An Early Music Monday post for my friends celebrating Chanukah! Renaissance sacred music includes more than just Christian liturgies. Salamone Rossi was a celebrated composer and court musician, and also a devout Jew. This article is from a few years ago (so the performance info is out of date), but the synopsis about Rossi is excellent!
A Renaissance Composer, Actively Jewish When That Wasn’t Easy
I’m in NYC this week for an Eton Choirbook project with Vox Vocal Ensemble. Want to know more about the Eton Choirbook? Early Music Monday (with the help of Wikipedia) is here for you!
The Eton Choirbook (Eton College MS. 178) is a richly illuminated manuscript collection of English sacred music composed during the late 15th century. It was one of very few collections of Latin liturgical music to survive the Reformation, and hence is an important source. It originally contained music by 24 different composers; however, many of the pieces are damaged or incomplete. It is one of three large choirbooks surviving from early-Tudor England (the others are the Lambeth Choirbook and the Caius Choirbook).
The Choirbook was compiled between approximately 1500 and 1505 for use at Eton College; its present binding dates from the mid 16th century. 126 folios remain of the original 224, including the index. In the original, there were a total of 93 separate compositions; however only 64 remain either complete or in part. Some of the 24 composers are known only because of their inclusion in the Eton Choirbook. John Browne has the most compositions (10), followed by Richard Davy (9) and Walter Lambe (8).
The Eton Choirbook (Eton College MS. 178) is a richly illuminated manuscript collection of English sacred music composed during the late 15th century. It was one of very few collections of Latin liturgical music to survive the Reformation, and hence is an important source.
Robert Parsons: A master of polyphonic writing, successor to John Sheppard and mentor to William Byrd, who died tragically in his mid-30s. Have a listen to his gorgeous Ave Maria.
One last Early Music Monday of celebration before the season of Advent begins! Clearly Lassus had no problem with festivity - he even based an entire mass on a song about good wine!
In addition to being a giant of an organist and composer, J.S. Bach was the youngest of eight children, and he had seven children with his first wife and thirteen with his second…
Not only do the sibyls show up in the Requiem mass, they’re also on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Pagan priestesses? In a Christian chapel in the Vatican?
“Dies irae, dies illa… teste David cum Sibylla.”
Day of wrath, that day, … as David witnessed with the Sibyl.
Wait … who exactly was this Sibyl? And why does she show up in the Requiem mass but not anywhere else in scripture or the liturgy? Early Music Monday continues with part 2 of Sacred or Secular this week!
The sibyls were oracles in Ancient Greece. The earliest sibyls, according to legend,[1] prophesied at holy sites. Their prophecies were influenced by divine inspiration from a deity; originally at Delphi and Pessinos. In Late Antiquity, various writers attested to the existence of sibyls in Greece, Italy, the Levant, and Asia Minor.
The English word sibyl (/ˈsɪbəl/ or /ˈsɪbɪl/) comes — via the Old French sibile and the Latin sibylla — from the ancient Greek Σίβυλλα (Sibulla).[2] Varro derived the name from theobule ("divine counsel"), but modern philologists mostly propose an Old Italic[3] or alternatively a Semitic etymology.[4]
The first known Greek writer to mention a sibyl is Heraclitus, in the 5th century BC:
The sibyls were oracles in Ancient Greece. The earliest sibyls, according to legend, prophesied at holy sites. Their prophecies were influenced by divine inspiration from a deity; originally at Delphi and Pessinos. In Late Antiquity, various writers attested to the existence of sibyls in Greece, Italy, the Levant, and Asia Minor.
It’s Requiem season, so this week’s Early Music Monday takes a peek at the Dies Irae chant. Not only is it one of the most frequently used melodies in all of western classical music, the text walks a very fine line between sacred scripture and pagan imagery… but more about that next week!
Dies irae (Ecclesiastical Latin: [ˈdi.es ˈire]; "the Day of Wrath") is a Latin sequence attributed to either Thomas of Celano of the Franciscans (1200 – c. 1265)[1] or to Latino Malabranca Orsini (d. 1294), lector at the Dominican studium at Santa Sabina, the forerunner of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum in Rome.[2] The sequence dates from at least the thirteenth century, though it is possible that it is much older, with some sources ascribing its origin to St. Gregory the Great (d. 604), Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), or Bonaventure (1221–1274).[1]
It is a Medieval Latin poem characterized by its accentual stress and rhymed lines. The metre is trochaic. The poem describes the Last Judgment, trumpet summoning souls before the throne of God, where the saved will be delivered and the unsaved cast into eternal flames.
It is best known from its use in the Requiem (Mass for the Dead or Funeral Mass). An English version is found in various Anglican Communion service books.
Dies irae (Ecclesiastical Latin: ; "the Day of Wrath") is a Latin sequence attributed to either Thomas of Celano of the Franciscans (1200 - c. 1265) or to Latino Malabranca Orsini (d. 1294), lector at the Dominican studium at Santa Sabina, the forerunner of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum in Rome.
An unsolved mystery for Early Music Monday - who murdered Jean-Marie Leclair? Was it the ex-wife or his nephew?
Jean-Marie Leclair l'aîné, also known as Jean-Marie Leclair the Elder (10 May 1697 – 22 October 1764),[1] was a Baroque violinist and composer. He is considered to have founded the French violin school. His brothers Jean-Marie Leclair the younger (1703–77), Pierre Leclair (1709–84) and Jean-Benoît Leclair (1714–after 1759) were also musicians.
Leclair was born in Lyon, but left to study dance and the violin in Turin. In 1716, he married Marie-Rose Casthanie, a dancer, who died about 1728. Leclair had returned to Paris in 1723, where he played at the Concert Spirituel, the main semi-public music series. His works included several sonatas for flute and basso continuo.
In 1730, Leclair married for the second time. His new wife was the engraver Louise Roussel, who prepared for printing all his works from Opus 2 onward. Named ordinaire de la musique by Louis XV in 1733, Leclair resigned in 1737 after a clash with Guidon over control of the musique du Roy.
Jean-Marie Leclair l'aîné, also known as Jean-Marie Leclair the Elder (10 May 1697 - 22 October 1764), was a Baroque violinist and composer. He is considered to have founded the French violin school. His brothers Jean-Marie Leclair the younger (1703-77), Pierre Leclair (1709-84) and Jean-Benoît Leclair (1714-after 1759) were also musicians.
“He literally peed on his boss and showed up to work drunk all the time and he never lost his job. How good do you have to be as an organist/composer to behave like that?!”