A Spanish Renaissance Christmas Celebration
with special guest ensemble Renaissonics
Saturday, December 13, 1997 at 8:00 pm.
Tomás Luis de Victoria
Missa "O Magnum Mysterium," Motet O Magnum Mysterium, Ave Maria,
Ne Timeas Maria, Quam Pulchri Sunt, Quem Vidistis, Pastores?
Christóbal de Morales
Pastores, Dicite, Quidnam Vidistis?
Plus a selection of anonymous Spanish carols and anthems from the 16th century
Texts and translations
Program Notes
Tomás Luis de Victoria was born in Avila, Spain and today is celebrated as that country's greatest Renaissance composer. His early studies were in the Roman Catholic schools of his region, and early in his education he showed great musical promise as a chorister. Palestrina was among his teachers, and that composer's influence can be seen and heard throughout much of Victoria's writing. In fact, there is record of a bit of professional jealousy on Palestrina's part when shown the elegant first editions of his pupil's first compositions.
Victoria's great gifts as a melodist and setter of liturgical texts are apparent throughout each of tonight's offerings. While diverse in his intellectual approach to the challenge posed by the various texts he has chosen, there are nonetheless certain stylistic similarities in the composer's use of harmony, rhythm, and meter which recur often enough that it is of interest to mention a few here.
Victoria's sensitivity to certain important moments in his texts is often indicated by a shift from seamless and elegant polyphony to a harmonically rich homophony. It can be especially poignant as in the O magnum mysterium motet when the chorus directly addresses Mary for the first time with "O beata Virgo," and at the word "adoravit" in Senex puerum portabat. Another affecting moment is in his exquisite setting of Ave Maria, surely among the most beautiful 2 1/2 minutes of music to spring from the Renaissance, when the chorus joins to pray as one rich four-part voice at "Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis."
This italicization of text by homophony serves a dramatic purpose as well. Note the special emphasis in the Missa when the composer sets "Cum Sancto Spiritu" in the Gloria, and "...per quem omnia facta sunt," "Et resurrexit tertia die," and "Et vitam venturi saeculi" in the Credo. At these telling points he also shifts the meter from duplum to triplum for further textual color.
Another unique and recurring trait is Victoria's employment of what we today might call "syncopation" within the voice parts which perhaps reflects an aspect of the composer's Spanish heritage. This rhythmic "spice" seasons the vocal lines, refreshing and pleasing singer and listener alike.
Four works extracted from an 1556 Venetian publication form the finale of our concert. Known as Villancicos de diversos Autores, it is sometimes referred to as the Cancionero de Upsala after the library in which a copy was discovered in 1900, or as the Cancionero del Duque de Calabria, since it contains repertoire from the Duke's court at Valencia.
Villancicos were like English carols in many ways. They covered all kinds of subject matter and had a verse-and-refrain structure. Particularly interesting of these is Ríu, ríu, chíu, the following interesting explication of which comes from Hugh Keyte:
...The text reflects the hyper-aesthetic court life at Valencia, where courtiers prided themselves on the subtlety and allusiveness of their conversation and literary tastes.
Like many villancicos (and English folk carols, for that matter), this one begins with a powerful, if rather gnarled, image in the refrain and first verse and then floats free with more conventional narrative: so it is worth unravelling the opening properly.
'Ríu, ríu, chíu' is the shepherd's cry; the shepherd is God the Father; the precious ewe he guards is the Virgin Mary; the furious wolf who attacks the fold is the Devil; and God's way of protecting her, like that of human shepherds, is to build an impregnable wall around her. In this case the impregnable wall is supposedly the Immaculate Conception, the miracle by which God intervened at the moment of Mary's conception in the womb of Anna, uniquely exempting her from fallen Man's common inheritance of Original Sin. When she later conceived Christ, the Devil was thus unable to frustrate God's scheme of salvation by sowing the seeds of corruption in his Son at birth, and this was the motive of his furious attack.
The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception had been debated since the thirteenth century, but was only accepted as a constituent part of Catholic belief by the Council of Trent, when it was given a universal feast-day, December 8th. All feasts need their artistic manifestations, and Ríu, ríu, chíu is a poetic response to the challenge of supplying them, as are many of Murillo's paintings of the Virgin crowned with stars and treading down the serpent on a crescent moon.
A quick note about performance styles in tonight's concert: while we presume that liturgical music from this period was performed largely -- if not exclusively -- by male singers and that it may have been performed at tempi different from those which we will employ, I nonetheless strongly believe that there is sufficient evidence in the composer's reactions to his texts that allows a more fleet and robust interpretation of some of tonight's music than may be customary. Our sopranos and altos are women, but women trained to sing without slavish fidelity to a completely non-vibrato tone. The Renaissance was a time of reawakening of the human spirit, and it is this human, personal element which I believe Victoria so clearly reflects in his response to key ideas voiced in his texts. It is in the light of this reflection that we present this offering of what we feel to be very special music by an especially gifted Renaissance master, whose humanity and humility were put to the service of God, and whose music comes to us as a very special gift indeed.
Copyright (c) 1997 by John W. Ehrlich
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