Shannon Canavin & Allison
Mondel, soprano
Thea Lobo & Aaron Russo, alto
Jason
McStoots & Eric Rice, tenor
Brian Church & Richard
Giarusso, bass
Friday, October 29, 2004 at 8 PM
The
First Lutheran Church of Boston
Sunday, October 31, 2004 at 3 PM
West
Parish, Andover
Program Notes
Next to the Word of God, music deserves the highest
praise. . . . For whether you wish to comfort the
sad, to terrify the happy, to encourage the despairing,
to humble the proud, to calm the passionate, or to
appease those full of hate . . . what more effective
means than music could you find?
— Martin Luther, preface to Symphoniae
jucundae, 1538
On October 31, 1517, an Augustinian monk named Martin
Luther (1483-1546) posted ninety-five complaints against
Roman Catholicism on a church door in Wittenberg, Germany.
Through this simple act of protest, which was aimed
at an arriving papal emissary, Luther had hoped to
begin stemming what he saw as the corrupt practice
of selling priestly pardons for sins. Instead, his
reforms coalesced into a new Christian faith, one for
which a new liturgical and musical tradition also evolved.
As the above quotation demonstrates, Luther believed
music to be the most “effective means” of
awakening and reinforcing people’s faith, and
this conviction had a profound effect on early Lutheran
music. Our concert surveys this repertoire, exploring
musical manifestations of two essential Lutheran beliefs:
first, that salvation from death occurs only through
faith in the forgiveness of sin brought about by Christ’s
crucifixion; second, that the Bible is the only norm
of doctrine and thus the only true standard by which
church teachings are to be judged. These beliefs are
expressed in the sacred music on our program, which
falls into three broad categories: works for Pentecost,
in which the Holy Spirit is implored to “fill
the hearts of the faithful”; works on the subject
of death, in which faith is often invoked as the means
to salvation; and various settings of Luther’s
own Ein feste Burg, a hymn that expresses
the steadfastness of faith grounded in scripture. Nearly
all of this music is a remarkable amalgam of tradition
and innovation. Tunes Luther adapted from Gregorian
chant or composed outright are employed in the context
of florid polyphony, and emotionally charged dissonances
worthy of the operatic stage occur in settings of Biblical
texts about death and renewal. The music is indeed
effective and stirring, serving as a remarkable testament
to Lutheran faith in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.
From the earliest years of the new church, Lutheran
musical ideals emphasized active congregational singing
and the use of vernacular language. The liturgy was
not the main target of Luther’s initial protests,
but he subjected it to increasing scrutiny as scripture
alone replaced Patristic teachings as the basis for
Lutheran faith. Soon German was employed together with
the traditional Latin, and a new genre of song known
as the chorale became a vehicle for the transmission
and retention of doctrinal texts. It is these works,
which are simple melodies with multiple verses of text
intended for congregational singing, that form the
cornerstone of Lutheran liturgical music.
Yet Luther did not abandon entirely the traditional
music of the Roman Church, a tradition in which he
happened to be exceptionally well trained. He translated
many of its texts and adapted its melodies. Komm
heiliger Geist, Herre Gott is Luther’s free
adaptation of the plainsong Veni, Sancte Spiritus,
reple tuorum corda fidelium, a chant sung at Pentecost.
Our program begins with a simple, four-voice rendering
of Luther’s adaptation by Michael Praetorius
(1571 – 1621), who served as a court organist
and Kapellmeister in the Lutheran strongholds
of Wolfenbüttel and Dresden. The chorale melody
is heard in the soprano, with the other three parts
providing primarily chordal accompaniment with light
embellishment. (The five-voice settings of Komm,
heiliger Geist by Johannes Eccard and Johann Hermann
Schein, which are heard later in the program, are more
complex, reflecting a compositional approach suited
more to professional choirs than to congregations.) Veni,
veni Sancte Spiritus is a freely composed setting
of the original Latin text for three voices of equal
range, originally boys, and an adult male singer. The
melodies of the three four-voice settings of Wenn
mein Stündlein vorhanden ist originate in
different regions of Germany; Praetorius, an incredibly
prolific composer as well as an active collector and
pedagogue, took pains to set as many of these regional
melodies as he could. All of these works appeared in
the composer’s massive Musae Sioniae,
a nine-volume collection published between 1605 and
1611 dedicated to polyphonic settings of chorales.
The earliest publications of Lutheran music emerged
from the press of Georg Rhau (1488-1548), a composer
and music theorist who was briefly the Kantor of the
Thomasschule in Leipzig, a position held by J.S. Bach
two hundred years later. Rhau’s Lutheran sympathies
cost him that post, however, as Leipzig was not yet
in Lutheran hands. In 1520, he returned to his native
Wittenberg to take up a relative’s printing business,
combining it with his interests in music and the new
church.
Rhau commissioned the Bohemian-born Balthasar Resinarius
(1485-1544), a Lutheran Bishop, to compose a cycle
of Latin-texted liturgical pieces for the entire church
year. The works are settings of responsories, chants
with a repeated section and a verse (a passage setting
a brief phrase of scripture) that were traditionally
sung in Catholic services of the Divine Office following
scripture readings. Resinarius had received his musical
training at the court of Emperor Maximilian I under
Heinrich Isaac (c. 1450-1517), who excelled in such
liturgical settings, and the younger composer’s
four-voice Libera me, Domine, a responsory
for the office of the dead, reflects both Isaac’s
influence and the immediate needs of the Lutheran church.
It employs thoroughgoing imitation (in which one voice
repeats, recognizably if not exactly, a melodic figure
previously heard in another voice), but also e mphasizes
the significance and meaning of the text of the repeated
section. After the section’s initial imitative
passage, in which the voices employ a rising figure,
the top voice presents a series of long notes, and
the inexorable rise and rhythmic drive of the bottom
three voices against these creates a restless quality
clearly intended to correspond to the movement of heaven
and earth described in the text.
Among the composers Rhau championed was Johann Walther
(1496-1570), a choirmaster and composer for the Elector
of Saxony at Torgau who became the principal composer
of the Lutheran chorale. Rhau issued a new and enlarged
edition of Walther’s Geystlichiches gesangk
Büchleyn, the most heavily used of Lutheran
hymnbooks, in 1544. While this publication contains
modest chorale settings for congregational and devotional
singing, surviving manuscripts contain motets by Walther
in thoroughly imitative style; O wie selig ist
der Tod is one such work. Each phrase of text
receives a new segment of melody that is heard in imitation
several times, and Walther’s occasional use of
implied dissonant cross relations (in which the voice
parts simultaneously differ on whether a pitch is natural,
sharp, or flat) betrays the influence of Franco-Flemish
composers of the period.
Some Lutheran composers engaged in secular composition
and were quite worldly in their approaches. Leonhard
Lechner (c. 1553-1606), for example, was a prolific
composer of the villanella, an Italian genre
associated with rustic texts and characters that he
assimilated and adapted for German use. Ich reu
und klag retains the three-voice disposition and
vocal ranges of its Italian models, but makes use of
a subtle rhythmic play and form that Lechner probably
associated with its German poem, a decidedly highbrow
work in which sets of two rhyming four-syllable lines
are alternated with rhyming seven-syllable lines. Lechner
spent the first portion of his adult career (until
1583) in Nuremberg, and it was there that he composed Si
pietas, si sancta fides, a funeral motet, though
for whom is not immediately clear. The piece, which
is scored for five low voices, contrasts imitative
and homophonic textures to great rhetorical effect
and employs expressive touches of chromaticism. Although
Lechner’s compositional voice can be clearly
heard, so too can the influence of Orlande de Lassus
(ca. 1530 – 1594), whom Lechner served as a choirboy
and cited throughout his life as his teacher.] Die
Musik ist ein schöne Kunst is a bright, energetic
work intended for the amateur singing societies Lechner
served in Nuremberg.
Like Lechner, Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) was
familiar with Italian models. He spent nearly four
years (1609-1612) in Venice in an apprenticeship with
Giovanni Gabrieli (1554-1612), adopting aspects of
the elder composer’s forward-looking approach
to dissonance treatment, speech rhythm, and polychoral
textures. In 1614 he became the Kapellmeister at
the court of the Elector Johann Georg I of Saxony in
Dresden, a post he held for more than forty years.
His six-voice Selig sind die Toten is characterized
by and abundant suspended dissonances (in which one
voice momentarily holds a note belonging to a chord
that the other voices have left behind), particularly
in long note values at the text “von ihrer Arbeit,” where
they may serve to symbolize the struggle of labor.
The idea of resting is conveyed by long notes at the
text “Sie ruhen” (“they rest”)
and the phrase “und ihre Werke folgen ihnen nach” (“and
their works do follow them”) is contrasted with
the rest of piece by means of its forward movement
in short note values and imitative counterpoint, suggesting
the “following” mentioned in the text.
Schütz’s seven-voice Ich weiß,
daß mein Erlöser lebt is particularly
noteworthy for its textural contrasts—separate
choirs of high and low voices alternate and collaborate
throughout the work—and its alternation between
triple and duple meter. Though the work (along with Selig
sind die Toten) was published in the composer’s Geistlicher
Chormusik of 1648, both of these features ultimately
descend from his studies with Gabrieli over three decades
earlier.
Schütz’s close friend, Johann Hermann
Schein (1586-1630), also employed chromatic melody
and suspended dissonances for expressive purposes.
Indeed, his five-voice Unser Leben währet
siebnzig Jahr, published in 1623, could well have
come from Schütz’s pen; it shares many characteristics
with Selig sind die Toten. The opening, for
example, expresses the length of the seventy-year lifespan
mentioned in the text with slow melodic lines in a
contrary motion, employing many suspended dissonances
along the way. The closing section depicts the idea
of flying with a lilting motion and then rapid, downward
runs. Like Rhau before him, Schein held the post of
Thomaskantor at Leipzig and died there at age 44, having
received a deathbed visit from Schütz.
The final segment of our concert presents sixteenth-
and seventeenth-century settings of Luther’s Ein
feste Burg, a German adaptation of Psalm 46 that
quickly became an anthem of Lutheran belief for annual
commemorations of the Reformation on October 31. The
melody’s insistent three-note beginning is an
apt expression of the analogy of the “secure
fortress” that Luther employed for his new faith.
We begin with Johann Walther’s modest but hauntingly
beautiful two-voice setting of the tune, which presents
the melody in the soprano. A version for four low voices
by Walther is next, with the melody in the second tenor.
Schütz’s rendering of the tune places it
in the soprano in a high register. Next comes a setting
in an imitative motet style by Melchior Franck (c.
1580-1639) in which all four voices take up the tune
in imitation. A five-voice work by Stephan Mahu (c.
1480-after 1541) combines the imitative approach of
Frank’s work with the idea of presenting the
tune in a single voice; the tenor sings the tune while
the other voices use motives from it as points of imitation.
We conclude with an eight-voice setting of the tune
by Samuel Scheidt (1587-1654), who published the work
in a volume of double-choir motets just after he was
made Kapellmeister for the administrator of
Halle, a position that afforded him the opportunity
to interact with both Schütz and Praetorius, among
other musicians. Each of these settings demonstrates
the composer’s particular skill at adapting and
developing Luther’s tune to create a new polyphonic
composition.
Like religious faith itself, throughout history sacred
polyphony has invited listeners to consider old texts
and tunes anew, often presenting them in a new, up-to-date
polyphonic context. It is particularly remarkable that
Luther created chorales that, despite their newness,
very quickly became “traditional” in the
eyes of his contemporaries. His emphasis on congregational
singing created a music-oriented laity that, perhaps
even more than their Catholic contemporaries, could
appreciate composers’ skillful manipulations
of chorale tunes and settings of Biblical texts. It
is our hope that, nearly five hundred years after Luther’s
initial protest, our own performance can elicit similar
appreciation of this extraordinary musical legacy.
© 2004 Eric Rice |
