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DDD 58:07 Recorded: The Queen;s College Oxford - 1-3 July 2003 Th The Christian year reaches one of its greatest climaxes in a group of three feasts following Easter: the Ascension (forty days after Easter), Pentecost or Whitsunday (fifth days after Easter), and Trinity Sunday (one week later). We here mark this season in music of the late Renaissance and the twentieth century, together with organ works by Bach. The disc complements the choir's previous recording, Christ Rising, which presents music from these same repertories for the final days of Holy Week and Easter Day. We concentrate here on many of the same composers: the four greatest figures of the late Renaissance—William Byrd, Tomás Luis de Victoria, Orlande de Lassus, and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina—together with Byrd's teacher Thomas Tallis, Victoria's most famous Spanish predecessor Francisco Guerrero, and the Portuguese Duarte Lobo. From the twentieth century we once again include the music of Kenneth Leighton, who studied at Queen's. Among the twentieth-century works is John Tavener's Prayer to the Holy Trinity, here recorded for the first time. In addition, we once again include music by Kenneth Leighton, marking his connection with The Queen's College. At the centre of our programme, and the largest-scale work here, is Jonathan Harvey's inspired meditation upon the Pentecost hymn, Come, Holy Ghost.
* * * * *
During the liturgy of the Feast of the Ascension the words 'Ascendit Deus in iubilatione, et Dominus in voce tubæ' are sung repeatedly. Edward Taylor translated them—in his Sacramental Meditations—as 'God is gone up with a triumphant shout: The Lord with sounding Trumpets' melodies'. In this form they inspired the grand organ and choral fanfares which begin the outer sections Finzi's anthem God is gone up (written in 1951 for St Sepulchre's Church, Holborn). At the centre of the piece Finzi vividly evokes in more lyrical vein Taylor's vision of the heavenly musicians accompanying the Lord's Ascension, 'whose 'Heartcramping notes of Melody surround his Chariot as it did ascend, mixing their Music, making ev'ry String more to enravish as they this tune sing'. Both Victoria and Byrd likewise produce brilliant fanfares for the 'voice of the trumpet' when setting the 'Ascendit Deus' text. This text begins the second part of Victoria's Ascendens Christus (published in Rome in 1572), while Byrd's Alleluia. Ascendit Deus is a strictly liturgical piece, setting the Alleluia for Mass of the Ascension, and published in his great collection of liturgical music—Gradualia—in 1607. Byrd and Victoria likewise rival one another in the rhythmic vivacity with which they treat the word 'iubilatione'. The breathless energetic concision of Byrd's piece is typical of his writing in the Gradualia. The word which above all marks the season from Easter Day onwards, 'Alleluia', frames this piece, and punctuates both Victoria's motet and the two-choir Regina cæli by Duarte Lobo (mestre de capela at Lisbon Cathedral from the 1590s until the 1640s). This is the antiphon to Mary sung daily in the period from Easter Day until the feast of the Trinity. Lobo's setting, published in Antwerp in 1602, lacks the first tenor part, and has been reconstructed and edited by José Abreu. Lobo evokes the joy of the season by repeatedly turning to triple time for 'alleluia'.
* * * * *
Pentecost is the celebration of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. A number of Pentecost chants begin with the petition 'Veni sancte spiritus': 'Come, Holy Ghost'. The antiphon which opens with these words was adapted as the Lutheran chorale Komm, Heiliger Geist, the basis of J. S. Bach's exuberant Fantasia super Komm, Heiliger Geist which ushers in our Pentecost sequence. Two more Bach organ works stand at the middle and end of this sequence; all three of these pieces are to be played 'in organo pleno', and in all three the cantus firmus is laid out majestically in the pedals. The second of the three is again based on a Latin chant—the hymn Veni creator spiritus—transformed into a Lutheran chorale, Komm, Gott, Schöpfer, Heiliger Geist. Last of the three organ works is Kyrie, Gott Heiliger Geist, from Bach's great collection of liturgical organ works, the third part of the Klavierübung (1739).
Another of the chants beginning Veni sancte spiritus is the Sequence at Mass of Pentecost, here heard in a lively triple-time setting for double choir. Typically for a Sequence, the verses are grouped in pairs sharing the same melody, to be sung by alternate sides of the choir. This pattern is retained here, the top voice of each choir singing a version of the chant melody, harmonised by the lower voices. But for the last pair of verses the composer engineers a climax, with the chant distributed among various voices, and the two choirs alternating more rapidly before joining together (for the first time in the piece) at the final prayer 'da perenne gaudium. Amen. Alleluia.' The piece survives only in manuscript, and—fine though it is—the attribution to Palestrina should perhaps be considered uncertain.
The gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was anticipated in Jesus's words to his disciples (in St John's Gospel) which form the text of Tallis's If ye love me, while the same composer's O Lord, give thy Holy Spirit is a prayer for that same gift. These two works are fine examples of the expressive power Tallis achieved within the simple frame of the four-voice English anthem. Turning to a startlingly different side of Tallis's output, the seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit are reflected in his decision to write in seven parts when setting the responsory Loquebantur variis linguis; the monumental textures of this setting are founded upon the chant melody laid out in the tenor part in equal note-values. The text here, for First Vespers of Pentecost, tells of the apostles speaking in various languages following the descent of the Holy Spirit upon them. The Pentecost narrative is recounted more fully in Palestrina's eight-voice Spiritus sanctus: 'The Holy Spirit filled the whole house where the apostles were, and there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with various tongues, as the Holy Spirit gave them utterance.' This is the scene depicted in the stained-glass window by Abraham van Linge (1635) in the chapel of The Queen's College, shown on the CD cover. Palestrina dramatises his treatment of the story through shifting textures and metres, highlighting for example the speaking in tongues by repeating the striking syncopated chordal phrase for 'variis linguis' ('various tongues').
Jonathan Harvey's Come, Holy Ghost is once again founded upon the chant: Bishop Cosin's translation of the hymn Veni creator spiritus (the Lutheran version of which is heard in the preceding organ piece by Bach). Harvey presents the hymn melody in a kaleidoscope of guises: the first verse is sung simply by a bass soloist, while for verse two Harvey builds a rich texture with four overlapping statements of the melody, at different pitch levels. Verse three begins with a slow chordal harmonisation by the main choir, overlaid by ecstatic tenor and soprano solo lines. Then, climactically, we hear a remarkable musical representation of the speaking in tongues, as the individual singers go their own ways, performing in an order of their choosing a series of phrases which build to a powerful hubbub, while the sopranos repeated the opening 'Come, Holy Ghost' as a motto. After this Harvey ends the piece with dramatic simplicity: a choral recitation of the hymn's closing lines.
* * * * *
On the Sunday after Pentecost the Western church celebrates the Most Holy Trinity. The first part of Lassus's motet Tibi laus, tibi gloria climaxes with an appropriately threefold setting of the acclamation 'O beata trinitas' ('O blessed Trinity'), made the more striking on the first two occasions by thinning the texture to (appropriately) just three voices for the word 'trinitas' itself. The 'threes' in the piece continue with three phrases of dancing triple time at the opening of the second part, and these are followed by a strikingly extended setting of the concluding prayers to 'break the bonds of strife and secure the treaty of peace'.
John Tavener's Prayer to the Holy Trinity was commissioned by Owen Rees and the Cambridge Taverner Choir in 1996. The composer arranges the singers in two groups: a distant semichorus repeat the litany 'Heal us, have mercy upon us, forgive us' in a variety of modes, and the main choir sing the four sections of the prayer text. The composer writes: 'This prayer is the foundation of Orthodox faith in the Holy Trinity. In setting it to music, I have tried to capture something of the deep compunction and repentance which lie at the heart of Orthodoxy. Each person of the Trinity is represented by a different tone in the Byzantine octoechos. The semichorus…is like the "heartbeat" of repentance. In the Roman Catholic Church, the Holy Spirit is deemed to come from both the Father and the Son, but this is regarded as a heresy by the Orthodox: we believe that the Spirit proceeds only from the Father. For this reason counterpoint is forbidden in Orthodox church music, as it is considered a symbol of dualism, and I have reflected this in my setting.'
Francisco Guerrero, maestro de capilla of Seville Cathedral, was one of the principal Spanish composers of the sixteenth century, and Duo seraphim is among his most remarkable works, demonstrating his mastery of a lively, varied, and dramatic polychoral style. The scoring of this Trinitarian piece is symbolic and pictorial: there are twelve voices (St Augustine associated Christ’s choice of twelve disciples with His desire to propagate faith in the Trinity in the four parts of the earth), divided into three choirs. The representation of each person of the Trinity by one choir is explicit at 'Pater, Verbum, et Spiritus Sanctus' ('Father, Word, and Holy Spirit') and at 'Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto' ('Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit'). What is more, the 'two seraphim' at the opening of the text are represented by two solo voices who 'cry one to the other' in close dialogue, while three soloists sing at 'tres sunt' ('there are three'). Finally, there are majestic homophonic entries of all twelve voices at the two occurrences of the words 'plena est omnis terra gloria eius' ('the whole earth is filled with his glory').
The recording ends, as it began, with a celebratory piece for choir and organ. Kenneth Leighton's exultant anthem Let all the world, setting a text by George Herbert, was composed in 1965 for St Matthew's Church, Northampton. Leighton came up to The Queen's College in 1947 to read Classics, and studied composition with Bernard Rose. The piece displays his characteristic rhythmic dynamism, marked by syncopation and shifting metres.
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