Christmas a cappella II

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Full Programme Notes

Saint Martin, who became Bishop of Tours in about 371AD, was chiefly remembered for his act of charity in cutting his cloak in half to clothe an almost naked beggar whom he found shivering in a severe frost at Amiens. Later on, the Saint’s cloak (Latin: cappa or diminutive cappella) as preserved in a sanctuary which hence came to be the first church building to bear the name ‘Cappella’ or Chapel. Eventually the term was used to refer to church musicians, like Monteverdi who was Maestro di Cappella in Venice, or JS Bach who was Kapellmeister in Leipzig. Hence, by extension, the term a cappella has come to mean music ‘in the church style’. (Incidentally, the word is often mis-spelled with only one ‘p’: but the word capella means ‘she-goat’.) The usual application of the term is to unaccompanied choral music, and it is thought that this usage may have originated in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, where there has never been any instrumental music.

It is in this tradition that Musica Sacra presents this programme of unaccompanied choral music for Christmas, a sequel to our very successful 2001 release, Christmas a cappella. We have chosen a variety of pieces: some well known Christmas favourites which need no explanation; some familiar tunes in new arrangements; and some pieces that have not been recorded before. The music comes from the sixteenth century to the present day, with composers from America, Germany, Austria, England, Ireland, France, Italy and New Zealand; we sing in English, Latin, German, French and Maori. The programme includes a group of pieces (tracks 6-11) devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and a smaller group (tracks 12 and 17-19) about the Epiphany. Several of the pieces on this recording are about the Annunciation, when the angel Gabriel visits Mary.

1 Nova! Nova! (John Scott b.1956) John Scott is the Organist and Director of Music at Saint Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York, where he directs the renowned choir of men and boys; he was previously Organist and Director of Music at St Paul's Cathedral, London. In 2006 he came to Auckland to inaugurate Musica Sacra's Mander chamber organ, the Donald Barriball Memorial Chamber Organ (click here for more information on this). Nova! Nova! is a setting of a medieval text about the Annunciation, which cleverly and vigorously projects a medieval sound-world within a modern idiom.

2 Omnis mundus jocundetur (Michael Praetorius 1571-1621) Michael Prætorius’s life spanned the transition from the High Renaissance to the early baroque. Born in Kreuzberg, Thuringia, as Michael Schultheiss (Latinized as Prætorius), he was the son of a Lutheran pastor. He spent most of his professional life as an organist, Kantor and Kapellmeister in the Lutheran cities and states of Northern Germany.A virtuoso organist, an organ builder, a composer and an assiduous musical scholar, Prætorius is celebrated for writing a remarkable three volume musical treatise, the Syntagma musicum, which allows us rare and fascinating glimpses into the musical sensibilities of his time. Prætorius’ musical style was strongly influenced by the Germans Schütz and Scheidt, and by the latest Italian music, with which he came into contact in Dresden in the 1610s. His Omnis mundus is a charming miniature, delicately exploiting the echo effects of dynamic contrasts. (More information at the Wikipedia entry on Praetorius)

3 Lo, how a rose (Michael Praetorius 1571-1621) Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, often translated as "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming," is a Christmas carol of German origin. The words are thought to be by an anonymous author, and the piece first appeared in print in the late 16th century. The familiar melody, dating from 14th century Germany, are given here in Praetorius' harmoization.

4 Wexford Carol (John Rutter b.1945) It is hardly possible to construct any programme of Christmas music without including something by the prolific composer and arranger John Rutter. This piece is one of his most beautiful arrangements, in which the lovely flowing tune is treated in a variety of ways. The Wexford Carol dates back to the 12th century. It is one of the oldest Irish Carols and is thought to originate in the area of Country Wexford, Ireland. (More information at the Wikipedia entry on Rutter)

5 While shepherds watched their flocks by night At the time of its publication in 1700, this was the only Christmas hymn officially authorised to be sung in the Anglican Church. The words are thought to be by Nahum Tate and the tune, "Winchester Old", has its origins in Este's Psalter of 1592.

6 Hymne à la Vierge (Pierre Villette 1926-1988) Villette was a pupil of Marcel Dupré and later became Director of the Conservatoires of Besançon and Aix en Provence. The Hymne à la Vierge is probably his most well known piece: an expansive tune with lush harmony, and a particularly bluesy coda at the end. (More on Villette at Wikipedia)

7 Alma Redemptoris Mater (Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina 1514-1594) At the age of 20, Giovanni Pierluigi bacame Organist of the cathedral at his birthplace, Palestrina, the town near Rome from which he took his name. He later became Maestro di Cappella at the Cappella Guilia, the papal choir at St Peter's, Rome. He was a prolific composer who wrote 104 masses and over 300 motets as well as a large quantity of other church music. Such is the perfection of his counterpoint that an entire style of writing - the Palestrina Style - was named after him, and it is studied by music students to this day. The Marian antiphon Alma Redemptoris is one of his shorter and simpler pieces, but it is nonetheless a perfect little gem. (More on Palestrina at Wikipedia)

8 Meine Seele erhebt den Herrn (Heinrich von Herzogenberg 1843-1900) Heinrich Picot de Peccaduc, Freiherr von Herzogenberg was an Austrian composer and conductor descended from a French aristocratic family. He was initially attracted to the music of Wagner, but through the study of J. S. Bach he was led to a strong attachment to the classical tradition and became an ardent admirer of Brahms. In 1874, with the Bach scholar and biographer Philipp Spitta, Herzogenberg founded the Leipzig Bach-Verein, which concerned itself with the revival of Bach’s cantatas. Herzogenberg was its artistic director for ten years, during which time Ethel Smyth was one of his composition pupils. From 1885 he was Professor of Composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin: it was in this capacity that he advised the young Ralph Vaughan Williams to study with Max Bruch. His setting of part of the Magnificat, Meine Seele erhebt den Herrn, comes from a set of pieces for the Lutheran Avent liturgy: gloriously expansive and radiant in its rich 8 part scoring, it is reminiscent of the style of the choral writing of Brahms and Mendelssohn. (More at Wikipedia)

9 The angel Gabriel (arr Edgar Pettman 1865-1943) This carol, of Basque origin, narrates the opening of the story of the Annunciation, where the Archangel Gabriel came to tell Mary that she was to be the Mother of God.  The words combine the angelic salutation, ‘Hail, Mary!’, with phrases from the Magnificat.  The English translation is by Sabine Baring-Gould. Edgar Pettman played a major part in reviving interest in traditional carols, especially through the publication of the University Carol Book with Sir Richard Terry.

10 Lux aurumque (Eric Whitacre b.1970) An accomplished composer, conductor and lecturer, Eric Whitacre has quickly become one of the most popular and performed composers of his generation. The Los Angeles Times has praised his compositions as "works of unearthly beauty and imagination, [with] electric, chilling harmonies," while The Philadelphia Inquirer has called him "the hottest thing in choral music." Many of Whitacre's works have entered the standard choral and symphonic repertories and have become the subject of several recent scholarly works and doctoral dissertations. His works Water Night, Cloudburst, Sleep, Lux Aurumque and A Boy and a Girl are among the most popular choral works of the last decade. To date, Whitacre's published works have received thousands of performances and sold well over 350,000 copies worldwide. Musica Sacra gave the New Zealand premiere of Lux aurumque at a concert in Wellington in 2005; of this piece the composer writes "After deciding upon the poem by Edward Esch (I was immediately struck by its genuine, elegant simplicity), I had it translated into the Latin by the celebrated American poet Charles Anthony Silvestri. A simple approach was essential to the success of the work, and if the tight harmonies are carefully tuned and balanced they will shimmer and glow. Lux Aurumque was commissioned by the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay, and is dedicated with love to my great friend Dr. Jo Michael Scheibe." (More information at www.ericwhitacre.com)

11 Annunciation (David Griffiths b.1950) David Griffiths was born and educated in New Zealand. He graduated M.Mus(First Class Honours) in composition from Auckland University in 1973. David is well known in New Zealand as a composer, singer and teacher. He has held posts at Otago and Auckland Universities. His singing engagements have included work with all major Choral Societies in New Zealand, The Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. He has performed on several occasions in the International Festival of the Arts and is a regular soloist with the NBR New Zealand Opera. Recital tours have taken him to Taiwan, America and England. As a recording artist with Concert FM David has presented a substantial list of programmes including much of the English, German and French Art Song repertoire and a significant body of New Zealand music. His operatic repertoire includes: 'La Traviata', 'Madama Butterfly', 'The Magic Flute', 'Tosca', ' Gianni Schcchi', 'Salome', 'Der Rosenkavalier', 'Don Pasquale', 'The Pearl Fishers', 'Macbeth', 'Cenerentola', 'Die Fledermaus', 'Julius Ceasar', 'Cosi fan Tutti', 'Zaida' and 'Galileo'. His concert work has included all the major works of J S Bach including many Cantatas, the 'War Requiem' by Britten, 'The Dream of Gerontius' by Elgar, Mendelsohn's 'Elijah', 'The Light in the Wilderness' by Dave Brubeck, Monteverdi's 'Solemn Vespers', Vaughan Williams' 'Five Mystical Songs', 'Carmina Burana' by Orff and 'Messiah' by Handel. David's compositions have gained international reputation with choirs throughout the world purchasing his music. Several American choirs have included his works on CD. Annunciation was written for Musica Sacra in 2001. Reviewing the premiere performance, given at St Paul's Cathedral, Wellington in November 2001, Lindis Taylor wrote in the Wellington Evesing Post: "One of the pleasures of the evening was the Annunciation by Auckland composer David Griffiths; a setting of a challenging, dense, metaphysical poem by John Donne, Griffiths' masterly, suspenseful music elucidated it superbly."

12 As with gladness men of old Strictly speaking this is a hymn for the season of Epiphany rather than Christmas, dealing with the journey of the Magi following the star, and their gifts for the new-born Jesus. The well known tune Dix, originally by Kocher (1786-1872), is named of the author of the hymn's words, W. Chatterton Dix 1837-1898.

13 Po marie/Silent Night (Franz Gruber 1787-1863 arr. Terence Maskell b.1950) The (probably apocryphal) story about the origin of this carol—that Gruber invented the tune on the spot with his guitar, because the church organ had broken down—is well known (read more about this at Wikipedia). Terence Maskell (pictured) enjoys a high reputation as one of New Zealand's most accomplished and successful choir directors. For over nine years he was the conductor of the Auckland Youth Choir (a group which won numerous international awards under his direction), relinquishing this position in early 2001. At the end of 2001 he undertook a two-month global tour as a Sir Woolf Fisher Fellow (an award given for excellence in music education), concentrating especially on North American institutions noted for excellence in choral education (amongst which was the internationally renowned St Olaf Choir under Anton Armstrong).His choirs have performed regularly on television and radio, toured in NZ and overseas, and he has acted as guest conductor, accompanist (piano and organ), soloist (countertenor), adjudicator, choral arranger and clinician on numerous occasions. He is the founder and conductor of the highly successful Graduate Choir, NZ (click here to visit their web site). The first verse of this arrangement is unusual in that it is set in Maori.

14 The Christ-child lay on Mary’s lap (John Bradley 1973) Little is known about John Bradley apart from the fact this this beautiful setting of a poem by GK Chesterton was written by him for the choir of Holy Trinity, Coventry.

15 Deck the hall (Welsh traditional carol arr. Sir David Willcocks b.1919) This old Welsh tune is first found in an eighteenth century manuscript, though it is probably much older than that. According to Wikipedia the tune was used by Mozart in a duet for violin and piano.

16 It came upon the midnight clear (English traditional melody adapted by Sir Arthur Sullivan 1842-1900) This Christmas hymn was written by Edmund Sears, pastor of a Unitarian church in Weston, Massachusetts, and it was first published in December 1849 in Boston's "Christian Register".

17 Omnes de Saba (Jacob Handl [called Gallus] 1550-1591) A composer of Slovenian birth, Jacobus Handl, known as Gallus, spent most of his professional life in the service of the Catholic Church in Austria. The ambiguity in his name may be due to his translating the original name Petelin (meaning rooster) into the German diminutive Handl and the Latin equivalent Gallus at different times in his life. He worked as Kantor for several courts and churches in Austria and Bohemia until his untimely death. Writing at the end of the Renaissance, he was able to avail himself of musical ideas that had matured over two centuries, crafting a sophisticated synthesis of Franco-Flemish, German, and Italian styles. Contemporaries admired his music for its beautifully woven counterpoint, sometimes calling him “The Bohemian Palestrina,” However, the complexity of his music was also criticized during his lifetime by others, such that in one of his published collections he felt obliged to defend the number of voices in his polychoral works. Where Gallus actually surpassed Palestrina was in his command of rhythm. His skill in moving back and forth between double and triple meter and in using word accents to enhance rhythmic variety enabled him to create moments of excitement or serenity within the relatively static harmony and dense polyphonic texture characteristic of the style in which he wrote. Most of his output comprises settings of sacred Latin texts, like the joyful short Epiphany motet Omnes de Saba, which fizzes with contrapuntal ingenuity.

18 The Three Kings (Peter Cornelius 1824-1874 arr. Sir Ivor Atkins) Carl August Peter Cornelius was a German composer, writer about music, poet and translator. He was born and died in Mainz. Cornelius played the violin and composed lieder from an early age, and began studying composition in 1841. Cornelius lived with his painter uncle Peter von Cornelius in Berlin from 1844 to 1852, during which time he met prominent figures such as Alexander von Humboldt, the Brothers Grimm, Friedrich Rückert and Felix Mendelssohn. During his last few years in Berlin, Cornelius wrote music criticism for several major Berlin journals. Cornelius's first mature works (including the opera Der Barbier von Bagdad) were composed during his brief stay in Weimar (1852–1858). His next place of residence was Vienna, where he stayed for five years. It was in Vienna that Cornelius began a friendship with Richard Wagner. It was at Wagner's behest that Cornelius moved to Munich in 1864, where he finally took a wife and fathered four children. Despite his friendships with Wagner and Franz Liszt, Cornelius had a rocky relationship with the so-called "New German School" of composition. He did not attend the premiere of Tristan und Isolde with von Bülow and Wagner, using the premiere of his own opera Der Cid as an excuse. His third and final operatic project, Gunlöd, based on the Norse eddas, was left incomplete at his death. (The foregoing information is from Wikipedia.) The beautiful The Three Kings (correctly titled Die Könige) is the third of a set of Christmas songs written in 1856, originally for baritone solo and piano. The piano plays the Epiphany chorale "How brightly shines the morning star". The song was later arranged for choir and soloist by Sir Ivor Atkins (1869-1953) who was Organist of Worcester Cathedral for over 50 years.

19 O God, who by the leading of a star (Thomas Attwood 1765-1838) Attwood, a friend of Mendelssohn and pupil of Mozart, was the Organist of St Paul's Cathedral, London, where he is now buried under the organ. He is now best remembered for his small scale English anthems, of which O God, who by the leading of a star (a setting of the 1662 Collect for the Feast of the Epiphany) is a delightful example. It is charmingly expressive with its wonderfully flowing inner parts and impassioned extended Amen - though it is not above criticism, since it spends over half its length stuck on the words "through Jesus Christ our Lord".

20 Ding, dong! merrily on high (French traditional carol arr. Charles Wood 1866-1926) Ding Dong Merrily on High is a secular dance tune that evolved into a Christmas song. The tune first appeared as Bransle l'Officiale in the Orchésographie, a dance book written by Jehan Tabourot (1519-1593). The text was composed by George Ratcliffe Woodward (1848-1934), and it was first published in 1924 in his The Cambridge Carol-Book: Being Fifty-two Songs for Christmas, Easter, And Other Seasons. Woodward took an interest in church bell ringing, which no doubt aided him in writing it. Woodward was the author of several carol books, including 'Songs of Syon' and 'The Cowley Carol Book'. The macaronic style is characteristic of Woodward’s delight in archaic poetry. The original tune is harmonised by Charles Wood (pictured), an Irish-born composer who succeeded Stanford as Professor of Music at Cambridge.

21 Away in a manger (WJ Kirkpatrick 1838-1921 arr. Willcocks) Away in a Manger was first published in an 1885 Lutheran Sunday School book by James R. Murray (March 7, 1841 - March 10, 1905), but the author of the first two verses is unknown. It is certain that verse three was added in 1904 by Dr. John McFarland of New York City. There are at least two major melodies for the song: one, "Cradle Song", more commonly encountered in Britain and recorded here in its most famous arrangement by Sir David Willcocks (pictured), beautiful in its simplicity; the other tune, "Mueller", is more commonly heard in the USA. The tune recorded here was written by William J. Kirkpatrick and was first published in 1895.

22 In dulci jubilo (Michael Praetorius) For information about Praetorius click here to jump to the notes for track 2. The poem In dulci jubilo is thought to have be written by the German mystic Heinrich Seuse in around 1328. According to folklore, he heard angels singing these words to him and he is supposed to have joined them in a dance of worship. It is written in macaronic verse (in more than one language) - German and Latin in the original. The nineteenth century English translation, as used here in this adaptation of Praetorius' thrilling 8 part setting, preserves the macaronic text with English and Latin. The well known melody, used by so many composers including Bach and Pearsall, is treated antiphonally by Praetorius, the phrases being batted from one side of the choir to the other. At the end both choirs combine in a majestic final statement. This is one of several workings of the tune to appear in volume two of Praetorius' Musæ Sioniæ, published in 1607.

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