Axis of Medieval

November 6, 2011: First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia

Christopher Barron, Bimal Desai, Rachel Haimovich, Ranwa Hammamy, Jen Hayman, Allison Hedges, Michael Johnson, Elissa Kranzler,Ken Olin, Jordan Rock, Joy Wiltenburg, Caroline Winschel, and Rick Womer

Congaudeant Catholici                   Albertus of Paris (fl. 1146–1177)

Jerusalem Luminosa                                         Abbie Betinis (1980–)

Three Psalm Tunes                              Thomas Tallis (c. 1505–1585)

from Nine Psalm Tunes for Archbishop Parker’s Psalter

   First Tune

   Second Tune

   Third Tune

Easter Chorale                                         Samuel Barber (1910–1981)

Tristis est anima mea                           Francis Poulenc (1899­–1963)

from Quatre Motets pour un temps de penitence

Концерт для хора                          Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943)

In Pace                                               William Blitheman (1525–1591)

Quatre motets sur des themes grégoriens Maurice Duruflé (1902–1986)

I. Ubi caritas

    II. Tota pulchra es

III. Tu es Petrus

   IV. Tantum ergo

Two Anonymous Medieval Carols

   Orientis Partibus                                             (c. 1200)

   Agincourt Carol                                              (c. 1415)

Douce Dame Jolie                      Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300–1377)

                                                                                   arr. Jordan Rock

Trois Chansons de Charles d’Orléans Claude Debussy (1862–1918)

I. Dieu! qu’il la fait bon regarder

    II. Quant j’ai ouy la tambourin

III. Yver, vous n’estes qu’un vilain

Jézus és a kufárok                                   Zoltán Kodály (1882–1967)

Ave Maria              Franz Biebl (1906–2001)

If we built a time machine and managed to bring Albertus of Paris (fl. 1146– 1177) to the same moment as Abbie Betinis (1980–)—admittedly not everyone’s first goal upon building a working time machine—the meeting might not go very well. Albertus, who served as cantor at Notre Dame in the middle decades of the twelfth century, would certainly be stymied by Betinis’ American English, and he would likely be surprised—if not downright outraged—by her literacy and her independence and her penchant for wearing pants. The awkwardness of the contrived interaction would be our own fault, and our friends would shake their heads disapprovingly. What do they expect? they’d mutter. They don’t even speak the same language. And our friends would be right: the language barrier would surely be insurmountable, and Albertus simply wouldn’t know what to make of Betinis— unless we brought them here today. If they sat with one another for the opening of today’s concert, they would hear Albertus’ “Congaudeant catholici,” the earliest extant example of three-voice polyphony, followed by Betinis’ two-part “Jerusalem Luminosa,” which premiered in 2001 mere blocks from Notre Dame. The pieces have more than Parisian geography in common, and their time-traveling composers might have found that they did, too.

Given that in the mid-twelfth century, polyphony for two voices was still relatively new—the earliest surviving examples date from the early tenth century, and by Albertus’ time polyphony was still controversial within the church— Albertus’ venture into writing music for three independently moving voices would have been a daring exercise. For all that the structure of his piece sounds somewhat familiar—a moving, melismatic melody line atop the droning voices below—we can hear Albertus testing the limits of the expanded polyphonic form, inviting dissonance in the middle voice where we expect only unsophisticated consonance. In our imagined scenario, Albertus might have traveled those centuries with all his twelfth-century prejudices and biases intact, but he would nonetheless be a medieval maverick, willing to seek out innovation and energy in new and unorthodox places. We may therefore imagine that perhaps the performance of his own groundbreaking “Congaudeant catholici” would sufficiently distract Albertus from the surprises of the twenty-first century. Proud of his innovation, he would bask in his unexpected dissonance, and then he would recognize—perhaps with a frisson of surprise—the techniques of his own era in Betinis’ “Jerusalem Luminosa.” The opening monophonic alleluia—all the women in unison on a chant melody—would sound quite familiar, as would the two-voiced reiteration of the same theme, with the altos holding down the drone beneath the sopranos’ chant. The piece then spirals off into an ecstatic game of harmonic leapfrog, but it never loses touch with those medieval cornerstones. Albertus, one of the forefathers of modern music, would feel at home in the first two phrases of Betinis’ twenty-first-century piece, and in that moment, our time travelers would indeed speak the same language.

So much of medieval music history is about language and attempted communication that imagining the meeting of our hypothetical time travelers isn’t a wholly frivolous idea. The advent of polyphony called for new ways to communicate, for as music progressed beyond the monophonic plainchant of the early church, singers could no longer reliably learn everything by ear. The concurrent spread of Christianity added to the problem of faithful transmission; if the liturgy needed to be sung the same way in each of the far corners of Christendom, the musicians would need a consistent way to notate their new pieces.

Medieval music is therefore significant not only for its polyphonic innovations but also for its creation of a system of musical notation. Modern notation was codified in the early eleventh century, and the manuscript for “Congaudeant catholici,” for example, reflects many of the new conventions: Notes are arranged relative to one another on a lined staff, and different voice parts are clearly indicated on different staffs or even in different colors of ink. The handwriting is archaic and the rhythms seem unclear, but this is still recognizably—and singably—music.

For all that Albertus and Betinis might have been able to speak clearly to one another’s polyphony across an eight-hundred-year gulf, theirs was not the only approach for the musicians working within that time span. Indeed, debates about the morality of polyphony raged until the sixteenth century, when extreme factions at the Council of Trent proposed banning polyphonic singing—along with professional musicians and organs—for fear that the independently moving parts would distract from the sacred text. Thomas Tallis (c. 1505–1585), whose homophonic psalm tunes seem quite distinct from the melismas of “Congaudeant catholici,” knew well the shifting loyalties required of early church musicians, and his musical genius was undoubtedly matched by a keen political savvy. Tallis served as a high-ranking church musician under several different—and vastly divergent— English monarchs, tailoring his music to suit the prevailing political and religious trends of each reign and remaining in favor with each successive ruler. A devout Catholic, Tallis was nonetheless a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I, whose Anglican reign discouraged the liturgical polyphony that had been popular under Mary I. Tallis’ psalms—written in 1567 as a set of nine for the first Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury—reject entirely the florid Catholic polyphony he had employed during Mary I’s reign, relying instead upon vernacular English and clear, open homophony.

Although the psalm tunes remained obscure for generations after their composition, they have lately enjoyed a renaissance: Ralph Vaughan Williams used the Third Tune as the eponymous theme in his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, providing us with both a handy example of the continued links between early modern and contemporary music and one of our favorite symphonic pieces. Samuel Barber (1910–1981), who shares his birth year with the premiere of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia, clearly saw no need to embellish on the early modern themes from which Vaughan Williams took inspiration. Instead, his “Easter Chorale,” also titled “Chorale for Ascension Day,” picks up neatly where Tallis left off four centuries earlier. Indeed, the continuity is so seamless that we can segue directly from Tallis’ Third Tune into Barber’s “Easter Chorale,” traversing the centuries in a single page turn. For Barber, the stripped-down homophony that Tallis employed to curry favor with puritanical Anglicans serves here simply to highlight the grandeur and exaltation of the piece’s text and occasion, as the “Easter Chorale” takes its secondary title from its original purpose: Barber composed the work in honor of the April 1965 dedication of the central tower at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. The text, written by Pack Browning (1940–), who was then a graduate student at Berkeley, celebrates both Christ’s resurrection and the natural world’s return to springtime activity. The poem is sufficiently vibrant and evocative as to require very little embellishment from Barber’s music; instead, Barber treats the text reverently, allowing the varying intensity of his music to reflect the moods of the poem. Interestingly, the piece’s inherent exaltation is keyed to one of today’s literal high points: the “Alleluia!” refrain marks the first moment on the program at which our voices reach fortissimo, celebrating a very different but equally valuable kind of ascension.

If Albertus and Betinis illustrate one form of early music and Tallis and Barber build upon another, then Francis Poulenc (1899–1963) neatly straddles both options. His “Tristis est anima mea,” the fourth and final movement of Quatre motets pour un temps de pénitence, merges melismatic flourishes with unadorned chant, resulting in a chillingly dramatic mélange. In contrast to Barber’s “Easter Chorale,” which celebrates the purely triumphant moment of the resurrection, Poulenc’s “Tristis est anima mea” is in a different mode, spotlighting Christ in the moments before his execution. Poulenc makes effective use of text painting to heighten the drama: after the opening soprano solo peals upward in true melismatic fashion, the full choir comes in with hushed urgency, imploring the listener to escape before the executioners arrive. As the narrator gets closer to admitting the dreadful truth of his fate—“You will take flight, and I will go sacrifice myself for you”—the four choral lines become more frantic and disjointed, with dissonant runs trading off between voice parts. Once the terrible pronouncement has been made, however, calm settles, and an objective narration steps in with chant-like simplicity. Nevertheless, this quiet resolution cannot disguise the enormity of the moment, and the piece closes with its complexity intact: the baritones, now serving as the narrator, ascend on uneasy arpeggios while the rest of the choir shimmers on delicately inverted chords. This is resignation, not resolution, made more dramatic by the use of very old techniques to tell an even older story.

To achieve similar dramatic intensity, Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) took a different approach for his Концерт для хора, or “Choral Concerto.” The text here is equally powerful: Rachmaninoff features the Kontakion for the Dormition, the traditional prayer for the feast day commemorating the death—or “falling asleep,” hence “dormition”—resurrection, and ascension to heaven of Mary, the “Theotokos” or “God-bearer.” The prayer seems like an obvious candidate for loud proclamation and exaltation, but Rachmaninoff focuses most of the choir’s energies on more intimate, intensely concentrated gestures. As we saw with Tallis and Barber, this kind of simplicity spotlights the otherwise-subtle nuances of text and voice, allowing the singers to both celebrate and grieve the departed Theotokos. Interestingly, medieval composers were not the only artists who faced censorship from anxious church officials: Rachmaninoff’s “Choral Concerto” was never published in his lifetime, because the slight changes he made to the traditional kontakion caused the piece to be banned by the Russian Orthodox authorities.

An even subtler, gentler form of dormition prayer comes via “In Pace” by William Blitheman (1525–1591). Here, the text is a prayer for the narrator himself; the calm with which the poem invokes the poet’s perpetual slumber is reminiscent of Christina Rossetti’s famous “Rest,” which glorifies a “stillness that is almost Paradise.” Blitheman, however, does not let the mood of the text act as a soporific; instead, he cleverly combines several early musical elements without allowing the junctures between the genres to overwhelm the piece. Although the bulk of the piece is set as a traditional four-part motet, the phrases are interwoven with interjections of plainchant. The chants fill the interstices between the choral phrases, and the piece ends not with the expected motet resolution, but with yet more chant—a reminder, perhaps, that all things must end as they began. In that spirit, the second half of today’s program also begins with chant.

Maurice Duruflé (1902–1986) makes his medieval inspirations clear in his title: Quatre motets sur des thèmes grégoriens are indeed based upon Gregorian themes, with the original chant melodies woven into the choral settings. Such technique is typical of Duruflé, whose Requiem also relies upon familiar liturgical chant, and as a result the four-part choral pieces never stray far from their medieval chant roots. Just as the clear melody lines show the influence of the earliest polyphony, the extended sections of mixed meter clearly stem from the days before bar lines and standardized rhythmic notation.

Our two anonymous medieval carols highlight a different tradition, providing examples of the non-liturgical music of the period. “Orientis Partibus,” a three-part ditty written in France around 1200, is a cheerful mockery of the traditional “O Magnum Mysterium.” Instead of celebrating the “great wonder” of lowly animals being present for the birth of Christ, “Orientis Partibus” simply celebrates a lowly animal: “an ass, handsome and most strong.” The jaunty, interweaving parts are an early example of a profane—that is, non-sacred-––conductus, liturgical versions of which would have been sung while holy texts were being carried to the lectern. “Agincourt Carol,” which dates from 1415, serves an entirely different purpose: in describing King Henry V’s unexpected and bloody victory over the French at Agincourt during the Hundred Years War, it works as a kind of early journalism, narrating the battle and its aftermath for those who remained at home (as long as they could understand the words).

“Douce Dame Jolie,” originally written by Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300– 1377) in the fourteenth century, rounds out our secular medieval programming. Machaut composed prodigiously, and his secular works center almost entirely on the three formes fixes—the ballade, rondeau, and virelai—dictating the rhythmic and rhyming structure of poems and music. “Douce Dame Jolie” is a virelai, a dance-like setting with a pattern of recurring rhymes. Our version, arranged by baritone Jordan Rock, pays homage to the dance origins of the genre in the insistent rhythmic interjections behind Machaut’s melody line. Jordan also provides us with slightly more text painting than Machaut’s original tune had made possible: the narrator, crazed with passion, begs his beloved to let him die rather than suffer further. The tone clusters that build in intensity throughout the third verse suggest that the narrator may be wishing for something other than to end his life, even though he does claim to be “without base thoughts.”

As an heir to the troubadour tradition of poetry and music, Machaut supplied music for many of his poems, but Charles d’Orléans (1394–1465) focused his output solely on poetry. Imprisoned in England after being captured at the battle of Agincourt, d’Orléans wrote most of his poems while in captivity. As a nobleman—indeed, he was heir to the French throne, which contributed to England’s desire to keep him in custody—he was afforded relative comfort during his twenty-four-year captivity, and he became friendly with his captors. Interestingly, all of his poems are in French in the traditional ballade and rondeau forms, suggesting that his learned fluency within the English nobility did not outweigh his French cultural heritage.

Charles Debussy’s (1862–1918) settings of three disparate d’Orléans poems honor their mixed medieval and early modern origins: the hemiolae in “Dieu! qu’il la fait bon regarder” remind us of the rhythmic instability in chant, the thrumming choral pulse in “Quand j’ai ouy la tambourin” serves as a vocal version of the percussive tambourin, and the quartal harmonies prevalent in “Yver, vous n’estes qu’un vilain” hearken back to medieval idealization of the interval of a perfect fourth. Returning to sacred text, Zoltán Kodály’s (1882–1967) “Jézus és a kufárok” relies similarly upon medieval techniques. Like Debussy, Kodály focuses heavily upon the quartal harmonies so revered by medieval composers. Text painting also returns to the fore; as the Biblical text describes the chaos and confusion of the interrupted market scene, the independent voice parts scurry up and down sixteenth-note runs, instigating a kind of call-and-response cacophony.

We close with Franz Biebl’s (1906–2001) “Ave Maria,” an entirely different kind of call-and-response. Biebl takes his cue from the medieval tradition of antiphonal choirs, in which the two choirs would have been arranged spatially along the cruciform arms of the nave of a church, the better to reflect the sacred significance of their music. Like Blitheman, Biebl interjects chant into his polyphony, here using the Angelus—Mary’s encounter with the angel Gabriel—alongside the traditional Ave Maria text. Biebl’s “Ave Maria” has achieved canonical status in contemporary choral repertoire, bringing these medieval echoes to yet another generation of singers.

It is these echoes and traces that make medieval music’s legacy so poignant. Modern music owes its development to the medieval composers who defied their church employers for the sake of writing polyphony; they risked termination—or worse—when they insisted upon integrating their new techniques into the church’s traditions. Ironically, however, the fears of the church elders may yet have been realized: the original efforts to ban polyphony or classify it as demonic music stemmed from a fear that increasingly sophisticated music would distract from the liturgy, gaining primacy over the sacred text. In a way, that’s exactly what has happened: the experiment of polyphony succeeded, and pieces like “Congaudeant catholici” are known and sung now not for their sacred text but for their musical interest. The musical frames that were once vessels for their holy words have become sacred in their own right, venerated by generations of musicians who worship this shared culture of intricacy and enlightenment. The words, as it turns out—and as Albertus and Betinis could have told us—are immaterial. The music is what sustains us.