Carols for Quire from the Old & New Worlds
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Music & Art @ Trinity presents QClevelanduire Ross W. Duffin, Artistic Director Carols for Quire from the Old & New Worlds Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland December 20–22, 2013 — please hold your applause until the end of each set. — Alleluia: a newë work Anonymous English (15th century) Alleluia: a newe work (1952) Peter Wishart (1921–1984) The Coventry Carol (1534) attr. Robert Croo, arr. R. Duffin The Coventry Carol (1956) Kenneth Leighton (1929–1988) Jesus Christ the Apple Tree (1805) Jeremiah Ingalls (1764–1838) Jesus Christ the Apple Tree (1967) Elizabeth Poston (1905–1987) The Lamb (1927) Charles Wood (1866–1926) The Lamb (1982) John Tavener (1944–2013) Es ist ein Ros (1607) Michael Praetorius (1571–1621) A spotless rose (1919) Herbert Howells (1892–1983) A spotless rose (2010) Paul Mealor (b.1975) Kentucky [Ohio] Wassail Song collected by John Jacob Niles, arr. R. Duffin Wassail Song (1913) Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) —intermission— Of one that is so fair and bright Anonymous (ca.1300), arr. R. Duffin A Hymn to the Virgin (1930) Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) The holly and the ivy Herefordshire Traditional, arr. R. Duffin The holly and the ivy (1913) arr. Henry Walford Davies (1869–1941) O nata lux (1575) Thomas Tallis (1505–1585) Lux aurumque (2009) Eric Whitacre (b.1970) Stille Nacht (1818) Franz Gruber (1787–1863) In the Bleak Midwinter (1906) Gustav Holst (1874–1934) Procedenti puero Anonymous (13th century), arr. R. Duffin Benedicamus Domino (1918) Peter Warlock (1894–1930) What cheer? to a ground Anonymous English (16th century), arr. R. Duffin What cheer? (1961) William Walton (1902–1983) ABOUT QUIRE Quire Cleveland provides a vital connection to distant lands and ages past through the human voice. By breathing life into choral works from the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque eras, and beyond — some of which have lain silent for centuries — Quire reveals the universality, timelessness, and humanity of this music. In addition to being soloists, choral leaders, and educators at many of the major churches, synagogues, and schools in northern Ohio, members of the ensemble have sung together in historically-informed ensembles, such as the Case Western Reserve University Early Music Singers and Apollo’s Singers of Apollo’s Fire. Quire performs nine centuries of a cappella repertoire. QUIRE CLEVELAND Sopranos: Donna Fagerhaug, Megan Lapp, Judith Overcash, Lisa Rainsong, Malina Rauschenfels, Gail West Altos: David Acres, John McElliott, Beverly Simmons, Jay White Tenors: Evan Bescan, Jeremiah Heilman, Corey Shotwell, Tyler Skidmore Basses: Ian Crane, José Gotera, Nathan Longnecker, Brian MacGilvray, Michael Peters, Daniel Singer Board of Directors: Richard Rodda, ph.d., President; Ross W. Duffin, dma, Artistic Director; Beverly Simmons, dma, Executive Director; John McElliott, Secretary; Gerald P. Weinstein, ph.d., cpa, Treasurer Quire Cleveland a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, nonprofit organization. Quire’s founding Artistic Director, Ross W. Duffin, is an award- winning scholar, specializing in the performance practice of early music. As 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 W. W. Norton), have gained international renown. In addition to many of the works in this concert, Ross has edited Cantiones Sacræ: Madrigalian Motets from Jacobean England (A-R Editions), which Quire record- ed complete for its Madrigalian Motets recording, A Josquin Anthology (Oxford University Press), the St. Matthew Passion by Richard Davy (A-R Editions), and A Performer’s Guide to Medieval Music (Indiana University Press). He has also sung with Apollo’s Fire since its inception in 1992. Ross’s maternal grandfather was a professional countertenor and conductor in London, England, and his mother directed her church choir in London, Ontario—making him a third-generation choral conductor. PROGRAM NOTES by Ross W. Duffin The seed for this program came from Quire co-founder, secretary, and countertenor, John McElliott. Having grown up in the rich Episcopal music tradition, he wanted Quire to sing some of the exquisite standards of the 20th-century English Christmas repertoire. Much as I too love that music, I wanted to relate it somehow to Quire’s mission to present earlier choral music, so I have paired each of John’s proffered pieces with an earlier work, either on the exact same text, or on a related one. This way, we can hear how composers of different eras or generations were differently inspired by the same sentiment. The result is this program, which I hope you enjoy hearing as much as we have enjoyed preparing it. We begin with Alleluia: a newë work. The modern version is a choraltour de force, composed in 1952 by Peter Wishart. Wishart was born in Crowborough, a Sussex town that was a favorite holiday spot for my mother’s family, during the time that Wishart was a young lad there. Rapidly overlapping entries and sophisticated counter- rhythms, combined with luscious chord clusters make this a brilliant fanfare for the opening of a program. Before we get to Wishart, we sing the original, anonymous setting of the lyric, from a 15th-century manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The burden, or refrain, heard at the beginning and between each stanza, consists entirely of repeated “Alleluia”s, first in a two-voice texture, then repeated in full chorus. The verses also present lines by soloists, reinforced immediately by the chorus, exactly as Wishart does in his setting. Of the six original stanzas, we sing the three that Wishart used for his setting. The Coventry Carol gets its name from the Shearmen & Tailors Pageant, a religious play presented annually by Coventry tradesmen in the 16th century. The song has been attributed to Robert Croo, from 1534, but the early source was a copy of the play from 1591, which was destroyed in a fire in 1879. The only extant version of the early piece is an 1825 edition by Thomas Sharp. Although the piece may have been crudely composed, certain aspects of Sharp’s transcription led me to believe that he may have misread some aspects of the original notation (with no way to check that now). I have therefore reconstructed what I think may have been the original version, regularizing some of the metrical features and adding a missing tenor voice. That early version is paired with Kenneth Leighton’s lilting 1956 setting, with its soaring soprano solo. Both settings present three stanzas of the lullaby, but with the middle verse decrying Herod’s massacre of the innocents. Next are two settings of Jesus Christ the Apple Tree. The original poem and Ingalls’s 1805 setting show seven verses, but how all verses are to be set to the music is not clear, and indeed, verse 5 is often omitted in performance. In fact, Elizabeth Poston omits verses 5 & 6 in her sweet 1967 setting of the lyric. She attributes the lyric to Joshua Smith, a New Hampshire Baptist minister, from a hymn collection of 1784, whereas we now know it was first printed in London in 1761 and signed by “R. H.” The music to Ingalls’s setting is based on the Quick March from the pantomime, Oscar and Malvina, produced at Covent Garden, London, in 1791. William Shield was the composer, but left the score to be completed by William Reeve, and it’s unclear which of them composed the Quick March. The Lamb is a poem from Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789) by William Blake. The lyric plays on the multiple identifications of a lamb as a baby sheep, a young child, and Jesus, the “Lamb of God.” It may have been intended to be sung, but there are no musical settings from Blake’s time. We present two settings from the 20th century, beginning with a 1927 piece by Charles Wood, an Anglo-Irishman from Armagh, and the famous 1982 setting by Sir John Tavener, who died last month. Tavener’s Lamb was composed in honor of his nephew Simon’s third birthday, again emphasizing the connection to a young child. Wood sets the two stanzas in a more straightfoward strophic setting in the 19th-century tradition. Tavener plays on the innocence of the lamb by featuring only high voices at the beginning, using basically the same music for the second stanza. The doubling of low voices for this second stanza gives a much different musical impression, and Tavener’s delicious dissonance contrasts sharply with the harmonic lushness of Wood’s setting. The next set includes three pieces. The 1607Es ist ein Ros, by Michael Praetorius, is a Christmas classic, which appears on our firstCarols for Quire CD. The second CD of Carols for Quire includes Herbert Howell’s exquisite 1919 setting of that same lyric, as translated in 1869 by the English hymnwriter, Catherine Winkworth (1827– 1878). With its heartfelt baritone solo, Howell’s setting is gorgeous. But in November 2012, I heard the ensemble Tenebrae perform a more recent setting of Winkworth’s translation, as part of a larger work by the contemporary composer Paul Mealor. It’s so different in style from the Howells, and so stunning with its angelic high soprano and sepulchral low bass parts, that I couldn’t resist sharing it with you. “Wassail” is both an ancient toast — meaning something like “Good health!” — and also a mulled cider that was drunk as part of “wassailing” festivities, typically on the 12th Night of Christmas.