The Choir Project al día | 14-III-2015

Robert Wylkynson [b c. 1475/80-d 1515 or later]: Jesus autem transiens/Credo in Deum à 13.

Huelgas Ensemble | Paul Van Nevel.
Ephemeris of Renaissance composers [II] | Beginning without end.

    Andrew Wathey wrote about this composer:
«English composer. He was appointed parish clerk at Eton College in 1496, and may possibly have been a scholar there [one of probably two Wylkynsons who were Eton scholars in the early 1490s]; he was a singing clerk in 1499 and informator choristarum c1500–15, serving as Constable of Eton in 1502 and witnessing the will of the College's Purser, William Tawnton, in 1506. He may have died c1515; alternatively, he may have left the College to seek ordination. A Dominus Robert Wilkinson [d 1538] was instituted rector of Haddenham in June 1519 by the Prior and Chapter of Rochester. Nine pieces by Wilkinson were included in the Eton Choirbook [GB-WRec 178; ed. in MB, x–xii, 1956–61], of which one is incomplete, three survive only as fragments and two are lost. Seven of these appear in the main layer of the manuscript; two were added later, possibly by Wilkinson himself.

    Wilkinson's five-voice Salve regina and incomplete four-voice Gaude virgo may be among his earlier surviving works. His massive nine-voice Salve regina, based on the plainsong cantus firmus Assumpta est Maria in celum, is an important example of the large-scale sonorous style cultivated by English composers during the early 16th century. Also in this tradition is the 13-voice canon Jesu autem transiens/Credo in deum, a setting of the Apostles' Creed prefaced by a fragment of plainsong. Both works incorporate verbal canons: these may offer some insight into the composer's learning or perhaps reveal a predilection for intricate devices and puzzles, as may the elaborate depiction of the nine orders of angels in the initial letters of the nine-voice Salve in the Eton manuscript. Wilkinson's Credo was copied, c1580–1606, by John Baldwin into his commonplace book [GB-Lbl R.M.24.d.2] as a curiosity. In O virgo prudentissima Wilkinson set a poem written by Angelo Poliziano in 1493, taken perhaps from the latter's Opera omnia [Venice, 1498]. His Salve decus castitatis was included in a choirbook recorded in an inventory of books at King's College, Cambridge, in 1529.»

    John Milson wrote about this piece:
«In Robert Wylkynson’s Jesus autem transiens, the most bizarre work in the Eton Choirbook, the central tenets of Christian belief are rehearsedthrough the words of the Apostles’ Creed: ‘I believein God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven andearth’. But this is no ordinary setting of the Creed.The text is divided into twelve segments, preceded bya thirteenth line, ‘Jesus autem transiens’ [‘Jesus thenpassing through (their midst)’]. This is notated as asingle melodic line. To perform the piece, thirteenmale voices sing the music in canon: first a solo voice intones the opening segment; then asecond voice enters, while the first voice moves on tothe second segment; and so on, until thirteen voicesare in play and all thirteen segments soundsimultaneously. The net effect is a harmonious chaos;but the sound is subservient to the work’s symbolicrepresentation of Christ surrounded by his twelve apostles. Through it the medieval listenercould more vividly imagine part of the divine orderthat rested on those pillars of eternity.»

    Enjoy it this wonderful music without end in the amazing performance of Paul Van Nevel and his Huelgas Esemble, in an extraordinary mixture between English and north-continental voices.

The Choir Project al día | 15-XI-2014

John Browne [fl. 1480-1505]: Stabat mater á 6.
The Tallis Scholars | Peter Phillips.
Glorious Eton Choirbook.

     Roger Bowers worte about Browne:
«English composer and musician. In a contemporary musical source his Stabat mater is ascribed to ‘Johannes Browne Oxoniensis’. No-one of this name appears as a member of the choir of any of the major Oxford colleges at this time; however, during 1490 a John Browne was one of the chaplains of the household of John de Vere, Earl of Oxford. This was the grandest of the aristocratic household chapels of its day, and there need be little doubt that this was the composer. His musical prowess was also known to royalty. His setting of «Stabat iuxta Christi crucem» employs as its cantus firmus the tenor of the song From stormy windes, composed by Edmund Turges in 1501 to commemorate the departure of Prince Arthur from court to begin his public life as Prince of Wales. The engagement of this musical quotation simultaneously with a text of maternal mourning suggests that Browne composed the piece for Arthur's mother, Queen Elizabeth, following the prince's untimely death in 1502. No more is known about Browne; there are no grounds for identifying him with the John Browne who, aged 14, applied for election as a scholar of Eton College in 1467.

     In the quality of his accomplishment he may be considered the greatest English composer of the period between Dunstaple and Taverner. Among the contents of the Eton Choirbook (GB-WRec 178, compiled c1502–5) his work was accorded pride of place. Its index reveals that it originally included 15 of his compositions; of the 11 Marian antiphons nine remain complete (or it is possible to complete them), but the sole survivor of the four Magnificat settings is only fragmentary. Of the ten pieces written for full choir only four have survived, throwing into especial relief Browne's facility for composing for the restricted compass of men's voices alone. His polyphony is dense and endlessly resourceful. He was a master of cogency of overall planning, deploying cantus-firmus technique and the alternation of reduced-voice and full scoring with a seemingly effortless artistry that wholly conceals the fact that certain compositions (for example the first of the Salve regina settings) stand upon an elaborately mathematical disposition of their successive and component proportions.

     The Eton Choirbook opens with his O Maria salvatoris mater, whose eight voices exhibit a remarkable assurance in contrapuntal finesse. Equally imposing are the three six-voice Marian antiphons on the Stabat mater and texts cognate with it. Browne is representative of the English florid style of composition not only at its most assured but also at its most imaginative. Few closing periods approach in breadth and sweep the ‘Salve’ concluding his first Salve regina, or in poignancy the setting of ‘gaudia’ ending Stabat iuxta Christi crucem, which (if Harrison's edition represents correctly contemporary practices in the realization of musica recta and musica ficta) engages a quite remarkable deployment of the technique of false relations. Moreover, long before the contrivances of the madrigalists, Browne created in his masterpiece, the six-part Stabat mater, a mood of brooding and despairing melancholy and introspection that gathers an inexorable momentum and energy until its eruption into a startling and percussive outburst at ‘Crucifige’ (‘Crucify!), articulated at the very top of the treble register, that represents the work's greatest climax – an unforgettable piece of composition unequalled anywhere in the European music of his time.

     It was common for musicians of this period in aristocratic employment to compose songs and devotional pieces to vernacular texts as well as church music. Three compositions surviving in a songbook of 1501 (the Fayrfax Book, GB-Lbl Add.5465) that are attributed just to ‘Browne’ may well be the work of this composer. Two are to devotional texts and one to secular, two in three parts, one in four; however, in response to the difference in the destined ambience of performance they are considerably different in style from the sacred compositions. The counterpoint of Margaret meke is deft, though lightweight in comparison with that of the church music; the two devotional pieces are more reflective, especially in the occasional held chords and relatively flexible imitation of Woffully araid.»

     Peter Phillips said about the composer and this piece:
« If so much of the music which originally surrounded John Browne had not been lost over the course of time, his style might seem less extraordinary today. As it is his writing is extreme in ways which apparently have no parallel, either in England or abroad. Compared with the ebullient William Cornysh, Browne is subtle, almost mystical, despite his colossal textures; compared with him Robert Fayrfax and Nicholas Ludford seem pedestrian. Where Jacob Obrecht made compositional history by writing in six parts in his glorious Salve regina, Browne wrote in eight in O Maria salvatoris. And although this piece would soon be rivalled by Robert Wylkynson in his nine-voice Salve, it is known that Wylkynson only tried this because the Browne was there to beat.

     All the evidence suggests that Browne simply set out to make more expressive than before all the elements of composition which he had inherited: harmony, melody and sonority. Sonority is the one which will strike the modern listener most forcefully, not only in the eight-voice textures of O Maria salvatoris, but in the way every piece on this disc is scored for a different grouping. O Maria salvatoris (TrMAATTBB) may seem remarkable, but so in a different way are Stabat iuxta (TTTTBB), O regina mundi clara (ATTTBarB), not to mention the more ‘normal' Stabat mater (TrMAATB) and Salve regina I (TrMATB). Every piece represents a new sound-world within which Browne was able to deploy his incomparable grasp of sustained melody. This is another extreme: the sheer length of Browne's lines gave him rare opportunities for graceful contours, arabesques and embellishments - never have vocal lines been so seductive. And underneath, as with any composer of sustained melody, there is a completely reliable use of harmony, relatively simple compared with later composers with this talent, but always fitting the melodies like a glove, whether shaping cadences or adding a chromatic inflection to heighten the mood. It is those chromaticisms which represent the third extreme.

     All the music on this disc is to be found uniquely in the earlier folios of the Eton Choirbook, dating from about 1490 to 1500, whose index tells us that originally there were ten more pieces by Browne in the collection. Of these five are completely lost, two more are incomplete, and the remaining three were too substantial to include on this disc. The five which we have recorded are all quite similar in one respect: their overall length and division into two clearly delineated parts, the first in triple time, the second in duple. The architecture of these halves is also similar: each building slowly to its final cadence through reduced voice sections, leading to the full choir at full throttle - this is even true in the gentle Stabat mater. With the Salve regina, for example, Browne was careful to convey the reflective nature of the text for most of its length, but eventually allowed the final ‘Salve' full reign, building through thirty-five bars of melisma to a trumpet-like open fifth on the last chord.

    The Salve regina and the Stabat mater are the pieces which for years have maintained Browne's reputation as a composer. They are both highly expressive, though for many commentators the Stabat mater is the supreme masterpiece of the period, contrasting dramatic writing with contemplative passages in an emotional world of contrasts thought to have surfaced first with Monteverdi. Certainly there is nothing so wide-ranging in a single work by Palestrina. The drama breaks through the surface at the word ‘Crucifige', which Browne hammers into place before turning inwards again with the phrases which follow: ‘O quam gravis' (‘O how bitter was your anguish'). This quartet, at such a sensitive moment in the text, is one of the most perfect examples of Browne's art: at fifty bars in length its melodies are able to unwind as if time has stopped, an effect heightened by the use of slow triplets.»

     This wonderful performance is quasi perfect. No one like the sopranos of The Tallis Scholars for this music.
The sonority, pitch, technique and expression are really amazing.
Salve Browne, TTS and Peter Phillips. 

Huelgas Ensemble: dos noticias, dos

   Echando un vistazo a la página web del Huelgas Ensemble -algo que suelo hacer con bastante asiduidad-, me encuentro hoy con un par de novedades, noticias de alcance que me alegraron y que creo conveniente compartir con los lectores de este ||:doblebarra:||, y que estoy seguro serán motivo de regocijo para todos aquellos que siguen con pasión las andanzas del que es uno de los mejores conjuntos vocales del planeta.

   La primera de ellas hace referencia a una novedad discográfica. Se trata del último disco que el conjunto belga ha grabado bajo la dirección de Paul Van Nevel, un disco monográfico con repertorio inglés, centrado en obras del Eton Choirbook. La novedad, ya de un enorme interés per se -pues cualquier nuevo disco de este grupo supone todo un evento-, lo es todavía más si tenemos en cuenta que se trata del primer disco que el conjunto graba íntegramente con repertorio proveniente de las islas británicas. Solamente se habían acercado a piezas de este territorio en momentos muy puntuales, como recordarmos con la grabación de la Missa Ave Maria, de Thomas Ashewell, para el disco La Quinta essentia.

Estamos, por lo tanto, ante un documento sonoro único y que habrá de hacer las delicias de todo aquel amante de la polifonía renacentista más elegante, además de los miles de seguidores del conjunto.

Esperemos, pues, ese 16 de noviembre, fecha en la que podremos hacernos con una copia.

   La segunda noticia tiene relación con el papel de Van Nevel como maestro, como sabio que traspasará sus cientos de conocimientos sobre el repertorio medieval y renacentista a aquellos que quieras recibirlos. Se ha programado la "Huelgas Academy 2013", un academia dedicada a formar a los asistentes sobre los entresijos de estos repertorios tan apasionantes. A lo largo de cinco fines de semana -entre enero y febrero-, el maestro belga irá centrándose en cuestiones puntuales del repertorio.

Toda la información necesaria de este suculento curso puede leerse a continuación [en inglés]:

HUELGAS ACADEMY 2013

In January and February 2013 the Huelgas Ensemble is organizing five weekend courses covering various aspects of music between 1200 and 1600.
The weekends are a sequel to the successful course on the subject of notation which took place in July 2012.
The courses will be given by Paul Van Nevel. Each one will begin on Saturday at 14.00 and end on Sunday at 21.00,
and will take place in Brussels.
The themes per weekend are as follows:

1. Saturday 12 & Sunday 13 January:
– the notation of polyphonic music 1200-1600: types of score, layout of the manuscripts   
– the evolution of the notation: from modal notation up to and  including open mensural rules of notation
– a thorough study of French black notation
– an in-depth exploration of the systems of coloration and proportion
This course in part recapitulates material dealt with on 7-8 July 2012.
However,  those who participated then could also find this reiteration and supplementation most useful.

2. Saturday 19 & Sunday 20 January:
–    musical forms in medieval polyphony:  organum, the clausula, the motet, the conductus, the isorhythmic motet, the cyclic mass,
the ballade, the ballatà, the virelai, the rondeau and the trecento madrigal: sources, notation, transcription, interpretation

3. Saturday 26 & Sunday 27 January:
–    musical forms in Renaissance vocal polyphony: the cantus firmus mass, the parody mass, the motet and related forms,
the chanson (song, lied), the madrigal, the lamentation, the villançico, the Tenorlied : sources, notation, transcription, interpretation

4. Saturday 2 & Sunday 3 February :
–    the tradition of text placement: the evolution of the rules 1350-1600 for singers and composers; examples and exercises
–    the musica ficta rules in the light of the laws of counterpoint and of the hexachord system
–    chiavette and transposition

5. Saturday 9 & Sunday 10 February :
– study of an important manuscript: its history, content, concordances, notation, different transcriptions and part assignments,
plus singing from the original notation.
The choice of the manuscript will depend on the number of participants and on their own preferences.

The courses are open to all interested parties. Singing experience is an advantage, but not a necessity.

Each weekend a comprehensive file of documentation will be provided, including illustrations of original documents in colour and black and white.

Course 1 is compulsory for those wishing to attend courses 2, 3, 4 and/or 5, unless they are capable of reading mensural notation quickly.

Weekends 2 up to and including 5 are separate entities. You can sign up for one, for several or for all the weekends.

For all further details concerning the cost of the courses, their location, the signing up terms and conditions etc., email to this address: dubrouillard@gmail.com

   Realmente se trata de una oportunidad maravillosa para poder del maestro, lo que supone una experiencia completamente inolvidable -de la que, afortunadamente, puedo dar fe-.

   El Huelgas y Van Nevel siguen vivos, así pues regocijémonos por ello y disfrutemos de todo lo que tienen para ofrecernos.