Early Music

Gesualdo’s Tenebrae Responsoria: Madrigali Spirituali

by

Four hundred years after it was written, the music of the Italian late Renaissance composer, Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613), still sounds shockingly avant-garde. Gesualdo’s madrigals and sacred works are filled with rule-bending harmonic innovations which, in the words of Aldous Huxley, add up to “a kind of musical no-man’s land.” In the final years of his turbulent life, Gesualdo wrote a twenty-seven part setting of the Responsoria, liturgical texts for Catholic evening services for …

Read more

Jacobus Gallus’ “Mirabile Mysterium”: A Late Renaissance Christmas Motet

by

The late Renaissance composer, Jacobus Gallus (1550-1591), also known as Jacob Händl, was born in what is now Slovenia and traveled throughout the Bohemian lands of the Holy Roman Empire. His prolific output included more than 500 works, both sacred and secular. Gallus’ five-voice motet, Mirabile mysterium, was first printed in 1586. The text describes a mystical alchemy which is expressed in the motet’s wild dissonances and wandering chromaticism. It is “a …

Read more

Orlando Gibbons’ Three Royal Fantasies for Viols: Sit Fast

by

The music of the English composer, Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625), bridges the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. Based in Cambridge and then at the Chapel Royal for much of his life, Gibbons became organist at Westminster Abbey in 1623. He enjoyed the patronage of King James I and his successor, Prince Charles. In addition to writing liturgical music and keyboard pieces, Gibbons developed the late English madrigal, creating such famous works as The …

Read more

Josquin’s Missa L’homme Armé, “Agnus Dei”: Brilliant Renaissance Polyphony

by

Eight Lines, Steve Reich’s 1979 minimalist masterpiece, sounds nothing like the Renaissance polyphony of Josquin des Prez (c. 1450-1521). As I pointed out last week, Eight Lines is the music of twentieth century American capitalism with its repetitious advertising and slick popular music. Other commentators have noted obvious links between Reich’s minimalism and the circular music of Asia, such as the Balinese gamelan. Yet, Steve Reich has been deeply influenced by the music of Pérotin and …

Read more

Tallis’ “Lamentations of Jeremiah”: Holy Week in Renaissance England

by

The English Renaissance composer Thomas Tallis wrote the Lamentations of Jeremiah in the 1560s for the liturgy of Maundy Thursday. At the time, musical settings from the Book of Jeremiah were common in England during the Christian Holy Week. The texts, which lament the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple by the Babylonians, held significance for Roman Catholics amid the turmoil surrounding the rise of Protestantism. The Lamentations were written during the early years of …

Read more

Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis”: Ghosts of the English Renaissance

by

Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis is filled with ghosts. Composed in 1910, this haunting single-movement work for string orchestra develops from a melody written nearly 400 years earlier by the English Renaissance composer, Thomas Tallis. Tallis’ hymn melody, one of nine written in 1567 for the Archbishop of Canterbury, is tinged with a sense of quiet mystery and lament. With continuous harmonic and metric shifts, it feels mysterious …

Read more

Three English Phantasies: Music of Vaughan Williams, Purcell, and Britten

by

The fantasia is a genre which spans more than four hundred years of English music. It flowered in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, with the viol consort music of composers such as William Byrd, John Jenkins, and Henry Purcell. Emerging from the word fancy, these compositions are free in form and feature an intricate, polyphonic dialogue between instruments. A predecessor to sonata form, the fantasia grew out of madrigals and vocal motets. Twentieth …

Read more