PROGRAM NOTES
Josquin des Prez (c. 1450-1521)
Ave Christe Immolate, arr. A Far Cry
When Josquin des Prez was born in northern France, the Hundred Years’ War had finally come to an end and the Renaissance was underway. From that point onward, information about des Prez moves in snapshots with little detail to fill in the gaps. What we do know is around 1475 des Prez worked for René of Anjou, in 1484 he was in Milan employed by Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, by 1489 he was in Rome as a member of the Sistine Chapel choir, and in the early 1500s he was hired as chapel master at the Este Court in Ferrara. For the last years of his life he was back in Conde-sur-Escaut as Provost of the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame until his death.
One rather remarkable detail we do know is that des Prez enjoyed a wide-spread reputation as the master of his craft during his lifetime. Lasting proof of that is quite literally in black and white, as Ottaviano Petrucci produced the first books of printed music, making sure to include many selections by des Prez because he knew it would sell the product. (Additionally, many works were originally attributed to des Prez that have since been discovered to be by other composers using his name.) Records also exist of des Prez’s temperament and composing style. Take, for example, this excerpt from a letter giving advice on hiring him: “It is true that Josquin composes better, but he composes when he wants to, and not when one wants him to, and he is asking 200 ducats in salary while [Heinrich] Isaac will come for 120, but Your Lordship will decide.”
Throughout his professional life, des Prez wrote in three main styles, one of them being the motet, a genre of vocal music that could be sacred or secular. In the sacred motet Ave Christe, immolate, the text venerates the embodied Christ as he suffered on the cross.
Jessie Montgomery (b. 1981)
Source Code
Jessie Montgomery was born in the Lower East Side of Manhattan to parents who were both artists and advocates. She studied at the Juilliard School and NYU, and has been associated with the Sphinx Organization in a variety of capacities since 1999. A recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, she enjoys a robust international career.
A work of arresting beauty, Source Code was commissioned by the Isaiah Fund for New Initiatives in partnership with Symphony Space. It received its premiere with the Cassatt Quartet in 2013. Montgomery’s note for the work follows:
“The first sketches of Source Code began as transcriptions of various sources from African American artists prominent during the peak of the Civil Rights era in the United States. I experimented by re-interpreting gestures, sentences, and musical syntax (the bare bones of rhythm and inflection) by choreographer Alvin Ailey, poets Langston Hughes and Rita Dove, and the great jazz songstress Ella Fitzgerald into musical sentences and tone paintings. Ultimately, this exercise of listening, re-imagining, and transcribing led me back to the black spiritual as a common musical source across all three genres. The spiritual is a significant part of the DNA of black folk music, and subsequently most (arguably all) American pop music forms that have developed to the present day. This one-movement work is a kind of dirge, which centers on a melody based on syntax derived from black spirituals. The melody is continuous and cycles through like a gene strand with which all other textures play.”
Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940)
Cuauhnáhuac for String Orchestra (1931)
Silvestre Revueltas wrote some of the most vividly arresting music of the 20th century during his brief life. One of twelve children (six of whom would become artists in various disciplines) born in Santiago Papasquiaro, Mexico, his musical education spanned the Americas. From early studies in his hometown, he went on to study in Austin, Texas, then Chicago, Illinois. Continuing his travels between countries and cities, he served as violinist in San Antonio (TX) and conducted an orchestra in Mobile, Alabama before finally settling in Mexico City.
It was Mexican composer Carlos Chávez who persuaded Revueltas to return to his home country to be assistant conductor of the Mexican Symphony Orchestra in 1929. During this time, Revueltas began composing with tremendous zeal. In an astounding burst of creativity, all of his works (over 30 of them, including orchestral, chamber, songs, ballet, and film scores) were written in the 10-year period from 1930 to his early death from alcoholism just two months before his 41st birthday in 1940.
Cuernavaca, Mexico was originally called Cuauhnáhuac in Nahuatl. Now a popular resort town, its name translates roughly to “surrounded by trees.” Dramatic and vibrant, the time signatures of its namesake music shift frequently (sometimes every bar or two) imparting a propulsive energy that brings alive the historic city.
Alex Fortes, curator of Feeling New Strength, notes:
“Cuernavaca/Cuahnahuac has important historical significance for Mexico -- it's where Moctezuma (the last Aztec emperor) had a country palace, where Hernan Cortes chose to put the administrative seat of the Spanish colonial Government, and where many of the most radical concepts powering the Mexican revolution one hundred years ago regarding labor rights, women's rights, indigenous rights, and socialism were championed.”
Caroline Shaw (b. 1982)
“Litany of the Displaced” from To the Hands, arr. A Far Cry
In the late spring of 2016, The Crossing, a vocal ensemble dedicated to new music led by Donald Nally, presented a remarkable program over the course of two nights called Seven Responses. The responses were to Membra Jesu nostri (The Limbs of Our Jesus), a cycle of seven cantatas written by the Baroque composer Dieterich Buxtehude—the organist Bach walked over 250 miles to meet.
In Membra Jesu nostri, the seven cantatas each commemorate one part of Christ’s body as he was crucified—feet, knees, hands, sides, breast, heart, and face. Each cantata is subdivided into six movements. For Seven Responses, each composer was assigned a part of the body as a point of inspiration. Caroline Shaw, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer who writes and collaborates in a broad variety of genres, was given Ad Manus, To the Hands. For her work, she chose to follow Buxtehude’s six-movement structure. “Litany of the displaced” is the fifth movement, and about it Shaw writes:
“...the harmony is passed around from one string instrument to another, overlapping only briefly, while numerical figures are spoken by the choir. These are global figures of internally displaced persons, by country, sourced from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) data reported in May 2015 (accessed on 20/03/2016 at www.internal-displacement.org). Sometimes data is the cruelest and most honest poetry.”
Read Shaw’s full program note HERE.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Heiliger Dankgesang, from String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132
Beethoven’s “Holy Song of Thanks by a Convalescent to the Divinity, in the Lydian Mode” (Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lycischen Tonart) is the expansive middle movement of the String Quartet Op. 132, completed in 1825, as part of the “Galitzen Quartets” (including opp. 127 and 130) commissioned by Prince Nikolas Galitzen. Always one to experiment and push the boundaries of a given musical form, Beethoven incorporated some unique features into the Quartet Op. 32. Proportionally, the Heiliger Dankgesang is nearly the length of the first two movements combined, and is twice as long as the last two movements following. Structurally, it is divided into five distinct parts, perhaps reflecting the overall structure of the Quartet’s five movements, alternating the three hymn-like sections of a “holy song of thanks” (Heiliger Dankgesang) with the shimmering melodic lightness of two “feeling new strength” (Neue Kraft fühlend) sections. Together, they form a set of double variations as each repeats with increasing elaboration. Emotionally, the song of thanks likely refers to Beethoven’s recovery from an abdominal illness, and perhaps also (as suggested by Maynard Solomon) the general idea of the healing powers of music for a beleaguered spirit. After all, in times of celebration or distress, we inevitably turn to music. It organizes and gathers the invisible murmurings of our hearts for contemplation, facilitates release, strengthens our resolve, and imbues hope.
What immediately confronts the listener is an opening gesture that expands and contracts like quiet breathing, which is strikingly similar in shape to two other seminal works written within a year or two of each other: the Adagio from the Symphony No. 9, and the String Quartet Op. 130. The Heiliger Dankgesang commences reverently in one of the old church modes, Lydian, which, according to Renaissance music theorist Zarlino, “...is a remedy for fatigue of the soul, and similarly for that of the body.” There is very little dissonance, lending a floating, otherworldly quality to its sound. Then, with three declamatory unisons that grasp the listener as if to say, “Pay special attention here!” the work shifts in D Major for the first of the two Neue Kraft fühlend sections. In all his works, Beethoven tends to use trills as a kind of asterisk noting an important shift, and here, the first violin trembles with the onset of joy. Each subsequent restatement of Heiliger Dankgesang and Neue Kraft fühlend gains confidence, strength, and resolve. Heightened passion is evoked through the increasing use of suspended dissonance, which is infused into the second Heiliger Dankgesang, whilst the intervallic jumps and increased energetic motion of the parts infuses the second Neue Kraft fühlend with enhanced exuberance. Finally, the work concludes with the use of sforzandos for sonic emphasis as if pledging to go forward with conviction and purpose, buoyed by spiritual and physical renewal, feeling new strength.
Kathryn J Allwine Bacasmot is a pianist/harpsichordist, musicologist, music and cultural critic, and freelance writer. A graduate of New England Conservatory, she writes program annotations for ensembles nationwide.
