Shannon Canavin & Allison
Mondel, soprano
Thea Lobo & Aaron Russo, alto
Jason
McStoots & Eric Rice, tenor
Brian Church, bass
Wednesday, May 18, 2005 at 8pm
St. Anthony’s
Church, Cambridge
Friday, May 20, 2005 at 8 PM
The First
Lutheran Church of Boston
Sunday, May 22, 2005 at 3 PM
St. Lawrence,
Martyr Church, New Bedford
Program Notes
Portugal lays claim to the first church musician
known by name on the Iberian Peninsula, one Andreas,
who was the princes cantorum (“leader
of the singers”) at Mértola from 489 to
525. Polyphony seems to have first appeared in Portugal
in 959, the year in which a convent inherited several
liturgical books from Muma Donna of Gulmarães.
The region enjoyed a long history of musical exchange
with neighboring Spain and Italy, and as Portugal’s
exploration expanded throughout the 15 th century,
her travelers encountered foreign musicians and employed
many of them in her courts. While the Portuguese composers
from 1550 to 1650 were very familiar with the compositional
practices of Palestrina (and the church’s mandate
to emulate that style following the Council of Trent),
they were more interested in continuing to model their
music on that of the Franco-Flemish school of Dufay,
Ockeghem, Josquin, Gombert, and others, finding that
this style better suited their inherent expressive
and dramatic temperament. When combined with the traditions
carried from port to port through oral traditions,
the Portuguese school of polyphony amassed a rich repertory
of music that it in turn took to its many colonies,
including those in Brazil, whose own indigenous musical
forms and subsequent musical heritage were shaped by
Portugal’s influence.
Luiz Heitor Correa de Azevedo has noted that “music,
as it was known in Europe…was simply transplanted
overseas,” and the travelers almost always had
a religious mission. Throughout its colonial period,
music in Brazil was directly related to church services,
and was used to connect with (and convert) the native
peoples; there is evidence, however, of secular music
flourishing, particularly in rural areas. We attempt
with this program not to trace the fascinating modification
of indigenous Brazilian folk music or the development
of the “transported” Portuguese music by
influences native and foreign, but rather give a picture
of the music that may have been taken to Brazil by
the first Portuguese missionaries. We also include
as a matter of interest a piece recorded as part of
France’s failed 1557 colony: the convoy dispatched
to meet Chevalier de Villegagnon in Rio de Janeiro
entered a small hall and apparently sang Goudimel’s
setting of Psalm 5 in thanks for having safely reached
their destination.
Francisco de Garro (ca. 1556–1623) was born
in Alfaro, Spain, and held the position of maestro
de capilla (“master of the chapel”)
at Sigüenza Cathedral until 1593. He then moved
to the Court of Lisbon. Although there are numerous
references to Garro in 16 th- and 17 th-century writings,
no details concerning his life and work survive, save
six letters between him and the Lisbon court regarding
his employment and duties there. His two collections
of liturgical works were published in Lisbon, and while
there is evidence he published additional music in
Castilian, Portuguese, and Latin, the 1609 volumes
are his only known surviving music. His Parce mihi
Domine for five voices sets a text from the Book
of Job and is laid out in two clearly defined sections,
the first comprised of a quietly beseeching plea for
mercy, and the second a sudden flurry of activity.
Damião de Gois (1502–1574) was a Portuguese
humanist, chronicler, diplomat, and composer. He traveled
throughout Europe and was an acquaintance of both Erasmus
and the music theorist Heinrich Glarean. At age 11,
de Gois was a page at the palace of King Manuel I,
and he was later sent to Antwerp. In 1542 he was captured
by the French, but returned to Lisbon, where he was
named royal archivist and historian by John III. During
the last few years of his life, de Gois was sent to
prison after having been denounced by the Inquisition
for consorting with heretic leaders and for singing
and playing strange music on the Sabbath. He was at
last released and allowed to return to his home in
Alemquer. In die tribulationis cannot be attributed
to de Gois definitively, since it is ascribed in its
two sources to only “Damianus,” but he
is the likely composer. Its thoroughly imitative, flowing
counterpoint owes much to the Franco-Flemish style,
though its three-voice texture is somewhat unusual.
Manuel de Tavares held the position of maestro
de capilla at the cathedrals of Baeza, Murcia,
Las Palmas, and Cuenca. Upon his death in 1638, his
son Nicolas, then maestro at Cádiz,
replaced him at Cuenca. His surviving music can be
found at Las Palmas and Puebla, from whose archives
his seven-voice Parce mihiDomine comes.
This dramatic setting abounds in expressive dissonances
and changes in texture designed to further the rhetoric
of its deeply penitential text. In this, it reflects
the influence of Italian madrigalists, particularly
Claudio Monteverdi, on the Iberian Peninsula.
Nothing is known of the life of Estêvão
de Brito (ca. 1575–1641) before his arrival at
Badajoz in 1597. His works were praised throughout
Spain, and it appears he was a pupil of the renowned
Filipe de Magalhães (1571–1652). From
Badajoz, de Brito traveled to Talavera and later received
his holy ordination in 1608, allowing him to be appointed
chaplain of the choir (a post which required “pure
blood”). In 1613, de Brito transferred to Màlaga
where he served as the cathedral’s maestro
de capilla, composing and giving lessons at the
college. The composer asked repeatedly to be released
from his teaching duties to rehearse the choir for
the very important services of Christmas, Corpus Christi,
and other high holy days, for which composers were
required to write extensive villancicos and chanzonetas;
while de Brito’s are certainly contained in the
volumes upon volumes of these works surviving in libraries
today, none have yet been identified. De Brito was
a composer for Portugal’s royal court, and much
of his secular music must have been performed there.
de Brito’s Quem tem farelos is a rustic villancico:
it employs triple meter and a great deal of rhythmic
play (especially “hemiola,” in which the
accent pattern of the meter is changed, rendering it
momentarily duple) and it sets several stanzas of text
interspersed with a refrain. Quamto tempo trabalhei and Esta
trabalhosa vida are in a similar style, with refrains
framing very short stanzas of poetry. Salió a
la fuente and De la hermosura de Filis are
less popular in character, employing some of the harmonic
language and imitative texture of the 16 th-century
madrigal while retaining some of the rhythmic play
favored on the Iberian Peninsula. Veni, sponsa
Christi is a short setting of a plainchant antiphon
(heard in long notes in the lowest voice), while Pater
superni luminis is a more extended work; both
demonstrate de Brito’s considerable compositional
ability in the international style of late-Renaissance
church music.
In 1537, Francisco Velez is reported to have headed
the list of cathedral singers at the Évora diocese,
and in 1544 he took charge of the choir school. In
1563 he was granted a 5-year printing privilege, but
his subsidy seems never to have materialized. Nothing
else of Velez’s life is known. Apart from two
works by his predecessor Mateo de Aranda (a Spaniard),
Velez’s Alleluia is the earliest example
of the Évora school of polyphony. It is based
on a plainchant alleluia and its verse, which are heard
in long note-values in the first alto voice (sung here
by our countertenor) and paired with a second, slow-moving
voice (sung here by a tenor). Above these are faster-moving
soprano parts, resulting in a rich web of polyphony.
Manuel Cardoso (1566–1650) was also a student
at Évora, one of Portugal’s main musical
centers, serving as choirmaster at the cathedral there
until 1588; the following year he took his vows for
the priesthood at Lisbon’s Convento do Carmo
and became their organist and choral conductor. From
1613 until his death, he served the Duke of Barcelos
at the Vila Viçosa. While the earliest existing
example of sacred Portuguese polyphony dates from 1490,
the true flowering of Portugal’s polyphony is
said to have begun in 1613 with the publication of
Cardoso’s Magnificat settings, the publication
of which seems to have been inspired by those of his
friend Duarte Lôbo ( 1565– 1646). Cardoso’s Magnificat
primi toni is a fine example of the Franco-Flemish
influence on the Iberian Peninsula, featuring free
imitation based on the recitation tone for the first
mode (“primi toni”) of the Gregorian repertoire
and, in the last verse, a strict canon between the
two sopranos.
© 2005 Shannon Canavin |
