DECEMBER 2014 / JANUARY 2015
A
MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT
Fellow MPRO Members,
In more personal
news, the increasing demands of work and a young family are making it difficult
for me to continue in an active role in the organization. I regret that my
availability for practices, rehearsals and concerts will be very limited going
forward.
I will continue to
fulfill my administrative duties through the rest of my current term, and will
ensure a smooth transition to the next President for the 2015-16 season.
This was a very
difficult decision to make. I want to thank the Board and members of the MPRO
for welcoming me to the organization. I hope to eventually return to the
orchestra in a more active capacity.
In the meantime,
we have an exciting season ahead. Our 2014 Holiday Concert is just around the
corner, followed closely by the January Workshop with Adam Gilbert. These
events, Fred and Greta’s musical leadership, and the dedication of our members
will make it another memorable year.
Regards, Dana
Note from the Editor: Many thanks to Dana for the interesting monthly articles he contributed during the last year and a half. Guest writers are invited to contribute articles for the remainder of the 2014-2015 season. The next issue will be February 2015. Please contact Mary Ann Field.
CONDUCTOR’S CORNER
Dear
members of the Mid-Peninsula Recorder Orchestra,
Here
are some of the highlights for the second half of the orchestra's 2014-2015
season: MPRO’s spring concert will be
scheduled early in January. You will be
informed of the date and location as soon as reservations for the performing
venue have been confirmed.
On
Saturday, January 31, Adam Gilbert will be directing a workshop for MPRO. You will find details about the workshop in
this issue of Upbeat. This is a wonderful opportunity to work with
one of today’s leading experts in renaissance music and its performance
practice, and I encourage everyone in the orchestra to attend this workshop and
experience the next best thing to learning directly from one of the masters of
music from the 15th century.
I am also pleased to announce that Greta Haug-Hryciw will continue as the orchestra’s Assistant
Director and that Irene Beardsley will be playing keyboard with the orchestra
at its upcoming spring concert. Irene
will also be with us at the January 21 meeting, and since this will be one of
the few opportunities to rehearse the music that calls for keyboard with all
forces present, I encourage everyone to attend that evening. Music for the second half of the orchestra’s
2014-2015 season will include an antiphonal canzona
by Giovanni Gabrieli and a suite, originally written
for wind instruments, by the late baroque composer, Johann Philipp Krieger, as
well as the following music from the first half of the season: Mainerio, Caro Ortolano; Jarzebski, Berlinesa; Guerrero, Adiós mi amor; Josquin, Adieu mes amors and Elfers and Johansson, Pippi Långstrump.
Listed
below is the music for the orchestra's first three meetings of the New
Year. Please note that there will be
sectional seating for the Gabrieli Canzon Noni Toni, with
those in Coro Primo on the right as they face the conductor and those in Coro
Secondo on the left. Please observe this
seating
arrangement when you choose your place at the beginning of the meetings on
January 21 and February 11. Please note
as well that sopranino and contrabass recorders,
bassoon and krummhorns will be needed at all three
meetings and great bass recorders on January 7 and February 11.
January 7
Krieger: Partie
Guerrero:
Adiós mi amor
Josquin: Adieu mes amors
Elfers
and Johansson: Pippi Långstrump
January 21
Mainerio: Caro Ortolano
Gabrieli: Canzon Noni Toni
Jarzebski: Berlinesa
Krieger: Partie
February 11
Krieger: Partie
Gabrieli: Canzon Noni Toni
Guerrero:
Adiós mi amor
Josquin: Adieu mes amors
Elfers
and Johansson: Pippi Långstrump
I
look forward to seeing you at these upcoming meetings and working on this music
with you. Please let any of your friends
who play early instruments know about the orchestra's varied activities and
invite them to attend an MPRO meeting, workshop or concert.
Sincerely, Fred Palmer
How 15th-Century
Composers Transformed the Prosaic into the Sublime or A Musical Trinity:
Three Types
of 15th-Century Love Songs in One
by Adam Gilbert
Invoking the time honored trinity of
Virgilian styles, the 15th-century theorist and composer, Johannes Tinctoris, listed three different types of songs: Cantus magnus
(“grand song”) referred to the Mass. Cantus
mediocris (medium song) referred to the Motet.
The third genre, cantus parvus (“little song”), referred to love songs.
If there had been radios in the Renaissance,
there would have been a top-forty of love songs, nothing but love songs.
Fortunately, many of these chansons—composed by the likes of Guillaume
Dufay, Gilles Binchois, Antoine Busnois,
Johannes Pullois, Loyset Compère, Firminus Caron, Henricus Isaac, and Josquin Desprez—survive in manuscripts lovingly copied by anonymous
scribes, and saved from ruin by avid collectors over the centuries.
Composers did more than just set love
poems to music. Like modern jazz
musicians, they improvised and composed florid counterpoint over favorite
melodies and added new voices to old songs.
Like modern hip-hop artists, they sampled small fragments of songs to
use as ostinato patterns for new versions. They made satirical commentary on
elegant love songs by juxtaposing them with racy, rustic tunes and downright
obscene texts. Like Noël Coward and Cole Porter, composers borrowed,
parodied and alluded to songs by their colleagues, teachers and friends. And
they chose the love songs to be the cantus firmi of
their grandest sacred motets and masses.
There was a rich theological and Platonic
tradition for this practice. Based on the idea that humans can only reach for
the inconceivable and pure, universal divine through the realm of sensible
perception, composers chose
songs that pulled at
human heartstrings, leading upward toward heavenly
salvation. This is why Isaac and Josquin
would use Binchois’ Comme femme desconfortée as the basis for a Marian Mass or the
motet Stabat mater dolorosa. What better song to bring the sorrows of Mary
to life than one about “the saddest woman in the world” whose love has been
stolen by Death? Or consider Heyne van Ghizeghem’s De tous beins plaine est ma maistresse (“My
Lady is full of all good things”), one of the most popular chansons of the
century. Loyset Compère
would take the melody and translate its text to Latin in the motet Omnium bonorum plena,
implying that the Virgin Mary “is full (pregnant) of all good things.” And then there is the song Et trop penser, whose text describes the
dream of seeing a lover naked in the middle of the night. Such an erotic
text is a perfect match for the imagery of the Annunciation to the Virgin, when
the Lord is revealed in all His glory. Songs could even have a practical use.
The song Maria zart
was reported to cure syphilis if sung a certain number of times: the same number
of times the melody appears in Jacob Obrecht’s Missa Maria zart.
Finally, the songs of the fifteenth
century are, as Howard Mayer Brown wrote, “exquisite miniatures”, finely
crafted, with kaleidoscopic turns of phrase, jazzy syncopations, deceptive
elisions, and brilliant explorations of just how many permutations a single
melodic pattern can yield. These are some of the most beautiful songs ever to
be copied on a page, with melodies like autumn leaves that rise and never fall
all the way to the ground, drifting across the pages and hearts of the fifteenth
century, and somehow, despite the ephemeral nature of music, still capable of
bringing a tear today.
On
Saturday, January 31, 2015, Adam Gilbert will be
presenting a workshop for the Mid-Peninsula Recorder Orchestra entitled, Villain et Courtoise: Rustic and Bawdy Songs Dressed in Courtly
Finery. The
workshop will explore how simple popular songs of the late Middle Ages and
Renaissance, often with bawdy lyrics, were transformed by the great composers
of the day into elegant courtly love songs, sacred motets, and even Masses
using the intricate polyphony of the late 15th and early 16th
centuries. For further information please see the
announcement in our website http://www.mpro-online.org .
The Board: President: Dana Wagner; Treasurer: LouAnn Hofmann; Recording Secretary: Helen Shamble; Membership: Chris Flake; Publicity: TBD; Graphics: Mary Ashley; Newsletter Editor: Mary Ann Field; Workshop Coordinator: Laura Gonsalves, Stuart Elliott; Hospitality: Judith Unsicker; Music Sales: Laura Gonsalves; Historian: vacant; Webmaster: Dan Chernikoff; Facilities Mgr: Grace Butler; Music Director: Fred Palmer; Assistant Music Director:Greta Haug-Hryciw. MPRO website: http://www.mpro-online.org