The
Principal’s Music Series at St. Michael’s College
Sing Praise
Upon the Lute and Viol
The Musicians
In Ordinary for the Lutes
and Voices
present
Motets with
Symphonies
Fr. Madden
Auditorium, Carr Hall
St. Michael’s
College
Oct. 24, 2014
Lecture
7:30PM, Concert 8PM
Sinfonia
Terzo Tuono from Op. 22 Biagio
Marini (1594-1663)
Stabat
Mater Giovanni
Felice Sances (c.1600-1679)
Sonata Prima Giovanni
Batista Fontana (d. c. 1630)
Preludio
2do Giovanni
Girolamo Kapsberger (d. 1651)
Vocem jucunditatis Alessandro
Grandi (c.1580-1630)
Canzon Seconda Giovanni
Gabrieli (1557-1617)
Preludio 3zo Kapsberger
O Quam tu pulchra Grandi
Canzon Quarta Gabrieli
O vos omnes Grandi
Canzona II from Op. 8 Marini
Sinfonia Quinto Tuono from Op. 22 Marini
Confitebor tibi ala francese Claudio
Monteverdi (1567-1643)
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, in 2012 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 Shakespeare Society of America, the
Renaissance Society of America, the Shakespeare Association of America,
Grinnell College, the Universities of Alberta, Toronto and at California at San
Diego, 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 BMus 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 an anthology
by Indiana University Press and collaborated with Sylvia Tyson on the companion
recording to her novel, Joyner’s Dream.
Patricia Ahern has a BA and BMus from Northwestern University, MMus from
Indiana University, and performer diploma from the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland.
She taught baroque violin at the Freiburg Conservatory and Oberlin’s Baroque
Performance Institute, and has given masterclasses at McGill, Wilfrid Laurier,
York and Grand Valley State Universities, and the Universities of Windsor,
Wisconsin and Toronto. She has concertized on five continents and performed
with Milwaukee Baroque, Ars Antigua, Chicago Opera Theater, Kingsbury Ensemble,
Aradia, I Furiosi, Newberry Consort, Musica Pacifica, and the Carmel Bach
Festival. Tricia has recorded for Sony, Naxos, and Analekta, and joined
Tafelmusik in 2002.
Eleanor Verrette began her studies on violin
in Toronto with Gretchen Paxson and Aisslinn Nosky, going on to study viola in
Montréal with Pemi Paull and Anna-Belle Marcotte at McGill University. She graduated
from McGill University in 2012 with a Bachelor's in viola performance. She appears regularly with the
Musicians In Ordinary, and is featured on recent album releases by acclaimed
folk-rock artists Lakes of Canada and Corinna Rose. She has also performed with
Aradia Ensemble and Montréal singer-songwriter Ari Swan, and plays vielle as a
founding member of the Pneuma Ensemble.
Kerri McGonigle is the Artistic Director of
the Academy Concert Series. Recipient of the Margarita Heron Pine String Prize
and the Beryl Barns Graduate Scholarship, Kerri graduated with a Master of
Music degree in cello performance from the University of Alberta. While
studying in Paris, she won Premier Prix with unanimous distinction in
violoncello and chamber music from the Gennevilliers Conservatory. Having
completed an Advanced Certificate in Baroque Performance with Tafelmusik
through the University of Toronto, Kerri is based in Toronto and performs
regularly as a soloist, recitalist, chamber musician and orchestral cellist.
Kerri spends her days running after and cuddling her beautiful 16-month old
son, practicing cello while he naps – thankfully he is a great sleeper!
In
1620 Monteverdi wrote to his opera librettist explaining why he couldn’t
possibly get away to Mantua. Apart from his duties at St. Mark’s Church,
Venice…
‘there is the Most Illustrious Primicerius, for whom
every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, I make music in a certain oratory of his,
to which half the nobility come.’
This
‘Primericus’ was Marc’Antonio Cornaro, from a family that included doges,
queens and cardinals. Between him and the ‘half the nobility’, had Monteverdi
applied to the Toronto Arts Council for these exclusive performances he would
not have been ticking the boxes to obtain extra points for promoting art music
in ‘at-risk neighbourhoods.’
In
1628 the governing council of the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bologna,
where Alessandro Grandi, formerly Monteverdi’s second-in-command at St. Mark’s,
was now maestro di capella, issued a memo that tells a different story.
‘Since in winter Vespers of feasts are sung at a
time when few can attend, the majority still being at dinner, music is made to
an empty church; the deputies propose that winter services should be put
forward half or three-quarters of an hour to give the nobility and the
townsfolk time to be able to come; it would be a good thing if the whole of
Vespers were sung, with some motet to draw the people in and uplift them to
devotion, particularly as so much is spent on the music that it ought to be of
profit to all.’
The
governing council seems to have been eager, then, to disseminate the spiritual
benefits to be reaped from listening to music. However, upon his arrival at his
new gig Grandi did an inventory of Santa Maria’s music library which has
survived. Though they liked Grandi’s music enough to hire him, the library is
full of Palestrina generation ‘da
capella’ music rather than the new small scale and drama driven baroque
style with and without instruments. Did Santa Maria engage Grandi to update
their music program or were Grandi’s books of motets for one to three voices ‘con sinfonie’ composed more for and
consumed more by the great and the good at their ‘certain oratories’? Or
perhaps both as the great and good on the church council wanted to give to the
townsfolk the spiritual thrills and chills that the baroque style shared with
opera and which they had access to.
The
peripatetic Biagio Marini did much to spread the baroque style north of the
Alps on his constant search for a better job. He worked as a bass singer and
violinist under Monteverdi at St. Mark’s for a time and much of his music was
printed in Venice. We insert one of his Sinfonie
as a ritornello into Sances’s Stabat
Mater, also published in Venice. Marini may have studied violin with
Giovanni Battista Fontana whose sonatas were also published there after his
death.
Monteverdi’s
Confitebor tibi ala francese has at
the top the suggestion ‘for five voices, or if you like, with four violins,
leaving the soprano voice solo’, which we do this evening.
Translations
Pianto della Madona – Stabat
mater
The
sorrowful Mother stood
beside
the cross weeping
while
her Son hung there.
She
whose grieving soul,
compassionate
and sorrowful,
a
sword pierced through.
O
how sad and afflicted
was
that blessed
Mother
of the Only-begotten!
She
who mourned and grieved
and
trembled to see
the
punishment of her glorious Son.
Who
is the man who would not weep,
if
he beheld the Mother of Christ
in
such suffering?
Who
could not feel sorrow,
contemplating
the devoted Mother
suffering
with her Son?
For
the sins of His people
she
saw Jesus in torment
and
subjected to scourging.
She
beheld her sweet Son
dying
forsaken
as
He gave up His spirit.
O
Mother, fount of love,
make
me feel the force of sorrow,
that
I may mourn with you.
Make
my heart on fire
with
love of Christ God,
that
I may please Him.
Holy
Mother, grant this:
fix
the wounds of the Crucified
firmly
in my heart.
Your
wounded Son,
who
deigned to suffer so much for me:
share
with me His punishment.
Make
me truly to weep with you,
sorrowing
with the Crucified,
for
as long as I live.
To
stand with you beside the Cross,
and
willingly share
in
your mourning, this I desire.
Virgin
of Virgins most renowned,
do
not be bitter to me now.
Make
me mourn with you.
Make
me bear the death of Christ,
make
me a sharer in His passion,
and
recall His wounds.
Make
me wounded with His wounds,
inebriated
by this cross,
for
the sake of your Son’s love.
Inflamed
and kindled
by
you, Virgin, may I be defended
in
the day of judgment.
Let
me be protected by the cross,
safeguarded
by the death of Christ,
and
nurtured by His grace.
When
my body dies,
grant
that my soul may be given
the
glory of paradise. Amen.
Vocem jucunditatis
Declare
it with the voice of joy, and make it known, alleluia.
The
Lord hath delivered His people, alleluia.
Christ
has ascended on high. He has led captivity captive. He has given gifts to
mankind, alleluia.
O Quam tu pulchra es
O
how beautiful you are, my love, my dove, my pretty one. Your eyes are like a
doves. Your hair is like a flock of goats.
Your
teeth are like a flock of ewes ready for shearing. Come from Lebanon, come my
love, my dove, my pretty one. O how beautiful you are, come. Arise my bride,
arise my delight, arise my immaculate one. Arise and come, for I am sick with
love.
O vos omnes
O
all ye that pass by the way, look and see if there be any sorrow like to my
sorrow.
Be
astonished, O ye heavens, at this; and ye gates thereof be very desolate.
Hear,
O heavens, and give ear, O earth, and be astonished because of this.
I
reared children, but they have rebelled against me, those I fed with manna in
the wilderness, they gave me gall for my food, and the water of salvation I
have given them, they, however, in my thirst, they gave me vinegar to drink.
Take
heed, therefore, and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow.
Hear,
O heavens, and give ear, O earth, and be amazed at this.
As
for the sons I exalted them, but they have rebelled against me.
I
have opened the sea before them, and they have opened my side with a spear.
I
scourged the Egyptian side on their account, and they scourged me and handed me
over.
Take
heed, therefore, and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow.
Confitebor tibi Domine
I
will praise thee, O Lord, with my whole heart; in the council of the just: and
in the congregation.
Great
are the works of the Lord: sought out according to all his wills.
His
work is praise and magnificence: and his justice continueth for ever and ever.
He
hath made a remembrance of his wonderful works, being a merciful and gracious
Lord:
He
hath given food to them that fear him. He will be mindful for ever of his
covenant:
He
will shew forth to his people the power of his works.
That
he may give them the inheritance of the Gentiles: the works of his hands are
truth and judgment.
All
his commandments are faithful: confirmed for ever and ever, made in truth and
equity.
He
hath sent redemption to his people: he hath commanded his covenant for ever.
Holy and terrible is his name:
The
fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. A good understanding to all that
do it: his praise continueth for ever and ever.
Glory
be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
As
it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
