Notes from Geoffrey Whittington, choir member, relating to the pieces we’re performing on Saturday 11 July in Southsea and 18 July in Boxgrove.
These concerts celebrate the choir’s fiftieth anniversary. They are also the two last concerts conducted by Peter Gambie, who has been our music director for 34 years.
Peter has developed the choir hugely in his time. He has devised very innovative programmes, such as concerts highlighting the master composers in different European countries, building on a tradition of pioneering Spanish music such as works by Guerrero, and coupling our core Renaissance period works with twentieth century composers such as Poulenc and Whitacre. We have also had many fantastic foreign tours.
Schofield – Songs of Hope (11 July only)
Ian Schofield is a local composer and reviewer. We enjoyed learning and performing his ‘Stream of Life’ which we commissioned ten years ago for our 40th anniversary. We have commissioned ‘Songs of Hope’ for our 50th anniversary year: we gave its world premiere in March at Petersfield. It is a collaboration between Ian and Maggie Sawkins, a local poet.
It is in nine movements. The texts focus on the plight of oppressed people, for instance those fleeing from torture, war and deprivation. There are several examples of bird-based imagery. As always with Ian’s music, the melodies and rhythms are fresh and captivating. The eighth movement is written in a polyphonic style to reflect the heritage of the Renaissance Choir, and it uses a Latin translation of the words.
Victoria – Officium Defunctorum (11 July only)
Tomas Luis de Victoria was probably the greatest Spanish composer of the Renaissance and has been a mainstay of our programmes. Although born and dying in Spain, for a large part of his early career he worked in Rome. His music is fresh and expressive. The Officium Defunctorum Mass is a late work, written for the funeral of the dowager Empress Maria, sister of King Philip II of Spain in 1603. Victoria had a deep fondness and respect for the Empress; this work is unusual in the depth of his expression.
We will sing these movements from the Mass:
4 – Graduale
8 – Communio
10 – Libera me
Allegri – Miserere Mei (11 July only)
Gregori Allegri was an Italian priest, singer, poet and composer. He became a favourite of Pope Urban VIII who brought him into the Sistine Chapel choir. His compositions include two volumes of concertos for five voices, two volumes of sacred songs for six voices and five masses. This, his most famous work, is a setting of Psalm 50 and is considered one of the last examples of late Renaissance music. It was for a long time performed in the Sistine Chapel during Holy Week and the scores were kept secret. It is scored for a five-part choir with solo sections in four parts.
MacMillan – Miserere (11 July only)
Sir James MacMillan is the pre-eminent contemporary Scottish composer who has written works in all major forms following some big successes at the Proms in the 1990s, and his music is always accessible on first listening. His Miserere characteristically mixes old style plainchant with elements of Scottish traditional music and a contemporary idiom, giving a big sense of spirituality. We have performed this very demanding work before and it involves duetting lines with very different rhythms, quintuplet bars, acciaccaturas, plainchant and so on. It is interesting to compare the plainchant and ornamentation here with the Allegri version.
Whitacre – With a Lily, This Marriage (11 July only)
The American contemporary composer Eric Whitacre is now one of the most popular and well performed living composers in the world. Our choir has been performing his pieces since they first became available in the UK and are a key part of our repertoire. Whitacre provides highly unusual note-clusters and wonderfully fresh sonorities.
With a Lily was written in 2001 sets a poem by the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca. It has real power and is very evocative of Spain. This Marriage is set to words by Jalal Ad-din Rumi and is a straight-forward but touching celebration of a good marriage.
Hill – Voices of Autumn (11 July only)
The American composer Jackson Hill had early links with Oxford and Cambridge. In the 1970s he studied Buddhist chant in Japan, and this has been a strong influence on his subsequent works. With static harmony and many grace notes, this music is so different to the Western music we normally perform, but we have enjoyed it.
Cage – FOUR2 (11 July only)
The radical twentieth century American composer John Cage made a whole career out of experimentation with new ways of writing and interpreting music. He composed pieces based on rhythmic combinations, with specially prepared instruments e.g. pianos with objects inserted between the strings, groups of variable speed turntables and so on, and with totally unconventional notation systems.
In this piece, which is simply notated on a single page, the singers hold static notes with one letter of the word ‘Oregon’. The starts and finishes of each note are deliberately somewhat imprecise.
Byrd – Ne Irascaris (both 11 and 18 July)
In this great work in five parts, one of our all-time favourites, Byrd (as a Catholic in Protestant England) expresses his deep sadness at the suppression of Catholicism. This is most poignant at the words ‘Jerusalem desolata est’ near the end. Many of the choir regard this work as the finest motet from the Renaissance period.
Poulenc – Gloria (18 July only)
This great work, surely one of the best-loved twentieth century choral works, was written by the French composer Poulenc in 1959, four years before his death. It is for soprano solo, choir and orchestra and is in six highly contrasting movements.
As usual with Poulenc, there are gorgeous melodic ideas and lots of energy. The harmony contains both well-judged dissonance and lush, sensuous chord progressions; vigorous counterpoint in clipped, angular phrases alternates with lyrical melodic writing; dynamics frequently range from a hushed piano to an emphatic forte within the space of a bar or two. Equally there are a wide range of emotions, from serious, serene and lyrical (e.g. in the third and fifth movements), to funny capering about (e.g. in the second movement).
The work’s various different moods probably reflect Poulenc’s own changes of view on religion during his lifetime. There’s an unresolved questioning seventh at the end of the third movement.
One of Poulenc’s many innovations in this piece is his use of contrasting tone colours between the sopranos and tenors against the altos and basses. For this reason, Peter Gambie has divided his forces in an antiphonal manner, which is particularly noticeable in the second movement.
Although an orchestra will naturally have a wider range of tone colour, arguably in some places the version we will use with piano accompaniment actually brings out more clearly some of the counterpoint, energy and dry humour. There are some influences from Stravinsky and even Bach, but the work as a whole strikes one as so fresh, original and life-affirming.
J.S. Bach – Komm, Jesu, Komm BWV 229 (18 July only)
This well-known motet is a setting of a text by Paul Thymich, who was professor at the Thomasschule where Bach worked and composed when he was in Leipzig. The text about feelings of a religious person looking towards to their death comes from the German Lutheran tradition where the love of Christ is so strong as wanting to sacrifice oneself to him. There is a lot of interplay between the two choirs, using devices such as falling paired notes to convey sighing, and the piece ends with a strong aria in the style of a chorale.
Byrd – Laudibus in Sanctis (18 July only)
One of the greatest composers of the Renaissance, William Byrd wrote a lot of both vocal and instrumental music. The motet Laudibus in Sanctis is an ambitious, lively work for five voices running in a single span of 182 bars. It has many off-beat rhythms, and Byrd uses some nice word-painting at phrases such as ‘resonent tympana’ and ‘cymbala laudes’, where the sounds of both drums and cymbals are evoked.