Program
Program Notes
Biographies

Stile Antico

A Golden Age:
Music of Tudor & Jacobean England

Saturday, October 9, 2010 8:00 pm Calvary Episcopal Church

From the courts of that Husband from Hell, King Henry VIII, across Queen Elizabeth I’s golden reign, to King James I, musical masters including Tallis, Byrd and Gibbons produced some wonderful songs. Our a cappella singers, the 2009 Gramophone Award-winning ensemble Stile Antico, highlight that colorful and turbulent era. Presented at and in association with Calvary Episcopal Church—315 Shady Avenue.

Programme

A Golden Age:
Glorious music from the Catholic and Protestant communities of Tudor and Jacobean England

Thomas Tallis William Byrd	Why Fum'th in Fight Vigilate
Thomas Tallis Orlando Gibbons	E'en Like the Hunted Hind I am the Resurrection
Thomas Tallis John Sheppard	Expend, O Lord, my Pliant Media Vita

Intermission

Thomas Tallis John Sheppard	Man Blest no Doubt Libera Nos
Thomas Tallis William Byrd	Let God arise in majesty Exsurge Domine
Thomas Tallis Thomas Tallis	God Grant with Grace In Pace
Thomas Tallis John Sheppard	Come Holy Ghost The Lord's Prayer
Thomas Tallis Thomas Tomkins	O Come in One to Praise the Lord O Praise the Lord

From the court of the bloodthirsty King Henry the Eight through the golden reign of Queen Elizabeth, this programme traces music from the most colourful period of English history. Works by the great masters of the age illustrate the turbulant religious changes that dominated the period. Included in the programme is John Sheppard's epic masterpiece, Media Vita - an extended and impassioned plea for mercy during a devestating flu epidemic.

PROGRAM NOTES

A Golden Age: Music of Tudor and Jacobean England

The composers represented tonight lived and worked in some of the most turbulent times in England’s religious history, as the country swung violently between Catholicism and Protestantism, and politics and religion mixed in an often dangerous cocktail. While Henry VIII remained Catholic in liturgical taste, in spite of his break from Rome in 1534, his successor, the young Edward VI, imposed a puritanical Protestant regime that had far-reaching implications for church music. Queen Mary restored a fervent Catholicism in 1553, burning at the stake those Protestants who stood against her and reinstating the elaborate music and ceremony of the old rite. A mere five years later, the accession of Elizabeth I led to a moderately Protestant compromise that has continued to define Anglicanism to this day.

In such uncertain times a composer had little choice but to adapt his style to suit the prevailing climate, and here Thomas Tallis (c.1505-85), who worked under all four monarchs, proved himself a master. He seems to have been equally at home in writing dazzling fifteen-minute antiphons and the most sophisticated liturgical music for the court of Queen Mary, or producing simple, concise English anthems in accordance with Protestant strictures, and unlike many of his contemporaries, he managed both with equal success. Interspersed throughout our program, his Nine Tunes for Archbishop Parker’s Psalter are models of Protestant restraint, designed to be accessible to a non-professional audience and conforming absolutely with Thomas Cranmer’s injunction, “as near as may be, for every syllable a note”. Yet for all their homophonic austerity, they are full of expression, rhythmic nuance and inflection, and each has a unique character. While Parker’s Whole Psalter never went on sale (a rival psalter by Sternhold and Hopkins, with inferior music by an anonymous composer, cornered the market), Tallis’ Tunes are still well known today; ‘Why fum’th in fight’ forms the basis for Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis.

The contrast between these simple psalm tunes and Tallis’ setting of In pace in idipsum well demonstrates their composer’s vast stylistic range. Written under a Catholic monarch – either at the end of Henry’s reign, or during Mary’s – In pace is full of long melismas, where a single syllable is sustained over many different notes, and in place of the hymn-like writing of the Tunes, we find a truly polyphonic texture where each part imitates and intertwines with the others. The text is a responsory appropriate for Compline, the final monastic service of the day – a service for which John Sheppard may have intended his twin Libera nos settings. Sheppard (1515–1558) worked as Master of the Choristers at Magdelen College, Oxford, during the 1540s: the statutes of the College prescribed that its members should recite ‘the antiphon of the Trinity’ upon waking and before retiring for the evening. Each setting is in a luminous seven parts. In the first, there is a plainchant sung very slowly in the lowest voice, as a cantus firmus, whilst the second is based on a contrapuntal variant of the same chant, with the note values halved. This means that its harmony moves twice as fast, and it is exactly half as long as the first. In their expansive, abstract beauty, these settings rank as some of the greatest achievements of the old, pre-Reformation English style.

Two other pieces by Sheppard appear in tonight’s program. His setting of The Lord’s Prayer, with a slightly different form of words to the traditional text we know today, is one of his finest Protestant pieces. It is a lucky survival, transmitted in just one source of which only the tenor part remains. Fortunately, it appears in another manuscript as an untexted work for viols, and may even have started life in this form. This brief, beautiful setting could hardly be more different from Sheppard’s colossal Media Vita, one of the most substantial works of the entire sixteenth century. Its sheer scale – almost twenty-five minutes in performance – suggests that Sheppard must have a particular purpose in mind for this work, a setting of a Lenten antiphon to the Nunc Dimittis. The impetus may have been the death of his fellow parishioner and composer Nicholas Ludford in 1557, or it could be a response to the deadly influenza epidemic which ravaged London in 1557-9, possibly claiming Sheppard’s own life. Either way, with its slowly unfolding arch, repeated refrains and the simple plainchant Nunc Dimittis chanted at its heart, it has a remarkable emotive effect.

William Byrd (c.1540-1623) trod a particularly dangerous line amidst the religious troubles of the sixteenth century, maintaining an active and overt association with the secret Catholic community at a time when this could easily have led to imprisonment or even burning. Many of his published motets have a subversive message, setting texts familiar from Elizabethan Catholic propaganda. Some focus on the destruction of Jerusalem – a thinly veiled metaphor for the plight of the English Catholics. Others, like Vigilate, warn of the Lord’s return in judgement, or cry to Him for deliverance, as in Exsurge. Whilst the text carries a clear Catholic message, Byrd’s musical style in fact owes much to the Protestant preoccupation with clarity of words and concision of expression, as opposed to the architectural flights of fancy common before the Reformation. In his hands, choral polyphony approaches the limits of its expressive capabilities, driven by a remarkably modern and theatrical response to text. In Vigilate we hear the crowing of the cock magnificently illustrated, as well as the lethargic believer being lulled to sleep at the wrong moment. The desperation of Exsurge is characterised by ever wilder ascending leaps on the word ‘exsurge’ (‘arise’) in the final section.

The two final composers in our program were born after the ascension of Elizabeth I, and so did not experience the religious upheavals of Tudor England at first hand. Nevertheless, the music of Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625), the most prodigiously talented composer of his generation, owes much to the vernacular English style pioneered by Thomas Tallis. His shiningly affirmative setting of the Easter text I am the Resurrection and the Life, only three of whose five voices survive, has been brilliantly reconstructed by David Wulstan. Gibbons’ tragically early death from apoplexy caused the task of writing music for the funeral of James I and accession of Charles I to pass to Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656). Tomkins studied with Byrd, and became one of the most prolific composers of his time, largely eschewing the modern, Baroque manner in favour of the traditional polyphonic style. His joyous O Praise the Lord calls for twelve separate voices, combining in a kaleidoscopic range of textures to sumptuous effect.

© Stile Antico 2010

   

Biography

STILE ANTICO is an ensemble of young British singers, now established as one of the most original and exciting new voices in its field. Prizewinners at the 2005 Early Music Network International Young Artists’ Competition, the group is much in demand in concert, performing regularly throughout Europe and North America. Their recordings on the Harmonia Mundi label have enjoyed great success, receiving the Diapason d’or de l’année and the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik; their debut, Music for Compline, was nominated for a GRAMMY Award. The group’s most recent release, Song of Songs, won the 2009 Gramophone Award for Early Music and reached the top of the US Classical Chart. Stile Antico’s latest recording Media Vita, featuring of the music of John Sheppard, was released early in 2010, and was hailed by The Observer as ‘their best yet’.

Working without a conductor, the members of Stile Antico rehearse and perform as chamber musicians, each contributing artistically to the musical result. Their performances have repeatedly been praised for their vitality and commitment, expressive lucidity and imaginative response to text. Stile Antico’s repertoire ranges from the glorious legacy of the English Tudor composers to the works of the Flemish and Spanish schools and the music of the early Baroque. They are regularly invited to lead courses at Dartington International Summer School, and are committed to developing their educational work, for which they have received generous funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Stile Antico’s recent performances include debuts at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Boston, Bruges and Utrecht Early Music Festivals (each broadcast on national radio), and the world premiere of John McCabe’s Woefully arrayed at the Three Choirs Festival. They have toured extensively with Sting, appearing throughout Europe, Australia and the Far East as part of his Dowland lute-song project Songs from the Labyrinth. Notable engagements in the 2009-10 season include a New York debut in the ‘Music before 1800’ series, appearances in the Spitalfields, Rheingau, Barcelona and Al-Bustan festivals, and performances in France, Mexico, Portugal, Switzerland, Belgium and Estonia.