Pre-concert talk


Join us for the pre-concert talk given by local musicologist Ann Valdes, from 7:00-7:30 in Synod Hall.



Program


LIONHEART

Lawrence Lipnik, Countertenor
John Olund, Michael Ryan-Wenger, Tenors
Jeffrey Johnson, Richard Porterfield, Baritones
Kurt-Owen Richards, Bass

El Siglo d'Oro
A century of vocal music by Morales and Guerrero

Ojos claros, serenos      Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599)
Sanctíssima María      Guerrero
Introit: Rorate caeli desuper      Gregorian chant
Kyrie: Missa Ave Maria      Cristobal Morales (c.1500-1553)
Gloria: Missa Ave Maria      Morales
Sancta et immaculate      Guerrero
Offertory: Ave Maria      Gregorian chant
Sanctus: Missa Ave Maria      Morales
Agnus Dei: Missa Ave Maria      Morales
Communion: Ecce virgo concipiet      Gregorian chant
Pan divino, gracioso      Guerrero
Pastor, quien madre virgen      Guerrero
¿Qué te dare, Señor      Guerrero
O Virgen, quand'os miro      Guerrero
Vana sperança      Guerrero
Antiphon: Ave Maria      Gregorian chant
Missus est Gabriel      Morales


Program Notes


Program Notes
        El Siglo d'Oro

While we are listening to the towering fugal edifices of J.S. Bach, we seldom pause to consider that this most revered composer of the High Baroque thought of himself simply as an exponent of the great polyphonic tradition of the Renaissance. Bach, after all, was not himself aware that his was a different Period in Music History. Balance among many voices, lacelike interweaving of motifs in imitation, use and reuse of familiar themes from plainchant or folksong, and word-painting, all were musical techniques pioneered by Josquin des Prez and his fifteenth-century contemporaries. Over the next 200 years, Italians Cipriano de Rore, Claudio Monteverdi and Arcangelo Corelli, Netherlanders Adrian Willaert and Jan Peterszoon Sweelinck, French composers Clemens non Papa and Marc-Antoine Charpentier, all continued to make use of these same techniques while greatly expanding the vocabulary of harmony and orchestration. Not least among the great followers of Josquin and antecedents of Bach were the Spaniards: Victoria, Morales, and Guerrero.

If there was an ideal place for a Great Composer of the Renaissance to be born in the sixteenth century, it would have to have been Seville. Renowned throughout the Middle Ages as a center of learning and the home of seventh-century bishop Isidore of Seville (or Isidorus Hyspalensis-Hyspalis being the Latin name of the city), upon whose Etymologies and other writings most medieval higher education had been based, Seville boasted an enormous Cathedral, a converted mosque as rich in intellectual and financial resources as it was in arabesque ornament. The first printed books of music were produced there; piles of Inca and Mexican gold were stored in a tower on the very Cathedral grounds. For a gifted child to be part of the choir there, and educated at the chapter school, was practically a guarantee of lifelong success.

Cristóbal de Morales (c.1500-1553), though the better part of his career was to be spent abroad in Rome, was particularly proud of his home town and heritage. More than a musician, he was an academic who assiduously practiced writing in Latin, as he claimed, to prevent any of his rivals in music from accusing him of lack of cultivation. His first appointments as an adult were well-paid, as maestro de capilla in Ávila and then in Plasencia, but these appear to have been less than satisfactory, for there is no record-even though all Cathedral records were carefully kept and archived-of Morales's whereabouts, for the four years before 1535.

That year he appeared on the rolls of the papal choir in Rome, singing baritone. Pope Paul III was especially generous to musicians, and Morales seems to have enjoyed special favor. Furthermore, the choir was made up mostly of Spaniards, with whom he was apparently comfortable enough to stay for a decade. Certainly the pay was good: one perquisite was a personal servant, and when traveling in the pope's retinue, a horse. In addition, a singer's stated salary was always at least doubled by special feasts subsidized by wealthy donors, and sumptuous occasions when the great powers of Europe came to visit the Pope. Morales used his time well in composing: near the end of his stay he presented the Pope with two volumes of polyphonic Masses, printed and inscribed "Christophorus Morales Hyspalensis."

Although by this time, due to the exposure he had gained before the greatest rulers of the age, his music had been distributed throughout Europe and even the New World, the expected rewards in the form of benefices or lifetime grants did not come forth, and he returned to Seville in 1545. Guerrero reported years later that he had studied then with Morales, but the lessons must have been brief; Morales was soon assigned to the Cathedral at Toledo. The salary was generous but insufficient, for the maestro de capilla was expected to pay for the room, board, and education of the choirboys. Morales had to borrow, and after two years destitution forced him to resign. In 1551 he was appointed at Málaga, but suffered even more frustration there when he discovered he could not discipline the unruly boys. Hoping to return to Toledo, he reapplied to that chapter in 1553, but before the process could be completed, Morales succumbed to ill health and died.

Most probably adding to the composer's frustration at home had been the universal Spanish custom of using organs and other instruments to accompany the singing. At Rome and elsewhere in Europe the usual practice had always been a cappella. Listening to the vocal balance and contrapuntal perfection of Morales's music, it is easy to imagine that temperamentally he was a purist.

Surely this was not the case with the sometime pupil Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599). Belying the portrait of him by Francisco Pacheco published in the 1599 "Book of True Portraits of Illustrious and Memorable Personages, with Descriptions," showing an elongated figure reminiscent of El Greco, with long nose and upper lip, pointed beard, and deep melancholy eyes under a four-cornered clerical cap, Guerrero's music reveals a sunny, eclectic, and flexible disposition. Yet as Pacheco claimed in the portrait's "Description," Guerrero was disciplined enough to write at least a page of music every day of his life. His output of motets exceeded that of either Morales or Victoria, but also, departing from the purely liturgical practice that was theirs, he produced a prodigious number of secular songs as well, of the type we might now call "madrigals." The texts he chose to set were written by the foremost Spanish poets of his day, including the dramatist Lope de Vega. Many of these canciones did double duty when Guerrero substituted religious (though not liturgical) words for the originals in later publications (the 1589 Canciones y villanescas espirituales in particular); such pieces are called contrafacts.

Like Morales, Guerrero had begun as a Seville Cathedral chorister. His older brother Pedro, who later enjoyed fame in his own right in Italy, was his first music teacher, but apparently Francisco largely taught himself, becoming proficient at the organ, vihuela, cornett, and harp as well as alto voice. At age 17, upon Morales's recommendation, he was offered the position of maestro de capilla at Jaén Cathedral, but soon the duty and expense of tending to six choirboys nearly as old as himself moved him to quit the post, return to Seville, and rejoin the choir. Other bids for his services were made, but the Seville chapter valued him so much that in 1551 they appointed him assistant and successor to the maestro. But like some Princes of Wales, he had to wait a while before the position became vacant, 23 years in fact. By that time he was internationally famous, with music published in Seville, Rome, Paris, Louvain, and Venice.

Guerrero was an inveterate traveler and attendant of the rich and famous. Around 1558 he presented a volume of his motets to the Emperor Charles V, visited Rome in 1581-82, and at the royal court in 1588 kissed the hand of Philip II, continuing on to Venice to oversee the publication of two large collections of music. From there he embarked for a five-month tour of the Holy Land. Pirates attacked his returning ship, and though his life was spared, they took whatever money he had left. Back in Seville, he failed to recover his former financial security, and at age 62 landed in debtor's prison, from which the Cathedral chapter eventually had to buy his freedom. Guerrero wrote a best-selling travelogue about his trip to the Holy Land (Viage de Hierusalem, 1590, from which many of these facts are gleaned), and confessed in it that he always hoped to return. In 1599 he obtained a year's leave for that purpose, but put off his departure until it was too late; that summer the plague struck Seville and swept him away.

It was essentially the music of Francisco Guerrero that became the Baroque music of the New World. The functionality of his clear harmonies, well in advance of his contemporaries' usage, and the effortless cantabile of his lines made his music peculiarly compatible with seventeenth-century tastes, especially in the colonies. Copies and imitations of his works are to be found in the archives of cathedrals at Guatemala City, Lima, Mexico City, and Puebla.

Lucy Cross

Bios


Lionheart Bios

Lionheart is one of America's leading ensembles in vocal chamber music. Acclaimed for its "smoothly blended and impeccably balanced sound" (Allan Kozinn, The New York Times), Lionheart (Jeffrey Johnson, Lawrence Lipnik, John Olund, Richard Porterfield, Kurt?Owen Richards, and Michael Ryan?Wenger) is best known for its interpretation of medieval and Renaissance a cappella music, with Gregorian Chant as the keystone of its repertoire. The ensemble also collaborates with instrumental ensembles, dance companies, and contemporary composers.

Lionheart released two CDs on the Nimbus label: My Fayre Ladye: Tudor Songs and Chant: (1997), and Paris 1200: Chant and Polyphony from 12th Century France (1998). The ensemble's CD of the music of Palestrina and his contemporaries was released by Koch International Classics in October of 2001, and their newest recording with Koch, Tydngs Trew was released in the Fall of '03. Lionheart is also heard on Sony Music's CD companion to A History of Western Music, and on NPR's Christmas Around the Country II, a collection of favorites from NPR's Performance Today. On radio, they have been featured on Performance Today, on PRI's Harmonia, on WGBH, and they appear regularly on WNYC. Lionheart has also received significant air play on Radio Shanghai, which broadcasts Western music to a wide audience in China.

In 1998 the six men of Lionheart began a collaboration with Anonymous 4, joining forces to explore rare and ravishing repertoire to create a combined sound that is "mystical... resonant with haunting beauty" (The New York Times). They did two national tours together, the last during the 2001/02 season. In December 2000, Lionheart furthered its commitment to presenting the work of living composers by premiering a new piece by composer Julia Wolfe as part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival. In the Spring of 2003 they premiered a new work composed for them and members of the Orchestre de Paris by composer Marc-Andre Dalbavie. The performance, which took place at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, was part of the Sounds French! Festival. They have been invited to perform the same work at the Présence Festival in Paris in February 2004.

In New York City Lionheart performs at The Cloisters and in its own concert series at Saint Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church. The ensemble has also appeared at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, at Lincoln Center, on the distinguished series Music Before 1800, and at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall (in collaboration with composer Steve Reich). Out?of?town venues include the Kennedy Center, the National Cathedral and the Folger Library in Washington, D.C., the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Friends of Chamber Music series in Kansas City, and the campuses of Stanford, UCLA, and Yale University. In Europe they have participated in festivals including musikpodium in Stuttgart, Tage Alte Musik in Regensburg, and the Covent Garden Festival in London.



Text


Text
El Siglo d'Oro
A century of vocal music by Morales and Guerrero

Ojos claros, serenos, que vuestro Apóstol Pedro an ofendido, Mirad y reparad lo que é perdido. Si atado fuertemente, queréis sufrir por mí [y] ser açotado, no me miréis ayrado, porque no parescas menos clemente; pues lloro amargamente, bolved, ojos serenos, y, pues morís por mí, miradme almenos.

Clear, serene eyes, that reproached your Apostle Peter, behold, and redeem him who is lost. If, strongly tied, you were willing to suffer and be scourged for me, do not regard me with anger, for you seem no less merciful; because I weep bitterly, turn, serene eyes, and, as you have died for me, at least regard me

Sanctíssima María, no 's menor tu beldad que la del çielo, que tu rostro graçioso es como luna y sol, y aun más hermoso; y el alva su frescura no ygual a 'l resplandor de tu figura.

Most blessed Mary, your beauty is no less than that of the sky, your gracious face is like the moon and sun, and even more lovely; and the freshness of dawn is no equal to the splendor of your form.

Rorate caeli desuper et nubes pluant justum: aperiatur terra et germinet salvatorem. Caeli enarrant gloriam dei: et opera manuum ejus annuntiat firmamentum.

Drop down dew, O heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just; let the earth be opened and bud forth a savior. The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament declares his handiwork.

Kyrie eléison.Christe eléison.Kyrie eléison.
Lord have mercy on us.Christ have mercy on us.Lord have mercy on us.

Gloria in excelsis deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. Laudamus te. Benedicimus te. Adoramus te. Glorificamus te. Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam. Domine deus rex caelestis deus pater omnipotens. Domine fili unigenite Jesu ChristeDomine deus agnus dei filius patris.Qui tollis peccata mundi miserere nobis.Qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe deprecationem nostram. Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris, miserere nobis. Quoniam tu solus sanctus. Tu solus dominus. Tu solus altissimus, Jesu Christe. Cum sancto spiritu in gloriam dei patris. Amen.

Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace to men of good will. We praise Thee. We bless Thee. We adore Thee. We glorify Thee. We give Thee thanks for Thy great glory. Lord God heavenly King, God the Father Almightly. Lord Jesus Christ, only-begotten Son, Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father. Thou Who takest away the sins of the world receive our prayer. Thou Who sittest at the right hand of the Father, have mercy on us. For Thou alone art holy. Thou alone art the Lord. Thou alone, O Jesus Christ, art most high. With the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father. Amen.

Sancta et immaculata virginitas quibus te laudibus efferant nescio: quia quem caeli capere non poterant tuo gremio contulisti.Benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tui. Quia quem caeli capere non poterant tuo gremio contulisti.

Holy and immaculate virginity, of your praises I know not the ending: for whom the heavens could not contain did you carry secretly within you.Blessed are you among women and blessed the fruit of your womb. For whom the heavens could not contain did you carry secretly within you.

Ave maria gracia plena dominus tecum: benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tui.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you: blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb.

Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth. Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua. Hosanna in excelsis. Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini. Hosanna in excelsis.

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts. Heaven and earth are full of Thy Glory. Hosanna in the highest.Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi miserere nobis.Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi miserere nobis.Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi dona nobis pacem.

Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world, grant us peace.

Ecce virgo concipiet et pariet filium: et vocabitur nomen ejus emmanuel.

Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son: and his name shall be called Emmanuel.

Pan divino, graçioso, sacrosancto, manjar queda sustento al alma mía; dichoso fué aquel día, punto y hora qu'en tales dos especies Christo mora, que si el alma 'stá dura, aquí se ablandará con tal dulçura. El pan qu'estás mirando, alma mía, es Dios qu'en ti reparte graçia y vida; y, pues que tal comida te mejora, no dudes de comerla desde agora, que aunque stuvieres dura, aquí te ablandarás con tal dulçura.

Bread divine, gracious, holy, food that is sustenance to my soul; blessed be the day, moment and hour that Christ abides in these two elements, so that if the soul is hardened, it will be softened here with such sweetness. The bread that you see, my soul, is God, who instills grace and life in you; and because this food heals you, do not hesitate to eat it from this time forth, for even though you have been hardened, you will be softened here with such sweetness.

Pastor, quien madre virgen á mirado,si no se torna loco, bien se puede jurar que siente poco,y ser hombre mortal Dios soberano,no cabe'n seso humano, pues yo me torno loco,porque no digas tú que siento poco.

"Shepherd, you who have seen a Virgin Mother, if you are not out of your mind, one would think you were a simpleton. And that the Most High God is a mortal man does not fit into the human brain;""I must be out of my mind because you are not saying that I am a simpleton."

¿Qué te daré, Señor, por tantos dones, que mandas a montones cada hora al alma pecadora? ¡O quién me diese, Jesús mío dulçe, que por tí muriese! Sangre me as dado y sangre querría darte: poco 's dar parte a quien á dado 'l todo. No á d'aver modo, no á d'aver medida, Christo, 'n amarte, y poco 's dar la vida.

What can I give you, Lord, for all the gifts that you send in abundance every hour to the sinful soul? Oh, who would say to me, my sweet Jesus, that I should die for you! You have shed blood for me, and I would gladly shed blood for you: but it is paltry to give a part to him who has given his all. There can be no style, there can be no measure, Christ, in loving you, and giving one's life is very little.

Un grande abismo un otro abismo llama, y así la llama de tu amor inmenso, quando 'n él pienso, me arrebata y prende, y un gran deseo de morir m'ençiende. Muerra, y no biva, por tu amor, o vida, que, por dar vida a quien t'avía ofendido, de lança herido, herido d'amor fuerte, sufriste acerba y dolorosa muerte

One great depth calls [llama] to another depth, and thus is the flame [llama] of your immeasurable love; when I think of it, it seizes and holds me, and ignites in me a great desire to die. To die, and not live, for your love, O Life, who, to give life to him who has sinned, wounded with a spear, wounded with strong love, suffered bitter and sorrowful death.

O Virgen, quand' os miro, no cabe 'n si mi alma de gozosa, y en mi pecho tan triste no reposa, y por esto suspiro, buscando mi alegría, que sola vos la dais al alma mía.

O Virgin, when I regard you, There is no room in my soul for any more joy, and in my breast sad things cannot remain. For this I breathe, in search of my happiness, for you alone give it to my soul.

Ave Maria, gratia plena,Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus,et benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesus Christus.Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,ora pro nobis peccatoribusnunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

Hail, Mary, full of grace,the Lord is with you, blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb,Jesus Christ. Holy Mary, Mother of God,pray for us sinnersnow and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Missus est Gabriel Angelus ad Mariam Virginem,nuntians ei verbum: Ave Maria, gratia plena: Dominus tecum: benedicta tu in mulieribus. Quae cum audisset, turbata est in sermone ejus:et cogitabat qualis esset ista salutatio. Ne timeas, Maria, invenisti enim gratiam apud Deum: ecce concipies in utero, et paries filium, et vocabis nomen ejus Jesum. Dixit autem Maria: Ecce ancilla Domini, fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum.

The Angel Gabriel was sent to the Virgin Mary, giving her the word: "Hail Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with you: blessed are you among women."Who when she heard this, was deeply disturbed at his saying, and cast about in her mind what manner of salutation this might be."Fear not, Mary, for you have found favor with the Lord: behold you shall conceive in your womb, and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus." And Mary said, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, let it be according to your word."

Spanish translations by Lucy CrossLatin
Latin translations by Richard Porterfield

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