From Flanders to Canterbury to Aix-en-Provence

Somehow, I find the English Reformation and its aftermath wherever I go!

My husband and I went to the used record store in the Delano neighborhood of downtown Wichita, Spektrum Rekords, and found some classical music LPs, including a series from the Musical Heritage Society/Erato Records called ". . . of Castles and Cathedrals". One of them is of liturgical music of Provencale composers, recorded in St. Sauveur (Holy Savior) Cathedral in Aix-en-Provence.

In searching online for more information about the LP and the cathedral, I found this note in the description of the notable art in the cathedral in the Wikipedia entry:

A set of seventeen tapestries of the life of Christ, bought in 1656 by the chapter thanks to a legacy from Archbishop Michel Mazarin. The tapestries were among twenty-six originally woven in 1511 for Canterbury Cathedral in England, and decorated the choir there until 1642, when they were taken down during the English Civil War. They made their way to Paris, where they were bought by the chapter and placed in the choir of the cathedral. The tapestries were stolen during the French Revolution, but repurchased by the Archbishop of Aix-en-Provence and Arles. In 1977, the first nine tapestries were stolen, and have not been recovered.

Here's more information about the tapestries.

Another great piece of art in the Cathedral, The Burning Bush, is pictured above with the side panels (you'll just have to imagine that the panels are on either side of the centerpiece):

The Burning Bush triptych by Nicolas Froment, an Avignon painter, is a masterpiece of the 15th century. The painting came from a Carmelite convent, destroyed during the French Revolution. The central panel represents the Virgin and Child seen on the burning bush. In the foreground, Moses, guarding his flock, is amazed by the vision. The two other parts of the triptych show the patrons of the work, King René I of Naples, also ruler of Provence, and his consort Queen Jeanne, in devotional attitudes.

The compositions on the LP are by Jocelyne Poitevin (by attribution), Joseph-Francois Salomon, and Andre Campra, "The Provencale Masters of the Motet", and are performed by the Stephane Caillat Chorale with its eponymous conductor. The subhead for the album is, "The glowing fervour of the musicians of Provence intensifies the prayers of their ardent faith". 

Heinrich Isaac, RIP

On the Gramophone magazine blog, Peter Phillips of The Tallis Scholars writes about Heinrich Isaac, who died 500 years ago today:

Heinrich Isaac died in Florence on March 26, 1517.

We know what happened to the reputations of renaissance composers: they bombed from the moment the composer died, were occasionally mentioned in treatises over the following centuries, until finally groups like mine took their music up and established a following for them on the contemporary concert-giving scene. There have been just a few exceptions: those who wrote for the Anglican church have been sung almost without break in religious services; Palestrina was put on a pedestal; and Josquin’s good name survived for more decades than most after his death, until he too vanished from sight.

The one deviation to this parade of death and resurrection is Heinrich Isaac. Having established a standing in his lifetime, after he died he continued uniquely to flourish. This was made possible by the fact that his music came to be worshipped by German musicians as the source of their national musical culture. This devotion has had its ups and downs historically – Hitler was not slow to tap into it – but the essence was that Isaac’s music had so dominated the musical life of the Hapsburg court in Vienna from 1497 until his death exactly 500 years ago, that the tradition there always acknowledged his influence. It is perhaps no accident that the peak of his posthumous fame was achieved in the Vienna of the 1890’s which resulted, for example, in a critical edition of one of his publications by Anton von Webern, prefaced by a remarkable essay on Isaac’s counterpoint. An irony here is that while the Nazis lauded Isaac, they suppressed Webern.

But long before the Romantics got hold of him Isaac had been prized – by Protestants as well as Catholics and not least by JS Bach. One source of the fascination was his simple but supremely beautiful valedictory song Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen which, with the text modified as O Welt, ich muss dich lassen, had been naturalised as a Lutheran chorale and set by Bach.

More about the CD here. It also includes several beautiful Marian motets! The Tallis Scholars have loaded one on YouTube, Virgo prudentissima. On my wish list!!

Brahms and Brahms and Bruckner

We found another used LP in very good condition--evidently played once to make a reel-to-reel recording, my husband thinks--of Brahms' Symphony No. 3 in F, Op. 90, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Fritz Reiner. This performance was recorded in Orchestra Hall, Chicago in 1957 and the RCA Victor Living Stereo LP released in 1958. It still makes the lists of great performances/recordings of this symphony. The liner notes are by Irving Kolodin, one of the most powerful and influential critics of the 20th century (see this story from Opera News). I was just now listening to the third movement, the Poco allegretto, of which Kolodin says: "Many listeners date their earliest attraction to symphonic music from this appealing movement, with its serenely expressive cello melody, its attractive aural curves and vistas. What makes it the endlessly satisfying thing it is, however, are the subtleties which become apparent as acquaintance ripens. For all its Poco allegretto marking, it is a scherzo as Brahms conceived the term, in which the conventional return to the opening (after the trio) is replaced by a wonderfully elaborate new version of the beginning. Moreover, it is replete with refinements of orchestration--that art of which Brahms supposedly knew so little--in which nothing ever happens the same way twice."

Here is a picture of the record on the turntable, a 1970's Yamaha:

Here is a picture of the symbol the previous owner stamped on all his record labels and sleeves, according to the owner of the record store.

I've also been listening quite often--in my car as I drive to see my mother in a care home about twenty minutes away--this award-winning recording of motets by Brahms and Anton Bruckner from Tenebrae. You may watch and listen to a selection from the recording here.

The liner notes for this CD introduced me to a new term, Cecilian, referring to reforms that predated Pope St. Pius X's 1903 call for the return to Gregorian Chant and Renaissance polyphony in sacred music for the Holy Mass:

Bruckner’s mature motets were written during a period of reform of music for the Catholic Church. The revisionist trend gathered pace in 1866 when the German priest and composer, Franz Xaver Witt, launched a journal devoted to the cause of ‘improving’ church music. The following year, he set out his manifesto and dealt with the practicalities of delivering it. Witt condemned the ‘trashy church music’ favoured by Catholic parochial choirs and suggested a ‘churchly’ alternative, one rooted in the ‘true’ music of such past masters as Palestrina and in the melodic purity of Gregorian chant. Witt’s words inspired the foundation of the Allgemeine Cäcilien-Verband (General Association of St Cecilia), or Cäcilien Verein (Cecilian Society) as it became known. His brainchild, named for music’s patron saint, soon grew in stature, leading one overenthusiastic cleric to describe it by the mid-1880s as ‘a small world power’.

In many ways Bruckner’s motets respect Cecilian ideals. They were informed by chant and Palestrinian polyphony; they also served to heighten the intensity of ritual worship without drawing attention to their composer’s ingenuity. Locus iste, written for the inauguration of the votive chapel of Linz’s New Cathedral, was first performed on 29 October 1869 under the direction of Johann Baptist Burgstaller, a driving force of the Cecilian Movement in Upper Austria. Bruckner’s predominantly homophonic gradual amounts to a study in simplicity. Its text, from Genesis 28:16-17, concerns Jacob’s reflections after waking from the dream in which he saw a ladder rising from earth to heaven. The work’s bass line, rarely silent, unfolds as a metaphor for a sacred building’s sure foundations.