LAMC Presents: Chanticleer in Concert

Program Notes

I. This unusual work by the prince of Renaissance composers may have been composed when Josquin was young; it is a frottola (from a word meaning "a mixture of unrelated thoughts"), a popular form in Italy at the time. Beginning sedately as a setting of a Latin sacred text, the piece abruptly goes off track into an Italian secular love poem that parodies the Latin, and only returns to the original text for its final line. Later manuscript copies of this piece replaced the Italian with the original Latin text - an act comparable to putting fig leaves on Greek statues. II. As the chapelmasters of San Marco were increasingly occupied with the administration of the enormous festivals put on by the state of Venice, composer-organists like Andrea Gabrieli (1533-1585) were freer to compose the music for such celebrations. Much of Andrea's compositional achievement was preserved after his death, when his more famous nephew Giovanni assembled his music posthumously in the Concerti di Andrea, et di Gio: Gabrieli ... Contenti Musica de Chiesa Madrigali & altro, per voci & strometi Musicali; 6 7 8 10 12 & 16 ... libra prima et secondo (1587). The works of this print show that by the end of his life Andrea had steered Venetian sacred music on a new course. A simple clue to this new direction lies in the word "concerti," an indication that the music is suitable for performances mixing voices and instruments. Andrea sought effects on a grand scale. Many of the works in the collection are scored for twelve voices, like the Magnificat heard here. Expansion of the choirs meant expansion of the musical "space" as well. The ranges of individual parts is often limited in these concerti, but the total range of pitches covered is greater than in mid-century sacred music. The tonal expansion is accompanied by a more lucid and simple overall musical structure. With the use of alternating choirs came a clearer separation of individual phrases and more sectionalized articulation of the text. In sacred concerto-style settings, Andrea ingeniously avoided tiresome alternation of choirs by employing irregular rhythms and phrase lengths, and created exciting climaxes with increased rhythmic activities and fuller sonorities at the end of compositions. In all of this the older Gabrieli achieved the effects of great splendor that the state wished to publicly project in its sacred rituals. III. In the Spring of 1608, Claudio Monteverdi was summoned to Mantua by his patron, Vincenzo Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua (for whom he had produced his opera L'Orfeo the previous year), to compose music celebrating the marriage of the Duke's son. Still mourning the recent death of his wife, Monteverdi nonetheless composed several works for this celebration, including his opera (now lost) L'Arianna. A further tragedy befell Monteverdi when the singer who was to have sung the opera's title role, eighteen year old Caterina Martinelli, died of smallpox. She had been part of Monteverdi's household, perhaps as his wife's pupil, and was the Duke's favorite singer. Soon after, the Duke commissioned his court poet, Scipone Agnelli, to write a mournful tribute to the girl, Lagrimae d'amante which was set to music by Monteverdi in 1610 and later published in his Sixth Book of Madrigals (1614). The poetry is in the form of a sestina, consisting of six stanzas, each containing six lines of twelve syllables. In each stanza (the first is slightly irregular) the six lines end in one of six words, arranged in a complicated rhyme scheme: tomba (tomb), cielo (sky), terra (earth), pianto (tears), seno (heart/breast) and Glauco (the mournful shepherd). The six key images are reflected in unifying musical devices (high and low contrasts for cielo and terra, harsh dissonances for pianto, etc.). The composer gives full expression to the pain in his soul, as his lament moves forward with intensity and deliberation, alternating somber chordal declamation with brief episodes of plaintive counterpoint. As Monteverdi scholar Denis Stevens points out, this sestina "represents a peak of dissonant, anguished music in this style." These are the first, third and sixth stanzas. IV. Steven Sametz is professor of music and Director of Choral Activities at Lehigh University. After completing his undergraduate studies at Yale University and the Hochschule für Musik in Frankfurt, he received his Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Sametz is active as a conductor, editor and composer whose works have been performed both nationally and internationally. In 1961, Ronald Blythe visited the village of Akenfield (population 298) in order to record tales of the lives of English country folk - farmers, pigmen, grave diggers, gardeners, fruit pickers and the like -vanishing breeds in the face of progress. He was startled by the harshness and beauty of their lives. This text is the reminiscence of eighty five year old Welsh horseman Fred Mitchell. I HAVE HAD SINGING Steven Sametz The singing. There was so much singing then and this was my pleasure, too. We all sang: the boys in the fields, the chapels were full of singing, always singing. Here I lie. I have had pleasure enough. I have had singing. Allen Shearer is the recipient of several awards in musical composition, including the Rome Prize Fellowship, a Charles Ives Scholarship (National Institute of Arts and Letters) and support from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is a singer as well as a composer, so it is not surprising that a large number of his works are vocal. Speaking of Mushrooms, Shearer notes: "(It) is a setting of an early Sylvia Plath poem which does not merely describe mushrooms but has them describe themselves in their own voices. Anyone who knows how mushrooms look, smell, taste and feel can easily form an idea of how their voices would sound. For some reason, I can only imagine them as male voices, so this number is not performable by a mixed choir." V. Twentieth century German composer Franz Biehl's Ave Maria setting (published in 1964) exploits the richly sonorous possibilities of double chorus writing for men's voices. The familiar Ave Maria antiphon is sung by four-part choir answered by a three-part soloist's group. This forms a refrain separating plainchant verses that comprises the Angelus. The result is a satisfying blend of medieval melodic sound and warm, multi-voiced choral harmonies.