VANCOUVER BACH FESTIVAL 2019 the artists tuesday august 6 at 7:30 pm | christ church cathedral Suzie LeBlanc song of songs & — a concert designed and led by alex potter — Dorothee Mields sopranos the audience is requested not to applaud until the end of each half Alex Potter (Song of Songs Chapter 1 complete) alto & leader Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina: Osculetur me Palestrina: Trahe me post te Samuel Boden reading: tenor song of songs 1:1-8 Matthew Brook Palestrina: Si ignoras te bass-baritone reading: song of songs 1: 8-15 Lucas Harris Palestrina: Ecce tu pulcher theorbo (End of Song of Songs Chapter 1 complete) Michael Jarvis harpsichord & organ Alessandro Piccinini: Toccata XI (lute solo) Maria Xaveria Perucona: Propera veni dilecte mi and with readers Alessandro Grandi: Surge propera Dana Camil Hewitt reading: & song of songs chapter 5 complete Yotam Ronen Orlande de Lassus: Anima mea liquefacta est INTERVAL “O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.” Thanks to Ray Nurse (Excerpt from Song of Songs, Chapter 5, Verse 1) for the use of his theorbo — wine is available for sale at intermission! — based on 17th-century Venetian models (Ray Nurse, 1999, Vancouver, B.C.) reading: song of songs 2:1-13 Generously supported by the Claudio Monteverdi: Ego flos campi EMV Board of Directors Cristóbal de Morales: Ecce amica mea Girolamo Frescobaldi: Toccata Terza (harpsichord solo) Pre-concert chat with Giovanni Antonio Rigatti: Surge Columba host Matthew White at 6:45: reading: Alex Potter song of songs 2:14-17 Lucrezia Orsina Vizana: Sonet vox tua Giovanni Rovetta: Surge propera THE UNAUTHORISED USE OF reading: ANY VIDEO OR AUDIO RECORDING song of song shapter 3 complete DEVICE IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED Domenicho Mazzochi: Dialogo della cantica earlymusic.bc.ca Song of Songs Vancouver Bach Festival 2019 1 PARTNERS board of directors Early Music Vancouver gratefully acknowledges the assistance and support of: Chris Guzy president government support Fran Watters vice president Ron Kruschen We acknowledge the support of treasurer the Province of British Columbia Tony Knox past president Ilia Korkh secretary foundations Kathleen Bourchier THE BRENNAN SPANO Spencer Corrigal cpa,ca FAMILY FOUNDATION Sherrill Grace THE DRANCE FAMILY Melody Mason EARLY MUSIC VANCOUVER FUND Tim Rendell cpa,ca Johanna Shapira 2019-20 production partners Ingrid Söchting EMV’s performances at the Chan Centre are presented in partnership with the Chan Centre for the Per- Vincent Tan forming Arts, with the support of the Chan Endowment Fund at the University of British Columbia. ÷ pacific José Verstappen cm baroque orchestra artistic director emeritus alexander weimann ÷ MUSIC director staff Matthew White executive & artistic director Nathan Lorch business manager Michelle Herrewynen development manager Jonathan Evans production manager production partners in victoria bc Laina Tanahara marketing & volunteer coordinator Mei Chi Chin corporate support summer production assistant Jan Gates Rosedale on Robson Suite Hotel event photographer VANCOUVER, BC Tony Knox Barrister & Solicitor, Arbitrator Tel: 604 263 5766 Cell: 604 374 7916 Fax: 604 261 1868 Email: [email protected] Murray Paterson 1291 West 40th Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. 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A range of sponsorship advantages is available, including logo recognition, complimentary tickets for tel: 604.732.1610 your clients, employee discounts, and many other benefits tailored to your specific needs. fax: 604.732.1602 Call Nathan Lorch to discuss how our audience profile [email protected] may fit with your company’s objectives: 604 732 1610. earlymusic.bc.ca Early Music Vancouver acknowledges that we are gathered on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples – Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm (Musqueam) Nations. 2 Vancouver Bach Festival 2019 Song of Songs [email protected] PROGRAMME NOTES by alex potter Singing Evensong in my youth brought me into daily Within tonight’s concert, we can hear how the text was contact with Christianity’s Judaic heritage. From its opening used in different ways by composers. In Palestrina’s and paraphrasing of Psalm 51, “O Lord open thou our lips”, the Monteverdi’s settings, we hear unchanged settings of the service is steeped in the language of the Hebrew scriptures. original texts, while in settings by Grandi and Rigatti we might Indeed, through the singing of psalms and anthems, as well observe how composers also drew together non-consecutive as hearing readings, the Old Testament (essentially identical verses from different parts of the collection, thus in effect to the Hebrew Tanakh) became increasingly familiar to me. creating their own texts. Finally, a third type is represented Thanks to Evensong, as a child I already knew about well- by those settings which use the language of the Song of Songs, known figures like Abraham, Moses and Ruth, and the story but change and paraphrase it to express something explicitly of Exodus, for example. I also learned about the less familiar: Christian, as exemplified in the Vizana and Mazzochi. Og the King of Bashan, Nebuchadnezzar II, as well as the fact that Noah’s Ark was exactly 300 cubits long! More radically different than the types of text is the way the composers set them. The works in the can roughly be divided Texts from the Song of Songs were less frequently encountered, into “Renaissance” and “Baroque”, or to use the terminology but bound up with very fond memories of performing of the time: prima and seconda pratica. In the prima pratica wonderful pieces like Patrick Hadley’s My beloved spake, several a cappella voices overlap and imitate each another Palestrina’s Surge amica mea, John Ireland’s Greater love hath according to strict rules of consonance and dissonance. The no man, and William Walton’s Set me as a seal – a work I sang text is frequently not declaimed simultaneously. Renaissance numerous times at weddings, and which provided much- composers such as Morales, Lassus, and particularly needed beer money as a student. Palestrina were three of the greatest exponents of this polyphonic style. By contrast, the seconda pratica, which When I was a child, I thought as a child and didn’t really consider emerged around 1600, prioritized a more rhetorical delivery of the peculiarity of the Song of Songs belonging to the religious the text. To this end, the older rules of harmony were relaxed canon. The transition to adulthood, of course, also gave me and the words became more clearly audible. The music is a more understanding of the text, but at the same time led frequently just with one voice and accompanying instruments me to wonder what this kind of erotic sensuality was doing in (in this case, lute, harpsichord or organ). Monteverdi, Grandi the Bible! Scholars now generally agree that it was originally and Rovetta were key figures of this radical new, “modern” Hebrew love poetry composed, adapted and expanded over way of composing music, which marked the beginning of generations, between 500 and 200 BCE, with recognizable what we now term “Baroque”. Egyptian, Persian and Hellenistic influences. The Hebrew title Shir ha-Shirim (“Song of Songs”) is used in a superlative sense, On one level, this concert might thus appear to be an “the most beautiful of songs”, (similar to “Holiest of Holies”). incompatible juxtaposition of styles. In fact, composers of the The poem’s place in both the Jewish and Christian scriptures seconda pratica continued to write in the polyphonic style of was established in late antiquity, significantly thanks to Rabbi the prima pratica, and routinely performed sixteenth-century Akiva (50-135 CE), who interpreted it as an allegory of the music alongside their own music well into the eighteenth love between God and Israel. Akiva’s writing was then highly century. Claudio Monteverdi, for example, published an influential on the Christian theologian Origen (184-253 CE), a cappella mass (the Missa In illo tempore) in the same who regarded the bridegroom as representing Christ and the publication as his famous 1610 Vespers. We also know that bride being the believer. in 1614 he ordered six volumes of polyphonic masses for St. Mark’s Venice. Even J.S. Bach still performed motets by Against this theological background it is hardly surprising Renaissance composers like Lassus and Gallus alongside his that there was a huge proliferation of musical settings of own music in Leipzig in the 1720s. This concert is therefore the Song of Songs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. ‘historical’ in its approach in terms of presenting the two In the early sixteenth century, the Reformation split the styles in direct juxtaposition, and hopefully offering an insight Western Church into Roman Catholic and Protestant into their complementarities. factions, both vying for the souls of the believers. Alongside killing and torture, both sides readily embraced mysticism The Song of Songs is very unusual in the wider context of to win over hearts and minds. With its potent sensuality, scripture and historical documents of its time, in that we are the Song of Songs became a central resource for composers often directly addressed by the rarely heard female voice.