booklet1.pdf

(259 KB) Pobierz
MUSIC FOR COURT AND CHURCH FROM THE LATER MIDDLE AGES
The Spirits of England and France
GOTHIC VOICES
with PAVLO BEZNOSIUK violin
CHRISTOPHER PAGE director
HE FIRST SECTION OF THIS PROGRAMME explores the
remarkable sonorities of three- and four-part writing
during the last decades of the fourteenth century and
the first decades of the fifteenth.
Laus detur multipharia
6
is a curiosity in many ways, not least because it is a devotional
Latin
virelai;
the setting has a beauty touched by strangeness
that characterizes many French songs of the later 1300s—
note the hocketing passages and the surprising harmonic shift
which occurs at the end of the B section, first heard at the
words ‘Veritas monstratur hoRUM’, the latter reminiscent of
some
Ars subtilior
chansons such as
Joyeux de cuer
by
Solage. Pursuing the French song tradition beyond 1400, we
find that the substantial legacy of the composer Matteo da
Perugia includes the exquisitely decorous
Belle sans per
3
, a
song whose determinedly busy under-parts and unpredictable
sharps recall fourteenth-century textures such as that of
Laus
detur multipharia,
but whose consonant texture looks forward
to later works such as
Quant la douce jouvencelle
1
.
Quant
la douce jouvencelle
is one of the most beautiful of all early
fifteenth-century songs, with the high plainness which com-
posers of the 1420s and 1430s often sought.
We must turn to liturgical music to find the last and most
mature response of English composers to the developments of
the French
Ars Nova.
The two pieces from the Old Hall manu-
script
2
and
7
chosen here are among the most inventive
and successful compositions of their generation. The former is
by Cooke, of whom barely anything is known for certain, while
the latter is by an anonymous master of great skill (the
exceptional development of the second voice is noteworthy).
The two-part sections of these compositions have a rhythmic
flexibility which clearly owes much to French chansons of the
Machaut and post-Machaut generations, while their four-part
sections create full and striking sonorities without losing the
rhythmic verve which some composers (including, perhaps,
the composer of
Laus detur multipharia)
could only achieve by
allowing other controls to slip. As a final surprise, these
two Old Hall movements introduce a fifth part for their final
2
T
passages, creating either a blaze of sound or an exciting
clamour in which the parts seem to fight for supremacy.
The oldest layer of music in the second part of this
programme is provided by the conducti—settings of Latin
rhythmical verse. The monophonic
In Rama sonat gemitus
bt
reaches back to the 1160s, for it laments Thomas Becket’s
exile from England to France. As far as we may discern, the
traditions of monophonic Latin song were much the same in
both countries and this song could have been written in either.
Polyphonic styles were less influenced by the ‘Channel culture’
that historians have posited for England and France in the
thirteenth century; the three-voice setting of
Ave Maria
cl
,
for example, with its chains of triads, is composed in an
irredeemably English style.
Flos in monte cernitur
bs
is one
of the tiny handful of conductus texts with an erotic theme; this
is a point worth emphasizing for the ‘wine, women and song’
image which medieval Latin lyric has acquired, probably un-
der the influence of the celebrated collection known as the
Carmina Burana,
is quite false to the conductus repertoire.
The texts of
Deduc, Syon, uberrimas
bl
and
Presul nostri
temporis
bu
, important compositions which appear in the
major sources of conducti (including one from Britain), are
more representative of conductus poetry; the former attacks
the vices of the clergy, and particularly of the Papacy, the
‘head’ from which the canker spreads to the ‘limbs’ of the body
politic; the latter (whose poem is almost certainly incomplete)
appears to celebrate the achievements of a prelate.
Conducti such as
Flos in monte cernitur
and
Deduc, Syon,
uberrimas
were eventually eclipsed by a form that was new
and all the rage in Northern France from
c1220
onwards:
the motet. The rise of the motet initiated a change in taste,
especially in matters of rhythm, that was to have enormous
consequences for the development of medieval song. This can
be illustrated from the materials recorded here.
Deduc, Syon,
uberrimas,
for example, is performed in what was certainly its
original rhythmic style, that is to say each syllable is declaimed
to one perfect long (in terms of modern transcription, a dotted
crochet). This kind of ‘isosyllabic’ declamation virtually dis-
appeared with the rise of the motet, for motets employed the
constant alternation of long and breve values (crochet and
quaver) to be heard in
Virgo plena gratie
bp
and
Je ne puis /
Par un matin / Le premier jor / IUSTUS
bn
. The first layers of
motets were produced by devising words for the upper part(s)
of liturgical polyphonic compositions, or to sections of those
compositions. The earliest three-part motets to result from this
process were apparently the so-called ‘conductus motets’
such as
Virgo plena gratie
where both of the upper voices sing
the same text. By
c1250,
however, the motet idea had already
been carried to its limit in four-part composition such as
Je ne
puis / Par un matin / Le premier jor / IUSTUS;
even today these
pieces come across as audacious and almost aleatory com-
positions, the combination of three texted parts over the tenor
creating tangles of dissonance and a rush of vowel and conso-
nant colour.
The instrumental items, played here on a medieval fiddle,
are all
estampies.
These pieces are often performed today
using a battery of instrumental resources, including percus-
sion, in the belief that they are a form of dance music. From
the period when the
estampies
recorded here were written
down, however—that is to say
c1300—there
is evidence that
the
estampie
was especially associated with the solo fiddle,
and that the appeal of such pieces lay, in part, in the way they
commanded the attention of anyone who wished to follow
their intricate form. On paper, these melodies look simple
and formulaic; but therein lies the difficulty: there is so much
material shared between one section of an
estampie
and
another—or between one
estampie
and another—that the
performer must concentrate hard in order to etch the melody
without allowing one section to dissolve into another through
the medium of the shared material. According to Johannes de
Grocheio, writing
c1300:
‘The
estampie
is a melody having a
difficult structure of agreements … on account of its difficulty
it causes the mind of anyone who performs it—and of anyone
who listens to it—to dwell upon it, and it often diverts the
minds of the powerful from perverse reflection.’
CHRISTOPHER PAGE © 1994
Recorded in Boxgrove Priory, West Sussex, on 11–13 March 1994
Recording Engineer TONY FAULKNER
Recording Producer MARTIN COMPTON
Executive Producers JOANNA GAMBLE, EDWARD PERRY
P
Hyperion Records Limited, London, 1994
C
Hyperion Records Limited, London, 2007
(Originally issued on Hyperion CDA66739)
Front illustration: Two hybrids from a fourteenth-century English Book of Hours,
now in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, MS76, f, 87r.
The text shown includes part of Psalm 93 (Deus
ultionum Dominus)
alluded to in the last stanza of
Deduc, Syon, uberrimas
(track
bl
)
3
PART I The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
1
ANONYMOUS
Quant la douce jouvencelle
Quant la douce jouvencelle,
When the sweet young girl,
La tres gracieuse et belle,
The very gracious and fair one,
Celle dont suy amoureux,
The one I love,
Veult que me tiengne joyeux,
Wishes that I be glad,
Ne doy je obeir a elle ?
Should I not obey her?
Certes ouy, car c’est celle
Certainly yes, for she is the one
Qui son doulx ami m’apelle :
Who calls me her sweet friend;
Estre ne puis plus joyeux
I could not be more glad
Quant la douce jouvencelle,
When the sweet young girl,
La tres gracieuse et belle,
The very gracious and fair one,
Celle dont suy amoureux,
The one I love
Plaisir en moy renouvelle,
Renews delight in me,
N’autre amer je ne quier qu’elle ;
Nor do I seek to love any other than her;
Servir la vueil en tous lieux
I wish to serve her everywhere
A mon povoir de bien en mieulx,
As best I can, better and better;
Ma volanté si est telle.
That is my desire.
Quant la douce jouvencelle,
When the sweet young girl,
La tres gracieuse et belle,
The very gracious and fair one,
Celle dont suy amoureux,
The one I love,
Veult que me tiengne joyeux,
Wishes that I be glad,
Ne doy je obeir a elle ?
Should I not obey her?
Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris,
You sit at the right hand of the Father,
miserere nobis.
have mercy on us.
Quoniam tu solus sanctus.
For you only are holy.
Tu solus Dominus.
You only are the Lord.
Tu solus altissimus, Iesu Christe.
You only are most high, Jesus Christ.
Cum Sancto Spiritu,
With the Holy Spirit,
in gloria Dei Patris. Amen.
in the glory of God the Father. Amen.
3
MATTEO DA PERUGIA
Belle sans per
Belle sans per d’haulte douchour paree,
De bien, d’honour et de toute vaillance,
Je vous suppli, sans faire delayance,
Renvoiiés moy vers vo chiere contree,
Fair one without peer, adorned with exalted sweetness,
Virtue, honour and all worthiness,
I beseech you, without delay,
Send me towards your dear country,
Car bien savés, ma seule desiree,
Que soubgis sui de vo noble acointance,
N’en aultre part poroit estre fermee
Ma volanté, ce sachies sans doubtance,
For you, the only one I desire, know well,
That I bear allegiance to your noble courtship,
Nor could my desire be set
Anywhere else—know this for sure—
Ainsi seras jusques a ma finee
Par vous servir et faire obeissance,
Com doit amans par tres fine alliance.
Or faites donc que de brief soit m’alee.
But, until death, it will be
To serve you and do you homage
As a lover must with the most refined friendship;
Now make it so that my journey be short.
Belle sans per d’haulte douchour paree,
De bien, d’honour et de toute vaillance,
Je vous suppli, sans faire delayance,
Renvoiiés moy vers vo chiere contree.
Fair one without peer, adorned with exalted sweetness,
Virtue, honour and all worthiness,
I beseech you, without delay,
Send me towards your dear country.
2
COOKE
Gloria
Gloria in excelsis Deo
et in terra pax
hominibus bonae voluntatis.
Laudamus te. Benedicimus te.
Adoramus te. Glorificamus te.
Gratias agimus tibi
propter magnam gloriam tuam.
Domine Deus, rex caelestis,
Deus Pater omnipotens,
Domine Fili unigenite,
Iesu Christe,
Domine Deus, Agnus Dei,
Filius Patris.
Qui tollis peccata mundi,
miserere nobis.
Qui tollis peccata mundi,
suscipe deprecationem nostram.
Glory be to God on high
and on earth peace,
to men of goodwill.
We praise you. We bless you.
We worship you. We glorify you.
We give thanks to you
for your great glory.
O Lord God, heavenly king,
God the Father almighty,
O Lord the only begotten Son,
Jesus Christ,
O Lord God, Lamb of God,
Son of the Father.
You take away the sins of the world,
have mercy on us.
You take away the sins of the world,
receive our prayer.
4
4
MACHAUT
Ay mi ! dame de valour
Ay mi ! dame de valour
Que j’aim et desir,
De vous me vient la dolour
Qui me fait languir.
Alas! noble lady,
Whom I love and desire,
From you comes the sadness
Which causes me to languish.
5
ANONYMOUS
En cest mois de May
En cest mois de May gracieux
In this courtly month of May
Il faut faire amye nouvelle;
;
One should make a new friend;
nouvelle
Dieu m’en doint trouver une belle
God grant me to find a fair one
Sans le parler des envieux.
Without any carping from the jealous.
Il m’est avis ([et] qui di mieux?)
It seems to me (who has a better plan?)
mieux ?)
Que de prendre une telle qu’elle
That to take one such as her
En cest mois de May gracieux
Il faut faire amye nouvelle.
In this courtly month of May
One should make a new friend.
Tres douce creature,
Very sweet creature,
Comment puet vo fine doucour
How can your refined gentleness
Estre vers moy si dure,
Be so hard towards me,
Quant mon cuer, mon corps et m’amour
Since I have unswervingly given
Vous ay donné sans retour
Et sans repentir ?
Or me tenez en langour
Dont je criem morir.
Ay mi ! dame de valour
Que j’aim et desir,
De vous me vient la dolour
Qui me fait languir.
Et tout par amesure,
Gentil dame, pleinne d’onnour,
Sui je a desconfiture ;
Car onques ne quis deshonnour
Vers vous, ains ay sans sejour
Fait vo dous plaisir
Et feray sans mauvais tour
Jusques au morir.
Ay mi ! dame de valour
Que j’aim et desir,
De vous me vient la dolour
Qui me fait languir.
Mais vo douce figure,
Vo fine biaute que j’aour
Et vo noble faiture
Paree de plaisant atour
En plour tiennent nuit et jour,
Sans joie sentir,
Mon cuer qui vit en tristour,
Dont ne puet garir.
Ay mi ! dame de valour …
My heart, my body, and my love,
Without regret?
Now you hold me in a languishing state
Which I fear may be mortal.
Alas! noble lady,
Whom I love and desire,
From you comes the sadness
Which causes me to languish.
It does not accord,
Sweet and honourable lady,
that I be so distressed,
For I sought nothing dishonourable
To you but have always, without stinting,
Done your sweet pleasure,
And I will do so, without trickery,
Until death.
Alas! noble lady,
Whom I love and desire,
From you comes the sadness
Which causes me to languish.
But your sweet face,
Your refined beauty that I love,
And your noble person
Adorned with pleasing embellishment
Keep my heart in tears
Night and day, without feeling
any delight, and thus it lives in sadness
Whence it cannot be cured.
Alas! noble lady …
[Servir la vueil, et en tous lieux
[I wish to serve her everywhere,
Sans desplaisance et sans rebelle;
;
rebelle
Plaisant Acueil tousjours m’apelle
Without vexation or dissension;
Plaisant Acueil tousjours m’apelle
Vers Amours; nul ne porroit mieux.]
Pleasing Welcome always summons me
[I wish to serve her everywhere,
Vers Amours; nul ne porroit mieux]
Without vexation or dissension;
Towards Love; nobody can
summons me
Pleasing Welcome always
do better]
Towards Love; nobody can do better.]
En cest mois de May gracieux …
In this courtly month of May …
En cest mois de May gracieux …
In this courtly month of May …
6
ANONYMOUS
Laus detur multipharia
6
Laus detur multipharia
detur multipharia
praise
Let manifold
ANONYMOUS
Laus
Deo regi seculorum,
Laus detur multipharia
Qui per munera varia
Deo regi seculorum,
Mentes
munera varia
Qui per
illustrat suorum;
Nec in penis tormentorum
Mentes illustrat suorum;
Eius
in penis tormentorum
Nec
abest victoria.
Eius abest victoria.
In Costi regis filia
Veritas monstratur horum,
In Costi regis filia
Quam ponet inter lilia
Veritas monstratur horum,
Sponsus et rex supernorum.
Quam ponet inter lilia
Sponsus et rex supernorum.
Nobilis virgo regia
Katerina perfidorum
Nobilis virgo regia
Confutatrix egregia,
Katerina perfidorum
Cultum fugat paganorum,
Confutatrix egregia,
Dum vere philosophorum
Cultum fugat paganorum,
Superat collegia.
Dum vere philosophorum
Superat collegia.
Dantur igne sevitia
Judicis sacrilegorum,
Dantur igne sevitia
Sed conservat clemencia
Judicis sacrilegorum,
Dei corpora eorum.
Sed conservat clemencia
bodies.
Dei corpora eorum.
Be given to God, eternal king,
Let manifold praise
Who, by his
God, eternal king,
Be given to
diverse gifts,
Illuminates the minds of his chosen ones;
Who, by his diverse gifts,
Even in grievous torments
chosen ones;
Illuminates the minds of his
His victory does not pass away.
Even in grievous torments
His victory does not pass away.
In the daughter of King Costus,
Whom
daughter of King
and king
In the
the bridegroom
Costus,
Of the blessed places among the lilies,
Whom the bridegroom and king
The truth of these things is made
lilies,
Of the blessed places among the
plain.
The truth of these things is made plain.
The royal, noble virgin
Catherine who confounds [the pagan]
The royal, noble virgin
Before everyone, puts the
[the pagan sages]
Catherine who confounds
rite
Of the pagans to flight
the rite
Before everyone, puts
When she overcomes
Of the pagans to flight
The companies of philosophers.
When she overcomes
The companies of philosophers.
They are therefore given over
To the fire through the cruelty
They are therefore given over
Of
the fire through the cruelty
judge of blasphemies,
To
But
the judge of
of God preserves their
Of
the mercy
blasphemies,
But the mercy of God preserves their bodies.
5

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin