Ottawa Chamber Music Society

KING'S SINGERS

King's Singers

Monday, February 5, 2007
8:00 p.m.

Dominion-Chalmers United Church
355 Cooper Street

David Hurley - countertenor
Robin Tyson - countertenor
Paul Phoenix - tenor
Philip Lawson - baritone
Christopher Gabbitas - baritone
Stephen Connolly - bass

Programme

Music from the French Renaissance
Revecy venir du printemps		Claude Le Jeune 1528-1600
Il est bel et bon		Pierre Passereau 1509-1547
Bonjour mon cœur		Orlando di Lasso 1532-1594
La guerre		Clément Janequin c1485-1558

Landscape & Time
Rakastava, op. 14		Jean Sibelius 1865-1957
Esti Dal		Zoltán Kodály 1882-1967
House of Winter		Peter Maxwell Davies 1934-

I N T E R M I S S I O N

Songs from Victorian England
Hears not my Phyllis		Sir John Rogers 1780-1847
Phillis is my only joy		John William Hobbs 1799-1877
The Goslings		John Frederick Bridge 1844-1924
The Way to build a boat, or, Jack's Opinion		John Liptrot Hatton 1809-1886
Charm me asleep		Henry David Leslie 1822-1896
Arrangements in Close Harmony

Program is subject to change

Biography

KING'S SINGERS

...still unmatched.for their musicality and sheer ability to entertain.
- The Times, London

Founded in 1968 at King's College, Cambridge, the King's Singers are one of the world's most sought-after and acclaimed vocal ensembles. Presenting a wide-ranging repertoire, from Renaissance madrigals and transcriptions of orchestral classics to folk music, pop and jazz, they have performed in cathedrals, palaces and prestigious concert halls around the globe. This season, on a trip to China, Japan and Taiwan, they sang for the first time in Beijing and Shanghai, and are performing in the United States and Canada, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Holland and the United Kingdom.

The King's Singers have joined forces with major orchestras such as the London, Chicago and Toronto symphony orchestras, and with chamber ensembles including, recently, The Harp Consort and Tragicomedia. They have collaborated with many illustrious artists such as Plácido Domingo, Emanuel Ax, Julie Andrews, and Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys. Maintaining their tradition to explore new music, they have commissioned over 200 works from leading composers including Krystof Penderecki, Luciano Berio, Ned Rorem and John Tavener. Keen to share their artistry through educational work, they have been Prince Consort Ensemble-in-Residence at London's Royal College of Music since 1996, and regularly conduct master classes and workshops on their tours.

The King's Singers' extensive discography include titles as diverse as 1605: Treason and Discord, an album commemorating the 400th anniversary of the infamous gunpowder plot, Street Songs that include commissioned pieces by Steve Martland and feature percussionist Evelyn Glennie, Sacred Bridges with Sarband, a Middle East early-music group, and, most recently, the acclaimed a capella album, Landscape & Time. In 2006, they also released a performance DVD, From Byrd to the Beatles, which includes the ensemble tackling the technical feat of singing the 40-part Spem in Alium by Thomas Tallis. The completed track is available as the King’s Singers' first single.

Programme Notes

The large sixteenth century repertoire of French madrigals, or chansons, by composers from France and the Netherlands (now the countries of Belgium and Holland), treat amorous subjects either in a suave courtly vein or in a popular and often ribald manner. The Gothic tradition of setting strict verse forms in tedious and complex repetitive forms was abandoned by Josquin des Pres (c. 1440-1521), who generally preferred shorter stanzas treated in a simpler style. Josquin's skill in polyphonic writing became a model for the next generation of composers, which included Clement Janequin (c. 1485-1558), the French master of the anecdotal and onomatopoeic chanson, Pierre Passereau (1509-1547) and the Flemish master Orlandus Lassus (1532-1594).

Claude Le Jeune (c.1528-1600) is recognized as the first major composer to employ a French style of writing in which the music follows the metrical rhythm of the text in accordance with the rules of classical prosody, known as "musique measurée à l'antique." Le Jeune was primarily a composer of vocal and choral music, and this innovation of the "mating of ancient rhythm and modern harmony" resulted in his achieving great renown during his own lifetime.

Orlandus Lassus (also known as Roland de Lassus, Orlando di Lasso, and even "divine Orlande, prince of musicians," depending on what country he was in) was generally acknowledged as the leading composer of his day: he saw more of his output published than did any of his contemporaries; and that output was vast and varied. Lassus was born in Mons, in the county of Hainault and the country which since the 19th century has been called Belgium. The area was famous at the time for its choir schools and its musicians, who through their polyphonic mastery held a position of hegemony in the art music of most of Europe.

Lassus was truly a man of many parts; a talented singer in his youth, a prolific, cosmopolitan composer in his twenties, an extrovert comic actor in his thirties, a keen traveler and amusing polyglot correspondent in his forties and fifties, and an introverted melancholic in his sixties. His works embraced the greatest variety of subject and style within the realm of vocal polyphony, a medium which dominates the surviving art music of the time.

In addition to the French chansons, Lassus' prodigious production, much of it published by his sons ten years after his death in a Magnum opus musicum, includes Latin motets, masses, Magnificats and other liturgical works, Italian madrigals and villanelle, and German lieder. This unusual variety of language is matched by a similar variety of subject-matter and form.

Passereau is best known for his chansons, which comprise the vast majority of his output. A substantial portion of his music was published along with that of his compatriot Janequin, who was famous in his own lifetime for his use of bird-song and other programmatic effects (such as the descriptive cries and noises of the battlefield in La guerre) in his music. Relatively little is known about Janequin’s life, but he composed over 250 chansons, two of which he later included in his two Masses, and in his later years he settled in Paris, becoming Compositeur du Roi (composer to the King) and he entered Paris University as a student after the age of 70.

Jean Sibelius' international reputation rests on his symphonies and orchestral music, while his numerous vocal and choral pieces have been unjustly neglected, perhaps because of language problems. As a rule, Sibelius tended to favor Swedish, his own first language, for the more intimate medium of the solo song, and he set a wide range of poets from Franzen (1772-1847) to Gripenberg (1878-1947). For the more public medium of choral song he turned to Finnish, the popular native language, and in particular to two collections of folk poetry, the Kalevala and the Kanteletar. These two volumes came into being as a result of the painstaking work of Elias Lonnrot (1802-1884) who traveled the length and breadth of the country assembling material. Their appearance in 1835-36 and 1840-41, respectively, made a decisive contribution to the awakening of national consciousness at a time when Finland was still a grand duchy of Russia.

Rakastava sets three lyrical folk poems from the Kanteletar and was written for a cappella male chorus in 1893. Sibelius submitted the piece for a competition arranged by the Helsinki University Chorus to find new repertoire for its spring concert, and he won second prize. The jury had perhaps been startled by the modernity of Sibelius' composition and had awarded the first prize to his former teacher, Emil Genetz, who had written a song of traditional stamp. Rakastava was first performed on 28 April 1894 in a hastily written arrangement for male chorus and strings. Sibelius arranged it again in 1898 for mixed chorus, and in 1911-12 he revised it completely for strings, triangle and timpani, in which form it is best known.

The critics at the first performance were not slow to recognize the mastery of this earthy and erotic picture of young love. As Eric Tawaststjerna has written, “the first movement is elegiac in mood and has the flavor of a folksong. The second movement breathes a restrained yet intense joy and is surprisingly innovative in texture. The final movement is about the sorrow of parting and refers back thematically to the first. The work dies away in a coda in which the two lovers are engulfed by the sad harmonies of the summer night.”
--Jeremy Parsons

Next to Béla Bartók (1881-1945), Zoltán Kodály was the most important Hungarian composer of the twentieth century. Indeed, Bartók once wrote of his countryman:

“If I were asked in whose music the spirit of Hungary is most perfectly embodied, I would reply, ‘In Kodály’s.’ His music is indeed a profession of faith in the spirit of Hungary. Objectively, this may be explained by the fact that his work as a composer is entirely rooted in the soil of Hungarian folk music. Subjectively, it is due to Kodály’s unwavering faith in the creative strength of his people and his confidence in their future.”

Bartók knew this well, since the two composers spent ten summers together in the early 1900’s, during which they traversed the entire countryside of their homeland, recording and notating the ancient folk melodies exactly as they were sung by the villagers they encountered. While their native folk music had a profound effect on the music written by each of these great composers, it was Kodály who in turn had the most significant impact on the musical life in his homeland, by staying there during World War II and working diligently and comprehensively (composer, critic, ethnomusicologist, educator, and concert presenter) to keep Hungarian music free from German domination.

The spirit of Hungarian folklore permeates Kodály’s music, and it is no coincidence that his unique musical language, with its open triadic sound, is particularly well suited to the human voice. He led a reform movement to make singing the basis of music education in Hungary, and his dream was that every child would participate in choral singing. Kodály wrote a substantial amount of vibrant choral music, much of which was intended to be performed by children, amateurs and students.

Esti dal is a reflective folksong which dates probably from the Hungarian Liberation War against the Hapsburgs in 1848, in which many were made homeless. In this song, a fugitive prays to God for shelter and safety for the night.

House of Winter
PETER MAXWELL DAVIES (B.1934)
WORDS BY GEORGE MACKAY BROWN (1921-96)

House of Winter is a setting of four Christmas poems by Brown. The music is continuous, and though scored for unaccompanied voices, it becomes almost orchestral in evocation of the calm, frozen stillness of an Orkney winter on the one hand, and the wildness of a December storm on the other.

Victorian Songs
Part-songs, Glees, and Ballads from the time of Queen Victoria

Music in England in the early 19th century was generally considered to be an accomplishment or an entertainment merely for the nobility or the well-to-do, but during the reign of Queen Victoria (which began in 1837), the effects of the Industrial Revolution has now penetrated even the misty realms of the Arts. Two of the most significant developments in the popularization of music were the advent of mass-produced, modestly priced upright pianos, and the invention of cheap music printing, both of which revolutionized music tastes in Britain. In an era when people has to entertain themselves, the demands of an increasingly sophisticated bourgeoisie has to be satisfied.

Whilst the drawing-room ballad and genteel piano solo were probably the most popular genres, the Part-song did not lag far behind. It could be performed by a parlour quartette or a vast choral society (usually written for men’s voices), and the variety and types of moods encompassed was endless, ranging from humor to pathos. At the time of Queen Victoria’s accession to the throne, the Glee was still in fashion amongst the somewhat alcoholic Gentlemen’s Catch Clubs. Indeed her royal predecessor, King George IV had been an enthusiastic Glee singer (although the quality of his vocal contributions is not recorded!).

In many respects, it was the Queen herself who influenced the transition from the vigorous, mildly contrapuntal Glee to the simpler, more melodious part-song. Her marriage to Prince Albert marked a new receptiveness to German influences.

The Part-song itself could be divided into three main categories: firstly those that followed Mendelssohn’s originals, gentle, unaccompanied four-part songs, suitable for domestic music-making. Into this group fall many of the Victorian “classics,” including some by Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900), who despite the enormous success of his beloved Savoy operas, longed for recognition as a serious classical composer. Others writing in this style includes Henry Leslie (1822-1896), a famous London choir-trainer.

The second group of Part-songs could be described as nostalgic in flavour, written in imitation of Elizabethan madrigals, the singing of which had been revived by the Glee Clubs of the late 18th century. Among the composers writing in this style were the last of the Glee writers, including John Hobbs (1799-1877), who was a Tenor Lay Vicar at Westminster Abbey and an outstanding concert singer of the day.

The third type of Part-song derived from the more alcoholic side of Glee Club activities—convivial male-voice quartets, usually extolling the joys of wine! The mutual delights of music and wine were also well appreciated in Germany, and many German drinking songs found their way across the Channel as well. This phenomenon was not exclusively European, and America, too, developed a tradition of “social singing,” in particular in the University Glee Clubs and later in the form of the barbershop quartet.