The Choir Project al día | 17-I-2015

Jean Maillard [fl. 1538-70]: In pace à 6.
The Marian Consort.
Unknown french master.

      Marie-Alexis Colin and FRank Dobbins wrote about Maillard:
«French composer. Most of his works were published in Paris, probably indicating that he was resident there for at least part of his life. His name is mentioned in the Prologue to Rabelais’ Quart livre [de] Pantagruel [1548], and by Ronsard, in the Preface to Le Roy & Ballard’s Livre de meslanges (1560). These citations, taken with the evidence of a portrait of a middle-aged composer printed in 1565, as well as the content and pattern of his publications, suggest that he was born in about 1515. His publication of the coronation motet Domine salvum fac regem in 1553 and the dedication of his two motet collections of 1565 to King Charles IX and the Queen Mother, Catherine de’ Medici, respectively, suggests a link with the French court; the few surviving records of the royal chapel and household do not mention his name. Several men named Jean Maillard are traceable in Paris between the 1540s and 60s, among them Jehan Maillard, poet and scrivener to François I and then Henry VIII; he published Le premier recueil de la muse cosmopolitique, which contains a polyphonic paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer. Another Jean Maillard, mentioned by Bèze and Henri Estienne as Dean of the Faculty of Theology in the University of Paris, died in about 1567. However, none of these men is definitely identifiable with the composer; nor can he be positively associated with the later musicians Gilles Maillard of Thérouanne, who was living in Lyons in 1584, or Pierre Maillart of Valenciennes.

     The absence of his name in Le Roy & Ballard’s new collections after 1571, together with the appeal to Catherine de’ Medici in the preface to the Modulorum … secundum librum [1565] for ‘the return of the most refined graces, hidden or banished from your France … during these stormy times’ may signify that Maillard harboured Protestant sympathies that caused him to be excluded from the Catholic court and capital. Even though his output of predominantly Latin sacred music, including a collection of 25 motets, two masses and two Magnificats copied in ultra-Catholic Spain (E-Bc 682), suggests an ecclesiastical career, more than a hint of protest can be gleaned from his setting of three chansons spirituelles – including Hélas mon Dieu ton ire by the Huguenot poet Guillaume Guéroult – and of a paraphrase of Psalm xv [Qui est-ce qui conversera] by Marot [RISM 155318].

     Maillard’s six surviving masses include a requiem for four voices, a Missa Virginis Mariae» paraphrasing the plainchant melodies of the Mass of the Virgin, three four-voice parody masses on chansons by Cadéac or Lupi Second [Je suis déshéritée], Certon [M’amie un jour], Sermisy [Missa pro vivis, based on O combien est malheureux] and one based on a motet by Richafort [Ego sum qui sum]. Of his 86 motets, 44 are for four voices, 32 for five, nine for six and one for seven voices; more than half of the motets are freely composed and the others based on plainchant melodies, presented usually in long note values in the superius, but occasionally in the tenor, or paraphrased with successive motifs treated in imitation. His five-voice Exaudi Domine uses an ostinato from Josquin’s Faulte d’argent, while one of his two four-voice settings of Inviolata integra combines the chant for the sequence with those of three different antiphons. Like other French composers, Maillard generally used short melodic motifs of limited range in close imitation; he also occasionally employed canonic devices, most effectively in the six-voice motet Fratres mei elongaverunt and the four-voice Congregati sunt inimici nostri. He fairly frequently employed techniques of word-painting, as in the Cecilian responsory Cantantibus organis and the Easter sequence Victimae paschali laudes.

     Most of his chansons set either courtly epigrams of four or eight lines by poets such as Marot, Saint-Gelais, Scève and Sainte-Marthe, or anonymous anecdotal narratives; these works are very much in the style of the 1540s established by Sermisy, Sandrin, Janequin and Certon. Occasionally he turned to older forms [as in the rondeaux Du mal que j’ay and Ceste belle petite bouche]. His earliest works were printed simultaneously by Moderne in Lyons and Attaingnant in Paris; his later pieces appeared in Le Roy’s collections, including two five-voice pieces in the retrospective Meslanges of 1560.

     Three of the motets appeared in the lute intabulation by Adrian Le Roy [155124] before their partbook publication in 15537. Many of the chansons were also arranged for lute, guitar, cittern and vihuela in publications by Gerle, Le Roy, Phalèse and others between 1546 and 1578; Goudimel based a mass on the chanson Tant plus je mets, Palestrina a mass on Eripe me, while Lassus parodied other motets and chansons.»

      Eric Rice wrote about this piece:
«Maillard’s impressive In pace for six voices was likely composed for use at Compline. The name “Compline” is from the Latin completus [“completed”], a reference to the end of the day; the service seems to have grown out of collective prayers said before going to bed. Many of the prayers and other texts recited during compline are supplications for God’s protection during sleep, and four psalms deemed particularly pertinent are chanted in Compline services: 4, 90, 30, and 133 [Vulgate numbering]. The texts of In pace are not drawn from these psalms, but they from others that refer to sleep. The brevity and grammatical incompleteness of the texts suggests that chant — perhaps that of a Paris tradition — may have been performed between sections of this motet.»

      Wonderful piece –pieces based on the the «In pace» are really beautiful, very expressive, calm and deep–. This performance is wonderful –pure British–, with an ethereal sonority. The plain chant is very «operistic», but ther poliphonic parts are fantastic. The young The Marian Consort is a fantastic vocal ensemble. Pay attention to them.

Enjoy it!

The Choir Project al día | 01-XI-2014

Gregorio Allegri [Roma, 1582-Roma, 1652]: Missa Christus resurgens à 8.
The Choir of King's College London | David Trendell.
A new farewell.

  Jerome Roche & Noel O'Regan wrote:
«Italian composer and singer, brother of Domenico Allegri. From 1591 to 1596 he was a boy chorister and from 1601 to 1604 a tenor at S Luigi dei Francesi, Rome, where the maestro di cappella was G.B. Nanino. According to Allegri’s obituary he studied with G.M. Nanino. He was active as a singer and composer at the cathedrals of Fermo (1607–21) and Tivoli, and by August 1628 he was maestro di cappella of Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome. He joined the papal choir as an alto on 6 December 1629, under Urban VIII, and was elected its maestro di cappella for the jubilee year of 1650. In 1640 his fellow singers elected him to revise Palestrina’s hymns (necessitated by Urban VIII’s revision of the texts), which were published in Antwerp in 1644. His contemporaries clearly saw him as a worthy successor to Palestrina and a guardian of the stile antico.

  Allegri’s fame stems largely from his Miserere, a setting of Psalm l, which, up until 1870, was traditionally sung by the papal choir during the Tenebrae Offices of Holy Week. Ironically, the setting's renown has little to do with Allegri since, in its basic form, it is a simple nine-part falsobordone chant for two choirs (SATTB/SSABar); the choirs alternate with each other and with plainchant (sung on a monotone), joining together only for the final half-verse. It was customary for improvised embellishments to be added to such falsobordoni, and during the 18th century both the five-and four-part verses of Allegri’s setting were made increasingly elaborate. In 1713 Bai wrote a complementary setting which was often substituted for Allegri’s. Both these ornamented versions were performed at a very high pitch and were much admired by, among others, Emperor Leopold I, G.B. Martini, Burney and Mozart. The embellishments were at first a closely guarded secret but they were written down in the 1820s. Goethe and Mendelssohn were among the Romantics who enthused over Allegri’s setting at a time when Roman polyphony was becoming the subject of attention for the earliest musicologists. The Miserere was first published by Burney in 1771, but in a version not found in any Vatican source. The version that is now commonly performed was assembled by Sir Ivor Atkins in the 1950s, from Burney’s version and one made in the 1930s by Robert Haas (see Keyte); it bears little or no resemblance either to Allegri’s original or to the piece as it as performed before 1870.

  Allegri’s best music is in the a cappella style, much of it for two choirs: it was copied and recopied into Cappella Sistina manuscripts for at least a century. A fine example is the six-part Missa Vidi turbam magnam; based on his own motet it shows that the stile antico, far from being insipid, could be the vehicle for superbly controlled sonority and counterpoint, using syncopation to lead to a climax and with a bass line entirely harmonic in function.

  Along with other Roman composers, Allegri responded to the new vogue for small-scale concertato church music and his published pieces are mostly in a more modern idiom. Clearly these were not written for the papal choir but for smaller musical establishments in Rome such as Spirito in Sassia, or for a provincial centre such as Fermo, where Allegri was living when they were published. The first book of Concertini has not survived, but the second (dedicated to Duke Giovanni Antonio Altaemps) is written in an unambitious post-Viadana idiom, neither melodious in the manner of the best north Italians nor ornamented. Some pieces include dance-like triple-time sections, but contrapuntal considerations still predominate. The five-part Dilectus meus is very like a late 16th-century madrigal in style, with delicate textural and rhythmic contrasts.»

  The last 28 october, the organist, conducter and lecturer David Trendell passed away. Probably the most important director of music at King’s College London, he developing the chapel choir into one of international standing. The Telegraph said: «He was a remarkable choral director, widely respected for his ability to mould students’ voices into a glorious sound, notably in the Renaissance music of the 16th century in general and of William Byrd in particular, about whom he also lectured at King’s.»

  This is my humble tribute. Requiescat in pace, maestro.