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Contents:
DDD 60:32 – Chapel of The Queen’s College, Oxford, on 18–19 April 2007, 21–2 February 2008 and 7 June 2008 ‘Gateway of heaven and star of the sea’ During the ‘union of the crowns’, 1580–1640, when the Spanish Hapsburgs ruled Portugal as well as Spain, Portuguese music experienced a golden age. Although no monarch was resident in Lisbon, the capital remained the principal focus for musical activity in the country, and almost all the most eminent Portuguese composers spent at least part of their careers there. However, the period of Hapsburg rule also saw many Portuguese musicians find employment in Spain, and especially in the great churches of Andalucia, for example in Seville and Granada, and such migration assisted the dissemination within Spain of the works of the great Lisbon composers. This recording presents sacred music heard in Lisbon during these decades, and reveals newly edited and reconstructed works by a Portuguese composer who directed the music at Granada’s Royal Chapel in the same period. The Lisbon repertory consists of a Marian Mass and Marian antiphon by the chapelmaster of the Cathedral, Duarte Lobo (c. 1565–1646), Vespers psalms by Pedro de Cristo (c. 1550–1618), who directed the music at the nearby Augustinian monastery of São Vicente de Fora, and canticle settings for organ or organ and voice by the organist of the Royal Chapel, Manuel Rodrigues Coelho (c. 1555–c. 1635). The Granada repertory recorded here – including a motet for St Nicholas and works for Holy Week – is mostly by Manuel Leitão de Aviles, choirmaster at the Royal Chapel there in the first three decades of the seventeenth century. All of the vocal music on this CD is recorded here for the first time. Duarte Lobo was among the foremost Portuguese composers of the early seventeenth century. Trained at the choir school of Évora Cathedral, and a student there of Manuel Mendes, he spent most of his adult life in Lisbon, and became in his turn a renowned teacher. The survival of a sizeable amount of music by Lobo – while most Lisbon repertory of the period was destroyed in the earthquake of 1755 – is thanks very largely to the fact that his music was printed during his lifetime. Indeed, four collections of his works were issued by one of the most internationally prestigious music-publishing houses of the period: that of Plantin in Antwerp. The third of these collections to appear, in 1621, was a luxurious folio volume, the Liber missarum, the opening Mass within which is the four-voice Missa de beata virgine Maria recorded here [9–11, 13–15]. Besides the abundant copies of the Liber missarum found in Portugal, Spain (including Granada), and the New World, one reached England thanks to the London bookseller George Thomason, who presented it to the Bodleian Library in Oxford in 1659. By means of this copy, works from the collection came to be transcribed and sung by English enthusiasts for ‘ancient music’ in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century London. Eighteenth-century copies of the Missa de beata virgine Maria include those by William Walond and Henry Needler, and the founder of The Madrigal Society, John Immyns, copied out the ‘Benedictus’ from this Mass for use at the Society’s meetings, transposing it downward by an octave so that it suited the all-male membership of the Society. Masses de beata virgine Maria form a distinctive and unusual sub-genre: unlike in parody Masses (which are based on, for example, a motet) or paraphrase Masses (which use a single chant melody throughout), each movement here employs the distinct plainchant melody associated with that text in a chanted performance of a Marian Mass, with the clearly audible result that the movements are in different modes. (Such Masses are, in this respect, similar to Requiem Masses.) The Missa de beata virgine Maria would probably have been the most often sung of all those from Lobo’s 1621 collection (together with the Missa pro defunctis which ends the collection), since it was appropriate for use both at Lady Mass each Saturday and at Masses on the numerous Marian feasts which occur during the church’s year. A contemporary listener would have been clearly aware of the familiar chant melodies which form the basis for much of Lobo’s music, and a modern listener can easily hear this relationship to the plainchant in the Kyrie and the Agnus Dei, since in both of these movements invocations in plainchant alternate with polyphonic sections based on the same chant melodies. Lobo’s Mass, although concise, is colourful and constantly varied not only in its imaginative handling of texture (despite the fact he is working with only four voices) but also in its harmonic palette, to produce flexibly and dynamically shaped phrases. As was common at this period, Lobo made the final Agnus Dei climactic and demonstrated there his technical prowess, by expanding the number of voices (to five), and devising a ‘canon’: a written instruction that (in this case) the second superius part is to be generated by reading the first superius part but altering its rhythms and singing the last phrase in reverse.
In Lisbon Cathedral during Lobo’s chapelmastership, and in the city’s other great chapels such as those served by Pedro de Cristo and Manuel Rodrigues Coehlo, the music of the liturgy at this period encompassed rich combinations of chant, organ music, simple formulaic genres of polyphony, and more elaborate composed polyphony in differing styles, including the polychoral styles which were by then so popular in many parts of Europe. We know that Portuguese composers produced such polychoral works in significant quantities, but lamentably few have survived, partly because it was vary rare for these works to reach print. The last section of this recording [16–20], following Lobo’s Marian Mass, gives some idea of this variety and juxtaposition of types of music in the singing of the Office services of Vespers and Compline, and for the Marian antiphon which followed them. As the Marian antiphon we sing Lobo’s eight-voice Alma redemptoris mater [20], which appeared in the only published collection to contain significant quantities of polychoral music issued in Portugal before the second half of the seventeenth century: Lobo’s Opuscula of 1602. Lobo here dramatises his treatment of the text by switching between two radically different approaches at various points: for the opening praise of Mary as ‘gateway of heaven and star of the sea’ the rhythms and textures are those of what would eventually become classified as the ‘stile antico’, but as soon as the text turns into a petition for ‘the fallen people who strive to rise’ Lobo responds by effectively doubling the speed of musical change and setting the text in dramatic chordal declamation. This latter approach was frequently employed also by Pedro de Cristo, especially in his polychoral works. Though such means he produced a scintillating setting of the opening psalm of Vespers, Dixit Dominus [2], in which the antiphony of the two choirs is used not in formulaic fashion but rather is moulded with rhetorical panache to reinforce the text. This can be heard for example at the opening, where the first choir (which, as quite often in Iberian polychoral writing of this period, is a smaller group of high voices) sings ‘The Lord said unto my Lord:’, while the direct speech which follows (‘Sit thou at my right hand’) enters as a dramatic interruption by the larger second choir, then repeated for emphasis by all seven voices. It is easy for the modern listener to be unaware of the degree to which sacred polyphony (and organ music) of this period is elaborated upon the plainchant of the Mass and Office services. As we have seen, chant is fundamental to Lobo’s Missa de beata virgine Maria. Likewise the rising melody which opens his Alma redemptoris mater is a reference to that antiphon chant, and the opening phrase of Pedro de Cristo’s Dixit Dominus uses the intonation of the eighth psalm tone. The psalm tones were used in singing both psalms and canticles in the Office services such as Vespers and Compline, and these ubiquitous chant formulæ were decorated polyphonically and instrumentally in a panoply of different styles. It was standard practice throughout the Iberian world to perform psalms and canticles in alternatim fashion, so that verses sung in plainchant alternated with those performed in polyphony (most usually of the simply formulaic type, based on the psalm tone, which the Portuguese called fabordão and the Spanish fabordón) or played on the organ or other instruments. We here present contrasting samples of some of these practices, in performances of the canticles for Vespers (the Magnificat [16]) and Compline (the Nunc dimittis [17]). For the Magnificat we use a set of organ versets by Manuel Rodrigues Coelho, based on the fourth psalm tone, and published in his Flores de música of 1620. The chant tone is presented in a different ‘voice’ in each verset, starting with the highest and ending in the bass, and he transposes the chant for the second and last verses. The chant is therefore most easily audible in the first verse, and it is this version of the psalm tone which here forms the basis for the sung verses. The performance scheme groups the verses into threes: the first of each group is sung to chant, the second is sung in fabordão (using a fourth-tone formula preserved in a Portuguese manuscript source of about 1580), and the third played on the organ. In the fabordão formula, the chant tone is clearly audible in the top voice. The setting of the Nunc dimittis [18] by Coelho is somewhat more unusual for Iberian repertory of this period, in that the composer has set the first verse as a single vocal line with organ accompaniment. We use this music for the last verse also, and the other verses are chanted. The fourth psalm tone, heard in the Magnificat, is also that used by Pedro de Cristo for the four-voice setting of the Vespers psalm Laudate pueri recorded here [8], although without the opening semitone inflexion in the chant as it is employed by Coelho. Here we have the most common type of polyphonic composed psalm of this period in Portugal: alternate verses are set in polyphony, which – although it does sometimes employ or refer to the psalm tone (audible for example in the ‘Gloria Patri’) – is more elaborate than fabordão and is composed afresh for each verse. Pedro de Cristo can thus duly respond to the text, for example with a madrigalian flourish at ‘cælo’ (‘heaven’). The Office of Compline ends with a versicle and response (‘Dominus vobiscum’: ‘Et cum spiritu tuo’), the latter sung here in a grand six-voice treatment by Pedro de Cristo [18], after which is the blessing ‘Benedicamus Domino’ – here a chant-based four-voice setting by Aires Fernandez [19] with the chanted response ‘Deo dicamus gratias’ using the same melody. The very considerable repertory of music for Office services (including canticles, psalms, and hymns) by Pedro de Cristo and other Portuguese composers, preserved in manuscript and sampled here, remains very little known (Masses and motets tend to attract more of our attention), and provides rich territory for further exploration. Pedro de Cristo’s musical life was divided between the two great monasteries of the Augustinian canons in Portugal: the mother-house – Santa Cruz in Coimbra – and São Vicente de Fora in Lisbon (‘de Fora’ meaning ‘outside’: the monastery lay beyond the medieval city wall, to the East of the Cathedral). We know that he was in Lisbon for a period until 1605, and that he was given permission to return there in 1615, although he was once again in Coimbra at the time of his death three years later. These two monasteries were among Portugal’s most prestigious and wealthy institutions, and both enjoyed royal patronage. During the composer’s lifetime and at royal command, the monastery church of São Vicente was rebuilt in imposing baroque style, under the direction of the Italian architect Filippo Terzi, who was Master of Works to King Philip (I of Portugal, II of Spain). Manuel Rodrigues Coelho arrived in Lisbon in 1602, to take up a post as royal chaplain and organist of the royal chapel. He remained in this post until his retirement in 1633, and thus served two of the Spanish rulers of Portugal, Philip III and IV of Spain (II and III of Portugal), although neither was resident in Lisbon. The composer’s colleagues in the royal chapel included Spaniards and Portuguese: the choirmasters during his tenure were successively the Spaniard Francisco Garro and the Portuguese Filipe de Magalhães. The Flores de música of Rodrigues Coehlo, dedicated to the King, includes extensive tentos, works based upon Lassus’s famous chanson Susanne un jour, and a large collection of versets for hymns (Pange lingua and Ave maris stella), canticles (with voice part), psalms, and the Kyrie. One of these brief Kyrie versets, on the first tone [6] is based on the same chant melody as the Benedicamus Domino / Deo dicamus gratias [19]. Another verset, in the sixth tone [12], is inserted after the Credo of Lobo’s Mass, as a reflection of the frequent use of organ music at the Offertory during Mass. The Meio Registo de 2o Tom Accidental by Frei Diego da Conceição [3] is a more extended and virtuosic piece, exemplifying the ‘meio registro’ technique common in Spanish and Portuguese organ music of the seventeenth century whereby a solo line in highlighted in the right hand. Just eight surviving works by Manuel Leitão de Aviles are known, preserved in two manuscripts in the Royal Chapel in Granada. One of these featured on the choir’s previous CD, Paradisi portas, and another three are recorded here. Leitão de Aviles was a native of Portalegre in Portugal, and a choirboy at the Cathedral, but by 1601 he was in Spain, as a musician in the great church (the Capilla del Salvador) of the de los Cobos family in Úbeda in northern Andalucia. In 1603 he moved to Granada as choirmaster of the Royal Chapel, and remained in this post until his death in 1630. Granada was of particular importance to the Spanish monarchs, since its capture in 1492 was the culminating victory of the centuries-long Christian reconquest of Spain. Hence the building in the city of a splendid royal chapel, mausoleum of the Spanish Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella and of later members of the royal family. A set of manuscript part-books, the contents of which reflect vividly the musical history of the Royal Chapel in the years before and during the period when Leitão de Aviles was maestro, preserve two works by the Portuguese composer: the motet Non est inventus [1], and the setting of Lamentations for tenebræ of Maundy Thursday [5]. The same part-books contain the six-voice Circumdederunt me attributed to Joan de Avila [7]. (The work survives also in two later manuscripts in Puebla, Mexico, in one of which it is unattributed, while in the other it bears an attribution to Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla.) Leitão de Aviles’s four-voice In jejunio et fletu [4] is appropriate to Holy Week, its text echoing the theme of lament for Jerusalem which ends the Lamentations. The Lamentations are typical of Iberian settings of this period in their frequent reference to the plainchant Lamentations formula, audible in the similar rising opening to each section of the piece. Indeed, at the opening the composer presents the chant formula as a solo in the upper voice, with the other voices joining for the word ‘lamentatio’. Non est inventus [1] is a motet in honour of St Nicholas. This feast day was one of those specially celebrated by the University of Granada, with the participation of musicians from the Royal Chapel. On St Nicholas’s Day, the university processed with music (including trumpets and drums) to the church dedicated to the saint in the high Albaicín district of the city.
Page revised Friday February 13 2009 |
