Sunday, March 24, 2013

The program, translations and notes for the next concert 7:30PM St. Basil’s Church, 50 St. Joseph St., St. Michael’s College, Mar. 25th 2013. (Map here)

THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. MICHAEL’S COLLEGE PRESENTS

Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater
The Musicians In Ordinary
Hallie Fishel-Soprano, Charlotte Burrage-Mezzo-Soprano
Led by Christopher Verrette

Victoria’s Tenebrae Responsories
St. Michael’s Schola Cantorum
Directed by Michael O’Connor

St. Basil’s Church, Mar. 25th 2013

Concerto Grosso Op. 6, No. 3 Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713)
Largo-Allegro-Grave-Vivace-Allegro

Tenebrae Responsories Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548–1611)
Eram quasi agnus-Animam meam dilectam-Caligaverunt oculi mei-Recessit pastor noster

Stabat Mater Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736)

The Musicians In Ordinary
Named after the singers and lutenists who performed in the most intimate quarters of the Stuart monarchs’ palace, The Musicians In Ordinary for the Lutes and Voices dedicate themselves to the performance of early solo song and vocal chamber music. Soprano Hallie Fishel and lutenist John Edwards have been described as ‘winning performers of winning music’. A fixture on the Toronto early music scene for over 10 years, this year MIO became Ensemble in Residence at St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto They have concertized across North America and lecture regularly at universities and museums. Institutions where MIO have performed range from the scholarly to those for a more general public and include the Renaissance Society of America, Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies, Grinnell College, the Universities of Alberta and Toronto, the Kingston Opera Guild, Syracuse, Trent and York Universities and the Bata Shoe Museum. They have been Ensemble in Residence at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.

Christopher Verrette has been a member of the violin section of Tafelmusik since 1993 and is a frequent soloist and leader with the orchestra. He holds a Bachelor of Music and a Performer’s Certificate from Indiana University and contributed to the development of early music in the American Midwest as a founding member of the Chicago Baroque Ensemble and Ensemble Voltaire, and as a guest director with the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra. He collaborates with many ensembles around North America, performing music from seven centuries on violin, viola, rebec, vielle and viola d’amore. He was concertmaster for a recording of rarely heard classical symphonies for a recently released anthology by Indiana University Press, and most recently collaborated with Sylvia Tyson on the companion recording to her novel, Joyner’s Dream.

Mezzo-Soprano Charlotte Burrage is a graduate of the University of Toronto with her Masters in Voice performance as well as the University of British Columbia’s Opera Diploma program. In 2011/2012, Charlotte toured with Vancouver Opera in Schools as Hansel in their production of Hansel and Gretel. In July she performed Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater in Italy with Kevin Mallon. Other operatic credits include Dorabella (Cosi fan tutte) with David Agler in the Opera as Theatre program in Banff, Alberta, Principessa (Suor Angelica) and Cendrillon (Cendrillon) with University of British Columbia, and the Old Maid (The Old Maid and the Thief) with Triptych Opera. Charlotte performed with Bramwell Tovey and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in their traditional Christmas concert series, was a soloist with VSO and Conductor Arnie Roth in Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy and was the alto soloist in the Bach Magnificat BWV 243 with Graeme Langager at the University of British Columbia. In the fall of 2012 Charlotte toured as Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte with Jeunesses Musicales Canada. Most recently she has been accepted into the Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble studio.


1st Violins
Christopher Verrette, Elizabeth Loewen Andrews, Michelle Odorico

2nd Violins 
Kathleen Kajioka, Rezan Onen Lapointe

Violas
Emily Eng, Eleanor Verrette

Violoncello 
Laura Jones

Contrabass
Calum MacLeod

Organ
Lysianne Boulva

St Michael’s Schola Cantorum is an ad hoc group drawn from staff, graduate and undergraduate students, faculty at the University of St Michael’s College, and members of St Basil’s parish choir.

Michael O’Connor has been Director of Music at St Basil’s Church since 2010, and is an Associate of the Royal School of Church Music. He teaches in the college programs at St Michael’s and runs a weekly singing club on campus. His academic scholarship and practical music-making overlap in the theory and practice of liturgical music.

Soprano
Bernadette Domingo, Kara Dymond, Laurel-Ann Finn, Anna Lubinsky

Alto
Irene Chan, Brigid Elson, Irene Gaspar

Tenor
Adam Miceli, Marcos Ramos

Bass
Eric Charron, Christian McConnell

Arcangelo Corelli was born in Fusignano, spent his early career in Bologna, but spent most of his mature years, from at least 1675, in Rome. Here he was in the service of Queen Christina of Sweden, and later was engaged by Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili as his music master at a monthly salary of ten Florentine piastres, plus room and board for him, Matteo Fornari, his companion and violin student, and a servant at cardinal's palace. When Pamphili moved to Bologna in 1690 Corelli moved into the household of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, the 22-year-old nephew of Pope Alexander VIII (‘Nipote’, the root of our word ‘nepotism’, means ‘nephew.’) and great friend to artists. During this period Corelli also directed operatic performances in Naples. 

Though his output was fairly small, it is impossible to overstate the influence Corelli’s music had on his contemporaries. Roger North, writing in the early 18th century said Corelli’s sonatas, at least ‘cleared the ground of all other sorts of musick whatsoever’ and ‘are to the musitians like the bread of life’ and helped ‘convert the English Musick intirely over from the French to the Italian taste’. The Twelve Concerti Grossi, Op. 6 were revised by Corelli in his last years and published in Amsterdam in 1714, the remuneration for the print going to the forementioned Fornari. The collection contains eight concerti da chiesa and four concerti da camera, which have dance movements and all have a small ‘concertino’ group of first and second violins, violoncello and a chordal instrument, alternating with the ‘grosso’ group ‘redoubling’ the parts. 



Tomás Luis de Victoria was born in Avila, a younger contemporary of St Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582). He received his early musical education at the local cathedral before moving to Rome, where he was ordained priest and established himself as a foremost church musician. After twenty years serving a variety of Roman churches, he was called back to Spain to be chaplain to the Emperor’s sister. Victoria composed his Tenebrae Responsories in Rome for a series of Holy Week evening liturgies. Of the set of eighteen (published 1585), four will be sung in tonight’s concert. Drawn mainly from the prophets and psalms, the biblical words are placed in the mouth of Christ and his enemies, telling of his betrayal, suffering, and death. The final responsory, assigned for Holy Saturday, speaks of his descent into hell, breaking down the doors of the underworld, overthrowing Satan, and freeing Adam and Eve. Each responsory follows the same form: ABCB, where C is a trio for solo voices. Victoria’s music is spare, intense, and deeply felt. Responding to the drama of the Passion story, he paints pictures of innocence, desolation, tragedy, and treachery with a restrained palate and with the subtlest gestures.


Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was born in the Papal States and moved to Naples, by then an important centre of opera, at the tender age of 15. Here he became famous particularly as a composer of opera buffa, though he also wrote church music including a Mass, a Magnificat and, most famously in the 18th century, as well as now, his Stabat Mater. 

Traditionally it has been said that the Stabat Mater was commissioned by the Confraternità dei Cavalieri di San Luigi di Palazzo to replace, or ‘soup up’ a similar setting by Alessandro Scarlatti, their former maestro di capella, which uses only two violins, soprano and alto soloists, and continuo. Scarlatti’s setting was performed on every Friday in Lent. Pergolesi wrote the Stabat in the spa town of Pozzuoli where he was trying, unsuccessfully, to recover from tuberculosis. 

It is hard to tell how much the romantic tale of the young genius struggling to complete his masterwork as he coughed out his last breath played a part in the astonishing popularity the Stabat Mater had in the following decades. Bach adapted it for a German cantata, Alexander Pope wrote an ode to fit the music, versions for solo keyboard and even violin solo versions of the fugal movements were adapted. Perhaps it was the decline of castrato singers, particularly in church, in the early 19th century that inspired an arrangement for four-part male chorus. Certainly the 19th century operas on and a ‘biography’ of Pergolesi’s life contain much fiction. 

The Stabat Mater imports from the opera a direct and dramatic harmonic vocabulary which had a great influence on the Classical style of Mozart and Haydn.

It is hard to know what forces would have been deployed for the Baroque music you hear tonight. The prefatory material for the Corelli and information from eyewitness Georg Muffat tells us that we could even do the ‘orchestral’ Concerti Grossi as a ‘perfect little trio’ with two violins and a bass, as long as the violins played loud when in the sections when the orchestra was supposed to be there. But Corelli also directed an orchestra as big as 80 players. The vocal parts would probably have been performed by castrati in church in the 18th century but none is cut out to be a singer of that kind today. Pergolesi specifies  ‘primo choro organo contrabasso, secondo coro violoncello, leuto, contrabasso’ for the continuo of a Mass, and the archlute (arcileuto) was very popular in Rome and was used in the small concertino group.



Eram quasi agnus 
I was like an innocent lamb. I was led to sacrifice, and did not know. My enemies plotted against me, saying: “Come, let us put wood into his bread, and drive him from the land of the living.” All my enemies plotted evil against me. Cruel words they spoke against me, saying: “Come...”

Animam meam dilectam  
The life that I held dear I put into the hands of the unrighteous, and my inheritance has become for me like a lion in the forest. My enemy spoke out against me: “Come, gather together and hasten to devour him.” They placed me in a desolate wilderness, and all the earth mourned for me. For there was no one to acknowledge me or give me help. They rose up against me without mercy and did not spare my life.

Caligaverunt oculi mei  
My eyes were blind with weeping; for he that consoled me is far from me. Consider, all you people, if there is any sorrow like my sorrow. All you who pass along this way, take heed and consider.

Recessit pastor noster 
Our shepherd, the fount of living water, is gone, at his passing the sun grew dark: For even he is taken, who held the first mortal captive. Today our Saviour has burst the gates and bolts of death. The bounds of hell he has destroyed and overthrown the devil’s power. 

Stabat Mater
Duet
Stood the Mother grieving 
beside the cross, weeping 
while on it hung her Son.

Soprano Aria
He whose soul, sighing,
saddened and suffering, 
was pierced by the sword.

Duet
O, how sad and afflicted 
was that blessed 
Mother of an only Son!

Alto Aria
Who mourned and grieved, 
the pious Mother, looking at 
her glorious Child’s torment.

Duet
Who is he that would not weep 
if he saw the Mother of Christ
in such torment?

Who would not be saddened 
contemplating the Mother of Christ 
suffering with her Son?

For the sins of his people
she saw Jesus in torment 
and to the scourge subjected.

Soprano Aria
She saw her sweet offspring 
dying forsaken, 
while He gave up his spirit.

Alto Aria
O Mother, fountain of love, 
make me feel the power of sorrow,
that I may grieve with you.

Duet
Cause my heart to burn 
in loving Christ the God, 
that I may please Him.

Duet
Holy Mother, may you do this: 
of the Crucified one fix the wounds 
in my heart securely. 

Of your wounded offspring, 
who deigned to suffer so much for me, 
his pains with me share.

Let me sincerely weep with you
bemoan the Crucified, for as long as I live
for as long as I live.

Beside the cross with you to stand
and to join you in your weeping, 
this I desire.

Virgin of virgins most exalted, 
to me be not now bitter, 
make me with you to lament. 

Alto Aria
Cause me to bear Christ’s death, 
of passion make me to be a partner
and the injuries to recollect.

Let me be wounded with his wounds, 
let me by the cross be inebriated 
and your Son's blood.

Duet
Lest I burn, set afire by flames, 
by you, Virgin, may I be defended
on the day of judgment.

Let me by the cross be guarded 
by Christ's death armed  
and by His grace nurtured.

Duet
When my body dies, 
grant that to my soul is given 
the glory of paradise. Amen.


Sunday, March 17, 2013


Here's the program for the last concert in our Principal's Concert Series at St. Michael's College for the season, Ladies That are Most Rare with Justin Haynes, viola da gamba, and Katie Larson doing the pre-concert talk.

Charbonnel Lounge, University of St. Michael’s College, 81 St. Mary Street, 7:30 PM, Mar. 19th 2013.
Bernini's Apollo and Daphne. One verse of the first song thinks it's dreadful to be turned into a weather beaten tree for  the sake of chastity, one thinks it's great to be forever green. 

Coy Daphne fled/Chast Daphne fled John Danyel (1564-c1626)
Eies looke no more Danyel
From depth of grief (Ps. 130) Anon.
Lyke as the Lute delights Danyel

Delacourt Pavan Anon.
Lachrimae Pavan John Dowland (1563-1626)
The Turtle Dove John Coprario (c. 1570-1626)

Go lovely Rose  Henry Lawes (1595-1622)
Sweet stay awhile Lawes

Comus with his Revellers, by William Blake
From the heav’ns now I fly Lawes
The Queenes Masque. the first Anon.
Sweet Eccho Lawes
Cuperaree or Grayes inn Coprario
The first of the Temple Robert Johnson (1583-c.1634)
Sabrina Lawes
Countrey Dance John Jenkins (1592-1678)
Country Dance Davis Mell (1604-62)
Now my taske Lawes

Hero’s Complaint to Leander Nicholas Lanier (1588-1666)

Oh mee the time has come to part Anon.

Program Notes
‘Into a most delicate and pleasant garden they came, lead by the King, who ther with true curiosities had Crowned himself in making that place the Crowne of all pleasure…Music ther was of all sorts… “Certainly,” sayd Amphilanthus, “voices resemble the heavenly music most, soe they bee rare and perfect voices.”
“Stronge voices you seeme to like the best,” sayd the King, “and such are heer (I can assure you) in all parfection, and Ladys that are most rare in that faculty.”’
- from Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania

John Danyel was the brother of the poet and playwright Samuel, who is the author of the lyrics ‘Lyke as the Lute’ and probably ‘Eies look no more.’ John Danyel’s Songs for the Lute, Viol and Voice of 1606 is dedicated to Mistress Anne Greene, the daughter of a wealthy if not particularly well-pedigreed knight, Sir William Greene.  Danyel worked as a household musician for the Greene family.  A few lines from his verse dedication will make clear the function of the songs in the collection.  ‘To Mrs. Anne Grene… That which was onely privately composed,/For your delight, Faire Ornament of Worth,/Is here, come to bee publikely disclosed:/And to an universall view put forth.’ These songs, then, were written for Anne to enjoy, and probably sing in her lessons with Danyel.

Before he was engaged at court, Henry Lawes also worked as a household musician, for the more illustrious Egerton family.  His duties included teaching the daughters of John Egerton, the Earl of Bridgewater, to sing.  Lawes dedicated his Ayres and Dialogues of 1653 is to Alice and Mary Egerton, by then Countess of Carbery and Lady Herbert of Cherbury. The dedication says of the songs ‘most of them were composed when I was employed to attend to your Ladishipp’s education in musick’,  that is, some 30 years earlier.  Lady Alice performed and sang in Milton’s Comus, for which Lawes wrote the music, and in which he also sang. We perform some dances from other Stuart masques between the Comus songs, since the dances have not survived, and some contemporary ‘Country Dances’ called for in the text. Since ‘Sweet stay awhile’ precedes the Comus songs in Lawes’ autograph songbook, we can presume it was written when he was still teaching the girls.

Who would have sung Lanier’s Hero’s Complaint? We know that Lanier did himself, but the song is in soprano clef. Might Lady Mary Wroth (author of ‘Oh mee’) be depicting herself as one of the strong voiced ladies by having herself depicted with her theorbo, the accompanying instrument? (See front of the program.) There is much in her Urania that is autobiographical. Her aunt was Lady Mary Sidney (author of the Psalm), and the Lanier family, the Sidneys and the Herberts were bound up in complicated bonds of loves and patronage.