Friday, October 20, 2006 at 8pm
The First Lutheran Church of Boston
299 Berkeley Street, Boston, MA Sunday, October 22, 2006 at 3pm
Cochran Chapel at Philips Academy Andover
1 Chapel Avenue, Andover, MA Shannon Canavin & Teresa Wakim, soprano
Thea Lobo & Aaron Russo, alto
Jason McStoots & Eric Rice, tenor
Brian Church & Aaron Ingersoll, bass Program notes Among musicians, Florence, Italy is most famous for its association with the birth of opera at the turn of the 16 th century. But for the previous three centuries, Florence was the quintessential center of Italian humanism and as such among the most active artistic and musical centers of Europe. Ruled by the Medici, a wealthy and powerful family of bankers and merchants, Florence was known for its lavish festivals during the carnival season preceding Lent. Lorenzo “the Magnificent” de' Medici (r. 1449-1492) did much to cultivate the Florentine carnival, from commissioning works of art by Michelangelo and Botticelli to importing famed composers and musicians from the north; he even wrote his own carnival song texts. While these celebrations provided the inspiration for some of the most captivating poetry, music, and art of the period, the festivals eventually turned into scenes of great excess and were viewed by religious zealots as corruptions of the holy days that they had originally commemorated. Upon Lorenzo's death, the Medici family was expelled from Florence, and the city came under the influence of a fiery preacher named Girolamo Savonarola, who transformed Florence from a vibrant cultural center to a religiously oppressive republic. Although Savonarola's protests against the moral laxity and spiritual corruption of the city's rulers had struck a chord with reformers as far away as England, the Vatican did not tolerate Savonarola's heresy, and he was tried and hanged in 1498. Festival music included secular carnival songs ( canti carnascialeschi ) and sacred songs called laude, and the two genres were closely related; the same melody was often used for both secular and sacred texts, which today proves helpful when attempting to reconstruct the history of carnival songs and laude of this period. Sung by individuals wearing masks and costumes representing the artisans and tradesmen of the city, works such as Canzona degli spazzacamini (“Song of the Chimney Sweepers”) and Canto dei Sarti (“Song of the Tailors”) extolled the merits of the occupation, with a fair number of coarse double-entendres thrown in for good measure. Because they were sung by the populace, the melodies and rhythms of these homophonic songs are relatively simple. Lorenzo de' Medici's O maligno e duro core was a new lauda text for the melody of Canzona de' profumi (“Song of the Perfumers”) and demostrates a particularly stark contrast in the variety of texts that could be associated with the same melody: it is difficult to reconcile the imagery of perfumers tempting the local ladies with long-necked bottles and soothing ointment with the wretchedness of Lorenzo's lauda. On est bien malade par amer trop and Que vous madame/In pace in idipsum both come from MS Banco Rari 229, now located in Florence's Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, which has been called “a Florentine chansonnier from the time of Lorenzo the Magnificent.” Chansonniers, which sometimes included a variety of genres in addition to chansons, were often lavish books assembled and presented as gifts by wealthy rulers and patrons. This particular collection of French, Flemish, and Italian songs may have been a gift from Lorenzo de' Medici to a poet named Alessandro Braccesi, King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, or Duke Sigismund of Austria. The music it contains represents the sophisticated art song that would have been performed at the Medici court, and includes such famous composers as Du Fay and Josquin des Prez to the now more obscure Johannes Martini. On est bien malade is a highly imitative, through-composed work, while Que vous madame is a virelai, one of the formes fixes or standard poetical and musical French forms of the time. An accomplished composer by the 1470s, Heinrich Isaac was evidently employed by the court of Duke Sigismund of Austria in Innsbruck; he may have come to the attention of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I during his time there. By 1485, Isaac was a singer in the baptistry of San Giovanni in Florence and had become a part of the Medici's domestic circle of artists and musicians. He was Lorenzo's favorite composer, setting poems by Lorenzo's favorite poet, Angelo Poliziano, as well as those of his patron; Un di lieto giamai is an example of the latter for carnival. While the chanson was the most common secular vocal genre, the motet was the standard form for sacred texts (other than settings of the ordinary of the mass). Adriano Willaert's Virgo gloriosa, a setting of a non-liturgical prayer, appears in the Medici Codex of 1518, a collection of motets dedicated to Lorenzo the Magnificent's grandson Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, who was born in 1492. The ornate dedication is discerned through highly florid Gothic letters arranged in the geometric pattern of a lozenge that reads, “A canon on you[r name] is written in the first letters;” those letters then spell out “May the undefeated Duke of Urbino Lorenzo de' Medici live forever!” The codex was probably assembled between 1518 and 1519, the years during which Lorenzo (the younger) governed Florence, and was likely a wedding gift upon his marriage in 1518 to Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne. Virgo gloriosa may have been commissioned especially for the codex; it opens the publication and bears the Medici coat of arms. As noted by musicologist Edward Lowinsky, the piece offers a glimpse of the young composer's future as a “leading master of a humanisticaly inspired text setting and an Italian-oriented, coloristic harmonic palette.” Isaac's Quis dabit capiti meo aquam is a lament for the sudden death of Lorenzo de' Medici in 1492. It is one of the most famous works of its kind and ingeniously composed: in the second of three parts, the bass repeats the text “Et requiescamus in pace” (“And may we rest in peace”) on an ostinato that bears a strong resemblance to the plainsong melody that bears the words “Requiem aeternam dona” (“Grant them eternal rest”) in the Matins service of the Office of the Dead. During this part of the motet, one voice, perhaps representing Lorenzo, is silent. The second half of our program explores works influenced by Girolamo Savonarola. Occhi miei oscurati uses the image of eyes blurred by tears as the inspiration for a song employing a rather jarring harmonic sequence; the same music was later used by a Dominican friar named Serafino Razzi for a sacred text entitled Piangendo i miei peccati (Weeping for my sins). The text “ Ecce quam bonum,” a motto Savonarola had drawn from Psalm 132, became synonymous with his attempts to reform Florence. The so-called Piagnoni, boys he had enlisted to patrol the city collecting “vanities” to be burned, would sing it to maintain their unity and fortify their resolve. The two-voice setting was written in memory of Savonarola by Luca Bettina, who almost certainly sang in Savonarolan processions and heard the friar's sermons in the cathedral. Serafino Razzi, who compiled an important anthology of laude in 1563, wrote Vergini deh lasiati i pigri letti while he was serving as confessor to the nuns of San Vinzenzo in Prato. The text, found in a manuscript copy of Razzi's biography of Savonarola, served to rouse the sleepy nuns, calling them to the night service. The anonymous Viva, viva in nostro core was probably sung at carnival in 1496, an important celebration for Savonarolans. The text is appended to Savonarola's Tractato…della vita spirituale and is based on Viva Christo!, which was shouted by the fanciulli, reformed boys who in pre-Savonarolan times had celebrated carnival by throwing rocks after they processed to the cathedral. Gombert's setting of Ecce quam bonum and Clemens non Papa's Tristitia obsedit me represent the tradition of Savonarolan texts in complex polyphonic settings by composers from throughout Europe. Such settings were common, despite the fact that Savonarola himself despised such elaborate music because it interfered with listeners' comprehension of the texts. The attribution to Gombert in the only surviving source for Ecce quam bonum is doubtful, considering that the piece does not resemble his complex counterpoint; it is instead reminiscent of French works from earlier in the 16 th century. However, it is possible that Gombert attempted to replicate the simple aesthetic favored by Savonarola that allowed the text to be more clearly understood. Clemens non Papa was a prolific composer, particularly of motets, employed at Bruges and various other locations in the Low Countries. His Tristitia obsedit me begins by setting the opening of Savonarola's meditation on Psalm 30 and then turns to Psalm 50, Infelix ego, at the end of the first section. The opening features a series of suspensions that musicologist Patrick Macey describes as “set[ting] the tone for the unrelieved mood of struggle in the first forty bars…Clemens obsessively repeats phrases of text in an apparent desire to wring every drop of expression from one melody before proceeding to the next.” The second part features dramatic repetitions of “quid igitur faciam” (“What therefore shall I do?”) and “Desperabo?” (“Shall I despair?”). Clemens's motet stands out as a brilliant rhetorical expression of Savonarola's two meditations, and perhaps could be the closest of the polyphonic settings of Savonarolan texts to the friar's own musical tastes, with its many textual repetitions and a gripping, vivid expression. In 1512, the Medici regained control of Florence; our program ends with Trionfo della compagnia del Broncone, performed to celebrate the triumphal entry of Pope Leo X—Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent—into his native city on November 30, 15 15. The “Company of Broncone” displayed the symbol of the flowering laurel branch ( broncone ), also used by Lorenzo Duke of Urbino (grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent and nephew of Leo X). The association between the young Lorenzo and the flowering laurel was first made evident during the festivities for the 1513 carnival season. On that occasion, the young Lorenzo chose the broncone as the device of his company. The use of the laurel on the final float of the company represented the return of the Golden Age and was decorated with dry laurel branches putting forth new leaves. The fact that the broncone was first adopted by the older Lorenzo during his own first public appearance as ruler of Florence during the carnival of 1469 reinforced the parallel and the efficacy of the device. The presence on this illuminated page of two bronconi, one cut and the other verdant, thus underscores the theme of Medicean renewal, the return of a Golden Age, and the presence in Florence of a new Lorenzo, the legitimate heir of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Shannon Canavin © 2006 |
