Purcell and Byrd - fantasias and consort songs

These program notes were written by Elise Groves and Shirley Hunt for a program of viol fantasias by Henry Purcell and consort songs of William Byrd. The concert was presented by The Henry Purcell Society of Boston in collaboration with Sonnambula on October 5, 2018.

William Byrd (c. 1540-1623) probably received his early musical training in the Chapel Royal, studying with Thomas Tallis who would become his very close friend. Returning to London after working in Lincoln, Byrd became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1572 and was named Joint Organist of the Chapel, a title he shared with Tallis. In 1575, Queen Elizabeth I granted Byrd and Tallis a patent and monopoly on the printing and marketing of part-music and lined music paper. Their first publication was naturally dedicated to the queen. Having the support and favor of the ruling monarch was essential for Byrd’s success because his personal beliefs put him in direct opposition to the crown.

Any discussion of Byrd must take into account the religious and political upheaval of the time, for Byrd was a Catholic in a vehemently Protestant nation. Fortunately, Elizabeth I tolerated his “seditious” beliefs even though others were executed for sharing them. As with many things in history, making something illegal does little to discourage it from flourishing. Byrd eventually moved from London to Stondon Massey. Here his creative energies, protected by the benevolence of his patrons and an order from the Queen herself, turned to the music of the Catholic liturgy, writing Latin motets, three mass settings, and the Gradualia - polyphonic settings of all the propers for an entire church year - all designed for secret celebrations of the mass in private homes and performance by soloists or small ensembles, rather than large choirs. The texts of his motets were intended to be messages to the Catholic faithful, with themes of the Babylonian captivity, or last words of martyrs, or other scriptural texts that could be read with a double meaning.

Though Byrd is known now primarily for his sacred music, his output is incredibly vast, covering almost all of the genres of his time. Unlike sacred songs, which are limited by the requirements and texts of the liturgy, secular songs provided composers with a very broad world of themes and ideas to explore. “Consort song” generally refers to a uniquely English genre of a piece for solo voice accompanied by instruments, frequently a viol consort. Unlike the madrigal, which used various compositional techniques to vividly illustrate the meaning of the words, in a consort song the music and the text have a much different relationship. The sung line exists as an equal partner in the polyphonic texture. The words are set plainly, with limited word painting. Though in description that makes the consort song sound rather austere, this texture allows for even more expressivity on the part of the performers and a clearer delivery of the meaning of the text to the audience.

This austerity in particular is what made the consort song such an effective genre for setting devotional poetry, as well as laments and elegies. O Lord, how vain is a beautiful setting of a somber text, not intended for a church service, but still sacred in nature – more likely intended for private performance and devotional use.

In angel’s weed was an elegy written for Mary, Queen of Scots after her beheading in 1587. Mary was a first cousin (once removed) of Elizabeth I, and had been married to Francis II of France until his death in 1560. She returned to Scotland, remarried, but was eventually forced to abdicate the Scottish throne and sought refuge in England. Mary was Catholic, and many English Catholics supported her as the legitimate heir to the English throne instead of Elizabeth I. Mary spent 18 years under house arrest in England before being found guilty of plotting to assassinate Elizabeth I. The word “weed” in this context (and later in Ye sacred muses) simply means “clothing”.

Perhaps the best known of these elegies is Ye sacred muses, composed after the death of Thomas Tallis in 1585. After a few lines of poetic imagery, Byrd sets aside text device and artistic formality to express plainly his own deep grief over the loss of his mentor and close friend with the simple yet devastating line “Tallis is dead and music dies.”

The consort song was not only used for somber texts – Ambitious love, Though Amaryllis dance in green, and The nightingale all have the familiar themes of success and failure in romantic pursuits common to most secular genres of the Renaissance. While Byrd generally avoided madrigals, he recognized a marketing opportunity and reworked many of his consort songs into a more madrigal-like form, adding text to the instrumental parts for the publication of Psalms, Sonnets, and Songs in 1588. This allowed these pieces to be performed both by consorts with soloist (as he had intended originally) but also by madrigal enthusiasts.

Byrd’s tendency to use texts with multiple meanings extended to his secular consort songs as well. On the surface, My mistress had a little dog appears to simply be a tale about a favorite pet who met an untimely end, followed by the idea of what would happen if the animals put the offending human on trial. It is possible, however, that Byrd was actually referring to the beheading of Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex. Devereux was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I, but also a Catholic who was eventually executed for treason after a very public trial. In the context of this song, “coneys” are rabbits, Appleton Hall was the home of one of Byrd’s patrons, and the gallows at Tyburn were the main place of execution for London until the late 1700s.

Any list of “most celebrated English composers” would certainly include both William Byrd and Henry Purcell. Though essentially a century apart, Purcell knew Byrd’s works very well – in fact he had copies of many of Byrd’s pieces including the magnificent Ne irascaris in his personal library.

Relatively little is known about the life of Henry Purcell, despite the widespread recognition he enjoys today. Born about 1659 on the eve of the Restoration of the English monarchy, the young Purcell also received his early musical training as a chorister at the Chapel Royal. When his voice changed in 1673, Purcell was appointed assistant to John Hingeston, an organ-builder, viol player, and composer who was responsible for the maintenance of the royal keyboard and wind instruments. From 1674-1678, Purcell dutifully tuned the organ at Westminster Abbey, and in 1677 he succeeded Matthew Locke as court composer for Charles II’s string orchestra. In 1679 Purcell succeeded John Blow as organist of Westminster Abbey, and in 1682 he received a further appointment as one of three organists of the Chapel Royal.

Over the course of about two weeks in the summer of 1680, Purcell produced an astonishing set of Fantasias for viol consort, composed in three, four, and five parts. These remarkably intricate pieces dazzle listener and player alike with virtuosic counterpoint, surprising harmonic shifts, pangs of pleading dissonance, and cascading fugal material. Moments of poetic homophony are also interspersed amidst these endlessly inventive episodes. Purcell manages to invert, reflect, augment, and superimpose thematic material in a way that expands all previously known limits. (Somehow, I feel the 21st century listener should be invited to make a connection here to Bach’s Art of the Fugue, and perhaps even to the Op. 20 and Op. 33 Quartets of Joseph Haydn – all works that exhibit unparalleled mastery via four independent voices.)

Some speculate that these Fantasias were a set of compositional exercises, an extension of Purcell’s enthusiastic study of English and Italian counterpoint. It is highly unlikely that these works were related to Purcell’s activities at court; by this time, consort music was falling out of fashion, and many would have thought Purcell’s fixation on the idiom to be rather backward-looking. If the Fantasias of Purcell were performed at all during his lifetime, it would have been in private, under highly personal circumstances, not anything like tonight’s highly visible ticketed performance at St. Paul’s!

And yet, there is something so special and remarkable about this facet of Purcell’s output that we feel it must be shared; we find ourselves inspired by the challenge of presenting this very private music in a concert setting, where we have the chance to bring out the many contrasting qualities these pieces display. As a reminder, Purcell produced these profoundly sophisticated pieces when he was just 21 years old. We can only wonder, what would he have gone on to create had he lived past 36 years of age? What other musical forms would he have exhausted with the mastery exhibited in these Fantasias?

Based on a five-bar ground bass, the serene Evening Hymn is one of Purcell’s most beautiful devotional songs. This anthem was published in Henry Playford’s 1688 collection Harmonia Sacra as a setting of a devotional text by Bishop William Fuller (1608-1675). This text, while intended to be sacred, lends itself well to both sacred and secular interpretations. Tonight, we close our program with a version for soprano and viol consort arranged by Fretwork, a superb consort of viols based in England. In doing this, we follow in the tradition of Byrd – rewriting madrigals as consort songs and vice versa to suit the situation and the performers at hand. We have every confidence that both Byrd and Purcell would have approved.

Consort Songs

How did composers set secular poetry before the “art song” developed in the 19th century? Consort songs were one way! Read up on them here and then come hear Sonnambula and I for The Henry Purcell Society of Boston’s concert on Friday evening!

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A consort song was a characteristic English song form of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, for solo voice or voices accompanied by a group of instruments, most commonly viols. Although usually in five parts, some early examples of four-part songs exist. It is considered to be the chief representative of a native musical tradition which resisted the onslaught of the italianate madrigal and the English lute ayre, and survived those forms' brilliant but short-lived ascendancy (Brett 2001).

In contemporary usage, the term was confined to a number of songs for four voices accompanied by the standard mixed consort of six instruments, found in Teares or Lamentacions of a Sorrowfull Soule: Composed with Musicall Ayres and Songs, both for Voyces and Divers Instruments by William Leighton, published in 1614, but was first used in the modern sense by Thurston Dart (Brett 2001).

William Byrd is recognized as the composer whose adoption and development of the consort song established its musical importance. He regarded it as a standard means to set vernacular poetry (Brett 2001).

A consort song was a characteristic English song form of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, for solo voice or voices accompanied by a group of instruments, most commonly viols. Although usually in five parts, some early examples of four-part songs exist.

Dowland's "A pilgrimes solace"

These program notes were written by Elise Groves and Karen Burciaga for a program of selections from Dowland’s “A Pilgrimes Solace” for voices, viols, and lutes presented by Long & Away, a consort of viols on March 24, 2018.

English lutenist John Dowland (1563-1626) spent nearly half of his life working and traveling in Europe and chasing an elusive position with the musicians of the English royal court.  He first moved to France at age 17 in the service of the English Ambassador to the French King. After returning to England, Dowland was involved with musical entertainment for Queen Elizabeth, though he did not have an official position.  On one of these occasions - the Queen’s visit to Sudeley Castle in 1592, a scene was prepared in which My heart and tongue were twinnes was performed by ‘one who sung and one who plaide.’  Encouraged by this success, Dowland applied for a position as one of the royal lutenists in 1594.  He was unsuccessful (though no one was actually hired) and decided to return to the Continent, intending to travel to Italy and study with Luca Marenzio.

He went first to Wolfenbüttel to the court of the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg.  Then he, along with a group of musicians from that court, traveled to Kassel to the Landgrave of Hesse.  Eventually Dowland continued onward to Italy while the others returned to Wolfenbüttel, along with a letter from the Landgrave to the Duke:

“[Dowland] is a good composer.  If, as Your Grace writes, he has belittled your lutenists, and has scorned them in any way, he apologizes most humbly and sincerely for it.”  

Once Dowland reached Florence, he became acquainted with a group of English Catholics living in exile who were conspiring to overthrow Queen Elizabeth and put a Catholic back on the English throne.  While Dowland had been raised as a Protestant, he converted to Catholicism while in France. At this point, he must have realized the magnitude of the risk he was taking. His trip abroad was intended to improve his reputation so he could obtain an English royal appointment.  Being linked to treasonous expats was unlikely to help, so he quickly abandoned his plan to study with Marenzio and returned to Kassel. He also sent a letter to one of his English patrons in which he confessed his bitterness over the rejection by the royal court, and then explained everything that had happened in Italy, even naming names, in hope of getting back in the good graces of the Queen.

In 1596 Henry Noel encouraged Dowland to return to England, saying that the Queen herself had been asking about him and wishing for his return.  Thinking that Noel would assist him in obtaining a court position, he returned to England to discover that Noel had died. Dowland commemorated his patron with the Lamentatio Henrici Noel and also published The First Booke of Songs, to great success.  In 1598, after failing again to join Queen Elizabeth’s musical establishment, he was hired by King Christian IV of Denmark.  Dowland completed The Second Booke of Songs and The Third and Last Booke of Songs while in Denmark.  He returned to England briefly in 1603-1604 to see about obtaining a court position with the newly crowned James I (whose wife, Queen Anne, was the sister of Christian IV).  He dedicated Lachrimae or Seaven Teares to Queen Anne, but was unsuccessful once again and went back to Denmark.

Dowland’s last published book, A Pilgrimes Solace, was published in 1612 shortly after he returned to England from his fourteen-year stint in Denmark.  His music was well-known at this time; the books of songs were constantly being reprinted, his solo lute music was in the repertoire of most advanced players, and many of his pieces had been arranged either by him or by his contemporaries (Byrd, Morley, etc.) for other instruments and groupings.  Dowland’s name appeared in theatrical works, proving that he was well-known and well-respected as a composer and a musician, even after so many years abroad.

In contrast to his success and reputation, Dowland wrote cruelly of his fellow musicians, attacking in particular ‘simple Cantors, or vocall singers’ who excel in ornamentation but are ignorant of theory, as well as young ‘professors of the Lute’ who do not respect their elders, and ‘divers strangers from beyond the seas’ who claim the English ‘have no true methode of application or fingering of the Lute’.  In particular, he singled out Tobias Hume, who claimed that the lyra viol was equal to the lute for both solo repertoire and accompaniment.

These attacks contain a contain a certain amount of “get off my lawn” along with the appearance that Dowland was lashing out at anyone and anything, likely because of his deep unfulfilled desire to obtain an English court position.  He wrote frequently of the unfairness with which he had been treated, and one can see how his frustration over this issue was expressed in his music. Frustrations about the inconstancy of women or deep mourning over the wrongs one had experienced (both real and imagined) have always been common poetic topics, but these, along with the popularity of the cult of melancholia, gave Dowland ample space to vent his feelings as he saw fit.  Certainly rivalries, criticism, rejection, and general frustration were as known to musicians then as they are now, but it would seem that what we describe as “professionalism” may not have been one of Dowland’s virtues.

In any case, sometimes the squeaky wheel gets the grease.  In 1612 an extra position was created increasing the number of court lutenists from four to five.  This position was given to Dowland, finally granting him his long-sought English royal appointment at the age of 49.   

A Pilgrimes Solace follows the pattern set by his earlier Bookes of Songs or Ayres and Lachrimae, all containing 21 or 22 songs, and all of which were “table-books” meant to be placed flat on a table with the musicians gathered around all sides. Like his previous books, this music can be played by any number and combination of voices and instruments (Dowland recommends viols and lutes). In contrast, though, this remarkable collection breaks his previous pattern and offers four very distinct styles of music: strophic, dance-inspired songs on the subject of love; mournful Italianate solos; somber contrapuntal works on religious themes; and allegorical masque-like songs.

In pieces such as Disdaine me still and Stay time a while, we hear of cold-hearted ladies and spurned lovers, heartfelt pleas and frustrated hopes. These works are clearly based on Renaissance dance forms, many of them triple-time galliards such as Shall I strive, which we perform along with its instrumental counterpart from Lachrimae (Henry Noels Galliard). The boisterous coranto Were every thought an eye presents singers with the challenging task of fitting all the text into a very intricate, upbeat rhythm! Next in the collection are several solo songs in a more modern Italianate character, all quite woeful in mood. Set for solo voice, treble viol, and continuo, Goe nightly cares is one example of the “new” declamatory way of setting text that English composers were only just beginning to warm to in the first decades of the 17th century.

Perhaps the emotional core of A Pilgrimes Solace, and of this evening’s performance, are several religious texts set for four voices.  We have chosen to vary the instrumentation within the trilogy (Thou mightie God) to highlight different textures and moods within each part. These heartfelt pieces employ daring harmonies, long phrases with unexpected suspensions, and imitation between voices, as is clearly heard in the opening of When Davids life. Also in this group are In this trembling shadow with its wrenching opening and closing harmonies, and If that a sinners sighes, which we present as a solo song.

The final pieces of the collection are dramatic tunes, some jovial and some melancholy, possibly for use at masques or court entertainments rather than home music-making. All feature gods and allegorical figures, with a story set in 1-3 verses followed by a “Conclusion” that drives home a moral point. My heart and tongue were twinnes, published in A Pilgrimes Solace even though it had been written much earlier, is in this group, even though it explores the familiar subjects of music and love.

We chose to supplement these wonderful works with a few selections from Dowland’s other publications. Our opening piece, Cleare or Cloudie, comes from The Second Booke of Songs or Ayres of 1600, which followed shortly after his highly popular and influential First Booke.  This volume was also the first appearance of his hit song “Flow My Tears” which has inspired generations of composers; indeed Dowland himself composed seven complex instrumental settings of the tune and published them in Lachrimae or Seaven Teares. From this seminal work we offer Lachrimae Amantis (“Lover’s Tears”), John Langtons Pavan, Mrs Nichols Almand and the aforementioned Henry Noels Galliard.  

No concert of Dowland’s works could be complete without hearing some of his lute music. Tonight we present The Lady Laitons Almane paired with My Lord Chamberlaine his Galliard, which was composed “for two to plaie upon one Lute”; we have left it to our lutenists to decide the best course of action.

The closing piece of this evening’s program, I shame at mine unworthines, comes from the second edition of a celebrated and enormous collection of verses penned by Sir William Leighton called Teares or Lamentations of a Sorrowfull Soule, which he compiled for Prince Charles in 1614 apparently while in debtor’s prison! The fifty-five works include settings for voices and lutes by famed composers of the period including Byrd, Weelkes, Gibbons and others. Dowland contributed this and one other devotional song to the collection, making these his last two published pieces.  Though Dowland only set the first of nine stanzas, we’ve chosen to include Leighton’s more uplifting final verse to end on a more hopeful note.

Prière - 17th-century French music for voices and viols

These program notes were written by Elise Groves, Anne Legêne, and James Williamson for a program of French sacred music for voices and viols presented by Tramontana and Long & Away, a consort of viols in November 2014 and June 2015

The inspiration for Prière came in the summer of 2011, when Elise and Hilary first performed a portion of Charpentier’s magnificent Litanies de la Vierge as part of the International Baroque Institute at Longy.  We could not be more thrilled to present this program of the music of Charpentier, Lully, Dumont, and Marais – all composers associated with the court of Louis XIV.

Marc-Antoine Charpentier received his early training from the Jesuits in Paris before venturing south to study with Carissimi in Rome.  Upon his return to Paris in 1670, he entered the employ of Marie de Lorraine, known as “Mademoiselle de Guise”, a cousin of Louis XIV, as a composer and haute-contre.  Her household included one of the largest private musical establishments in France, and he remained in her service until her death.  In 1683 he entered the competition for four quarterly appointments as sous-maîtres of the royal chapel, a position that Dumont would go on to win.  Unfortunately Charpentier became ill and dropped out of competition after the first round.  After the relationship between Lully and Molière soured, Molière began collaborating with Charpentier on revivals of earlier plays as well as new works, all the while carefully constructing their work to abide by the restrictions put in place by Lully in his monopoly on theatrical composition in France.  After Molière’s death, Charpentier continued writing for his company for almost two decades.  He also held appointments at several Jesuit institutions, and in 1698 was made maître de musique at the Sainte Chapelle on the Île de la Cité.

Litanies de la Vierge and Annunciate Superi were likely composed in the summer of 1684 for the musical establishment of Mademoiselle de Guise. The scores for those two pieces even contain the names of the singers employed in the Hôtel de Guise at the time of the first performances.  Mlle de Guise was an ardent admirer of Italian sacred music and a devout Catholic, and this no doubt influenced Charpentier’s compositional output and style. 

During his lifetime, Charpentier was drastically overshadowed by the overwhelming popularity of Lully.  Even after Lully’s death opened the doors for other French opera composers, the cult-like followers of Lully vehemently condemned anyone that may have been perceived as a threat to Lully or his ideals.  With the exception of a handful of airs from Circéand the full score of Médée, none of Charpentier’s music was published during his lifetime, and he remained virtually unknown until the late 20thcentury.

Henry Dumont was a Belgian composer, organist, and harpsichordist.  He, along with his brother, studied at the choir school in Maastricht and later the Jesuit college.  He became organist at the church of St. Paul in Paris in 1643 and held that post until his death.  In 1652 he was named harpsichordist to the Duke of Anjou, thus providing him with access to the French court.  In 1660 he entered the service of the queen, Marie-Thérèse, first wife of Louis XIV, as her organist.  Eight years later he became compositeur de la musique de la chapelle royale and finally in 1673, maître de la musique de la reine.  

The majority of Dumont’s surviving works are sacred vocal pieces, as one would expect of a composer who spent so much of his career in positions related to the church.  Dumont’s instrumental dances, including the sublime Allemanda Gravis, are found in his Meslanges à II, III, IV et V parties published in 1652.  French composers were slow to take up the Italians’ innovations in continuo accompaniment, preferring old-fashioned polyphony that worked so well in matched consorts of instruments.  By the 1650s, however, when Dumont was harpsichordist for the Duke of Anjou, tastes were beginning to change; his works are among the earliest French pieces published with figures in the bass. 

Jean-Baptiste Lully was born in Florence.  He was taken to France in 1646 as garçon de chambre and Italian teacher to Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans, another of Louis XIV’s cousins.  He became known in her court for his talent on the violin.  In 1652 he entered into court employment as compositeur de la musique instrumentale to Louis XIV, a position that involved writing music for the court ballets and dancing in them.  He was invited to join the Vingt-Quatre Violons du Roi, but was unimpressed with their lack of discipline.  He set up his own Petits Violons and trained them from 1656 to 1664.  Meanwhile, Lully was gaining fame as a composer of ballet. He was appointed surintendant et compositeur de la musique de la chambre du roi in 1661 and by 1662 was maître de la musique de la chambre.  Through the 1660s, Lully collaborated with Molière on a series of comedies-balletscombining spoken comedy with singing and dancing.  The chaconne from L’amour Médecin, one such comedie-ballet, dates from 1665, roughly a decade before his wildly successful operas were performed. 

Lully was initially resistant to the idea of French opera, but when his rival Pierre Perrin fell from the favor of the king, Lully was quick to take up his post and soon was granted the exclusive right to compose and produce opera at the Académie Royale de Musique.  From 1673-1687 he produced a new opera nearly every year and fiercely protected his monopoly on that genre.  Lully ruled with an iron fist.  He imposed harsh limits on his rivals, preventing them from doing anything that might have threatened his own success.  He insisted on “military precision” in his orchestra, and was adamantly intolerant of added ornamentation by either instrumentalists or singers.  His greed, ambition, and ruthless plotting against other composers and musicians he perceived to be threats resulted in numerous enemies.  His violent temper caused problems with the musicians in his employ.  However, he paid his performers extremely well, and even guaranteed them earnings outside the opera as long as they were not working for any of his rivals.

In the 1680s, mirroring the preferences of the court, and in a desperate attempt to regain his former status with the king, whose tastes had turned away from lavish entertainment, Lully focused his attention on sacred music.  Lully wrote relatively few sacred works, but the petits motets, three of which will be performed on this program, are a unique hybrid of Italian and French tastes. They were most likely composed for the nuns at the convent of the Assumption in rue Saint-Honoré.  In 1687, while conducting a performance of his Te Deum before the king, he struck his foot with his conducting cane and subsequently died of gangrene.

Marin Marais received his initial musical training as a chorister at the parish of St. Germain-l’Auxerrois from 1667 until 1672, where his teachers included members of the Couperin family.  In his late teen years he also studied for a time with the eminent gambist St. Colombe, an episode in his life that inspired the largely fictional book and film Tous les Matins du Monde.  His fame spread far beyond the borders of France, where he was chamber musician to Louis XIV, and played in and later conducted the Opéra orchestra.  Marais studied composition with Lully and remained loyal to Lully for his whole career. The finest viola da gamba player of his time, he published 5 books of viol compositions, a total of 596 pieces grouped into 39 suites, some of them for three viols.  Some are easy to play, some fiendishly difficult.  Beautifully engraved, they are still being re-published in facsimile, as one could not wish for a more pleasing, elegant, and nicely laid out edition.  Marais gives fingering, bowing, and ornament indications, which still make these books extremely valuable as teaching material, besides being the absolute summit of typically French baroque viol music. 

The music for three viols on tonight’s program comes from his fourth volume of viol music, published in 1717.  This volume is organized in three sections: easier solos, quite virtuosic solos which include a number of his most famous works, and finally two suites for three viols, one in D and the other in G.  The Caprice in G opens the second suite.  It is in two sections, the first is lush and chromatic while the second is a brilliantly virtuosic fugue.  The three pieces in D major come from the middle of the first suite.  The Allemande, which was no longer dance music in France by the eighteenth century, moves between grandeur and tenderness.  The Sarabande features luscious soaring lines and the Petit Paysane is a short, rousing vignette depicting a country festival.  The combination of three bass viols is uniquely sonorous and Marais demonstrates his mastery of writing for the instrument throughout these pieces.