Renaissance Tenebrae
Inspired by the stark, dramatic ceremonial of the service of Tenebrae from Holy Week, Renaissance composers gave us some of the greatest music of the age. Come and revel in the drama and atmosphere of this service of Darkness, as it was sung across Europe in the 16th century.
Programme Notes
When the Council of Trent ended in 1563, the Catholic Church mobilized itself for an offensive against the Protestant Reformation. Ecclesiastical censure and force of arms had failed to stop the spread of Protestantism across most of Northern Europe, so this Counter-Reformation turned to a new strategy to win back souls: persuasion through delight. When the Protestants broke stained glass windows and whitewashed churches, the Catholics would find the finest artists to preach through fresco and sculpture; when plays and theatres were closed, sacred dramas and oratorios would be offered; when organs were smashed and music burned, the greatest composers and performers of the age would be employed. The strategy failed to win over the Protestants, but it gave us a golden age of music.
The entrepreneurial, humanist musicians of the late Renaissance were naturally drawn to a movement that valued their art so highly. In Rome, both the Jesuits and the Oratorians under Philip Neri actively promoted music as a means of conversion. Victoria (and Palestrina to a lesser extent) was deeply involved with the seminaries which sent missionaries north. In Munich, Lassus knew that his music was on the frontier of the Catholic world. Both its spirituality and its grandeur were designed to persuade. Even in far-off England, Tallis and Byrd remained secretly loyal to the “Old Religion”. Byrd vigorously and sometimes recklessly aligned himself with the aesthetic and religious ideals of the Counter-Reformation. He went so far as to write music for clandestine and illegal services led by Jesuit priests.
Catholic composers now looked at the liturgy of the church for opportunities to awake devotion through beauty and emotion. Inevitably, they would focus on the services of Holy Week with its dramatic narrative of the Passion and death of Christ. In particular, they were drawn to the office of “Tenebrae”. This was the monastic service of Matins, historically sung at dawn. In the late middle ages, the time of the Holy Week offices on Thursday, Friday and Saturday had crept earlier and earlier, until they were sung on the previous evenings. During the service, the candles were gradually extinguished, symbolic of the death of Christ. The final candle was removed and the church was left in darkness for the closing musical items. At the end, a loud noise was made, either by a hammer striking the floor or all the clergy closing their books. This represented the earthquake at the Crucifixion. The single candle, now symbolic of the Resurrection, was brought back into the darkened church.
This dramatic ceremonial caught the imagination of composers and gave us some of the greatest music of the Renaissance. This evening’s concert recreates some of Tenebrae with music from Italy, Spain and England. We will also explore this acoustical setting by singing portions of the concert from the choir loft. The disposition of voices high and invisible in a gallery is a crucial part of Renaissance choral music. We hope to capture some of the drama and atmosphere of Tenebrae as it was sung in the great churches of the sixteenth century.
Your applause is invited after the sections so marked:
| Sancte Deus | Thomas Tallis (c. 1505–1585) | |
| Thomas Tallis served four capricious monarchs and managed to die in his own bed—a remarkable achievement for any Tudor courtier! His professional success is all the more astonishing, considering that he remained a Catholic at a time when that religious allegiance was a dangerous matter. Sancte Deus was written for Waltham Abbey before Henry VIII’s marital problems turned the religious life of the kingdom upside down. The motet is highly dramatic and emotional: it must have sounded very avant-garde to listeners used to the detached florid style of composers such as John Taverner. Particularly arresting are the extraordinarily harsh dissonances at “miserere nobis” and “damnare redemptos.” After such chromatic pain, the “Amen” provides a soothing, relaxed coda. | ||
| Sancte Deus, sancte fortis, sancte et immortalis: Miserere nobis. Nunc, Christe, te petimus, Miserere quaesumus. Qui venisti redimere perditos, Noli damnare redemptos; Quia per crucem tuam Redimisti mundum. Amen. |
Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and immortal: have mercy on us. Christ, we implore you, have mercy, we pray. You came to redeem the lost, Do not damn the redeemed; For by your cross you have redeemed the world. Amen. |
|
| Lamentations of Jeremiah (Part I) | Robert White (c. 1538–1574) |
| Robert White’s career shows the typical path of an English musician: education at Cambridge, a series of positions in provincial cathedrals, and, finally, a royal appointment to Westminster Abbey in 1569. As well, it was no hindrance to his promotion that he married the daughter of Christopher Tye, a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal. White probably wrote his settings of the Lamentations during the reign of Mary I. Mary Tudor restored the Latin rite after the reign of the Protestant boy-king, Edward VI, and the court composers such as Tallis, White, Tye, and Shepherd wrote an extraordinary quantity of music within a year of the queen’s accession. White’s settings of the Lamentations are among his finest works and have been inexcusably neglected by modern choirs. White follows the traditional pattern of prefacing each verse with a short vocalization on successive Hebrew letters, a nod to the acrostic present in the original Hebrew text. There is an expressive opening theme for “Heth,” a lament-like descending figure for “Teth,” and a haunting effect of widely-spaced bass and soprano entries on “Iod.” The verses display White’s preference for dense counterpoint, with the harmonies passing back and forth between the major and minor modes. This complex texture is broken by magical shifts of harmony at “quia viderunt” and “non habeas.” The poignant dropping third at “Deum tuum” brings the setting to an expressive close. | |
| Heth.
Peccatum peccavit Jerusalem |
Heth.
Jerusalem sinned grievously, |
| Teth.
Sordes eius in pedibus eius, |
Teth.
Her uncleanness was in her skirts; |
| lod.
Manum suam misit hostis Jerusalem, Jerusalem, |
Iod.
The enemy has stretched out his hands Jerusalem, Jerusalem, |
| Jerusalem, surge | Plainsong (Fifth Mode) |
| The plainsong chants for Tenebrae contain some of the finest examples of the Gregorian repertoire. The responsories, sung after the Lamentations, are especially rich in their expressive melismas and arresting solo verses. Jerusalem, surge was sung on Holy Saturday and displays typical fifth-mode motifs at “jucunditatis” and “oculi tui.” (The fifth mode, also known as the Lydian mode, sounds to modem listeners like a major scale with a raised fourth). Particularly beautiful is the solo verse’s syllabic chanting with melismatic cadential figures. | |
| (Choir) | |
| Jerusalem, surge, et exue te vestibus, jucunditatis; induere cinere et cilicio; Quia in te occisus est Salvator Israel. |
Jerusalem, arise, and put off your garments of joy; clothe yourself in ashes and sackcloth; For the Saviour of Israel has been slain in you. |
| (Solo verse) | |
| Deduc quasi torrentem lacrimas per diem et noctem, et non taceat pupilla oculi tui; |
Let your tears run down like a torrent day and night, and let your eye not be silent; |
| (Choir) | |
| Quia in te occisus est Salvator Israel. | For the Saviour of Israel has been slain in you. |
| Lamentations of Jeremiah (Part II) | Robert White |
| White’s music was highly esteemed by his colleagues. A contemporary copy has a singer’s tribute in the margin: “Not even the words of the gloomy prophet sound so sad as the sad music of my composer.” White’s technique shows a remarkable synthesis between the old melismatic style of Taverner and the then-fashionable Continental preference for syllabic imitation. At “omnis populus eius gemens,” the voices seem to keen in lament, while “et considera” sets the voices in strings of expressive thirds. The beautiful concluding section, “Jerusalem, convertere,” is remarkably similar to Tallis’s setting and may contain a mutual tribute. | |
| Caph.
Omnis populus eius gemens et querens panem,
|
Caph.
All her people groan as they search for bread;
|
| Lamed.
O vos omnes qui transitis per viam, |
Lamed.
Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? |
| Mem.
De excelso misit ignem Jerusalem, Jerusalem, |
Mem.
From on high he sent fire Jerusalem, Jerusalem, |
Five-minute break; please remain in place.
| Tenebrae factae sunt | Tomás Luis de Victoria (c. 1548–1611) |
| In 1581, Tomas Luis da Victoria astounded the musical world of Rome by leaving lucrative career and returning to his native Spain. King Philip II of Spain was delighted. His widowed sister, the Empress Maria of the Holy Roman Empire, had just retired to Madrid as well. Like so many other unemployed royals, she wanted a place in a comfortable, aristocratic abbey. Her brother obliged and lavishly endowed a religious house where she could be abbess. The news that Victoria was returning set off a bidding war throughout the kingdom. The king made Victoria an offer he could not refuse: good money, good singers, no administration and entrée to the Royal circle. It was for this abbey that Victoria wrote his greatest works, the Tenebrae Responsaries and the great six-voice Requiem.
Victoria wrote his responsaries in groups of three: two for SATB choir and one for high voices, SSAT. Tenebrae Factae Sunt (from which the office took its name), exploits the ethereal, transparent texture of the latter disposition of voices. Particularly fine are the great shouts of at “exclamavit Jesus” and the poignant descent into death at “Et iclinato”. The verse is given to a trio of solo verses before the choir returns to close the ABCB responsory form. |
|
| (Choir – SSAT) | |
| Tenebrae factae sunt, dum crucifixissent Jesum Judaei: et circa horam nonam exclamavit Jesus voce magna: Deus meus, ut quid me dereliquisti? Et inclinato capite, emisit spiritum. |
There was darkness when the Jews crucified Jesus; and about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice: My God, why have you forsaken me? And bowing his head, he gave up his spirit. |
| (Solo verse – SST) | |
| Exclamans Jesus voce magna ait: Pater, in manus tuas commendo spiritum. | Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. |
| (Choir) | |
| Et inclinato capite, emisit spiritum. | And bowing his head, he gave up his spirit. |
| Eram quasi agnus | Tomás Luis de Victoria |
| Eram quasi agnus has all the drama of a crowd chorus in an early Passion. Noteworthy is the descending theme at “ductus sum,” which is something of a leitmotif in Victoria’s Holy Week music. Although Victoria prefers long, arching phrases in a contrapuntal texture, he knows how to use heavy block chords for dramatic effect: the violence of “consilium fecerunt” and “Venite mittamus” give the music an intense quality. | |
| (Choir – SATB) | |
| Eram quasi agnus innocens: ductus sum ad immolandum et nesciebam: consilium fecerunt inimici mei adversum me, dicentes: Venite, mittamus lignum in panem eius et eradamum eum de terra viventium. |
I was like an innocent lamb: I was led to be sacrificed and I knew it not: my enemies conspired against me, saying: Come, let us put wood into his bread, and root him out of the land of the living. |
| (Solo verse – SAT) | |
| Omnes inirnici mei adversus me cogitabant mala mihi: verbum iniquum mandaverunt adversum me, dicentes: | All my enemies contrived evil against me, they uttered evil speech against me, saying: |
| (Choir) | |
| Venite, mittamus lignum in panem eius et eradamus eum de terra viventium. | Come, let us put wood into his bread, and root him out of the land of the living. |
| Caligaverunt oculi mei | Tomás Luis de Victoria |
| Caligaverunt oculi mei is the finest of Victoria’s Tenebrae Responsories. The opening gropes in symbolic darkness while the descending motif returns at “quia elongatus est.” A cry of “videte” prepares us for a superb passage. The lower voices provide a hushed accompaniment as, far above, the sopranos float a theme of indescribable sorrow. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that this passage may have inspired the soaring lines of Allegri’s Miserere. | |
| (Choir – SATB) | |
| Caligaverunt oculi mei a fletu meo quia elongatus est a me qui consolabatur me. Videte omnes populi, Si est dolor similis sicut dolor meus. |
My eyes became dim with weeping; for he is far from me that consoled me. Look, all you people, if there is any sorrow like my sorrow. |
| (Solo verse – ATB) | |
| O vos omnes, qui transitis per viam, attendite et videte. |
All you that pass this way, look and see. |
| (Choir) | |
| Si est dolor similis sicut dolor meus. | If there is any sorrow like my sorrow. |
Intermission
| In ieiunio | Thomas Tallis | |
| The dramatic texts of Holy Week invariably called composers to use unconventional chromatic harmonies. Gesualdo’s theatrical excesses contrast with Tallis’s harmonic experiment, which is no less revolutionary. Tallis takes his counterpoint (in this edition’s transposition) through C major, B major, F major, E major and C# major. We would have to look ahead 300 years to Wagner to find a comparable experiment. At the same time, the symbolically restless harmonies underpin the richest of part-writing, enlivened by the dramatic use of dissonant “cross-relations” at “dicentes”. | ||
| In ieiunio et fletu orabant sacerdotes, parce Domine, parce populo tuo, et ne des hereditatem tuam in perditionem. Inter vestibulum et altare plorabant sacerdotes dicentes: Parce populo tuo. |
Weeping bitterly and wailing, the priests prayed, Spare us, Lord, spare your people, and do not give your heritage into perdition. Between the porch and the altar, the priests wept and said: Spare your people. |
|
| Tristis est anima mea | Carlo Gesualdo (1566–1613) |
| The life of Carlo Gesualdo is the stuff of tabloid journalism. An urbane nobleman, he suspected his wife of adultery. Replacing the locks on her apartment, he and his henchmen were able to enter unnoticed and catch the lovers “in flagrante delicto”. Gesualdo ordered them stabbed to death. All of Italy was scandalized—he should have murdered them personally, not asked servants to do the deed! Such was the protocol of Renaissance revenge. His subsequent life was marked with illness and melancholy. It is almost impossible not to hear the drama of Gesualdo’s life in his music. Gesualdo’s music is bizarre and idiosyncratic. His vocal lines are short and jagged, and his harmonies plunge through extraordinary chromaticism which threatens to destroy the very shape of late Renaissance polyphony.
Tristis est anima mea opens with a sighing motif that is gradually swept into a vortex of modulations depicting the approach of Judas and the crowd. At “vos fugam,” the voices run in all directions. Particularly beautiful are the expressive dissonances at “et ego vadam.” The solo verse displays another extraordinary series of modulations which would not be out place in Hindemith. The first section is repeated to give the ABCB form of the responsory. |
|
| (Choir – SAATTB) | |
| Tristis est anima mea usque ad mortem: sustinete hic, et vigilate mecum: nunc videbitis turbam, quae circumdabit me. Vos fugam capietis, et ego vadam immolari pro vobis. |
My soul is sorrowful even unto death, Abide here and watch with me: soon you will see the crowd, which will surround me. You will flee away, and I will go to be sacrificed for you. |
| (Solo verse – SATB) | |
| Ecce appropinquat hora, et Filius hominis tradetur in manus peccatorum. |
Behold, the hour approaches, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hand of sinners. |
| (Choir) | |
| Vos fugam capietis, et ego vadam immolari pro vobis. |
You will flee away, and I will go to be sacrificed for you. |
| Lamentations of Jeremiah (Part I) | Thomas Tallis | |
| Tallis probably wrote his set of five-voice (ATTBB) Lamentations for use in the Chapel Royal of Mary Tudor, but they could equally have been used as “anthems” for the Latin services of Elizabeth’s reign. It is interesting to note that Tallis’s and White’s settings together provide a complete Lamentations sequence for Maundy Thursday. Tallis seems to have collaborated with other court composers in several projects designed to provide complete cycles of liturgical music for the newly-restored Latin rite under Mary. If they do date from Elizabeth’s Chapel, the descriptions of the raped and desolate Jerusalem may well be a crypto-Catholic lament for the religious iconoclasm of the period. The setting opens with an expressive figure to depict lamentation. Like White, Tallis introduces each section with a short vocalization of the Hebrew letters “Aleph” and “Beth.” Also like his colleague, Tallis has one voice lead while the rest of the choir follows in block harmonies. Particularly poignant are the cross-relations at “in nocte.” Though the contrapuntal writing throughout is dense and complex, in yet another connection with White, Tallis allows the voices to chant the climactic “Jerusalem, Jerusalem” in the simplest of harmonies. The effect is unforgettable. | ||
| Incipit lamentatione Jeremiae Prophetae.
Aleph. Quomodo sedit sola civitas plena populo facta est, |
Here begins the lamentation of Jeremiah the Prophet.
Aleph. How lonely sits the city that was full of people! |
|
| Beth.
Plorans ploravit in nocte |
Beth.
She weeps bitterly in the night, |
|
| Jerusalem, Jerusalem, convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum. |
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, turn to the Lord your God. |
|
| Caligaverunt oculi mei | Carlo Gesualdo |
| A comparison of Gesualdo and Victoria’s settings of this text shows the remarkable range of late-Renaissance technique. Both are impassioned settings, but where Victoria forges his emotional impact through austere, tightly-written harmonies, Gesualdo uses an almost hallucinogenic vision of shifting tonal colours. Caligaverunt opens with dark swimming counterpoint which is suddenly given eye-opening harmonies at “oculi mei.” The painful chromatic descent at “si est dolor” is without parallel in other music of the period. Another arresting example of Gesualdo’s anarchic harmonies occurs at “O vos omnes,” where we hear short, fragmented sections sinking through third-related modulations: B flat, G, E flat, and C major. | |
| (Choir – SATB) | |
| Caligaverunt oculi mei a fletu mei quia elongatus est a me qui consolabatur me. Videte omnes populi, Si est dolor similis sicut dolor meus. |
My eyes became dim with weeping; for he is far from me that consoled me. Look, all you people, if there is any sorrow like my sorrow. |
| (Solo verse – ATB) | |
| O vos omnes, qui transitis per viam, attendite et videte. |
All you that pass this way, look and see. |
| (Choir) | |
| Si est dolor similis sicut dolor meus. | If there is any sorrow like my sorrow. |
Five-minute break; please remain in place.
| Benedictus | Tomás Luis de Victoria |
| The Benedictus is the principal canticle at Lauds, analogous to the Magnificat at Vespers. During the Benedictus of Tenebrae, the six candles on the altar were extinguished, giving tangible symbolism to the closing line, “Illuminare his qui in tenebris.” Victoria’s setting is taken from his great Holy Week collection. Victoria ensures the utmost intensity by placing the voices in a particularly high range. Even the plainsong, sung in this high transposition, sounds urgent and restless—Victoria clearly had the high voices of the nuns in mind. The plainsong theme can be heard in the sopranos at “et erexit.” Echoes of the Responsories abound: the trio of high voices at “Jus jurandum” and the symbolic falling figure at “in umbra mortis” in the final verse. The work is sung here with its proper antiphon of Holy Saturday. | |
| (Plainsong antiphon) | |
| Mulieres sedentes ad monumentum lamentabantur flentes Dominum. |
The women sitting at the tomb lamented weeping to the Lord. |
| (Plainsong) | |
| Benedictus Deus Israel quia visitavit et fecit redemptionem plebis suae. | Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people. |
| (Choir – SATB) | |
| Et erexit cornu salutis nobis in domo David pueri sui, |
And has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, |
| (Plainsong) | |
| Sicut locutus est per os sanctorum quia a saeculo sunt prophetarum eius, | As he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, |
| (Choir) | |
| Salutem ex inimicis nostris et de manu omnium qui oderunt nos. |
That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all who hate us; |
| (Plainsong) | |
| Ad faciendam misericordiam cum patribus nostris, et memorari testamenti sui sancti, |
To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant, |
| (Choir – SAT) | |
| Ius iurandum quod iuravit ad Abraham patrem nostrum daturus se nobis, | The oath which he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us, |
| (Plainsong) | |
| Ut sine timore de manu inimicorum nostrorum liberati serviamus illi, | That we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, |
| (Choir – SATB) | |
| In sanctitate et iustitia coram ipso omnibus diebus nostris. | in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life. |
| (Plainsong) | |
| Et tu puer propheta Altissimi vocaberis; praeibis enim ante faciem Domini parare vias eius, |
And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, |
| (Choir) | |
| Ad dandam scientiam salutis plebi eius in remissionem peccatorum eorum, | To give knowledge of salvation to his people for the forgiveness of their sins, |
| (Plainsong) | |
| Per viscera misericordiae Dei nostri, in quibus visitavit nos oriens ex alto, | Through the tender mercy of our God, when the day shall dawn upon us from on high, |
| (Choir) | |
| Illuminare his qui in tenebris et in umbra mortis sedent ad dirigentes pedes nostros in viam pacis. |
To give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. |
| (Plainsong antiphon) | |
| Mulieres sedentes ad monumentum lamentabantur flentes Dominum. |
The women sitting at the tomb lamented weeping to the Lord. |
| Christus factus est | Sebastián de Vivanco (c. 1551–1622) | |
| Like Victoria, Sebastián de Vivanco was a native of Avila. His first appointment was at Lérida, but like other Castilian “foreigners,” he came into conflict with the independent-minded Catalonians. After an assistantship under Guerrero in Seville and positions in Segovia and Avila, he entered the public competition in Salamanca in 1603. At a brilliant audition, he received the double appointment of chapel master at the cathedral and professor of philosophy at the university.
This twelve-voice motet was written for the moment in Tenebrae when the church was enveloped in complete darkness. At this point, the Christus factus est and Miserere were sung from a veiled choir gallery (in some places in Spain the more fervid devotees of the penitential confraternities would begin to flagellate themselves). Vivanco’s work is worthy of this theatrical setting. He lays out his forces in three antiphonal choirs: two choirs of SATB and one of SSAT. Basing his themes on the plainsong chant, Vivanco gradually builds up to massive climaxes at “mortem crucis” and “omne nomen.” The text was sung cumulatively on the last three days of Holy Week with one section added at each successive performance. The final section is majestic with the fanfare figures of “propter quod” ringing out antiphonally until all the choirs are united for a sonorous conclusion presaging Easter. |
||
| Christus factus est pro nobis obediens usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis. Propter quod et Deus exaltavit illum, et dedit illi nomen quod est super omne nomen. |
For our sake, Christ submitted himself to death; a death moreover on the cross. For this reason, God both exalted him and gave him a name above every name. |
|
| Miserere | Gregorio Allegri (1582–1652) |
| When Mozart was fourteen years old, he attended Tenebrae in the Sistine Chapel and was transfixed when the papal choir sang Allegri’s Miserere. So jealously did the choir guard the work that they circulated a rumour that anyone who copied it would be excommunicated. The wunderkind was undeterred: he went home and wrote it out from memory. In fact, the feat is not that difficult, for the work is very simple: two rich choral sections which are repeated in alternation with plainsong verses. The setting’s mystique comes from the ornaments which the papal choir spontaneously added to the polyphony, as the Emperor Leopold I found out the hard way. After ordering his ambassador at Rome to secure a copy of the score, Leopold triumphantly assembled his choir for a performance at court. The choir sang, but no one was impressed: the papal choir had sent a copy without the ornaments!
The version of the Miserere commonly performed today bears little resemblance to Allegri’s original score. According to the musicologist and conductor Graham O’Reilly, it also has less in common with the Sistine Chapel’s highly ornamented version than generations of choral singers have been led to believe. Regardless of their lineage, the ethereal high C’s of the version we are performing tonight capture the true spirit of the Tenebrae service. |
|
| (Choir I – SSATB) | |
| Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam. | Have mercy on me, O God, according to your great mercy. |
| (Plainsong) | |
| Et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum: dele iniquitatem meam. | And according to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my iniquity. |
| (Choir II – SSAB) | |
| Amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea et a peccato meo munda me. | Wash me yet more from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. |
| (Plainsong) | |
| Quoniam iniquitatem meam ego cognosco et peccatum meum contra me est semper. | For I know my iniquity, and my sin is always before me. |
| (Choir I) | |
| Tibi soli peccavi et malum coram te feci, et justificeris in sermonibus tuis et vincas cum judicaris. |
Against you only have I sinned, and have done evil before you: that you might be justified in your words and overcome when you are judged. |
| (Plainsong) | |
| Ecce enim in iniquitatibus conceptus sum et in peccatis concepit me mater mea. | Behold I was conceived in iniquities; and in sin did my mother conceive me. |
| (Choir II) | |
| Ecce enim veritatem dilexisti incerta et occulta sapientiae tuae manifestasti mihi. |
Behold you have loved truth: your hidden wisdom you have made manifest to me. |
| (Plainsong) | |
| Asperges me hyssopo et mundabor lavabis me et super nivem dealbabor. | You will sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed: you will wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. |
| (Choir II) | |
| Auditui meo dabis gaudium et laetitiam, et exultabunt: ossa humiliata. | To my hearing you will give joy and g!adness: the bones that have been humbled shall rejoice. |
| (Plainsong) | |
| Averte faciem tuam a peccatis meis: et omnes iniquitates meas dele. | Turn away your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. |
| (Choir II) | |
| Cor mundum crea in me Deus et spiritum rectum innova in visceribus meis. | Create a clean heart in me, O God: and renew a right spirit within me. |
| (Plainsong) | |
| Ne projicias me a facie tua et spiritum sanctum tuum ne auferas a me. | Cast me not away from your face; and take not your holy spirit from me. |
| (Choir I) | |
| Redde mihi laetitiam salutaris tui et spiritu principali confirma me. | Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and strengthen me with a perfect spirit. |
| (Plainsong) | |
| Docebo iniquos vias tuas et impii ad te convertentur. |
I will teach the unjust your ways: and the wicked shall be converted to you. |
| (Choir II) | |
| Libera me de sanguinibus, Deus, Deus salutis meae: et exultabit lingua mea justitiam tuam. |
Deliver me from blood, O God, the God of my salvation: and my tongue shall extol your justice. |
| (Plainsong) | |
| Domine labia mea aperies et os meum adnuntiabit laudem tuam. |
O Lord, open my lips: and my mouth shall declare your praise. |
| (Choir I) | |
| Quoniam si voluisses sacrificium dedissem utique: holocaustis non delectaberis. |
If you had desired sacrifice, I would give it: with burnt offerings you will not be delighted. |
| (Plainsong) | |
| Sacrificium Deo spiritus contribulatus cor contritum et humiliatum Deus non despicies. |
A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit: a contrite and humbled heart, O God, you will not despise. |
| (Choir II) | |
| Benigne fac Domine in bona voluntate tua Sion et aedificentur muri Jerusalem. |
Deal favourably, O Lord, in your good will with Sion; that the walls of Jerusalem may be built up. |
| (Choir I) | |
| Tunc acceptabis sacrificium justitiae, oblationes et holocausta. | Then you will accept the sacrifice of justiceoblations and whole burnt offerings. |
| (Choirs I & II) | |
| Tunc imponent super altare tuum vitulos. | Then shall they lay calves upon your altar. |
Programme notes by Douglas Cowling; with updates by Naomi Perley
The Tallis Choir is:
Soprano – Margaret Allen, Anne Biringer, Elizabeth Cowling, Lauren Crowther*, Iona Lister, Jane McKinney, Katharine Pimenoff, Ana Luisa Santo, Cheryl Ann Smith, Rebecca Vogan, Jennifer Wilson*, Audrey Winch
Alto – Claudia Brown, Rohan D’Souza, Christine Davidson, Emily Hush, Sister Jeanne Marie, Joaquin Justo, Matthew Muggeridge*, Tara Nadal, Lauren Pais, Naomi Perley, Elaine Robertson, Alex Rojik
Tenor – Dan Donnelly, Curtis Eisenberg, Charles Im, Nathan Jeffery, Robert Kinar*, Sean Lee,
Bass – Jean-Paul Feo*, Raphael Redmond Fernandes, David Martin, Devyn Pope, Benjamin Tran-Pugh, Daniel Tran-Pugh, Isaiah Yankech
*concert soloist
Rehearsal Accompanist
Joaquin Justo
Artistic Director
Peter Mahon
Requiescat in pace
BEVERLEY LYNN JAHNKE
1948-2023
Tonight’s concert is dedicated to the memory of Bev Jahnke, a friend and fellow member of the Tallis Choir, of 30 years standing. This past Christmas Day she lost her battle with cancer. Bev loved singing and loved the Tallis Choir. Despite a difficult regimen of chemo and radiation therapy Bev continued to attend rehearsals and concerts right up until this past fall, when her health prevented her.
In paradisum deducant te angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere æternam habeas requiem.
Thank you for joining us tonight.
Mark your calendars for our closing concert of this season:
Saturday, May 4, 2024 Glories of the German Romantic Era
We look forward to seeing you there!
Please continue to check our website, sign up for our email list, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter for further updates.