet, designed to ‘seek out’ the key of the following piece through counterpoint that modulates, interweaves and imitates. The Lochamer Liederbuch is published (a collection of secular hits including ‘the forest is leafless’, ‘wake up my darling’, and ‘who let the cows out moo moo moo moo moo’), and the Meistersingers continue to churn out classy hits including ‘did you wake up like that, or are you just ugly’, ‘my dog’s better than your dog’ and ‘I love you, you’re perfect, now give me your endowment’. Meanwhile Tinctoris comes up with his Eight Rules of Composition, which to his surprise, prove very useful.

The ricecar and its livelier uncle the canzona (an instrumental version of the French medieval chansons) gradually combine to become what we now call the fugue; named after the Latin fugare (‘to chase’), because the subject and its answer continually chase each other through the texture. What fun. Busnois (we think) writes the L’homme armé (armed man) tune as Constantinople is seized to the delight of the Turks and the lip quivers of Europe; the song becomes embedded subtly in many polyphonic mass settings as a 8

European call to arms to those who know what to listen for. The Battle of St Albans (over who doesn’t want to live next to Luton) begins the War of the Roses, and causes England’s musical influence in Europe to wane (sad times). As the thorns are removed from the sniffing hamster of time, light-hearted madrigals and their European variations appear with much fa la la la la: the vilancico, canción and tiento in Spain, the canzonetta and villotta in Italy, and the villanelle in France. Intabulations also crop up (vocal pieces arranged for instruments), and the six-stringed viol and viola da gamba (‘viola of the leg’) appear in Spain for household music making, copied from the Arabic rebab. The hurdy-gurdy (imaginatively named after its sound), flute and shawm also become very popular for secular music, with instruments now occasionally doubling or even replacing voice parts in a vocal piece. And so, instruments sneakily sneak into church music… (DA DA DAAAAAAAAA ).

The Spanish Inquisition is founded (which no-one expected, least of all them), whilst in Italy the homophonic frottola (secular songs sung by three voices) are concocted. Botticelli paints The Birth of Venus just as sets of instrumental dances began to be composed in contrasting pairs (the pavane and galliard, the passamezzo and saltarello, etc.). Other woodwind and string instruments rock up; the kortholt and cornett (both woodwind) and vihuela (Spanish guitar) are used for social and secular music-making. Instruments by now are either haut (high, piercing, outdoor) or bas (quieter and indoors). The French make a new haut instrument out of wood (‘bois’) and ta daaa – an hautbois or, in English, an oboe. Giddy on this sheer success, a tree trunk is hollowed out to create a bassoon, or fagot (Old French for ‘bundle of sticks’), to replace the increasingly useless racket and the beyond useless blown moorhen (it tried). The violin family emerges for professional players (violino meaning ‘little viol’ in Italian), harpsichords slowly begin to appear throughout Europe, and the Eton Choirbook is assembled around 1490 in order to show off how good their boy trebles were. Columbus then lands in America, and Robert Fayrfax takes over at the Chapel Royal from 1497 in order to compete in a chorister-off with Eton, judged by swans. The prize was unanimously awarded to a small boy named Samuel, who won six cabbages, a knighthood and half of Wales.

Next week: The dizzy heights of the Late Renaissance 9