St. Martin's Chamber Choir - Program Notes

Program notes - "Choral Milestones"

A Note from the Artistic Director

As I stated in the most recent St. Martin's Voice, I have generally been reticent to give concerts names such as "Choral Gems" or "Choral Masterpieces," for a variety of reasons (mainly that to do so implies that the rest of what we perform is somehow not a gem or a masterpiece!); however, I have felt comfortable naming this concert "Choral Milestones" only by strictly defining what I mean by the word "milestone." This definition is "1) a work that significantly affected the progress of music history; or 2) a work that serves as one of the prime examples of a genre that, as a category, played a significant role in music history."

As you will see from the program notes accompanying each work, as well as a few comments I will make during the course of the concert, every piece tonight fits the above criteria in some way. And it is my hope that the information imparted will not only be found to be interesting in and of itself, but that it will inform your listening to each particular work, and therefore enhance your appreciation.

Gregorian Plainchant
Although we know from their artworks and literature that the ancient Greeks, Hebrews, and Romans had a very active musical culture, we know next to nothing about what their music actually sounded like, as no system of notation has come down to us. Likewise with the ancient cultures of the Orient. The earliest music that we know with any degree of certainty how it actually sounded, therefore, remains the liturgical chant of the Roman Catholic Church, often called "Gregorian Plainchant" due to the probably inaccurate assumption that Pope Gregory the Great (reigned 590-604 A.D.) composed much of it. Roman Catholic monks in the 9th century first devised a system of notating pitch (i.e. the highness or lowness of a note), but not rhythm (i.e. how long a note lasts); and it was, of course, the chant of the church that they notated with their new system. Gregorian Plainchant remained the "official" music of the Roman Catholic Church for over 1000 years, until Vatican II in 1963. Heard tonight are two types of it, the first a strophic "hymn" sung by the women, the second a through-composed canticle for the Feast of St. Martin of Tours (chosen for the obvious connection to the name of this choir!) sung by the men.

Hymn from the Office of Vespers: Lucis Creator optime

Canticle for the Feast of St. Martin of Tours: O beatum Pontificem!

'Kyrie' from the Messe de Notre Dame Guillaume de Machaut (c.1300-1377)
In the 13th century, a group of French composers associated with the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris were the first to develop a rhythmic notation system to complement the existing pitch notation. Thrilled with the whole new world this opened up to them, composers immediately began experimenting with the many possibilities, creating rhythms so complex that, although they were theoretically possible and mathematically coherent, they were sometimes impossible to perform. I liken it to children gone wild in a rhythmic candy store.

In addition, composers had for some time been adding counter-melodies to the officially accepted plainchant of the church, reasoning that, though the church stipulated that the official Gregorian Plainchant be the only music to which the sacred liturgical texts could be sung to, they did not prohibit the adding of counter-melodies to the plainchant. Hence, as long as the Gregorian melody was present in one voice or another, the stipulations of the church were satisfied, and therefore other voices could be added with impunity!

In this excerpt from a Mass by French poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut, we hear both the rhythmic complexity of those works created during the first flush of rhythmic notation, as well as the practice of adding other voices to the plainchant (called "polyphony," or "many melodies"). The plainchant actually exists in the men's voices (moving at a rather slow pace, and hence almost unrecognizable); the women's parts, however, are freely composed by Machaut to accompany the slow-moving cantus firmus of the men's voices, and they are, by contrast, extremely rhythmic and complex. I have chosen to spotlight the highly rhythmic nature of the women's parts in this performance by how I have placed the singers on the "stage."

Missa Papae Marcelli Giovanni da Palestrina (1525-1594)
Although Machaut and Palestrina both appear to us as "ancients," it is informative to note that they were separated by over 200 years (hence, Machaut was as ancient to Palestrina as Mozart is to us!). And much had changed in that 200 years. The "child in a candy-store" fascination with rhythm is gone, and the vocal lines have been cleaned out and simplified dramatically; the melodies are more gentle and singable, less angular; there is a greater flow to the music; a greater softness of harmonies; a greater lushness of texture. Indeed, although the average listener may at first be tempted to think of both the Machaut and the Palestrina as "old church music," they could not be more different from each other in actual conception or "feel."

Palestrina wrote 104 settings of the Mass; this is easily his most popular and widely performed. One reason is the incredible story that goes along with its composition (probably, unfortunately, largely apocryphal). In the 1560's, the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church were met in the Italian city of Trent to decide how to reform the church in response to (and even to save it from) the new Protestant sects rising up to challenge it. One of the issues they addressed was the music of the church. It was argued persuasively that polyphonic music had grown so complex and difficult to understand (both in terms of the words, and its theory/construction), that it had ceased to serve its primary function of accompanying the liturgy in a clear and comprehensible way. The defenders of music, however, argued that its great complexity was a tribute to the Creator, an homage to an intelligence so profound that it was only fitting in the divine liturgy to use the utmost of our human endeavors to worship him, even if it was beyond the comprehension of the average parishioner.

The story goes that Palestrina, concerned that the bishops would ban polyphony at this Council of Trent and dictate a return to the simpler, unadorned Gregorian Plainchant, wrote this mass and dedicated it to Pope Marcellus in the hopes of "saving" polyphony. It purportedly had the desired effect, and the Council of Trent, so moved by its fluid beauty, its soaring lines, its lush textures, etc., forebore from their intention, and instead resorted to a mere exhortation to church musicians that the words be more prominent in the music. Whether or not (or to what extent) this story is true, the mass is undeniably one of the most beautiful of Palestrina's masses, and even when the performance of Renaissance music had largely died out (i.e. in the Baroque and Classical eras), this piece (along with the Allegri Miserere, heard later tonight!) was the one exception that could still be heard regularly.

Miserere mei, Deus Gregorio Allegri (1582-1652)
Allegri was a singer in the Papal Choir, for which he composed this setting of the 51st Psalm, as well as several other choral works. Although this Miserere has become arguably the most well-known work of the late-Renaissance, Allegri's other compositions are now entirely forgotten. Written to be sung during Holy Week (at Tenebrae on Good Friday), it marks the darkest point in the whole of Christian liturgy. It alternates verses of plainchant with through-composed verses, some for the full choir, others for a quartet, which contain the justly famous high C's (sung tonight [five times!] by Julia Melady). In addition to the haunting, mesmerizing nature of the music, this piece is equally famous for its history. Recognizing its power, Vatican officials reserved performance of the work for the Papal Choir only. The sheet music was carefully guarded - handed out to the singers shortly before the service, and collected fastidiously immediately thereafter. It remained closely guarded into the 18th century, until the adolescent Mozart heard a performance of it on Good Friday, 1770, and transcribed it from memory after the service, thus allowing it a wider dissemination and performance by other choirs.

St. Martin's Chamber Choir is very honored to have played a part in an educational/artistic endeavor surrounding Allegri's Miserere this Spring. Collaborating with the Park Hill K-8 School, two-dozen 7th- and 8th-grade students listened to the work, discussed it, shared personal impressions of it, heard a little about the history of the work, and then began creating paintings inspired by the piece. These painting are on display tonight here in the concert space, and I want to personally congratulate the students on their work, their creativeness, their flexibility, and willingness to collaborate on this project. Following these concerts, these paintings will be displayed at the Children's Hospital for a time, before being returned to the students.

Two Partsongs Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Frühlingsfeier (Spring Celebration) Op. 48, No. 3
Die Primel (The Primrose) Op. 48, No. 2

During the Baroque and Classical eras, very few works were written without accompaniment by instruments (i.e., a cappella). It was the era of the basso continuo, where every piece of music was necessarily accompanied by harpsichord and cello. One of the first to break this practice was Felix Mendelssohn, who began writing for a cappella choirs again, particularly in his secular music. I personally feel that the most direct antecedent to Mendelssohn's secular choral works is the madrigal. The madrigal went out of fashion in the later Baroque; it was kept barely alive in England in the form of catches and glees; and re-emerged in the writing of the Romantic composers in the form now called 'partsongs.' Although not the inventor, Mendelssohn was the first great exploiter of this genre; and these, along with his revival of the Lutheran 'motet' (through his veneration of Bach), place Mendelssohn squarely at the center of the revival of a cappella choral music in the 19th century, after 150 years of almost complete neglect. So, although these two works (from a collection entitled Der Erste Frühlingstag ["The First Day of Spring"]) are not really choral milestones in and of themselves, I chose them to represent the key role that Mendelssohn's choral works played in the history of choral music.

Warum ist das Licht gegeben, Op. 74, No. 1 Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

To a musicologist - especially one such as myself whose stylistic sympathies lie most strongly in the Romantic era - there can be no more kindred spirit than Johannes Brahms. His harmonic vocabulary, his intensely introverted emotionalism, his passionate nature are all deeply Romantic; yet his veneration for past composers, his studies of and work with music of the Renaissance and Baroque give his music a classical grounding, a rootedness in the techniques of the past, that enrich them immeasurably.

It was not until the 19th century that the idea of musicology was initially conceived of. In order to understand this, we must divorce ourselves from the concept of "Classical Music" in the popularly understood way - i.e., that there is something of value to be found in music from the past; indeed, it was not until the Romantic Era that music was considered much more than a professional craft, like pottery or weaving. With the elevation in people's minds of music to the status of an "Art," equal to painting and literature and drama (largely due to Beethoven), people began to look back at old music not just as outdated, out-of-fashion decoration or entertainment, but as something worthy of study and performance. And Brahms was among the first to seriously consider the music of the Renaissance and in this way. In fact, he even went much farther, and considered it worthy not just of performance, but also imitation.

It is this spirit of imitation that tonight's work was written. Like the motets of J. S. Bach and others, it begins with a very intellectual fugue; it culminates in the harmonization of what would have been a familiar hymn-chorale, and throughout uses the voice-leading principles and formal structural conception of the Baroque masters; yet he imbues it with his intensely Romantic nature to produce a combination of elements that is unparalleled (in my opinion) before or since - the perfect fusion of head and heart, if I may put it in such base terms.

Trois Chansons Claude Debussy (1868-1918)

Dieu! qu'il la fait bon regarder!
Quant j'ai ouy le tabourin
Yver, vous n'estes qu'un villain

Impressionism is one of those artistic styles that subsequently was identified as in between two eras, not quite one, not quite the other, but including elements of both, and perhaps even helping lead the way from one to the other. In music, one can see that, although Impressionism has the lush qualities of Romanticism, and an equally emotional response to its subject; yet its use of alternate tonalities (whole tone, pentatonic) and its use of tone for its sheer sonic ("color") qualities as for its structural, functional qualities (the opposite of Brahms, for instance, for whom every note had a tonal function within the traditional classical tonality), all this opened the door to the experimentation, and wholesale abandonment of tonality, that occurred in the early 20th century. Unfortunately, there are only a tiny handful of a cappella choral works within the Impressionistic oeuvre, and you are about to hear virtually the entire lot!

Timor et Tremor Terry Schlenker (b. 1957)
World Premiere Performance

The performance of new music is something I take very seriously, and it is one of the primary pleasures I have in my career. Needless to say, it is far too early to say whether this particular piece is a "choral milestone," in keeping with the theme of the program. I include it, however, as an example of how important it is for a choir like St. Martin's to perform (and commission and encourage) newly composed works. I have been pleased that, as St. Martin's reputation has grown over the last decade, I have received a dramatically increasing number of submissions from composers of newly composer works - many more than I could possibly ever perform, even if we devoted every concert exclusively to new premieres. Indeed, our most recent CD-recording, The Unknown Masterpiece, is a testament to the number of premieres we do, as it consisted entirely of the premieres from our 2003-04 season.

Tonight, as the conclusion to this program devoted to some of the principal milestones of choral literature, we perform another "unknown masterpiece," as symbol of how important it is to the life of St. Martin's, as well as to the cultural life of Denver and the wider world, to give audience to those creative products of today's composers.

Timothy J. Krueger
June 2005