THE CATHEDRAL OF ST JOHN THE EVANGELIST HELEN D. SCHUBERT CONCERTS

CLEVELAND OHIO

The Song of Songs: Medieval to Modern

Ross W. Duffin, Artistic Director David Fallis, Guest Conductor (Toronto Consort)

Friday, 27 February 2015 7:30 p.m.

The Cathedral of St John the Evangelist

Most Reverend Richard G. Lennon, Bishop of Cleveland Reverend Sean Ralph, Administrator

Mr Gregory Heislman, Director of Music

Sing You After Me:Wondrous Rounds & Canons

Saturday, 7 November 2015

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Round RootsO virgo splendens Anon. 14th-century Spanish (Llibre vermell)Munda Maria Anon. 13th-century English (Worcester Fragments)Sumer is icumen in / Perspice Christicola Anon. 13th-century English (arr. Ross W. Duffin)

Brains & BeautyLe ray au soleyl Johannes Ciconia (ca.1370–1412)Missa Prolationum: Agnus dei Johannes Ockeghem (ca.1410–1497)

E Paucis PluresQuae est ista [4 from 1] Antoine de Févin (ca.1470–ca.1512)Ave sanctissima [6 from 3] Philippe Verdelot (ca.1480–ca.1530)Nesciens mater [8 from 4] Jean Mouton (1459–1522)

Just JoyBrowning madame Thomas Ravenscroft (ca.1590–ca.1635)Hey ho, to the greenwood RavenscroftSing we now merrily Ravenscroft

— intermission —Please remain seated while the ushers receive the offering.

Your gift of at least $10 (if check, payable to: Cathedral of St John) enables the continued success of this concert series.If you would like to be on our mailing list, please fill out the yellow form and deposit in the Free-will offering basket.

Amazing AnswerQuomodo cantabimus [a1&2 from b1] William Byrd (ca.1540–1623)

Local LinksWith humble voice O Lord Robert Ramsey (fl.1616–1644)Orlando was his name Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625)She weepeth sore William Lawes (1602–1645)Non nobis Domine Anon. 17th-century English

Enlightenment ExcellenceCanon a 4 voc. perpetuus Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)The Singing Club Thomas Arne (1710–1778)

Clerical ClassicsWhen Jesus wep’t the falling tear William Billings (1746–1800)Alleluia, k. 553 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)Kyrie, k. 89 MozartMissa Canonica: Benedictus, woo 18 Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)

Operatic OfferingMir ist so wunderbar [from Fidelio, op. 72] Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)

Quire ClevelandRoss Duffin, Artistic Director

Sing You After Me:Wondrous Rounds & Canons

About Quire ClevelandQuire Cleveland is a professional chamber choir established in 2008 to explore the vast and timeless repertoire of choral music over the last 9 centuries. Quire’s programs introduce our audiences to music not heard in the modern era — including modern premieres of works newly discovered or reconstructed — breathing life into the music of our shared heritage.

With highly-trained professional musicians — who collectively represent 500 years of choral singing — the ensemble has earned both popular and critical acclaim. Quire contributes to the artistic life of our community in unique ways, including collaborations with such organizations as the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Composers Guild, Music & Art at Trinity, CityMusic Cleveland, Summit Choral Society, and The Cleveland Foundation.

Now in its eighth season, Quire Cleveland has presented more than 50 concerts and produced five CDs of music from the 12th to the 21st centuries. Artistic Director Ross W. Duffin, a prize-winning musicologist, creates unique editions for Quire, and plans programs that are appealing and accessible, showcasing the beauty of the music and the glorious sound of voices raised in harmony.

In addition to live and recorded broadcasts on classical radio, Quire has also recorded music for Oxford University Press. An education program, initiated in 2014, offers free workshops and lectures.

With concert videos posted on YouTube, Quire Cleveland’s reach has indeed been world-wide, attracting over 375,000 views from 198 countries.

Personnel

SopranoS: Donna Fagerhaug, Gabrielle Haigh, Angela Mitchell, Lisa Rainsong, Gail WestaltoS: John McElliott, Malina Rauschenfels, Beverly Simmons, Jay WhitetenorS: Evan Bescan, Kevin Foster, Peter Hampton, Bryan Munch, Brian WentzelBaSSeS: Anthony Gault, Nicolas Haigh, Nathan Longnecker, Michael McKay, Daniel Singer

Ross W. Duffin, artistic director

Ross W. Duffin was born in London, Canada, and attended the University of Western Ontario there. He received his master’s and doctoral degrees from Stanford University, where he specialized in the Performance Practice of Early Music. He came to Case Western Reserve University in 1978 to direct the nationally recognized historical performance program there. He has earned renown as a scholar in a wide range of repertoires, publishing articles on music from the 13th to the 18th centuries. His edition of DuFay chansons won the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society for work of benefit to both scholars and performers, and his edition of Josquin motets was published in 1998 by Oxford University Press. Other “vocal” publications include the award winning Shakespeare’s Songbook (W W Norton, 2004), a study of all the songs from Shakespeare’s plays, and an edition of motets from the Jacobean period from A-R Editions. His expertise in historical tuning systems is borne out in the popularity of his book, How Equal Temperament Ruined Temperament (and Why You Should Care), and the success of his guest conducting of St Johns College Choir at Cambridge University. His love of vocal ensemble singing has a familial background, since his grandfather, William Nelson, was a professional countertenor in London, England, and was soloist for Harold Darke and later Herbert Murrill, and his mother conducted her church choir, making him a third-generation choral conductor. Ross Duffin has sung with Apollo’s Fire since its inception in 1992. He also directs the Early Music Singers at Case.

O virgo splendens hic in monte celso miraculis serrato fulgentibus ubique quem fideles conscendunt universi. Eya pietatis oculo placato, cerne ligatos fune peccatorum ne infernorum ictibus graventur sed cum beatis tua prece vocentur.

1. Munda Maria mater milicie vis vite via velis vas vere valencie.

2. Te Iheremia vocat virgam mundicie presit helyam lucem magne substancie.

3. Qua prophetia paris prolem potencie summa sophia celas solem iusticie.

4. O iherarchia coram rege clemencie salva nos quia manes donatrix gracie.

5. Per te messia dolens nexus tristicie premia pia tuis dona leticie.

Perspice Christicola que dignacio. Celicus agricola pro vitis vicio, filio non parcens exposuit mortis exicio, qui captivos semivivos a supplicio, vite donat et secum coronat in celi solio.

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

Quæ est ista, quæ ascendit per desertum sicut virgula fumi ex aromatibus mirre et thurris?

— Song of Songs 3:6

Ave sanctissima Maria, mater dei, regina cæli, porta paradisi, tu es singularis virgo et pura. Tu concepisti Jesum ex spiritu sancto, tu peperisti creatorem et salvatorem mundi, in quo non dubito. Ora pro me Jesum, dilectum tuum, et libera me ab omnibus malis.

Nesciens mater virgo virum peperit sine dolore Salvatorem seculorum ipsum regem angelorum Sola virgo lactabat ubere de cælo pleno.

Quomodo cantabimus canticum Domini in terra aliena? Si oblitus fuero tui Hierusalem, oblivioni detur dextra mea. Adhæreat lingua mea faucibus meis, si non meminero tui. Si non proposuero Hierusalem, in principio lætitiæ meæ. Memor esto Domine, memor filiorum Edom, in die Hierusalem.

ps. 137:4–7

Non nobis Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam.

Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison. Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.

O resplendent virgin, here on the miraculous mountain cleft everywhere by dazzling wonders, and which all of the faithful climb. Behold with the merciful eye of love those enmeshed in the bonds of sin, that they will not have to endure the blows of hell, but rather will be named among the blessed through your intercession.

1. Fair Mary, mother of hosts, power of life, a true vessel of strength.

2. Jeremiah calls you a shoot of seemliness; it should outshine the sun’s light with great power.

3. As prophesied, you bore a mighty child; in your highest wisdom you shelter the sun of justice.

4. O sacred leader, in the sight of the king of mercy, save us, for you grant grace forever.

5. Through you, the suffering Messiah assumed our woes; give to your servants the reward of joy.

See, O Christian, the great honor, the celestial grower, because of the flaw in the vine, exposes his son to the pain of death for sins, he who gives life to the half-alive captives, crowning them with him on his heavenly throne.

Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us. Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, grant us thy peace.

Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense?

Hail most holy Mary, mother of God, queen of heaven, gate of paradise, ruler of the world. You are a uniquely pure virgin. You conceived Jesus without sin. You bore the creator and savior of the world in whom I do not doubt. Pray for me to Jesus, your beloved son, and free me from all evil.

A mother though she had no knowledge of man, the maiden gave birth without pain to the Savior of the world. She alone suckled the very king of the angels with heavenly plenty.

How shall we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten. Let my tongue cleave to my jaws if I do not remember thee: If I make not Jerusalem the beginnng of my joy. Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom, in the day of Jerusalem.

— Douay-Rheims Bible

Not unto us, Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory.

Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Translations

Program NotesNo one knows when a singer first discovered that a song might harmonize with itself by repeating after a short time interval, but rounds and canons have been around in notated form for about 800 years. In that time, there have been so many textures devised, from simple rounds like Row, row, row your boat (which is not on tonight’s program), to the exquisite and complex textures of Ockeghem and Byrd (which are). For many years, I have made mental notes about rounds and canons that sometimes dazzled in their ingenuity, while creating beautiful musical tapestries, one voice following another along the same path, sometimes at another pitch, sometimes in inversion, sometimes at a different speed. It occurred to me that this might make a musical program that is both lovely and fun. So we hope you enjoy our “musical offering” — to borrow a phrase from another one of tonight’s composers.

The beautiful O virgo splendens is described as a caça in its unique source, the 14-century Spanish manuscript known as Llibre Vermell (the Red Book). The word caça means “hunt” or “chase,” and we find the same word used in 14th-century France (chace) and Italy (caccia) to describe canonic pieces. One voice-part begins and is followed in turn by two others, as if the following voices were hunting the first along the same trail. The melody of O virgo splendens is chant-like — in that it is not metrical — but each phrase is exactly the same length, so the three voices come together every few seconds before proceeding to the next phrase.

This set continues with two 13th-century English pieces. Munda Maria, another three-voice round, is strongly rhythmic — in fact, quite virtuosic in its syncopated opening, especially considering that composers were then just figuring out how to notate rhythm.

Next is Sumer is icumen in, perhaps the most famous song from the Middle Ages. Its manuscript source describes the piece as a rota, Latin for “wheel,” imagery that well suits the concept of a round. Four voices follow each other on the same music, but beneath the voices of the round are two other voice-parts, making their own short canon with each other. The manuscript refers to those as Pes — literally the “foot,” and therefore serving the same sort of function as the repeating “ground bass” of later centuries. The piece has the sacred text, Perspice Christicola, written underneath the familiar English one.

Johannes Ciconia is generally regarded as the first Franco-Flemish composer to make his way to Italy in the late Middle Ages. He paved the way for a host of other Northern singers and composers attracted to the brilliant courts of Italy during the course of the Renaissance, including DuFay, Josquin, Willært, Rore, and Lassus, to name but a few. Ciconia’s Le ray au soleyl is a mensuration canon, meaning a canon that depends on the fact that notes had different durations in different meters — just as, in modern notation, a whole rest can have different values, depending on the meter. The first voice is joined by another, one octave lower and moving at 1/3 of the speed, then by a third voice in the same range as the first, but moving at 4/3 speed, that is, with four notes for every three of the other.

This remarkable conception was brought to its zenith by Johannes Ockeghem in his Missa Prolationum. This is the most complex canon imaginable, since the soprano and alto are in canon with each other at different pitch levels and different speeds. At the same time, the tenor and bass are also in canon, again at different pitch levels, and in meters — not only different from each other, but different from those of the upper voices, as well! The second Agnus differs from the first and third, in that it has just two voice-parts, sung simultaneously a 5th apart, but with the lower voice moving at half the speed of the top part. The truly amazing thing about Ockeghem’s achievement throughout this mass is that the listener is hardly aware of the canon — never distracted by the technical achievement of what must rank with Bach’s Musical Offering and Art of Fugue as the most extraordinary canonic masterpieces ever composed.

Antoine Févin’s Quae est ista begins a set of motets by Franco-Flemish composers. Févin’s piece uses a melody, introduced first in the top part, followed after a short interval by itself in the alto, then tenor, and then bass voice, each entry being a 5th lower than the last. The close time interval and the starting pitches a 5th apart create an unusual modal ambiguity, as each of the four parts tries to make the melody fit into its scale, while harmonizing with the other voices.

Ave virgo sanctissima exists in various sources with conflicting attributions, but it seems most likely to have been by Philippe Verdelot. In this piece, three voice-parts begin simultaneously, but each is followed by a canonic part singing a 4th higher. Thus, from three notated voices, a texture of six is created. This same technique is used by Jean Mouton for Nesciens mater, except that Mouton starts with four voices instead of three, and thus creates a full,

eight-voice texture: four voices in canon with themselves at the interval of a 4th. Remarkably, the fact that it is entirely canonic is not the predominant impression for listeners.

The next set presents three rounds published by Thomas Ravenscroft, a boy actor at St Paul’s Cathedral, who grew up to be a composer, arranger, music theorist, and publisher. As the first person to publish a version of Three blind mice, he is especially important to people today who like to sing rounds. There is nothing fancy about the technique here, however. These are just plain rounds, the last of which carries a special message, as we ask you to be generous during the collection at intermission!

The music of William Byrd holds a special place in our hearts. Quire Cleveland presented his Mass for 4 Voices in our 2008 début concert (here at the Cathedral of St John), and we will present an entire program of his music next Spring (to which you’re invited!). His Quomodo cantabimus was composed in answer to a canonic piece by Philippe de Monte. Its two alto voices are both derived from one of the bass parts, except an octave higher, and one of them in inversion — where the bass part ascends, the inverted part descends. At the same time, five other voices swirl around in independent counterpoint, creating a lush musical texture and virtually obliterating any chance a listener might have of hearing the embedded canon.

Next are four canonic pieces from early 17th-century England, two of which have local connections. Robert Ramsey is a composer who worked at Trinity College, Cambridge. His beautiful and chromatic With humble voice occurs uniquely in a manuscript fragment preserved in the Special Collections Library at Case Western Reserve University. The same is true for the second round in the set: Orlando was his name by Orlando Gibbons, which was composed to commemorate the return of Prince Charles from Spain in November 1623. Gibbons was organist and singer in the Chapel Royal, as well as a musican in the prince’s household, so he had the kind of personal access implied by the lyrics. The lyrics also contain unique confirmation that, although rounds may be notated in high or low clefs, they were intended to be sung by high and low voices together, as Quire does for most performances of such works.

She weepeth sore is based on texts from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, but it is thought that its composer, William Lawes, may have been inspired by the citation of this particular passage during an oubreak of the plague in London in 1626. Highly chromatic like the Ramsey piece, She weepeth sore was published by his brother Henry Lawes (also a composer) during the English Civil War, after William’s death in that conflict.

Non nobis Domine was attributed in the 18th century to William Byrd, but the musicologist Philip Brett showed that to be erroneous. The music occurs without text in a manuscript once owned by the composer John Bull, but the music and words together are not found until John Hilton’s 1652 collection of rounds and canons, Catch that catch can. I have great affection for this piece and used to sing it regularly with friends as a kind of grace.

The perpetual canon for four voices by J. S. Bach is found in a manuscript in the composer’s own handwriting, signed at Weimar on August 2, 1713. The bass begins, followed in turn by the successively higher voices, each a 5th above the previous one. The piece achieved fame in modern times as a favorite of the Swingle Singers, whom we emulate for the beginning of our arrangement. After that, I have added a new lyric in the spirit of the piece.

The Singing Club by Thomas Augustine Arne is an extended round that tells the story of a singing lesson. We hear scales, complaints about the quality of the singing, tentative testing of vowel quality, euphoric appreciation (perhaps feigned), and finally, asides about the singer’s lack of ability.

When Jesus wep’t the falling tear was composed by the American composer, William Billings, and published by him in 1770. This iconic and poignant American round is included on Quire’s Land of Harmony CD.

Next are two canonic pieces by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The first is a four-voice Alleluia for high voices, signed by Mozart in Vienna on September 2, 1788. The second canon is a complex, five-voice Kyrie movement, composed in Rome in May 1770, when Mozart was only fourteen years old.

The lovely Benedictus by Johannes Brahms is known from a copy in the composer’s own handwriting. He also used it as the basis for another choral work, Warum ist das Licht gegeben? But no one realized that it was part of a

complete canonic mass by the composer until 1978, when a manuscript of the mass turned up in Cape Cod, Massachusetts — not copied by Brahms, but certainly composed by him. The Benedictus is the movement that Brahms wrote out separately and preserved for himself, however, so it seems to have had special meaning for him.

Canonic techniques mostly fell out of favor among composers in the 19th and 20th centuries, but we found a stunning example from opera to end the concert. It is the charming Mir ist so wunderbar from Ludwig van Beethoven’s 1805 opera, Fidelio. It occurs as a quartet at the end of Act I, where Marzelline, Leonore, Rocco, and Jaquino each, in turn, take up the same melody, though with lyrics showing their respective reaction to the confusing love quandary. Jaquino loves Marzelline, Rocco’s daughter, but Marzelline has fallen for Leonore, who is disguised as a man (Fidelio).

Whenever people get together and want to sing communally, rounds and canons are an obvious choice. We are happy to share that tradition with you this evening!

— Ross W. Duffin

On DisplayOn tonight’s program are two rounds that are probably making their modern concert début: Orlando was his name, by Orlando Gibbons, and With humble voice O Lord, by Robert Ramsey. They are preserved as bits of paper, glued into a copy of a book on the history of music notation, published in 1880, and now in the Special Collections Library at Case Western Reserve University. These are unique documents; they do not exist anywhere else in the world. Somehow, they came into the hands of a collector, probably from the library of Edward Rimbault, the musical antiquarian, who died in 1876, and whose library was sold at Sotheby’s the next year. Most of Rimbault’s collection went to the British Library or to the New York Public Library, but some odds and ends were bound into this book as samples of early music copying. Quire Cleveland is grateful to Melissa Hubbard, Special Collections Librarian at CWRU, for agreeing to let the book be displayed during our concert — in the central crossing — and urge you to take advantage of the opportunity to look at these rare items at first hand.