CHANDOS early music LE DIVIN ARCADELT De Silva • PaleStrina Candlemas in Renaissance Rome MUSICA CONTEXTA with The English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble © Lebrecht Music & Arts Photo Library Photo & Arts Music © Lebrecht Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Le Divin Arcadelt: Candlemas in Renaissance Rome premiere recordings, except* Jacques Arcadelt (c. 1507 – 1568) 1 Pater noster 6:01 Motet 2 Hodie beata virgo Maria 3:23 Motet Chant 3 Suscepimus, Deus 3:16 Introitus Jacques Arcadelt 4 Kyrie from Missa ‘Ave, Regina caelorum’ 4:21 5 Gloria from Missa ‘Ave, Regina caelorum’ 5:24 Chant 6 Suscepimus, Deus 1:09 Graduale 3 Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525 – 1594) 7 Senex puerum portabat* 7:31 Motet Jacques Arcadelt 8 Credo from Missa ‘Ave, Regina caelorum’ 9:18 Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina 9 Diffusa est gratia* 2:42 Offertory Chant 10 Nunc dimittis 2:11 Tractus Jacques Arcadelt 11 Sanctus from Missa ‘Ave, Regina caelorum’ 5:41 4 Chant 12 Responsum accepit Simeon 0:55 Communio Andreas de Silva (c. 1475 / 80 – c. 1530) 13 Inviolata, integra et casta es Maria 5:29 Motet Jacques Arcadelt 14 Agnus Dei from Missa ‘Ave, Regina caelorum’ 4:57 Andreas de Silva 15 Ave, Regina caelorum 5:44 Motet TT 68:14 Musica Contexta Simon Ravens director with The English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble 5 Musica Contexta soprano Stephen Shellard Leonora Dawson-Bowling Andra Patterson alto Simon Lillystone Samir Savant Peter North tenor Patrick Allies Andrew Hope Simon Ravens bass Chris Hunter Philip Pratt Edmund Saddington 6 The English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble Gawain Glenton Emily White Tom Lees Andrew Harwood-White soprano cornett (440) Gawain Glenton by Serge Delmas, Paris 2004, after Venetian originals mute cornett (440) Gawain Glenton by Christoph Schuler, Langenthal (Switzerland) 2007 alto sackbut (E flat) Emily White Renaissance style by Egger, Basel 1998, after Hieronimus Starck, Nuremberg 1670, now in Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg tenor sackbut (B flat) Emily White Renaissance style by Egger, Basel 1998, after Sebastian Hainlein, Nuremberg 1632, now in Historisches Museum, Frankfurt Tom Lees Renaissance style by Egger, Basel 1990, after Sebastian Hainlein, Nuremberg 1632, now in Historisches Museum, Frankfurt bass sackbut (E flat or F) Andrew Harwood-White Renaissance style by Egger, Basel 1995, after E flat instrument by Isaac Ehe, Nuremberg 1612, now in Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg 7 Le Divin Arcadelt It is the most blessed varietie in the This recording, then, does not attempt world, where a man may goe to so many to reconstruct a single context in which the Churches in one day, chose where he wil, music of de Silva, Arcadelt, and Palestrina so heavenly served, with such musicke, might have been heard. Indeed, although such voices, such instruments, al ful at various times they were all members of of gravitie and majestie, al moving to the same choir, there is no evidence that devotion and ravishing a mans hart to the music presented here was ever sung at a the meditation of Angels and Saintes in single service. Rather, we take the ecstatic heaven. With the Organs a childes voice description by Gregory Martin of the music shriller and louder than the instrument, he heard in the churches of Rome as a starting tuneable with every pipe: Among the point for a quest with many grails to discover. quyre, Cornet or Sagbut, or such like How real were these grails? Whilst Martin, above al the other voices. (Gregory a fervent English Jesuit, perhaps exaggerated Martin, Roma Sancta, 1588) the quality of music in Papal Rome, there It is easy for modern performers, preparing a is good evidence from other sources that piece of Italian Renaissance music, to imagine he was not fabricating about the nature of that we are questing for some kind of Holy the ensembles he heard. So we can imagine Grail: just by establishing the context for which ourselves, in company with Martin, walking a piece was written, we tell ourselves, we can the streets of Rome on the morning of discover the one true way of making the music 2 February – the Feast of the Purification – shimmer. The chief flaw with this historical some time at the end of the sixteenth century. quest for authenticity is that Italian Renaissance At each major church we come to we enter musicians themselves would not have recognised and listen to a musical item. In one church it. Their music showed none of our kid-glove we find a single falsettist accompanied by reverence for the past, and their approach to sackbuts, in another an unaccompanied choir. performing it was anything but singular. Moving further on, we find a group of singers 8 with a solo cornett, and elsewhere a full choir into obscurity by the blazing star of Josquin: with wind instruments. Perhaps a sneaking to judge from the two works presented curiosity leads us back to some churches, here, this seems unjust in the extreme. Yet which explains how we hear the same scoring biographically too, de Silva is something of a more than once. In this roundabout way, after shooting star, since his movements can only the irresistible benediction of the Pater noster be accounted for between 1513 and 1522. by Arcadelt, by happy chance we come to hear Within this brief period, de Silva was for two all his Ave, Regina caelorum mass, along with years ‘cantor et compositor’ of the Cappella the motet on which it was based, and several Sistina in Rome, and it is in the Sistine propers – items specific to the Feast of the archive that his motet Ave, Regina caelorum Purification. survives. There is also evidence that de Silva There is one obvious reason why Rome spent time working in northern Italy: his played host to such a variety of musical Inviolata, integra et casta es Maria is found practices during the Renaissance. Despite in a manuscript from Bologna. being a net exporter of religious customs and Spain aside, the other greatest regional jurisdiction, musically Rome was very much an influence on the music of the Italian importer. In this melting-pot of national styles, Renaissance was that of northern France and one of the strongest influences came from the Low Countries. It was from here (there Iberian musicians (a term which here embraces is no evidence exactly where) that Jacques composers and performers – the distinction Arcadelt (c. 1507 – 1568) arrived in northern being more ours than theirs). The participation Italy in the early 1530s. After a decade in the of wind instruments in Roman churches may north, he travelled south to Rome. Between well have come from Spain, as did the practice about 1539 and 1551, he was a member of the of soprano falsettists and, in the latter part Cappella Sistina, and it was almost certainly of the sixteenth century, castrati. It has been here that he came across de Silva’s Ave, Regina suggested (admittedly on little more evidence caelorum motet. Evidently it made a strong than the sound of his name) that Andreas impression on Arcadelt, for he used it as the de Silva (c. 1475 / 80 – c. 1530) was born in basis of his Missa ‘Ave, Regina caelorum’. Spain, before moving to Italy. Like so many In our own age, this kind of artistic composers of his era, de Silva has been cast appropriation would be deemed (at least 9 in the eyes of the law) as being to de Silva’s competing spiritual and humanist aesthetics detriment. In the Renaissance, Arcadelt’s of the time has become commonplace. gesture would have been regarded as paying However mythical the biographical details de Silva the highest compliment. (Perhaps not surrounding the role of Palestrina in this quite: the highest compliment offered to reconciliation may be, his music provides all de Silva may have been the attribution of some the testimony we need that the composer of his music to Josquin.) Even today, though, did indeed fuse these different elements. The Arcadelt could have deflected any charge of clarity of Palestrina’s writing – exemplified plagiarism by pointing out that the melody here by the late work Diffusa est gratia – has which gave de Silva his inspiration – the always been realised. Perhaps, however, it has Gregorian chant ‘Ave, Regina caelorum’ – was been realised at the expense of the emotional itself borrowed. De Silva updates the chant response which Palestrina showed to his texts. to make it more tonally focused. In his turn, Senex puerum portabat, an earlier work, Arcadelt – at heart an affective madrigalist – seems to radiate this quality. subtly tweaks de Silva’s approach to texture In one other respect, Palestrina played and word setting to place the mass firmly in a vital role in the music of the Counter- the post-Josquin era. Unabashed humanism, Reformation. In 1577 he was commissioned one senses, is not far away. Nor is it in by Gregory XIII to co-edit the existing Arcadelt’s motets. On paper, Arcadelt’s Pater Roman Gradual, to rid the chant of its noster and Hodie beata virgo Maria appear ‘superfluities, barbarities, and obscurities’: worlds apart – the former as sumptuous as the in other words, to modernise chant in the latter is simple – but at their core is the same spirit of humanism. In fact, this huge task direct appeal to our emotions. was only completed in 1614 by two disciples In the year that Arcadelt left Rome to of Palestrina, Felice Anerio (c. 1560 – 1614) return north to France, Giovanni Pierluigi and Francesco Soriano (1548 / 49 – 1621). da Palestrina (c. 1525 – 1594) arrived in the This ‘Medicean’ chant was re-published as the city. Born only a short distance from Rome, Graduale Romanum in 1871 by Palestrina’s Palestrina was part of a growing wave of first modern editor, Franz Xaver Haberl, native Italian musical talent.