Tomás L. de Victoria's Te Deum Laudamus

The ‘Te Deum’ is a hymn of thanksgiving, the origins of which are thought reach a long way back towards antiquity. The text is constructed from a number of complex and diverse elements, some of which are thought by scholars to point to an origin before the mid-fourth century. Nowadays this is a chant of praise to God which is sung at the end of Matins on Sundays or on Feast days, but it is known to have been used in early times as a processional chant, as the conclusion of a liturgical drama, for thanksgiving at the consecration of a Bishop or to celebrate a battlefield victory.

In his setting of the ‘Te Deum’ (published in Madrid in 1600) Victoria divides the text into thirty-one verses. These he sets in alternatim style with alternate verses set to chant and for the full choir. In verses 1-4 the text is constructed on a quasi-‘antiphonal’ basis (‘Tibi omnes angeli’ – ‘tibi caeli et universae potestates’ – ‘tipi cherubin et seraphim... proclamant’): verses 5-8 then insert slightly adapted words from the Sanctus of the Mass. In verses 9-12 the text reverts to the ‘antiphonal’ manner (‘Te gloriosus apostolorum...’ – ‘te prophetarum...’ – ‘te martyrum...’ – ‘Te per orbem...’). verses 13-15 are tought to be a doxology inserted later into an earlier basic text. Then comes a section, beginning in verse 16, of praise for Christ (‘Tu, rex gloriae Christe’). In the last section a great deal of the text is derived from the Psalms. Thus verses 24 and 25 (‘Salvum fac populum tuum, Domine... / Et rege eos et extolle...’) are a prayer based on a text from Psalm 28: 9; verses 26 and 27 (‘Per singulos dies benedicimus te, / et laudamus nomen tuum in saeculum, et in saeculum saeculi’) borrow text adapted from Psalm 145: 2; and finally there is a distinct echo in the closing verse of the hymn of words of Psalm 24: 2. Less information is available about the melody for the ‘Te Deum’ chant. All the earliest sources of the text are without musical notation. It is not until the twelfth century that manuscripts containing musical indications of the chant are known, and scholars are still seeking precise early sources.

Moving forward to more recent times, transcriptions, not always from completely specified sources, are available in the Solesmes edition, the Antiphonale Monasticum and the Liber usualis, which provide a working basis for performance of the hymn; the present recording of the ‘Te Deum’ is based on the solemn chant to be found in the Liber usualis.

Victoria’s setting of the hymn, which provides choral music for all the even-numbered verses, is rather unusual ofr an alternatim composition in that virtually all the music he writes for the choral verses is in a non-fugal homophonic style. Nonetheless, he achieves great liveliness and variety by using shorter and longer note values to underline the rhythm of the words, by embellishing the approach to cadences, by well-chosen changes in vocal register, and by using predominantly a bright major tonality. This provides an excellent contrast to the more sombre mood of the chant.

John Dixon

Adriano Banchieri’s Theoretical Works on Keyboard Playing

Adriano Banchieri (Bologna, 1568-1634), Benedictine monk of the Olivetan order, was active as an organist in the Italian regions of Emilia, Veneto and Tuscany. A pupil in Lucca of Gioseffo Guami, after 1608 he became one of the principal figures of musical life in Bologna. A versatile and prolific musician, he reconciled the diverse activities of organist, composer, theoretician, teacher, organizer of musical academies, and even inventor of musical instruments. His publications are numerous, and some are of great historical significance. An example is his Concerti ecclsiastici of 1595, the first printed work with basso continuo. The name of Banchieri is tied to the cycles of madrigal comedies (La pazzia senile, Il Festino nella sera del Giovedi grasso, etc.) which he composed on the models of the celebrated collections by Orazio Vecchi (Amfiparnasso, Le veglie di Siena, and others). The keen and at times sarcastic wit of these compositions comes through in the relationship between text and music, though there lacks a corresponding originality in the formal structure.

In the field of secular music, Banchieri was limited by an archaic style and a polyphonic language which was already amply surpassed by the innovations of musical theatre. On the contrary, it is in the area of sacred music that Banchieri emerges as an innovative composer, sensible to the new and multifaceted tendencies resulting from the rise of monody over traditional renaissance polyphony. His sacred vocal writing reflects the influences of the Florentine recitative style, Venetian polychoral writing, and the daring harmonic innovations of Gesualdo and Monteverdi. As a theoretician and teacher as well, Banchieri demonstrated a predilection for novelty. Intent on finding solutions to real problems of performance and composition, he was not immune to pedantic scientific displays in his treatises.

L’organo Suonarino, published for the first time in Venice in 1605, testifies to the Bolognese monk’s willingness to introduce concrete solutions to musical questions. This treatise is a practical-didactic manual aimed at helping organists (and players of polyphonic instruments in intabulation in general) to carry out their liturgical duties. Divided into five “registers”, it deals with all of the musical texts for the liturgy: from the ordinary of the mass to the psalmodic formulas, from hymns for the festivities and Magnificats based on the eight church modes to Marian antiphons. At the end of the first, second and fourth “registers”, Banchieri included various compositions for organ: sonatas and capriccios whose apparent simplicity in no way diminishes the felicitous inventiveness of the composer. The term “sonata”, still far from acquiring its later formal connotations, is here a simple and generic indication for an instrumental work. In the later editions of the treatise (1611, 1622, and the posthumous edition of 1638), many other types of compositions will be added: ricercatas, canzonas, fantasias, dialogues, toccatas and a battaglia, the latter particularly rich with markings of accentuation, registration and realization.

The Vezzo di perle musicali... opera ventesima terza (Venice, 1610) is a collection of duets composed for the Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria della Neve. An unicum copy is still preserved in the Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale in Bologna. In the dedication “To the most illustrious and venerated Mother D. Flavia Clemenza Gazzi, diligent concertatrice at the most honoured monastery of S. Maria della Neve in Piaxenza”, Banchieri refers to one of his own festive masses composed for double choir which had been performed the previous year “to the delight and satisfaction of all those reverend nuns, singers and listeners – all women”. Of the 21 pieces from the Vezzo, published in separate part books, 11 are for equal voices (two sopranos and bass instrument), while the other 10 are for unequal voices (soprano, bass, and bass instrument). Banchieri concludes his publication with notes “to the performer” in which he recommends in particular that the pieces be executed “with affect and gravity” and “without divisions or gorghe”. Moreover, he leaves to the performer the liberty of substituting one or both the voices with instruments (violin, cornett or trombone), or performing them with a solo voice on one or the other part (“whichever he best prefers”).

Of the four books which make up the Nuovi Pensieri Ecclesiastici by Adriano Banchieri, only the third (Bologna, 1613) is complete. Dedicated by the printer Perseo Rossi “to the most illustrious Senate of Bologna”, this work presents a curious preface entitled “The work [presented] to the reader”. Here the publication, “almost a newlywed bride consecrated to the divine cult”, is presented to “virtuous men and women in the musical profession [...]” and “adorned with sacred words containing affective accents”. The collection is a “little garland” of compositions, “a gift by five organists who are friends and well-loved by the author” (Guami, Vernizzi, Poggliolini, Barbieri and Porta). In addition, it includes Concerti for 1 and 2 voices, which, in the final table of contents, are classified according to the compositional style as “passaggiati, accentuate, affettati, in eco, in sinfonia, in dialogo, in ricercata”. For the realization of the basso continuo, the frontispiece foresees, in addition to the organ, the harpsichord, theorbo and arpichitarrone. This last instrument, invented by Banchieri himself in 1608, is decribed in detail on pages 66 and 67 of the publication: “instructions and measurements for constructing the modern musical instrument ‘arpichitarrone’, so-called because it has the body of an arpicordo and the harmony of a chitarrones”.

If the duets of Vezzo di perle musicali are characterized by a still restrained style and rather strict imitation – albeit with a melodic freedom of invention and a perfect adherence to the affects of the text – in the Nuovi Pensieri Ecclesiastici it seems that Banchieri wanted to experiment with the diverse possibilities of a vocal and instrumental language in full renewal. He does not disdain to introduce the most varied compositional devices borrowed from contemporary sacred and secular music; divisions and gorge, sections in recitative style, dotted rhythms, echo effects, instrumental ritornellos and sinfonias, and ascending and descending chromatic passages which, as in the case of the eight concerto on the adjective “liquefacta”, create harmonic situations of unfettered liberty.

Gino Nappo

Joseph Eybler’s 'The Shepherds at the Crib in Bethlehem'

Music history has known many composers who were highly esteemed during their own lifetimes but later went on to fall into oblivion. This posthumous judgment does not seem to be unjust for some composers, but such is not the case with Joseph Eybler (1765-1846). It is only in recent years that his compositions have begun to receive their proper due. They certainly merit rediscovery in that they show us an inventive and interesting figure from the Viennese classical period.

Eybler received his first instruction in music at his family home. His studies at the Vienna City College, where Joseph and Michael Haydn had studied before him, were of decisive importance for the whole rest of his career. As a pupil of Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, Eybler enjoyed thorough instruction in composition. When he finally decided to pursue a career in music (the difficult financial straits caused by a fire in his parents’ home meant that he was unable to pursue the jurist’s career originally intended for him), well-intentioned patrons stood at his side. These patrons included not only Albrechtsberger, who wrote a glowing recommendation for him in 1793, and Joseph Haydn, who always lent his friendly support to him, but also Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who described him as «a solid composer, equally talented in both the chamber and church styles, very experienced in the art of song, also perfect as an organ and piano player», as a musician «such as it is only to regret that composers of his kind are so rare».

What distinguished Albrechtsberger, Haydn, and Mozart also left its mark on Eybler’s style: thorough knowledge of counterpoint and in the «high art» of composition in general, experience in the symphonic and chamber compositional styles, and a special feeling for captivating motifs and tone color. Eybler’s career enabled all these influences to come together in a special way. He composed a great many sacred compositions, which is explained in part by the fact that he served as a regens chori for decades, with the Vienna Carmelites during 1792-94 and beginning in 1794 for thirty years with the Schottenstift in Vienna. He wrote more than thirty masses, oratorios, a requiem, and some shorter sacred works. His long years at the imperial court also clearly influenced his style. He became a music teacher for the imperial family in 1801, assistant court music director twenty years later, succeeding Antonio Salieri. Eybler was no revolutionary; he complied very well with the aesthetic-musical wishes of the court music tradition in Vienna and rejected the turning away from this tradition (as in Franz Schubert’s Mass in A flat major). Remarkably, however, he did indeed develop his own individual expressive palette within the established framework set by church and imperial taste.

Eybler composed his first oratorio, Die Hirten bei der Krippe zu Bethlehem (The Shepherds at the Crib in Bethlehem) for the Musicians Retirement Institute in Vienna. The score bears the date of December 22, 1784. He later formed a cantata from the two-part work. The author of the text is unknown. In keeping with its Christmas theme, the texts, in part almost with a folk effect, in part based on biblical passages, create a more lyrical-meditative than dramatic atmosphere full of contemplative moments.

Eybler drew on a great many musical models. The gentle siciliano in the concluding chorus of Part One and the bass aria «Er ist in Bethlehem geboren», to name two examples, point to baroque predecessors such as Handel’s Messiah or to Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. The influence of Mozart’s music is clearly recognizable not only in some motivic elements (e.g., in the minor beginning of the orchestral introduction, which recalls the character of the Piano Sonata in C minor KV 457) but also in the treatment of the voice parts, which is sometimes distinguished by virtuosity and sometimes by smooth cantability. Eybler’s sovereign command of the orchestral structure recalls the symphonic style of Mozart and Haydn with its skilfully employed wind effects and elaborated voice leading in the strings. Despite these roots; Eybler’s music offers a wealth of original, sometimes surprising compositional ideas. One example occurs right at the beginning, where the musical effect of the sunrise points ahead to Haydn’s The Creation; other examples are to be found in the various designs of the arias. The tenor aria «Sehet Hirten den Heiland» combines the tripartite structure of the da capo arias with the sonata-form-like modulation plan (the first part modulates to the dominant, while the third part remains in the tonic key), each of the two Allegro moderato sections of the soprano aria «Er ist’s Gott slbst» are prepared by an Adagio recitative, and the soprano voice is accompanied only by the winds in the cadenza of the highly virtuoso coloratura aria.

Eybler repeatedly came up with subtle solutions for the illustration of the text. In the alto aria «Das Kind streckt seinen Arm den Gaben wonnelächlend hin», the sixteenth passages based on broken chords solo depict quiet beating of the heart. The unusual beginning of the soprano aria «Bald weidet sich am Kind ihr Blick», where the motif begins on the dominant seventh chord and finds the tonic key only after it, has the effect of seeking, wandering glance. In the quartet «Selbst aus ihren Blicken» the devotional and moving atmosphere full of sighs and tears is underscored not only by actual «sighing motifs» but also by the unusual instrumentation in which the solo clarinet and three trombones join in with the strings. The counterpart to this quartet in Part Two, «Holter Knab aus Juda Samen», has uniquely beautiful tone colors with its two clarinets, two bassoons, and strings.

The two «divisions» or parts of the oratorio exhibit some similarities of structure. A meditative quartet stands at the center of each part. Aris placing high demands on the singer prepare for the concluding chorus in each part: the soprano aria «Er ist’s Gott selbst» in Part One and the bass aria «Er ist in Bethlehem geboren» in Part Two. The chorus of angels, «Euch ward er geboren», concluding Part One and is a siciliano which sometimes has gentle thirds and sometimes is of contrapuntal design. The concluding chorus of Part Two, «Gott sey Ehren in der Höhe», based on the biblical words «Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe», based on the biblical words «Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe» captivates the listener not only with its strong dynamic contrasts but also with the finely crafted fugue in its last section.

Éva Pintér

Johann S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio BWV 248

The term ‘oratorio’ is usually associated with a large dramatic musical work which tells a story – much in the same way as does an opera with arias, recitatives and choruses – and which is performed at one sitting in the concert hall. Oratorios that fit this description include Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s Creation and Mendelssohn’s Elijah. The Weihnachts-Oratorium (Christmas Oratorio) by Johann Sebastian Bach is certainly dramatic and has an important story to tell but it was never intended to be performed in its entirely in the concert hall.

Bach created his Weihnachts-Oratorium during 1734 for performance in church over the ensuing Christmas period. It consists of six cantatas which between them tell the story of the Nativity and the events of the following week or so. The first of these cantatas, which should be performed on Christmas Day itself, tells how Joseph and Mary travelled from Nazareth to Bethlehem to fulfil the decree of Caesar Augustus and how, when they arrived there, Mary gave birth to the baby Jesus in a stable, there being no room at the inn. The chorus opens this cantata by exhorting Christians to be joyful and ends it with a lullaby to the new born babe. The cantata for the next day opens with a Pastoral Symphony, thus setting scene for the story of the shepherds who, while keeping watch over their flocks by night, suddenly saw an angel proclaiming that a Saviour had been born that day in the city of David. Much of the recitative sung in this cantata by the soprano (taking the part of the angel) and the tenor uses the same biblical words that Handel set in the Christmas section of Messiah. During the cantata, for the following day the shepherds make their decision to go to Bethlehem to see the baby Jesus, whom they eventually find lying in a manger. They then return home, glorifying God and telling everyone about the wondrous things they have heard and seen. As the fourth cantata deals with the naming of the child and his circumcision, which took place when he was eight days old, it should be performed on New Year’s Day. The next cantata is intended for the following Sunday and is the one which tells of the three wise men who came to Jerusalem asking where they could find the new-born King of the Jews, for they had seen his star in the East. This request caused King Herod great anguish so he called together all his chief priests and scribes to ascertain where the child could be. In the final cantata, the one for the Feast of the Epiphany, Herod charges the wise men to go to Bethlehem, find the child and then come back with news of his whereabouts, for the King says that he too wishes to go and worship him. The wise men follow their star and when they have found the young child they kneel to worship him and offer him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod they go home another way. At the end of this cantata the chorus sings – to the same chorale melody that was heard in the first cantata – of how sin, death, hell and the devil have all been vanquished now that God has sent his Son to earth.

When the Christmas Oratorio was performed in Leipzig for the first time at the end of 1734 and the beginning of 1735, Bach had been working in that city as Cantor at the St Thomas School for nearly twelve years. He had arrived in Leipzig on 22 May 1723 and had immediately taken up his duties at the school and at the city’s two major churches, the Thomaskirche and the Nikolaikirche. These duties included providing a regular supply of new cantatas, both sacred and secular. Apart from the weekly church services and the Saints’ Days, there were civic occasions that required festal music and royal birthdays that needed to be celebrated in musical terms. It seems that the people of Bach’s time were less interested in hearing repeated performances of tried and tested compositions than in listening to new compositions by tried and tested composers

Sometimes, however, audiences and congregations would have noticed that Bach was in the habit of recycling his material and, in particular, that music from his secular cantatas would often reappear in his sacred ones. In the Christmas Oratorio, for example, Bach made use of two secular cantatas – Hercules auf dem Scheidewege (BWV 123), which was written for the birthday of Prince Friedrich Christian of Saxony on 5 Setember 1733, and Tönet, ihr Pauken! Erschallet Trompeten! (BWV 214), composed for the birthday of the Electress Maria Josepha on 8 December 1733. Indeed, the trumpets and drums in the opening chorus of the Christmas Oratorio bear witness to its origins in BWV 214 whose title translates as ‘Sound the drums, ring out the trumpets’.

The first performances of the six cantatas which make up Bach’s Weihnachts-Oratorium were given on the appropriate days (25, 26 and 27 December 1734, 1, 2 and 6 January 1735) in the two main Leipzig churches. The complete cycle was given at the church of St Nicholas and all but parts three and five at that of St Thomas. Those attending would have been doing so as part of their regular pattern of worship, not as if going to a concert, and they would also have been encouraged to join in the various chorales.

Peter Avis

Marc-Antoine Charpentier's 'Messe de Minuit'

Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s early life is shrouded in mystery. Even his date of birth is unknown (estimated today as some time during the late 1640s in Paris), and although it is known that he went to Rome to study with the early master of the oratorio, Carissimi, the period of his stay there remains uncertain. Upon his return to France he is known to have fulfilled a number of church and aristocratic appointments as maître de musique. He now found himself in the paradoxical situation of being a Frenchman espousing the Italian liturgical style of Carissimi against the largely secular French style promoted by Lully, who was himself an expatriate Italian.

By the 1690s Charpentier’s style had gradually begun to merge both national characteristics. In the Messe de minuit pour Noël, probably written at some time in the early 1690s for use in the Christmas midnight Mass of the main Jesuit church in Paris, we find him combining traditional French carols with a contrapuntal manner that is typically Italian. A different carol melody forms the basis of the material for each section of the text. These sections (within the movements) alternate between solo and choral forces, while Charpentier’s use of the instrumental accompaniment is especially subtle, with the woodwind in particular imparting a pastoral flavour that is in keeping with the nature both of the folk tunes and of the festival itself.

Matthew Rye

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Christmas Music

The category of ‘Christmas music’ is not, contrary to expectation, a modern commercial invention; ‘per il natale’ was a valid and evocative selling-line throughout the Baroque period, calling on the traditional images of shepherd musicians, the pastorale and noel and the peculiar characteristics of rustic instruments. These include two of the most popular of the concerti grossi that were associated with church music for Christmas Eve in Italy and two scene-Setting sinfonie of Bach and Handel, all of which draw on a familiar folk-style of southern Italy, where, in the weeks before Christmas, the shepherd bagpipers and shawm players would come down from the mountains to play in the large towns. The music of these zampognari and pifferari seems to have remained basically unchanged for several centuries; Spohr in his autobiography quotes a tune that – in 1816 – he heard played all over Rome by Neapolitan pipers and which is almost identical with the melodic line of Handel’s Pifa from Messiah. The tune was played, he says, on a sort of coarse, powerful oboe with an accompaniment on a bagpipe, which sounded like three clarinets at once, playing in thirds and sixths or adding a double drone. There is little to distinguish these pifas from the sicilianas, and almost all 18th-century pastorals draw on this common vocabulary with varying ingenuity.

For Handel, the resources of a string orchestra were sufficient; in his Pifa he divided the violins into three parts, and thus was able to double his two melodic lines at the lower octave (first and third violins for one line, seconds and violas for the other). In its oratorio context this movement seems to have given Handel recurrent trouble; his original version consisted of eleven bars only, which then led into the following recitative (‘There were shepherds abiding in the field’). He subsequently made two attempts at extending the movement with a further nine bars and a da capo, and the second of these versions was copied into the score. Later, probably in the interests of dramatic pace, he deleted the extra section (revealed by the Foundling Hospital parts). Although the title of ‘Pastoral Symphony’ seems to have been in use during the 18th century, it did not originate with Handel, who specifically identifies the music he must have heard in Rome and in Naples in 1708-9 through the title of ‘Pifa’.

Bach’s Sinfonia sets the scene for the second of the cantatas that make up the Christmas Oratorio, to be performed on the second day of Christmas; it precedes the same line of recitative as does Handel’s Pifa (‘Und es waren Hirten...’) but makes with an evocation of the shawm and bagpipes (two oboes d’amore and two oboes da caccia).

Torelli’s concerto ‘in forma di Pastorale per il Santissimo Natale’ is taken from his Opus 8 concerti published posthumously in Bologna in 1709. Burney thought them ‘the best of his works, and the model of grand concertos for a numerous band’. Torelli’s introduction explains carefully that the two parts for solo violins are not to be doubled, and lists those works of the set (including this concerto) where the viola part is essential. The pastorale material is used exclusively for the two fast movements, thus lending weight to the theory that, despite frequent markings of larghetto, such Christmas evocations were played faster in the 18th century than they normally are today. The intervening Largo displays the two soloists against simple reiterated tutti chords in a manner very like Vivaldi.

Unlike Torelli, Corelli made no mention on his title-page of the concerto ‘fatto per la notte di natale’, and in fact tried to minimize the Christmas associations by marking the final Pastorale ‘ad libitum’; at other seasons apparently the concerto could end with the preceding gavotte. Further pictorialism, if it exists at all in the concerto, is much more subjective; the hushed mood of the first Grave, marked by Corelli ‘Arcate sostenute e come sta’ (‘sustained bowing, and play as written’, that is without embellishment), may be thought to evoke Christmas night, just as the final diminuendo of the Pastorale may depict the angels disappearing into heaven (a device later used by Handel in Messiah at the end of ‘Glory to God’). But the abstract qualities of this popular piece are more striking: ‘the harmony is so pure, so rich, and so grateful; the parts are so cleary, judiciously, and ingeniously disposed; and the effect of the whole, from a large band, so majestic, solemn, and sublime, that they preclude all criticism, and make us forget that there is any other Music of the same kind existing’ (Burney).

Other music draws its Christmas connotations from the less universal music of local shepherd music, national folk songs and noels, Two sonatas by Pavel Vejvanovsky, a master trumpeter at the court of Kromeríz in Moravia, draw on elements of a folk lullaby, ‘Hajej, muj andílku’ (Sleep, my little angel...’). The scoring, for two trumpets and four- or five-part strings, is typical of much of the repertoire that is still unexplored in the archives of Kromeríz and provides the brass player’s answer to the virtuoso compositions of Vejvanovsky’s contemporaries and colleagues, Schmelzer and Biber. The autograph of the Sonata a 7 is dated 1666, and that of the Sonata Natalis 1674.

Werner’s Pastorella for solo organ and strings also reflects the idiom of middle Europe and, to a slight extent, the influence of trumpet technique. Much of the Bohemian and Hungarian Christmas music of the 18th century calls on the effects of the shepherd’s trumpet, the tuba pastoralis; this type of alpen-horn is responsible for the triadic, almost fanfare nature of the Christmas melodies, and the curious cadences to the first and last movements of Werner’s Christmas piece imitative the distinctive octave over-blowing effect of the pastoral trumpet. Gregor Joseph Werner was Haydn’s predecessor at the court of Nikolaus Esterházy and during Haydn’s first years as director of music Werner continued as Oberhofkapellmeister, though on increasingly strained terms with the younger musician (‘little song-maker’ [‘Gsanglmacher’] as he disparagingly called him).

The Suite de noels by Gossec, probably written around 1774, represents the most naive use of familiar Christmas melodies in a style differing very little from that of the most simple opéra comique. It is possible that the various arrangements of well-known carol were intended for use as instrumental interludes during the Christmas Eve mass; in fact several of the noels will be familiar from their inclusion, for a similar purpose, in Charpentier’s Messe de minuit. Paris boasted large numbers of expert wind players (many of them from Bohemia), and Gossec’s scoring gives prominence to the oboe and the two horns. The third noel, titled here Le Chant, represents the song of the angels, taken up fortissimo by the earth, and ending with the familiar diminuendo to ppp. For the final arrangement a four-part chorus of shepherds enters, alternating with a simple wind-band and encouraging the population to ‘hasten and bring gifts’.

Christopher Hogwood

Christoph Graupner: Christmas in Darmstadt

“His penetrating understanding of all aspects of musical science and in particular His abilities in sacred music, a field in which he knows no rivals, assure him of an imperish able reputation, as the great qualities of his heart assure that all who have known him will never forget him”.

Hamburger Relations- Courier (Hamburg newspaper), May 29, 1760; chronicle of Graupner’s death.

According to Alberto Maguel, in his remarkable book A History of Reading (Vintage Canada, 1998), every reader needs information concerning the creation of a text – or musical work – its historical context, its particular idioms and that mysterious thing Saint Thomas called quem auctor intendit: the intentions of the author – or composer. Every listener can obviously find meaning to music without this kind of prior knowledge. However, I think it useful here, in order to better understand Graupner’s Christmas cantatas, to outline several important aspects of his cultural environment in Darmstadt, where bustling musical activity reached its peak during the years he worked at court there (1707-1753).

Graupner’s Sacred Music

Graupner’s sacred music represents 75 per cent of his total output, that is to say a colossal collection of 1418 cantatas. Contrary to the secular music performed at the Darmstadt court, only the music written by the Kapellmeister and the Vice-Kapellmeister were heard in the court church on Sundays and feast days. It was therefore necessary to compose and perform a new cantata for each of these occasions, which is what Graupner did uninterruptedly from 1709 till 1753.

Graupner was an exception among Lutheran Baroque composers. Cantors regularly performed their own works several times over or chose to play those of other composers. However, from the time of his appointment in 1709, Graupner fulfilled this duty in rotation with the current Kapellmeister Wolfgang Carl Brieged until his death in 1712, and then with Gottfried Grünewald, his friend and old colleague from Leipzig and Hamburg, who was Vice-Kapellmeister at the Darmstadt court from 1713 until his death in 1739. Graupner then solely took over court sacred music until he went blind in 1753. From this exceptional workload stemmed an equally exceptional body of work, the autograph scores of which are still kept at the Darmstadt palace library. Of these, 55 relate to Christmastide.

Johann Conrad Lichtenberg (1689-1751): Graupner’s Librettist

Lichtenberg was a theologian, pastor, architect, and prolific writer who excelled in cantata texts. He also showed great interest in mathematics, philosophy, and especially astronomy. He studied at the University of Leipzig, and in 1711 attended the University of Halle, birthplace and stronghold of pietism.

Pietism was a Lutheran theological movement that dominated Germany in the middle of the 18th century. It sought to oppose hedonism with introspection and subjectivity and had a marked disdain for theatrical music. Graupner, like J. S. Bach, was attracted to the devotional qualities of the movement. Kant, Schiller, and Goethe were all brought up in the pietistic tradition.

In the course of his functions as poet at the Darmstadt court, Lichtenberg wrote 35 cantata cycles, meaning over 1500 texts. He sometimes wrote up to 12 in a single day (a productiveness rivalling Graupner’s own...). Graupner’s friend, Lichtenberg was also his brother-in-law: their wives were sisters. Both men worked fruitfully together from 1719 to 1743.

Lichtenberg’s religious literary style was similar to that of the famous pastor Erdmann Neumeister, who wrote volumes of sacred cantatas published as of 1704 and who established a form that became widespread in 18th-century Germany, known as the “mixed madrigalian style”. Lichtenberg was also drawn to Biblical thought and Symbolism. Just as Graupner’s style was to prove transitional between the Baroque and Pre-Classicism, Lichtenberg was part of the late-Baroque literary tradition that was to usher in budding Romanticism.

Lutheranism: Religious Themes and Texts

Martin Luther’s musical reform raised the cantata to the status of a musical sermon. Composers who wished to attain the ideal of the Reformation adhered, as did the pastors, to rhetorical figures that emphasized key words.

Apart from the texts directly related to the Nativity and to the coming of the Saviour (Nun freut euch No. 3), there are few jubilant texts for Christmas. The emphasis is mostly on the representation of the world as a test of faith, and so the texts express a mix of joy and penance.

Formulas that showed the soul adrift in life’s perilous waters or described a faith that is rock-solid against the assaults of Satan were dear both to the Baroque spirit and to pietism. Lichtenberg put them to much use (Gedenket an den, recitative No. 4, but also No. 2, as well as the arias Nos. 3 and 6) and they gave Graupner, always mindful of word-painting, ample substance for his musical creations. This is particularly evident in the Aria No. 6 of Gedenket an den (bars 17 to 26) on the word bewegt (Mein Glaube ist auf Gott gegründet trutz dem, der diesen Grund bewegt; My faith is founded upon God, despite he who attacks this foundation). Graupner depicts the world’s attempts at shaking faith in a long ascending and descending melisma sung by the tenor, accompanied by a violin playing repeated notes during the tenor’s rests, as if to insist on Satan’s assaults.

Form in the Mixed Madrigalian Cantata

“Madrigalian verses” were incorporated into the German Lutheran cantata by Neumeister in 1704. The recitatives were no longer rhymed, contrary to the arias and recitatives of German opera. Neumeister added biblical verses as well as the chorale, a staple of the old German cantata.

This almost entirely poetic formal scheme was used by Lichtenberg and constituted the final developmental stage of the cantata, composed of six or seven pieces: an introduction borrowed from a biblical passage; two da capo arias; one chorale (with one or two verses); and the requisite number of recitatives.

The first piece, whose text is related to the day’s Gospel or Epistle reading, usually announces the theme of the cantata and is often called Dictum by Graupner. The dictum is generally composed in the manner of an accompanied recitative and is sung by the tenor. The recitatives and chorales are narrative exegeses of biblical passages and profess eternal truths, formulated in the third person. The arias are personal reactions to the decreed truths, and are in the first person. With the grouping of the recitative and aria, it befalls the singer to assume the double responsibility of proclaiming the message (recitative) and offering a moral reaction to it (aria). This was Lichtenberg’s preferred method, which he used in the recitative and aria of Nun freut euch (Nos. 2 and 3).

The chorales are of the utmost importance to Graupner. As he explained in his Choralbuch (1728), it is primordial that the chorale melody be clearly heard. To achieve this, he harmonizes the melody homophonically for 3 voices (Gedenket an den) or for 4 voices (Machet die Tore weit and Wie schön), or yet again simply assigns ut to the solo voice (Nun freut euch). An independent instrumental part, almost always one or more violins, completes the texture. This is the structure in which Graupner is at his most conventional, yet he still seems bold enough occasionally to develop a modern, even gallant voice, which he saves for the instrumental accompaniment. Such is the case in the opening chorale of Nun freut euch.

Geneviève Soly
(2004)

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

•  Giovanni P. da Palestrina's Missa Brevis
• Giovanni P. da Palestrina's Missa 'Viri Galilaei'
• Giovanni P. da Palestrina's Music for Pentecost
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Cyprien de Rore's Missa 'Praeter Rerum Seriem'

In the revival of interest in Renaissance composers very few have become known through a balanced appraisal of all their work. Such lop-sidedness is extreme in the case of Cipriano de Rore, who since his lifetime has been celebrated as an epoch-making composer of madrigals, one of the most significant precursors of Monteverdi. Inconveniently for those who like to keep things simple, Rore was also a composer of sacred music of genius, a true successor to Josquin des Prés.

Rore followed the natural course of a talented Renaissance musician born in the Low Countries. Having been educated in his native Flanders, he sought employment in Italy where he made contacts in Venice, not least with Adrian Willaert, maestro di cappella at St Mark's and also a Netherlander. From 1547 to March 1558 he was employed uninterruptedly at the court of Ferrara by Duke Ercole II d'Este, for whom he composed the Missa Praeter rerum seriem. When, in 1559, Duke Ercole's successor, Alfonso II, refused to continue Rore's employment in Ferrara he moved, at the request of the Farnese family, to Parma. In 1563 he was elected to succeed Willaert at St Mark's, Venice, which was even then probably the most prestigious post for a musician in Italy. At the age of 47 it must have seemed as though Rore's future was set very fair indeed; unfortunately, for whatever reason, it appears he was not suited to the task at St Mark's and by September 1564 he had returned to Parma where he died in August or September 1565.

Despite the impressive number of madrigals which Rore wrote, his sacred output was not small: over 80 motets and five Masses. Of this music it is the motets which show most clearly Rore's training as a Franco-Flemish musician in the Josquin tradition; the Mass, although not in the least madrigalian, contains some fascinating pre-echoes of Monteverdi despite the fact that it was written some years before his birth. This Mass, based on Josquin's Christmas motet Praeter rerum seriem, is one of the most elaborate parody masses of its epoch. In writing it, Rore was paying homage both to his employer, Duke Ercole II of Ferrara, and to Josquin, who was not only the greatest single influence on him but also his most celebrated predecessor at the d'Este court.

Josquin's Praeter rerum seriem must rank amongst his very greatest achievements. It takes the form of a succession of carefully worked motifs around the devotional song on which it is based. For much of the piece the polyphony is presented antiphonally between the three upper voices, when the song is in the first soprano, and the three lower voices, when it is in the tenor. This method is introduced at the very opening with the lower scoring, resulting in so powerful a piece of writing that Rore based the openings of all five of his movements on it, as well as one subsidiary section (at 'Et iterum' in the Credo). The second part of Josquin's motet is rather freer than the first, concealing the song in what has become a more consistently six-part texture, which breaks into triple-time where the text makes final reference to the mystery of the Trinity, before returning to the duple time of 'Mater Ave'.

In one sense very little of Rore's Mass is original composition, yet he parodies his model so resourcefully that the stated material seems to take on new perspectives. To Josquin's original six voices Rore added an extra soprano part. He then turned one of the existing parts, the first alto, into a long-note cantus firmus line which sings the words 'Hercules secundus dux Ferrarie quartus vivit et vivet' throughout to the devotional song melody quoted by Josquin. Rore's extra soprano line gives a new colour to the writing, creating a brighter sonority which seems to take the music out of the middle Renaissance period altogether, even occasionally hinting at the Baroque. The passage at 'Et in unum Dominum Iesum Christum' in the Credo is almost pure Monteverdi.

The most impressive writing of all comes at the start of each of Rore's Mass movements, where he develops the magisterial opening of Josquin's motet. In the Kyrie Josquin's version is given almost straight for lower voices, though Rore adds a new line in the second alto. In the Gloria an inversion of Josquin's ascending scale is used alongside its original; this occurs again in the Credo in a more ornate form. But it is only in the Sanctus and Agnus Dei that the full potential of Rore's two soprano parts becomes apparent in the context of this phrase, which seems to have expanded and broadened. The Sanctus opens with long rhapsodic lines in a widely-spaced sonority; the Agnus Dei goes a stage further in involving all the voices from the outset and for the first time underpinning everything with a statement of the song. In general the song is not heard until a movement or a section is well under way, when the extreme length of its notes effectively prevents it from blending into the texture. Only in two reduced-voice passages, the 'Pleni' and 'Benedictus' (both in the Sanctus), is it omitted altogether.

Peter Phillips
(1994)

Claudio Monteverdi's Beatus Vir a 6

The Beatus vir I ‘à 6 voci concertato con due violini et 3 viole da brazzo ovvero 3 Tromboni quali anco si ponno lasciare’ is one of the most attractive and inspired settings of the Selva morale e spirituale (1640) and one of the few sacred works of Monteverdi’s later years that has become widely known.

The musical setting is constructed in three sections: A (verses 1 to 4), B (verses 5 to 8), A1 (verse 9) plus the Gloria Patri. The two A sections are an elaboration on a large scale of the music that Monteverdi had earlier invented for a slight, but very charming canzonetta for two voices and violins, ‘Chiome d’oro’ (Hair of gold) included in his seventh book of madrigals (1619). They are set over a ‘walking’ bass using recurring patterns of notes (though not quite a ground bass) of a kind that became popular in Venetian song-books of the 1620s and ’30s. And as if this were not enough to bind the texture, Monteverdi also repeats the opening phrase ‘Beatus vir’ or, in its fuller form ‘Beatus vir qui timet Dominum’ as a refrain. In the second A section he produces particularly vivid musical images of the wicked man, his desires thwarted, gnashing his teeth in angry envy of the (admittedly rather smug) righteous and blessed man. In the B section of the setting, perhaps prompted by the initial image of happiness, Monteverdi changes to triple time and a new set of bass patterns; again, not quite a ground bass, but with recognizable repetitions.

John Whenham

Franz J. Haydn's Missa 'in Tempore Belli'

Posterity has good reason to thank Prince Nikolaus I Esterházy, who as Haydn’s employer provided him for almost 30 years with facilities that were to stimulate his growth as a composer. Less obvious is the debt we owe to Nikolau’s grandson, Nikolaus II, who in renewing Haydn’s appointment as court Kapellmeister demanded of him principally that he provide a new mass each September to celebrate the name day of his wife, Princess Maria Hermenegild. The resulting six works that Haydn composed between 1796 and 1802 comprise the greatest set of masses produced by any composer since the Renaissance.

The Missa in tempore belli (or Paukenmesse) may have been the first or the second of the series. (The other mass in question is the Heiligmesse; both works are dated 1796, and no mass is dated 1797.) The Pauken of its German nickname are timpani which, in the Agnus Dei, evoke the distant rumblings of war and then, with trumpets and woodwind, passionately reinforce the final prayer, “Dona nobis pacem”. The war to which the Latin nickname refers is Napoleon’s Italian campaign of 1796, news of which was causing almost daily consternation in Vienna throughout the latter half of that year.

So symphonic is the Kyrie that it would be possible to remove the voices and be left  with a coherent, if short, symphony movement. The Largo introduction lead to an Allegro which, in addition to a symphonic solo opening statement and tutti continuation, actually recalls some thematic procedures from the first movement of Haydn’s last symphony, no. 104, completed the previous year. The Gloria is subdivided according to Haydn’s normal practice: the opening Vivace – another sonata form – closes at the words “Filius Patris”. A ravishing cello solo in A major, in which each Adagio phrase fervently climbs to a higher peak than its predecessor, announces the “Qui tollis” for solo bass. The closing “Cum sancto spiritu” recalls material from the opening section of the movement.

There is no final fugue in the Gloria, probably because Haydn chose to affirm the strength of “Credo in unum Deum” with one, after which the “Et incarnates est” – Adagio, in C minor – contains one of the most telling movements in the whole work: Haydn has saved the first lone entry of the tenor solo for the words “et homo factus est”. It is accompanied by low strings, clarinets, and bassoon, which create a beautiful yet strangely subdued atmosphere, quite different from the enraptured textures normally associated with this part of the text. Although unusual, it is then entirely fitting that “Crucifixus etiam” follows as the unmistakable outcome of the tenor solo. The Sanctus, “Pleni sunt coeli” and Osanna form a short, self-contained and jubilant movement in C major, probably as a foil to the more austere Benedictus, in C minor. Only in its recapitulation does the latter turn (with trumpets and drums already anticipating the Agnus Dei) to C major, and the restatement of the Osanna text is woven into a coda, mutterings in the timpani and the strident fanfares from trumpets and wind that will soon take over. When they do supervene in the “Dona nobis pacem” – the prayer for peace – they leave us with the compelling speculation that this is the first religious work in the history of music explicitly to condemn war rather than to glorify it.

Robert Meikle

Wolfgang A. Mozart's Coronation Mass K 317

It was a reluctant Mozart who returned home to Salzburg n 15 January 1779. He had been away for almost eighteen months, looking for work in some of Europe’s most prestigious musical centres, among them Mannheim, Munich and Paris. Not only had His efforts been unsuccessful, however, but His mother had died while they were in Paris; now, back in Salzburg, he had to content himself with an appointment as court organist to Prince-Archbishop Colloredo. The Mass in C major K. 317, was written as part of His duties, probably for an Easter service in April of that year. And apart from the unfinished Mass in C minor of 1782-83, the liturgical music that Mozart produced in the archbishop’s service during 1779-80 was the last that he was to compose for about ten years, as the strictures of the Austrian Emperor Joseph II were soon to impose limitations on both its lavishness and the occasions for its use. Consequently, when Salieri decided in 1791 to take three Mozart Masses to Prague for the festivities marking the coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia, he had to go back more than a decade to find suitable settings. Among them, as H. C. Robbins Landon relates, was K 317; it was sung a the celebration of Mass on 6 September 1791. It is also possible that it was heard in Frankfurt at two other coronations that of Leopold himself as Holy Roman Emperor eleven months previously and, after his brief reign, that of his successor, Franz II, in 1792. But whether it was performed once, twice or three times, it is from the second of these royal occasions – in 1791 in Prague – that the work acquired its nickname as the “Coronation” Mass.

Mozart’s fifteenth Mass looks in two directions at once. It is partly in the missa brevis tradition, that is, a mainly homophonic setting, with little text repetition, and so short hat (as Mozart had written to Padre Martini in 1776) the whole, including parts of the Proper, should not last more than three-quarters of an hour. At the same time, it is one of the earliest of the “symphonic” masses, its movements constructed with the thematic tautness, and often the sonata structure, of purely instrumental works. Yet while Haydn’s style in his masses is symphonic through and through, Mozart’s symphonic instincts continually lean towards opera. Operatic lyricism permeates many of the solo sections in this work, even to the extent of anticipating, in the Agnus Dei, the Countess’s “Dove sonno” from Le nozze di Figaro, while frequent turns of phrase provide even more distant pre-echos of Cosi fan tutte.

After a maestoso Kyrie movement, which is in three sections but which does not treat “Christe eleison” with the customary tender contrast, the Gloria is a terse sonata form. It skilfully preserves, in the development section, the threefold prayer beginning with the words “Qui tollis peccata mundi”, and reaches the recapitulation at “Quoniam”, combining the second subject in the orchestra with the word “Amen” for the soloists.

The Credo is a rondo – an ideal structure, for it constantly returns to and reiterates its refrain in a manner analogous to the text, which throughout is almost entirely a series of grammatical objects to its opening verb. The initial jubilant affirmation of “Credo in unum Deum” will reappear at “Genitum non factum”, “Et resurrexit” and “Et unam sanctam catholicam”; and the movement is rounded off by a final restatement of the opening text, this time to a different musical phrase. The “Et incarnates est” (soloists) and “Crucifixus” (chorus) – with an accompaniment in the violins that may derive from Bach’s setting of the same text in his Mass in B minor – provide no more than a brief, if beautiful, interlude in a movement whose predominant mood is one of joy.

After the Sanctus (like the opening Kyrie, maestoso, and also turning momentarily from C major to the somewhat unusual key of A minor), the Benedictus is remarkable for the treatment of the repetitions of the Osanna, which begins as if it were to be the customary da capo; but it breaks off after twelve bars, and the first eleven bars of the Benedictus reappear. Only then does the Osanna resume where it had left off, and complete the movement. The threefold division of the Agnus Dei text – set first for soprano solo – provoke another rondo. Mozart’s continuing efforts to bring structural unity to the work culminate in the setting of “Dona nobis pacem”, which returns to the music of the Kyrie, a reminiscence even carried over into parts of the final Allegro con spirito.

Robert Meikle

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[Not my favourite version, but the only decent one on YouTube. I suggest Trevor Pinnock's 1994 version.]