St John’s Smith Square
The Gesualdo Six
4 August 2020
Programme Notes
Canon & Invention
The Gesualdo Six explore the roots of fugue in musical canons from Italy
can·on | \ ˈka-nən \
The repetition of a musical pattern after it has been sung or played once, although not always in the same octave or by the same instrument – Cambridge English Dictionary
Introduction
The earliest and most rigorous imitative technique in Western polyphony is the canon. However, it wasn’t until the 16th century that the word canon, meaning ‘law’ or ‘norm’, began to be used to describe the strict, imitative texture it creates. From the Middle Ages to the early Baroque, any kind of imitative musical counterpoints were called fugues, music famed for its mathematical intricacy, formality, symmetry, and variety.
Courts in renaissance Europe were meeting places for some of the greatest musicians from across Europe. The Court at Ferrara in Italy became a leading centre: many of the Franco-Flemish school passed through its gates and perhaps the most notable of these is Josquin. Tracing themes of pedagogy and patronage over 150 years, this programme features works by Ockeghem, Compère, Josquin, Mouton and Verdelot.
Programme Notes
Prenez sur moi
Johannes Ockeghem (c.1410 – 1497)
Canon: Three in One
The strictly imitative chanson, Prenez sur moi is a perfect example of a ‘stacked canon’: Ockeghem employs an exact repetition of the melody in three voices at close remove. The words playfully hint at this connection, “Take from me your example of love.” An experienced, if slightly melancholy voice is teaching those listening about the ups and downs of love, portrayed through slow ascents and fast downward turns. The Copenhagen source contains a single notated voice, with a famous enigmatic array of flats and sharps that was decoded in an article by Carl Dahlhaus in 1960. Having solved that particular puzzle, scholarship now focuses on what these pieces—those with highly compact notation and few clues on how to realise them—would have meant to singers not interested in creating a score, but in turning the written notation into sound. An influential composer, Ockeghem further developed the form in works such as his Missa Prolationum, in which he employs mensuration canon, where canonic voices move at different speeds.
Quis numerare queat – Da pacem
Loyset Compère (1445 – 1518)
Canon: Da Pacem cantus firmus
In Quis numerare queat, Compère uses the well known Antiphon pro pace, “Da pacem, Domine” as a canonic cantus firmus, building a compact five-voice texture around this mathematical framework. The text in the ‘free’ parts is a poem which hopes for the newly found peace between nations to endure. It is one of his ‘political’ motets which, in all probability, refers to war and peace conducted between French and Italian opponents: the third verse mentions “itali” in one source but “galle” in another. The composition is dominated by vertical components: chordal progressions with some lively motion and mostly syllabic text declamation. Listen to the tonal development in the opening of the second part, “Audivit ipse tamen populi”, which sounds like a rather astonishing prefiguration of much later functional thinking.
Salve Mater Salvatoris
Jean Mouton (c.1459 – 1522)
Canon in inversion
In Salve Mater Salvatoris, Mouton cleverly uses a mixture of imitation and canon to create a webbed texture in which all voices seem intimately connected. The two lowest-sounding parts are joined in canon at the fourth, which is inverted so that where one part descends, the other rises. This is a gorgeously florid motet, the first of two Marian works in this programme, and three penned by Mouton.
Illibata dei virgo nutrix
Josquin des Prez (1450/55 – 1521)
Solfège cantus firmus, acrostic
The centrepiece of this programme is perhaps also the most ingenious composition. Unlike many of his other works, Illibata dei virgo nutrix is securely attributed to Josquin and has attracted extended scholarly debate particularly with regards to its date of composition. It had long been considered to be an early work, perhaps composed in Milan around 1470, though recent papers have argued for a later date of composition, arguing that Rome in the 1480s was a more likely place for a new five-voice tenor motet with hallmarks of the Netherlandish style. In any case, this is a piece in which the composer responds to the text – unsurprising, since he may have written it himself. The text of the first part forms a downward acrostic of his name: Iosqvin des Prez. In the first stages of the work, Josquin delivers full cadences on G with the rhyme “-ix” to articulate the poetic structure. Later, where the lines employ enjambment, Josquin responds by abandoning long duets and dividing the musical phrases into short imitative groupings. The middle part is a cantus firmus on the syllables La mi la, whose vowels are the same as those in Maria – such a process is known as Solmization.
Qui ne regrettoit le gentil Févin?
Jean Mouton
Double canon
In 1512, Jean Mouton composed this brief chanson to honour his departed friend and colleague, Antione de Févin. Stylistically, Févin’s music is similar to Josquin's in its clarity of texture and design; Mouton parodies this in this chanson and also in a mass based on Fevin's motet, Benedictus Dominus Deus. In Qui ne regrettoit le gentil Fevin (“Who didn't mourn the gentle Fevin?”), the four voices create a texture which is completely derived from two notated parts. At the conclusion of the work, Mouton crafts an antiphonal motif (within the canon) to underscore the last phrase of the text: the hope that the departed man may come to paradise.
Dignare me laudare
Philippe Verdelot (1475 – 1552)
Canon: Four in One
Like Ockeghem’s Prenez sur moi, Philippe Verdelot’s Dignare me laudare is another ‘stacked canon’; the work features four voices singing the same melody, operating at the fifth above. It was included in Georg Rhau's print of 1545, Secundus tomus biciniorum, under the title “Da pacem Domine”. In the other extant sources of the work—an Attaingnant print (1534) and a Kriesstein print (1540)—the text appears as the motet “Dignare me laudare”.
Salva Nos, Domine
Jean Mouton
Canon: Two in One plainchant
To conclude the programme, we turn to a setting of words from the ancient service of compline: ‘Save us, O Lord, while waking, and guard us while sleeping’. Salva nos, Domine is a relatively late work from Mouton’s time at the French royal court. Despite its brevity, the work illustrates many of the hallmarks of Mouton’s style; the texture is full and continuous from the beginning, and there is an emphasis placed on the elegance of melody and richness of harmony. Four voices embed the chant, sung canonically in two parts, in sumptuously rich polyphony.
The Gesualdo Six
Owain Park – director
Guy James - countertenor
Andrew Leslie Cooper - countertenor
Joseph Wicks - tenor
Josh Cooter - tenor
Michael Craddock - baritone
Samuel Mitchell – bass
“Ingeniously programmed and impeccably delivered, with that undefinable excitement that comes from a group of musicians working absolutely as one.” – Gramophone, 2020
The Gesualdo Six is a British vocal ensemble comprising some of the UK’s finest consort singers, directed by Owain Park. Praised for their imaginative programming and impeccable blend, the ensemble formed in 2014 for a performance of Gesualdo’s Tenebrae Responsories in Cambridge and has gone on to perform at numerous major festivals across UK, Europe, Canada and Australia. Notable highlights include a concert as part of the distinguished Deutschland Radio Debut Series in 2018, and collaborations with the Brodsky Quartet, Luxmuralis, William Barton and Matilda Lloyd.
The ensemble often incorporates educational work into its activities, holding workshops for choirs and composers and giving concerts alongside local performers. The Gesualdo Six has curated two Composition Competitions, with the 2019 edition attracting entries from over three hundred composers around the world.
Videos of the ensemble performing a diverse selection of works filmed in Ely Cathedral have been watched by millions online. The group released their debut recording ‘English Motets’ on Hyperion Records in early 2018 to critical acclaim, followed by a festive album of seasonal favourites in late 2019, ‘Christmas’. The Gesualdo Six’s latest recording is an album of compline-themed music titled ‘Fading’.
The Gesualdo Six were St John’s Smith Square Young Artists in 2016, and are delighted to be returning as part of the Digital Exchange series.
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If you have enjoyed this programme, you may like to explore the following links:
The Gesualdo Six: https://www.thegesualdosix.co.uk/
The Alamire Foundation: https://alamirefoundation.org/en/
Laus Polyphoniae: https://www.amuz.be/en/polyphonyconnects/
Josquin des Prez discography: http://plainsong.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/PMMS-Josquin-des-Prez-Discography-2019.pdf