Woking Choral Society - Summer Concert, 26 June 2004

 

In this concert our main aim is to present a selection of the best choral music written for liturgical use in the Roman Catholic church. The pieces come from widely differing periods and are in different styles, but they have a number of unifying characteristics. First, they are all intended for church rather than concert use and are strongly devotional in tone. Second, they all in their various ways aim for simplicity and directness, with theatricality and overt and personal emotion pared to the minimum. Third, there is an underlying stylistic link: the works from later periods by Bruckner, Stravinsky and Arvo Pärt all in varying degrees owe a debt to Gregorian chant and to the Renaissance polyphony which is our starting point.

 

That departure point is motets by the 16th century Flemish composer Jacob Clement and his English near-contemporary Robert Parsons, which typify the harmonic purity and richness of texture of the last great age of Renaissance polyphony, before it came under the reforming influences of the Counter-Reformation and then gave way to the Baroque style. The motets by the great Austrian composer Anton Bruckner are more obviously dramatic than these, but have a similar simplicity and directness - not surprising as Bruckner, trained as a church musician, had studied the Renaissance masters and used them as a model. Stravinsky’s liturgical music, too, may come from a very different stable, but for all its dissonances it aims, like the music of Clement and Parsons, for a sense of calm and a levelling down of the emotions, in order to allow a strong faith to make its own statement. Similar objectives imbue the pared down, almost minimalist religious music of the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, of whom Paul Hillier has written: "after [1968] Pärt abandoned serialism and made a thorough study of plainchant and early polyphony, seeking to understand how a few notes could express much, how words uttered in song could retain their power and eloquence". To emphasise the unity of objectives underlying the different idioms, the choral works will be performed in groups which mix the various periods of composition.

 

To complement the choral programme, the wind and brass group required for Stravinsky’s Mass will perform a selection of pieces, some of them reflecting different facets of our featured composers (eg Stravinsky’s Octet), and some of them demonstrating the instrumental equivalent of the choral motet (the canzonas by Palestrina and Purcell). The other instrumental works, though not written for the church, do (it is hoped) at least have stylistic kinship with the rest of the programme.

 

Choral Group

 

Note: Many Renaissance composers wrote canons - pieces consisting of a single line of music, but with successive voices (five in this case) entering to sing this line at a predetermined number of beats after the previous voice has started. This setting of the single word "Sanctus" ("Holy") is a fine example of the rich polyphony that can be created by this device.

 

Christ, ascending on high, has led captivity captive, and given himself as a gift to mankind. Alleluia

This place was made by God, a priceless sacrifice, beyond reproach.

 

Note: Jacob Clement was one of the most prolific and impressive of Renaissance composers, but little is known of his life. He was succentor at Bruges Cathedral from 1544-45 and is thought to have worked after that as a choirmaster at the court of the Emperor Charles V. Much of his work was published in Antwerp from 1545 onwards. Besides a large number of masses and motets he wrote 159 souterliedekens and lofzangen (3-part polyphonic settings of the Psalms in Dutch, all based on Netherlandish melodies). The secular works include 89 chansons, eight Dutch songs, and several instrumental pieces. At some point in his life it became common to refer to him as "Clemens non Papa". One theory is that this was to distinguish him from his contemporary Pope Clement VII, but the more likely reason was to avoid confusion with a Dutch poet, Clemens Papa, who lived in Ypres.

 

Anton Bruckner is best known for his magnificent cycle of nine symphonies and his three large-scale masses for choir and orchestra, but his motets for unaccompanied choir, and for choir and brass, are important and finely-wrought works in their own right. Locus iste was written in 1869 for the dedication of the votive chapel of Linz Cathedral, where Bruckner was organist at the time.

 

Instrumental canzonas

 

 

Note: This celebrated piece was written in 1695 for the Funeral of Queen Mary, where it "was sounded in the Abbey after the anthem" (a reference to Purcell’s "Thou knowest, Lord").

 

Choral Group

 

Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee

 

Offertory for the Feast of St Cecilia: After her shall virgins be brought to the King: her neighbours shall be brought to Thee with gladness and rejoicing: they shall be brought into the temple of the King, the Lord.

 

Note: Robert Parsons was one of many English composers who came to maturity during the turbulent religious upheavals of the Reformation. Born around 1530, he was sworn a gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1563 and wrote a number of works to English texts. His finest music, however, is to Latin texts and was probably composed in the 1550s during the restoration of the Catholic rites under Queen Mary. In 1567 Parsons was granted a Crown lease on three rectories near Lincoln, and it may have been on a visit to these that he met an untimely death by drowning in the river Trent at Newark in 1570.

 

Instrumental Group

 

Note: These short works exemplify the best of English chamber music of the 17th century. Both are highly concentrated, conveying a large amount of musical message in a short space of time. Written originally for viols, they sound effective on modern wind instruments. Thomas Tomkins was organist at the Chapel Royal and also at Worcester Cathedral until the puritans put an end to sung services there in 1646. Though primarily a composer of madrigals and church music he made an important contribution to the consort repertory. Purcell’s consort music, almost all dating from 1680 when the composer was 21 and the viol consort almost obsolete, are masterpieces of contrapuntal writing, using an antique style to create a romantic and uniquely personal means of expression.

 

 

Octet for wind instruments (1922-23, revised 1952) Igor Stravinsky 1882 - 1971


Stravinsky wrote of this work: "The Octet began with a dream, in which I saw myself in a small room surrounded by a small group of instrumentalists playing some attractive music . . . I awoke from this little concert in a state of great delight and anticipation and the next morning began to compose." The result was a woodwind divertissement that equally exercises the listener's mind and the eight virtuoso performers. The first movement marks Stravinsky's rediscovery of sonata form. The second is the first of many Stravinsky variation sets to come. The quick finale yields a stately coda: cool, jazzy, syncopated. Aaron Copland attended the premiere in Paris and later wrote: "I can attest to the general feeling of mystification that followed the initial hearing. Here was Stravinsky . . . now suddenly, without any seeming explanation, making an about-face and presenting a piece to the public that bore no conceivable resemblance to the individual style with which he had hitherto been identified. . . . No one could possibly have foreseen . . . that the Octet was destined to influence composers all over the world." The work is scored for flute, clarinet, two bassoons, two trumpets and two trombones.

(Note by Joseph Horowitz, courtesy of Boosey & Hawkes)

---- Interval ----

 

Andrea Gabrieli was organist of St Mark’s, Venice, from 1566 until his death. His canzonas were probably written in the 1570s when a permanent instrumental ensemble became established there for the first time.

Choral Group

 

Mary, Rose in season vernal, Beauty’s gate to realm supernal, Brighter than the stars on high, Thou support me, thou direct me, Thou sustain me, thou protect me, Lest beneath the foe I die. (Translation by Rev G R Woodward.)

 

Jesse’s rod has come to flower, Jesus, God and man of virgin born in power; peace on earth our God has given again; heaven and earth are one through God’s goodwill to men. (Translation by Wilbur Skools.)

 

Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Benedictus, Agnus Dei.

 

Note: Stravinsky's Mass is for mixed chorus and double wind quintet (2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 bassoons, 2 trumpets and 3 trombones). The Kyrie and Gloria were written in 1944, the remainder in 1947. The first performance was in October 1948 at Milan under Ernest Ansermet. Stravinsky was moved to write a Mass by coming across some Masses by Mozart in a second-hand music shop in Los Angeles. "As I played through these rococo-operatic sweets-of-sin, I knew I had to write a Mass of my own, but a real one (i.e. one that could be used liturgically). He later said "My Mass was not composed for concert performances but for use in the church. It is liturgical and almost without ornament. In making a musical setting of the Credo I wished only to preserve the text in a special way. One composes a march to facilitate marching men, so with my Credo I hope to provide an aid to the text. The Credo is the longest movement. There is much to believe." He is reported as having said on another occasion that he wanted to write "very cold music, absolutely cold, that will appeal directly to the spirit". The sources of the style reach back to the Middle Ages and the age of plainchant, reflecting the increased awareness of music of that period which was emerging at the time.

The Kyrie is built up out of ten short contrasting sections for full chorus and orchestra, with cadences in varying keys. The Gloria and Sanctus, which flank the central Credo, are the only movements to use soloists, and to use embellishment. The Credo uses a chanting style, proceeding at a measured pace and always piano, except for short marcato passages to embellish the words "Ecclesiarn . . . peccatorum . . . mortuorum", ending with an unaccompanied canonic "Amen". The final Agnus Dei consists of three unaccompanied choral sections, each introduced by an orchestral ritornello in ten parts, whose complex texture resolves each time in a plain D major chord.

The use of the instruments is most original. Rarely doubling the voices directly they stress, underline, counterpoint and augment them, contrasting more than they blend, and despite the work's strong harmonic character pointing forward to later works such as the Requiem Canticles and the Canticum Sacrum.

 

I am the true vine, and my father is the husbandman...............ye are my friends , if ye do whatsoever I command you. (words from the Gospel according to St John, Capter 15, verses 1 to 14)

 

Note: Arvo Pärt is one of the most original and pivotal voices in modern choral music. In his recent works he uses a special compositional technique which he calls tintinnabuli, because its harmonic effects are suggestive of the way in which the sound of a bell lingers in the air after it has been rung. The harmony is based on simple triads, and there are two types of melodic line. One, the "melodic" or "M" voice (in this work generally the tenor), proceeds mostly step by step, while the other (the tintinnabulating or "T" voice) moves through pitches of a major or minor triad. The pitch of the triadic or T voice is always determined by the stepwise movement of the M voice. The shape and structure of the lines is always closely bound to the text, reflecting its stresses and syllable lengths. I am the true vine is for four-part unaccompanied choir and was written in 1996