Sunday 25 December 2016

An Impressive and Powerful Christmas Work

One of the greatest treasures of the English language is the wealth of beautiful poetry from different eras inspired by the story of Christmas.  Writers at all times from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century have set pen to paper and produced verse of high quality, drawing on different aspects of the Christmas story for their themes.

Among all these Christmas poems, the imperial pride of place must go -- I think -- to John Milton's majestic Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity.  Composed on a most unusual rhythmic and rhyme scheme, Milton's poem in 27 stanzas with a four-stanza introduction is not overly lengthy but in its scope and interweaving of multiple themes clearly foreshadows the more epic creations that would flow from his pen in years to come.  Nothing about this poem is quite so startling as the fact that Milton completed this work while still a university undergraduate.

Although the vivid imagery of the poem and its themes alike seem to me to cry out for musical illustration, no truly well-known composers have undertaken the task.  Certainly Vaughan Williams made magnificent use of six stanzas in two separate sections of his 1954 Christmas cantata Hodie (read about that work here:  A Christmas Miracle in Music).  But years earlier, back around the turn of the twentieth century, Scottish composer John McEwen produced a setting of symphonic scale, bearing the title of the poem.  He set most of the text in due order, omitting the four introductory stanzas and three more from the Hymn proper.

As far as anyone has been able to discover, this uniquely powerful and evocative music -- although written up in at least one contemporary musical journal -- was never performed or even heard until Scottish conductor Alasdair Mitchell recorded it in 1998 with Chandos Records, fifty years after the composer's death.

My first reaction on hearing this large-scale work was to feel regret that the man who created it never (apparently) got to hear it played and sung.  Despite that lack, the music seems to me to display an uncommon degree of assurance and sophistication such as might be expected from an older composer of much more experience.  This is the more startling when you realize that his two greatest works for the orchestra, the Three Border Ballads (reviewed here:  Unknown Scottish Romantic Music) and the Solway Symphony, still lay ahead of him when he composed this setting of Milton's verses.

I wanted to emphasize that point because what strikes me most of all is the strength of the structural organization in the different sections of McEwen's Ode, and his mastery of orchestration and colour as a means of underlying his view of Milton's words.  The very opening proves the point: a chilling orchestral introduction which effectively paints both the violent negative energy and the sheer coldness of the opening line of the poem, "It was the winter wild...."

Even more gripping is the extraordinary battle music in the sixth movement, and the powerful post-Wagnerian chromaticism of the seventh, reaching almost into the sound world of Schoenberg's monumental Gurrelieder. 

But in between these more dramatic moments are others of great lyrical beauty and repose: the moving pastoral vein of Nos. 2 and 3 or the gentle lullaby evoking the sleeping Christ Child in the final pages.  All these, and more besides, are skillfully drawn by the composer.

In some ways, the most startling moment for me comes in the sixth movement where McEwen sets the same stanzas used by Vaughan Williams in the exhilarating finale of Hodie.  But McEwen approaches the poetry from a completely different angle, and the words (as a result) sound brand-fire-new rather than old familiar friends.

The net effect of this entire work is very much a unified whole in spite of its division into numbered movements, a single mighty arch of choral and orchestral sound.  There's no denying McEwen's skill in setting Milton's sometimes-complex phrases, nor the deep insight which the composer has brought to the underlying messages and meanings of the poem.  And, like all the greatest works of music, the end comes far too soon for my liking.

Indeed, I think I admire most of all the concision of McEwen's structure and writing that lets him cover this rather lengthy poem, all but completely, in less than an hour's span.

The one and only (as far as I know) recording is still available as a download from Chandos Records.

Saturday 17 December 2016

More Christmas Delights Part 2

Another new album that found a home in my collection this year is called A Wondrous Mystery.  The music on this CD comes mainly from the German-speaking part of Europe in the 1400s and 1500s, and is all music for the season of Christmas.  It's expertly and lovingly performed a cappella by the twelve voices of the ensemble Stile Antico and is released on the Harmonia Mundi label.
 
At a quick glance, it's obvious that the biggest work on the disc is the Missa Pastores quidnam vidistis by the Flemish composer Jacobus Clemens (yes, that's the composer who was jokingly nicknamed Clemens non Papa, supposedly to distinguish him from his contemporary, Pope Clement VII ("Clemens Papa" in Latin).
 
The Missa takes its title from Clemens' own five-voice motet on the Christmas text which asks, "Shepherds, what have you seen?" (also included in the disc).  The mass is a lovely, serene work of typical Renaissance polyphony of its time (the 1500s).  The disc is organized so that the different sections of this mass setting are interspersed with works by other and later composers. 
 
These other works include both Latin and German texts.  There are settings of Lutheran chorales and settings of German folk carols.  And in the middle of it all is the piece that really caught my attention, and caught it in the most enchanting way.
 
The title is Magnificat quinti toni and it was composed by Hieronymus Praetorius (no relation of the much better-known Michael Praetorius).  This man composed settings of the Magnificat based on each of the eight tones of traditional chant, but then added this ninth setting, specifically intended for Christmas use.  It's a work which bridges the gap between the stile antico of the Renaissance and the new stile moderno of what we now see as the early Baroque era in music.  He published it alongside two ravishingly beautiful settings of two of the German Christmas carols, with instructions that the carol arrangements should be sung between verses of the Magnificat.  The performers here have followed that direction.  The result fuses chant, polyphony, and harmonized chordal singing of the folk melodies into a thing of utter beauty.
 
The simple key to this loveliness is the use of double choirs throughout the composed sections of the Magnificat and the carol settings.  In the two carols, the melody is entrusted to one of the inner parts and the sopranos instead receive a soaring harmony line of the type that English choirs call a "descant".  It's these descant parts that lift the music out of the ordinary and give it wings.  The two carols used are Joseph lieber, Joseph mein (known in English as The Song of the Crib) and In dulci jubilo.  What fuses all these disparate elements together is the simple rising triad which opens the fifth tone chant, a figure which also occurs in the melodies of both carols. 
 
So while all the music on this disc is very beautiful and aptly suited to an evening's listening before the Christmas tree, it's the Praetorius Magnificat that always prompts me to hit the "repeat" button.

Friday 2 December 2016

More Christmas Delights Part 1

With December now here, and the church calendar season of Advent under way, it's a good time to look into a couple of new Christmas recordings which I've acquired since this time last year or the year before, whenever I last posted some new Christmas material.

What I love about the traditional music of Christmas is that it's absolutely music of the people.  Genuine folk music, in the most literal sense of the term.  And why not?  At one level, the Christmas story is a story of people of the most ordinary kind, caught up in a most extraordinary event.  I think that Christians through the centuries have often responded to the very ordinariness of Joseph and Mary, of the Shepherds and the Wise Men, the Innkeeper, and even the animals.  The story comes very close to the heart of how so many, many people in the Christian world lived before the coming of the industrial age.

Those of you who follow this blog regularly will recall that I have before presented some works of music based on the traditional noëls or folk carols of France.  Like similar carols everywhere, these songs live in a world of simple diatonic harmonies and engaging melodies.  The words are usually strophic, the tunes more or less appropriate to the scenes and events and feelings being evoked.

Today, I want to bring to you two well-filled CDs (or downloads) from Naxos containing a veritable treasure chest of Christmas music, much of it inspired by the noëlsand all of it composed by the French royal composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier. 

I've previously brought to your attention Charpentier's utterly charming Messe de minuit pour Noël,  in which the original tunes are used to set the text of the Ordinary of the Mass.  In the recordings I'm featuring today, we get the original words as well as the melodies.

While the melodies may not be familiar to you, there's no doubt that they are tunes of the people, totally and aptly suited to mass song among people who are not formally trained musicians.  Charpentier's arrangements of these traditional tunes include accompaniments of bewitching beauty, and the music is aptly orchestrated and performed with original instruments, such as would have been used in the reign of Louis XIV at Versailles.

Aside from the popularity of these well-known carols in France, Charpentier must have possessed some particular affection himself for the Christmas season -- at least if one can judge by the skill and care which he lavished on these seasonal pieces.  Not least in his bag of tricks is the skill of making the music sound artless and simple when it is actually becoming quite sophisticated.  Perhaps the best example of that is the organ arrangements of noëls which dot the two records, arrangements which achieve a very different effect altogether from Louis-Claude Daquin's noëls for the organ which I have also previously reviewed.

For this delightful two-disc set of Christmas music, we are indebted to Kevin Mallon and the Aradia Ensemble.  These are but a few of the many treasures this team of Canadian musicians have recorded through the years for Naxos Records, but they are certainly not the least!  Just as with Daquin's organ delights, once you have listened to these a few times they will become as much a necessary part of your Christmas season as any of the tunes from the English-language tradition.  These recordings are easily available as downloads.