Tuesday 27 November 2012

A Mass of Fools -- and its modern counterpart

In the Middle Ages it was common for the time from Christmas to the New Year to be treated as a time of reversing normal structures and procedures.  Masters and servants changed places, and in the monasteries or cathedrals the younger monks and clerics took control away from the senior abbots and bishops.

When the normal order was reversed, it was also expected that normal events were parodied and satirized in the process.  We know from historic documentation that the Mass was often given in a parodied form, especially on the Feast of Fools (December 26).  There is one text of such a parody mass extant, and it is called the Officium Lusorum (Mass of Gamblers).  This text, without music, is found in the famous Carmina Burana manuscript which later provided the text for Carl Orff's famous cantata in the 20th century.

Now, I've been fascinated by the music of the mediaeval period ever since I was a student, and I've often read or heard of these Fools' Masses without having any idea what they might have sounded like.  That gap in my experience has just been filled.

I recently bought a 7-CD collection from the French ensemble Millenarium, highlighting all kinds of different styles of secular music from the Middle Ages.  One entire disc is devoted to a conjectural reconstruction of a Mass of Fools, using the Officium Lusorum text as a basis for reconstruction.

All I can say is I have never heard anything like this in my life before!  Okay, with one exception -- which I'll get to later. 

The Feast of Fools was also known as the Feast of the Ass -- and so the performers in the Fools' Mass at certain times bray, bellow, or bleat like animals.  There are outrageous parodies of singing style with ridiculous tremolo effects, strained vocal sounds, and the like.  Some parts of the Mass are given in complete and normal style, which only highlights the ridiculous sounds produced in other parts.  The second part of the Mass uses the famous "Song of the Ass" whose tune is well known today as a Christmas hymn in many churches.  On occasion, one can hear laughter and applause, which seem to indicate a live performance (although that is not specifically stated in the booklet).  That's a live concert I would have loved to attend! 

What marks the music as typical of the Middle Ages is that all the singing is in the form of single, unharmonized melodies.  This type of singing, known as "monody" (single voice), was the only kind widely used.  Only as the mediaeval period worked towards its end did any attempt at vocal harmony become widespread.

Thanks to Millenarium for producing (over a period of years) this extraordinary anthology of secular music of the Middle Ages. It is certainly going to find an honoured place in my CD collection. And I expect to get a few good laughs every time I listen to the Officium Lusorum!

And what was that one piece I've heard which seems to grow out of the same tradition?  It was actually written in the 1930s -- and I'm not referring to Orff's masterpiece, much as I enjoy it!  It seems plain to me that Swiss composer Arthur Honegger must have been very familiar with the research done into these Fools' Masses and all the aspects of these outrageous parodies.  In his oratorio Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher ("Joan of Arc at the Stake") a key section is called "Joan given up to the Beasts".  Here, Joan's trial proceeds exactly like a parody from the Feast of Fools with the Ass singing his song to the tune of the mediaeval "Song of the Ass", the sheep as a jury, and the pig (Porcus) as judge -- a wicked pun on the name of Bishop Pierre Cauchon of Beauvais, who judged Joan ("cochon" is the French name for a wild pig).  The music proceeds with parodies of court procedure and religious ritual all thrown in, with all the characters switching back and forth between debased Latin and modern French (the main language of the work) and with the electronic ondes martenot supplying the ass's braying!



Wednesday 14 November 2012

In Remembrance....

Sorry I am a few days late with this post, but in spite of personal issues I need to share with you my three top musical selections for Remembrance Day.  There are many fine pieces both old and new, but these three are (in my opinion) true masterpieces and one of them is definitely undervalued.

Start with the oldest one.  In 1914, as World War One began, the English composer Edward Elgar wrote a piece called Carillon as a tribute to "Gallant Little Belgium" -- very positive and upbeat.  But like many other creative artists, the more private Elgar behind this public face was, I think, already consumed with doubts and fears about what was happening.

Remember Sir Edward Grey's famous remark as war broke out:  "The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."  His words were much more prescient than the jingoistic optimism reigning in most public and media utterances of the day.

I believe that creative artists see further and deeper than ordinary folk into such situations.  Certainly, the poet Laurence Binyon did.  His patriotic war poetry struck popular notes (the staunch heroism of British soldiers, the courage of mothers at home) but there is an undeniable thread of darkness running through his verses, and I think it was this emphasis on the darkness engulfing their world that drew Elgar to make musical settings of his poetry.

The war was less than a year old as Elgar composed his setting of For the Fallen, but darkness reigns in his music as in the text.  Combined with two other poems, it forms a choral trilogy called The Spirit of England.  The work was finally completed in 1917, and in its half-hour length captures the heartbreak, sorrow, and doom which war had visited on European civilisation.  For the Fallen includes the most famous of Binyon's lines:

They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn,
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Oddly enough, Elgar's setting of these lines forms only a quiet interlude between the two massive, dark funeral-march hymns which begin and end the movement.  The final great climax and the long slow descent to quiet darkness and despair at the end of the work are built on these powerful lines:

As stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As stars that are starry in the time of our darkness
To the end, to the end they remain.

This profoundly moving music has been rarely performed and more rarely recorded.  I think the apparently jingoistic title puts many people off.  But you certainly should make the acquaintance of The Spirit of England.  The Chandos recording I have was made in the rich, resonant acoustic of Paisley Abbey in Scotland, and features the Scottish National Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Sir Alexander Gibson.  The accompanying Coronation Ode for King Edward VII is a very jingoistic piece, but since it includes the original and thrilling vocal setting of Land of Hope and Glory, replete with organ and extra brass bands, I think it is forgivable!

The second piece is better-known, but still deserves to be heard more often.  In the 1930s, Ralph Vaughan Williams pulled together a cantata which he called Dona nobis pacem.  The main portion of the text consists of three poems from the American Civil War by Walt Whitman, framed by settings of portions of the Latin mass, the Psalms, and even the famous "Angel of Death" speech made by John Bright in Parliament during the Crimean War.  At the heart of this passionate appeal for peace comes the intensely moving Dirge for Two Veterans.  Whitman's poem describes a not uncommon tragedy of the Civil War -- the simultaneous burial of a father and son, both killed in battle.  Vaughan Williams uses the full resources of the modern orchestra to build the thunderous climax demanded by Whitman's description: "...and the strong dead march enwraps me."  The final section erupts into a jubilant Gloria in excelsis as the composer envisages the world where war will be no more, but he ends in a more unsettled mood with the soprano soloist still pleading for peace.  My favourite recording of this cantata (I have several) is on EMI conducted by Richard Hickox with Yvonne Kenny in the pivotal soprano role.  It comes generously paired with the yet rarer oratorio Sancta Civitas with a young but already formidable Bryn Terfel in the central solo part -- and that's a piece I will write more about on some future date.

Finally, one of the greatest masterpieces of the twentieth century: the War Requiem by Benjamin Britten.  In 1941 the industrial city of Coventry was firebombed into destruction, leaving the smoking shell of the burnt-out cathedral amid devastation.  In 1962, a new cathedral was consecrated and Britten was commissioned to compose a major work for the occasion.  The result was one of the most unique works of music ever written.  Britten alternates his settings of the major sections of the Latin Mass for the Dead with the anti-war poems of Wilfred Owen, who died in the trenches a week before the conclusion of World War One.

The Mass is set for large orchestra, chorus, and soprano solo.  The Owen poems use a small chamber orchestra and tenor and baritone solos.  There is also a boys choir which adopts a more impersonal tone, seeming to come from a remote place outside the main body of the music. 

Britten's task was made easier by the fact that Owen used many Biblical references in his poetry, some subtle, some very overt.  One whole poem is indeed a parody of the sacrifice of Isaac by Abram in the Old Testament.  What could be more natural, then, than to juxtapose that poem with the Latin line Quam olim Abrahae promisisti et semini ejus ("As he promised to Abraham and his seed forever").

Right from the opening notes, it's plain that the composer means to make the audience feel a bit uncomfortable or disoriented.  The very opening features the first of many appearances of the tritone, the augmented fourth, the musical interval that was known in mediaeval times as diabolus in musica because it was impossible to harmonize.  But Britten does use it to disharmonize, and also as a melodic interval, continually shaking the ground the music stands on.

Generally, the settings of the Latin text and the poems appear in alternate sections, but in the Agnus dei they flow together.  The ancient Latin prayer and Owen's poem occur simultaneously to powerful effect:

One ever hangs where shelled roads part,
In this war He too lost a limb,
But his disciples hide apart
And now the soldiers bear with Him.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona eis requiem

Near Golgotha strolls many a priest
And in their faces there is pride
That they were flesh-marked by the Beast
By whom the gentle Christ's denied.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona eis requiem.

The scribes on all the people shove
And bawl allegiance to the state,
But they who love the greater love
Lay down their lives, they do not hate.

And then, on a quietly rising scale, the tenor soloist for the first and only time joins in the Latin text:

Dona nobis pacem.

The true emotional climax of the work comes in the final section.  The reiteration of the Dies irae builds up to one of the most shattering climaxes in all music, a cacophonous roaring which then gradually dies away to a gentle held note.  The tenor then begins Owen's most moving poem, Strange Meeting, which describes two soldiers meeting after death in a "profound dark tunnel".  They come to terms with the fate which led one of them to kill the other, and then end with the words of reconciliation "Let us sleep now."  This gradually joins with the final utterances of In paradisum deducant te angeli and Requiem aeternam from the choir, boys choir and soloists, and the final Amen is a decided question mark.

Britten's own recording, made shortly after the premiere, is one of the great historic documents of recorded music -- and in its most recent Decca re-release the sound has been miraculously cleaned of all the hiss that formerly marred the tape.  Among more modern recordings, my own preference goes to Richard Hickox on Chandos because of the richness and clarity of the sound (especially notable in that last humongous climax) and the inclusion of two substantial early Britten extras, the Ballad of Heroes and the Sinfonia da Requiem, both obviously linked thematically to the main work.  If you have never heard War Requiem, you owe it to yourself to do so as soon as you can!

Thursday 8 November 2012

Strangely Neglected Masterpieces

A few years ago, a student of mine in Elliot Lake asked me to accompany her for the upcoming music festival in a performance of Wieniawski's Violin Concerto # 2 in D Minor.  Of the composer, I knew only the name and the music was completely unknown to me. 

This, I was to discover, is a sadly common state of affairs.  Wieniawski was acclaimed in his lifetime by no less a figure than Anton Rubinstein as "without doubt the greatest violinist of his time."  This second concerto was dedicated to "his dear friend, Pablo de Sarasate", the famous Spanish violin virtuoso.  These concertos were known everywhere and played everywhere for many years after his death.  Then came the change of attitude.  Wieniawski's music fell out of favour, and was consigned by many to be fit only as a study work for advanced violin students.

From my first day of studying the piano reduction of the orchestral part, I guessed this was a mistaken attitude.  In the short space of 16 bars, Wieniawski introduces two distinct melodies which may well be considered, short as they are, as the first and second main themes of the movement.  The first is a restless, rapidly moving tune for the strings, the second a meltingly lyrical line for the solo horn.  The two themes repeat while turning in a different direction and we are launched into a concerto first movement of a kind that Beethoven and Mozart would recognize, where a clear and complete (but brief) tutti for the orchestra precedes the first entry of the soloist.

But Wieniawski is never conventional.  When (after a dramatic climax) the violin does enter, it takes up the horn melody and turns it in very unexpected directions.  What follows is a kind of free fantasia on the musical themes, until at last the orchestra again takes the lead.  By a more complex route, with significant alterations in the orchestration, the same great climax is reached and then the music dies away, bit by bit, becoming quieter and then slower.  When the violin re-enters after several minutes we realize that we are now in the concerto's slow movement.  Few composers have ever effected a seamless transition from a big fast movement to a simpler slow movement with such subtlety.

The slow movement is a nonstop outpouring of lyrical melody from the violin, discreetly supported by the orchestral strings (and occasionally the winds).  This grows to a passionate climax (which always brought tears to my eyes when my student and I played it) and then dies away again to a gentle conclusion.

The final movement is separate.  It's a gypsy rondo of a virtuoso kind familiar to such composers as Brahms and Liszt, but the fast-flying violin keeps twisting and turning unexpectedly into new and different keys.  This is certainly a showpiece, but even as it flashes and glitters it still contains enough musical substance to give it more weight than some nineteenth-century virtuoso works.

The common feature of all three movements is the obstinately memorable melodies.  It's difficult to listen to this music, and not come away humming some tune or other!

Shortly before that music festival, I picked up a copy of a DGG CD which contains the two violin concertos and a darkly lyrical piece called Legend in G Minor, along with the famous Zigeunerweisen of Sarasate as a fill-up.  Gil Shaham is the violinist, and the London Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Lawrence Foster.  Both concertos are played with brilliance and verve, but also with a clear realization of the kinship to the classicists.  The symphonic weight of the orchestral passages is fully emphasized.

Of the other recordings I have found available, the great majority are either historic recordings by great violinists of the early years of the last century, or produced by small adventurous labels using relatively little-known artists.  It seems a pity that this music, full of beauty and substance, has been thus consigned to the back rows of the cheap seats in the estimation of the musical world.