Recording date: 05/15/2003
Price: $12
Recorded in May, 2003, this CD presents a selection of Josquin's music ranging from Marian motets to secular music in Italian and French to the Missa Pange Lingua.
Program Notes
Good
evening, and welcome to The Music of Josquin Desprez. This may well be the
first all-Josquin concert ever in
In attempting to rectify this gap, at least here on our local level, we have
chosen to present for you a broad array of the genres in which Josquin worked.
Tonight you will hear some of Josquin’s most famous pieces, and some obscure;
you will hear motets, frottole, chansons, and a mass; you will hear pieces
structured upon secular songs, upon canons, and upon Gregorian chant; you will
hear the profoundly sacred and the rather naughty; and you will, we hope, end
up with a strong sense the artistry and versatility of this profound artist,
who stands in the eyes of many with Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and the other
greats of the Western canon.
Marian Motets: We open with what is
perhaps Josquin’s best-known work, the 4-voice Ave Maria. This piece demonstrates many of the typical qualities of
Josquin’s work: successive duets; occasional blossoming into full-ensemble;
carefully constructed imitative themes; special care for the text; and the use
of canon (in the triple-time section). It closes with a memorable homophonic
passage, which focuses all of the previous celebration of the events of Mary’s
life into a moving and personal prayer.
The 4-voice Salve Regina is a
double-canon based upon the chant antiphon, which the women sing for you before
we begin the motet. Josquin uses the chant in a subtle manner, paraphrasing it
in the alto, trailed by the soprano up a fourth, and supporting these principal
voices with a separate canon, also at the fourth, between the tenor and bass.
The resulting texture is a swirl of voices rising and falling with the contour
of the chant.
Ut Phoebi is a rarely heard motet in
which Josquin uses solfege puns throughout. The text is constructed so that
each line begins with an ever-augmenting sequence of solfege syllables. (For
this to be comprehensible to the modern listener, one must know that ut was only later replaced by the modern
do). The women sing the full text,
while the men extract the initial solfege syllables, performing them on the
prescribed pitches, but jogged off from each other by two beats (in time), and
by a perfect fourth (in pitch). When the entire 6-tone ascending scale has been
achieved, the process is inverted, the bass and tenor now descending through
the scale. The amazing thing is that, while strictly maintaining this take-no-prisoners left-brained structure, Josquin
manages to write profoundly expressive music; in this sense he reminds one of
Bach.
Italian Songs: Although he was
prolific in many genres, only three Italian songs survive which are thought to
be by Josquin; we perform all three for you tonight. Scaramella is based upon a secular sopng celebrating the exploits of fictional
character who goes off to war, with many alarms and excursions and a great many
borombos. In te Domine speravi is a piece which
lends itself to either a sacred or secular interpretation; in any case, the
speaker is lamenting loss and deprivation, and is now bereft of hope. Josquin
supplies plangent music to express this poem, full of suspensions and drawn-out,
longing lines. El grillo refers to the cricket, who
sings for love and not money. There is a (possibly apocryphal) tale that one of
the singers at the court where Josquin was working at the time he wrote this
piece was named Carlo Grillo. Since the duke was notoriously tight with money,
Grillo was often in fact forced to sing only for love (no cash).
Chansons: We present for you an array
of Josquin’s many chansons, progressing from three voices to six. Si j’ay perdu mon
amy was a well-known monophonic song, upon which Josquin constructed two
different settings. Tonight, our women perform the unadorned song, followed by
the men on the 3-voice piece, which uses a variant of the song in the tenor,
with some imitation in the other voices. In the distinctive final section, where
the melody falls in fast notes, all voices imitate to create a ‘waterfall’
effect. We follow this with the 4-voice setting, more succinct and perhaps even
more expressive, which again places the melody in the top voice, and involves
the other three voices in a tight imitative structure. Here the waterfall is
harmonized note-for-note.
Baisés moy is a typical Renaissance
love dialog, again based upon a previous melody. Here we have the young man
pleading for love (or whatever), and the young woman declining, in this case
because her mother wouldn’t approve. Josquin cleverly uses the tune against
itself at different pitch levels, creating a web of cadences and repeated
pleas.
Faulte d’argent is a tightly
constructed piece which shares many of the characteristics of a motet. There is
a literal canon (at the fifth) between two of the voices, while the other three
participate in the same melodic material. As the piece laments the lack of
cash, it builds to a plaintive pitch, before recapitulating the opening
material.
In the moving lament, Plaine de dueil, cast
in a woman’s voice, Josquin writes an exact canon between the top two voices,
and, as in Faulte d’argent, gives
imitative lines to the other voices. A special feature of this piece is the
fact that the canon has rests at the end of each phrase, giving the bottom
voices a chance to stretch and ‘exhaust’ the material until the canon collects
enough strength to continue.
Our final chanson, Petite camusette, is
a saucy ditty about Robin and Marion, who go into the woods to (ahem) fall
asleep. The structure here is strikingly lucid: In the center of the 6-voice
texture, a perfect canon between Alto 2 and Tenor, accompanied by two
additional near-perfect canons between (respectively) upper voices and lower
voices. The effect is spry and wry and delightful.
Missa Pange lingua: This mass is one
of Josquin’s most famous compositions. It is based upon a
As in all his music, in the Missa Pange
lingua Josquin is wonderfully sensitive to the expressive demands of the
text, making sound worlds which are in every case peculiarly appropriate to
express the relevant text. Among many passages, we have been particularly
struck by the swirling ‘spiral’ close to the Kyrie; by the alternately
celebratory and prayerful Gloria; by the special mood of the Crucifixus; by the
party-down feel of the Hosanna; and by the amazing finish to the last movement,
with its descending and diminishing cries of ‘Grant us peace’.
Thank you so much for coming to our concert tonight. We hope you enjoy The
Music of Josquin Desprez as much as we have enjoyed preparing it for you!
--Bob Worth
SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITYCHAMBER SINGERS
PRESENT
THE MUSIC OF JOSQUIN DESPREZ (ca.
Motets
Ave Maria
Salve Regina: Chant
Salve Regina à 4
Ut Phoebi radiis
Italian Songs
Scaramella: Monophonic song
Scaramella à 4
In te Domine speravi
El grillo
Three- and Four-Part Chansons
Si j’ay perdu mon amy: Monophonic song
Si j’ay perdu mon amy à 3
Si j’ay perdu mon amy à 4
Baisés moy: Monophonic song
Baisés moy à 4
Five- and Six-Part Chansons
Faultes d’argent
Plaine de dueil
Petite camusette
INTERMISSION
Missa Pange Lingua
Pange lingua: Chant
Kyrie
Gloria
Credo
Sanctus
Agnus Dei
Directed by Robert Worth
|
Shawna Anderson |
Isaac Gonzalez |
Ana Robinson |
Translations
Ave Maria
|
Ave
Maria, |
Hail
Mary, |
Salve
Regina
|
Salve Regina mater misericordiae: |
Hail,
o queen, mother of mercy: |
Ut Phoebi radiis
|
Ut
Phoebi radiis soror obvia sidera luna, |
As
the Moon, sister of Phoebus, rules with her rays the stars, |
|
Petri currere prora, |
As
it is the destiny of the Peter’s oar to steer one ship, |
|
Latius in numerum canit id quoque coelica turba, |
Everywhere
the heavenly host in verse sings this also, |
Scaramella
|
Scaramella va alla guerra |
Scaramella
is going off to war |
|
Scaramella fa la galla |
Scaramella
is out on a spree |
In te Domine speravi
|
In te Domine, speravi, |
In
Thee O Lord did I hope |
El
grillo
|
El grillo è buon cantore |
The
cricket is a good singer |
Si
j’ay perdu (à 3)
|
Si j’ay perdu mon amy |
If
I have lost my lover |
|
Il m’avoit iuré sur sa foy |
He
swore to me on his faith |
Si j’ay perdu (a 4)
|
Si j’ay perdu mon amy |
If
I have lost my lover |
Baisés moy
|
--Baisés moy, ma doulce amye, |
--Kiss
me, my sweet friend, |
Faute d’Argent
|
Faute d’argent, c’est douleur nompareille |
Lack
of money, it is sadness without equal |
Plaine de Dueil
|
Plaine de dueil et de mélancolye, |
Full
of grief and of melancholy, |
Petite Camusette
|
Petite camusette à la mort m’avez mis, |
Little
snub-nose, you’ve put me to death, |
INTERMISSION
Pange lingua: Chant
|
Pange lingua gloriosi |
Sing,
my tongue, |
|
Nobis datus, nobis natus |
Given
to us, born for us, |
|
In suprema nocte coenae |
On
the night of His last supper, |
|
Verbum caro, panem verum |
The
Word in Flesh makes true Bread |
|
Tantum ergo Sacramentum |
Then
let us prostrate and |
|
Genitori, Genitoque |
To
the Begetter and the Begotten, |
Missa Pange lingua
|
Kyrie |
|
|
Kyrie
eleison. |
Lord,
have mercy. |
|
Christe
eleison. |
Christ,
have mercy. |
|
Kyrie
eleison. |
Lord,
have mercy. |
|
|
|
|
Gloria |
|
|
Gloria
in excelsis Deo. |
Glory
to God in the highest, |
|
Et
in terra pax |
and
on earth peace |
|
hominibus bonae voluntatis. |
to those of good will. |
|
Laudamus
te, benedicimus te, |
We
praise thee, we bless thee, |
|
adoramus te, glorificamus te. |
we adore thee, we glorify thee. |
|
Gratias
agimus tibi |
We
give thanks to thee |
|
propter magnam gloriam tuam. |
for
thy great glory |
|
Domine
Deus, Rex coelestis, |
Lord
God, heavenly king, |
|
Deus
Pater omnipotens. |
God
the Father almighty. |
|
Domine
Fili unigenite, Jesu Christe. |
The
only-begotten Son, Lord Jesus Christ. |
|
Domine
Deus, Agnus Dei, |
Lord
God, Lamb of God, |
|
Filius
Patris. |
Son
of the Father. |
|
|
|
|
Qui
tollis peccata mundi, |
Who
takes away the sins of the world, |
|
suscipe deprecationem nostram. |
receive our prayer. |
|
Qui
sedes ad dexteram Patris, |
Who
sittest at the right hand of the Father, |
|
miserere nobis. |
have mercy upon us. |
|
|
|
|
Quoniam
tu solus Sanctus. |
For
thou alone art holy. |
|
Tu
solus Dominus. |
Thou
alone art the Lord. |
|
Tu
solus Altissimus, |
Thou
alone art most high, |
|
Jesu
Christe. |
Jesus
Christ. |
|
Cum
Sancto Spiritu |
With
the Holy Ghost |
|
in gloria Dei Patris. |
in the glory of God the Father. |
|
Amen. |
Amen. |
|
Credo |
|
|
Credo
in unum Deum, |
I
believe in one God, |
|
Patrem
omnipotentem, |
the
Father Almighty, |
|
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