Shannon Canavin & Eunsun
Song, soprano
Thea Lobo & Martin Near, alto
Jason
McStoots & Eric Rice, tenor
Richard Giarusso & Paul
Guttry, bass
Friday, February 6, 2004 at 8 PM
The
First Lutheran Church of Boston
Sunday, February 8, 2004 at 3 PM
Cochran
Chapel at Phillips Academy Andover
Program Notes
In 1534, Henry VIII issued the Act of Supremacy establishing
himself as the head of the Church of England and allowing
him to divorce Catherine of Aragon as he sought to
achieve a male heir to the thrown. From this exploitation
of power there followed almost a century of turmoil
as the official faith changed from Catholic to Protestant
and back again. This had a particular impact on composers
of the time, who not only had to endure the threat
of persecution as the religious pendulum swung, but
whose livelihoods depended on keeping up with the changing
liturgical and doctrinal demands. As composers were
charged with composing for the vernacular rite instead
of the Latin, new genres and styles developed and the
period would eventually be looked upon as one of the
most fruitful musical eras in English history.
Thomas Tallis was probably born in Kent during the
first decade of the sixteenth century. His first post
appears to have been as organist at the Benedictine
priory of Dover in 1530-31. He is next found at St.
Mary-at-Hill, a parish noted for its music, and from
there he moved to Waltham Abbey in Essex in 1538 as
a senior member of its extensive musical foundation.
However, that assignment proved short-lived, as in
1540 the Abbey was the last of the monastic foundations
to be dissolved under the Reformation. Tallis then
returned to Canterbury Cathedral in East Kent, which
was being re-founded as a secular establishment with
an expanded choir. In 1543 (or perhaps earlier), Tallis
became a member of the famed Chapel Royal, where he
remained until his death.
Tallis survived the various changes in political and
religious leadership due to his pragmatism and flexibility.
While there is today some ambiguity over his true religious
convictions, a case can convincingly be made for his
devotion to Catholicism, through his strong friendship
with William Byrd and apparent relationship with Anthony
Ruper (grandson of Catholic Thomas Moore), and through
the heartfelt nature of his late works, most notably
the Lamentations.
Tallis’s music changed markedly over time. The
votive antiphon Salve intemerata is found
in the Eton Choirbook, the leading source of late fifteenth-century
English music, and was probably composed in the 1530s.
This form was enthusiastically cultivated in Pre-Reformation
England but later strongly criticized. Salve follows
the form’s traditional plan of two parts of about
equal length, the first of which is in triple meter
and the second of which is in duple, and features frequent
scoring contrasts from duets to the full complement
of five voices. The long melismatic passages and use
of imitation as a decorative device rather than a structural
one is indicative of the older musical fashion. I
call and cry to thee, also found in contrafactum
as O sacrum convivium (although there is still
doubt as to which version was penned first), demonstrates
Tallis’s use of structural imitation: the textual
phrases are given their own musical motives which are
introduced at varying intervals by each voice. Due
to the influence of Cranmer and other reformers who
demanded audibility in word-setting and greater simplicity
of musical style, as demonstrated in the Latin motet O
nata lux and Verily, verily, an English
anthem set almost completely homophonically.
William Byrd came from a family of gentlemen and was
probably brought up in the Chapel Royal, where he was
a student of Tallis and later became his assistant.
He began composing as a teenager and in 1563 became
organist and choirmaster at Lincoln Cathedral, from
which he was suspended in 1569 after a complaint about
his “popish” and longwinded organ interludes.
Byrd was sworn in as a gentleman of the Chapel Royal
in 1572 following the death of Robert Parsons and became
joint organist with Tallis. He later moved to Essex–the
first step in his journey away from London and the
threat of recusancy–where he was supported by
various patrons, including the Earl of Oxford, Paget,
Petre, and Queen Elizabeth. In 1575, the Queen granted
Tallis and Byrd a publishing patent to supplement their
income. This first enterprise was a financial disaster,
but Byrd would eventually use this privilege to catalogue
his works and circulate his extensive body of carefully
ordered music for the Proper and Ordinary of the Catholic
mass. In 1584, Byrd was convicted of recusancy (refusal
to attend services of the Church of England) and the
family was excommunicated in 1605. There is little
record of his life from this point forward aside from
his entry in many legal disputes concerning leases.
He died at Stondon Massey in 1623, described in the
Chapel Royal ledger as “a Father of Musick.”
Byrd’s early output of is represented by a large
number of styles, forms, and genres, including Latin
motets, English anthems, consort songs, instrumental
fantasias, the complete Ordinary and Propers as contained
in the two volumes of Gradualia, and a wealth
of music for the English virginal. There is a deliberate
plan of experimentation and the influence of such composers
as Tallis, Tye, White Parsons, and Ferrabosco is evident.
Byrd was the first English composer to understand classical
imitative polyphony, as in O salutaris hostia,
which maintains its initial imitative polyphony throughout
the piece. Byrd’s skillful combination of polyphony
and homophony is perhaps what makes his vocal music
most compelling. In the opening phrase of Arise,
Lord, into thy rest, each voice picks up the rising
motive introduced by the tenor, but the voices weave
their way together at the word “rest” at
the close of the phrase. From there to the end, the
voices maintain a principally homophonic texture, often
trading off in duets and trios. The expansive Quomodo
cantabimus is composed in much the same way. This
remarkable piece was in response to the Flemish composer
Philippus de Monte’s 1583 Super flumina Babylonis,
who served in the household chapel choir of Prince
Philip of Spain from 1554 to 1555. Also a devout Catholic,
de Monte urged Byrd to use his talents in a country
that would appreciate him (“How shall we [i.e.
you, the English] sing the Lord’s song in a strange
land?”). Byrd replied the following year with
the dense and structurally strong Quomodo (“Remember
the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem”,
referring to the Edomites who joined the besieging
army at the destruction of Jerusalem and were later
denounced). Byrd’s faith remained strong and
his musical contribution to the Catholic faith helped
to ensure its future.
Little is known of the life of Martin Peerson. He
was probably the son of Thomas and Margaret of March
and may have come under the patronage of poet Fulke
Greville. In 1604, he is known to have provided a piece
to Ben Jonson’s masque. In 1606 he was convicted
with Jonson of recusancy, so he mostly likely had Catholic
sympathies. He later moved to Newington and published
several books for virginal. He received a music degree
from Oxford in 1613, meaning he had to subscribe to
Protestantism. From 1623 to 1630 was at Westminster
Abbey serving as sacrist and from 1624-5 was almoner
and Master of Choristers at St. Paul’s Cathedral.
When civil war broke out in 1642 and cathedral services
ended, Peerson remained at St. Paul’s and is
buried there at St. Faith’s Chapel.
Peerson’s compositions are very forward-looking
in their use of chromaticism, demanding dramatic vocal
lines, and novelty of style. An accomplished organist
and virginalist, his music is infused with the extemporized
style of that music; there are four surviving keyboard
works which show a range of style. His English-texted
works survive in two publications: Private Musicke (1620)
containing secular songs for one or two voices and
viols and virginal and Motets or Grave Chamber
Music (1630), which represents the first instance
of figured bass in an English published collection.
Peerson’s five-voice Latin motets are preserved
in part-book format, the cantus part of which is lost.
The two motets performed on this program are reconstructed
by Ross W. Duffin [blurb].
Thomas Tomkins was the son of organist and choirmaster
of St. David’s Cathedral in ?? and studied with
Byrd during his early years, as evidenced by the dedication
of Tomkins’s madrigal Too much I once lamented (1622)
to “my ancient, & much reverenced Master,
William Byrd.” In 1596 he was appointed organist
of Worcester Cathedral and in 1607 received his Bachelor
of Music degree from Oxford . Tomkins was apparently
quite influenced by Thomas Morley’s A Plaine
and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597),
which he studied and annotated carefully. Morley included
one of Tomkins’s madrigals in the 1601 The
Triumphs of Oriana, a publication praising the
good works of Queen Elizabeth, indicating Tomkins’s
stature as a composer and apparent affiliation with
the court, and in 1621 Tomkins succeeded Edmund Hooper
as organist of the Chapel Royal. In 1628 he was mistakenly
named “Composer in Ordinary of the king’s
musicke,” a post that was promised to Ferrabosco,
who later rightly assumed the position. After the death
of his wife in 1630, Tomkins spent less time at the
Chapel Royal and returned increasingly to Worcester
Cathedral. Although services at Worcester ceased in
1646, Tomkins resided there until 1654 when he went
to live with his son, where he died in 1656.
Tomkins’s epitaph reads simply “Mr. Thomas
Tomkins, organist of the King’s Chapel and of
the Cathedral Church of Worcester,” indicating
he was not considered a very important composer. However,
considering the number and distinction of his contemporaries,
as well as the suppression of the Anglican Church and
its musicians, it is not difficult to understand his
being overlooked. Tomkins’s contrapuntal technique
was indeed exceptional, continuing Byrd’s achievements
as no other composer was able. He also updated the
traditional Anglican style by balancing modern madrigalian
compositional techniques with older cathedral methods.
His daring harmonic language also foreshadows the music
of the next great English composer, Henry Purcell.
Nearly all of Tomkins’s church music was published
in the posthumous Musica Deo Sacra (1668),
which contains over a hundred anthems and five services.
His surviving vocal works are entirely in English,
save one Latin motet which is also found in English
contrafactum (or vice-versa). Tomkins also continued
Byrd’s contribution to the virginal repertory,
and as Stephen Tuttle stated, “the school of
English virginalists came to a close” with the
death of Tomkins. His three-voice anthems are somewhat
awkward in their counterpoint, but contain strange
idiosyncrasies that capture Tomkins’s daring
style, as in the closing measures of O Lord, rebuke
me not, which meanders harmonically until all
three voices end in unison. The striking and elaborate O
sing unto the Lord a new song seems at first to
be merely an expansive and joyful devotion to God,
but the “Alleluia” section is marked by
constantly changing sonorities and driving syncopations
that set it apart from most pieces of the time.
© 2004 Shannon Canavin and Eric Rice
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