Fairy Tales Set To Music

In the summer of 1795, while on holiday with his friend Schiller, Goethe decided to try his hand at something entirely new and challenging. Having mastered epic poetry and lyric verse, novels and plays, essays and even watercolors-not to mention new theories on botany and optics-he was going to tackle a real challenge: a fairy tale.

The entire corpus of Germanic tale-telling heritage lay heavy upon his shoulders, and he knew it. The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily has the virtue of being short, if dense and laden with meaning. Goethe said "it will remind you of nothing and of everything";
not a bad aphorism for any good fairy story.

Received with typical over-reaction (Goethe's patron Duke Karl August saw the work as "a continuation of the revelation of St. John," and Thomas Carlyle, who brought it to an English audience in 1832, called it "one of the notabelist [!] performances produced in the last 1,000 years"), the Fairy Tale did have one lasting effect on a young scholar who allowed the seed of this story to germinate in his mind. While Rudolf Steiner had read the Fairy Tale as a young man in Vienna, by the time the 150th anniversary celebrations of Goethe's birth came in 1899, he had concluded that the work perfectly addressed "the question about the relationship of the physical world to an experience of the supersensory realm, free of the physical senses, with its consequences for the human community."

Steiner called the Fairy Tale the "archetypal seed" of Anthroposophy, his philosophy that unites consciousness and spirit. Out of this he established the Waldorf system of education, still thriving at millennium's end, and still using fairy tales as a primary tool of enlightenment.

On the other hand, as we watch children listen with wonder to Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty, or even Babar the Elephant, we can see in them the palpable link between their immediate world and that "supersensory realm," and intuit with our innermost hearts that this is transforming for
the future human community.

Some of the earliest secular music we have tells us tales of the supernatural world, and composers today still thrive on coloring in sound what is often difficult to put into words maybe music is the closest we can get to the vivid pictures of our childhood imaginations!). It was bold of Soulima Stravinsky to tackle stories we all know, some of which had already been treated in celebrated works by Russian orchestral masters.

A certain boldness was required of this composer whose composer-father often created music bridging the physical world and the supersensory land of dreams and stories. Born in Lausanne in 1910 (115 years to the day after Goethe completed the Fairy Tale), Soulima watched his father work from an early age: "My father always composed at the piano," he told an interviewer shortly before his death in 1994; "He never had students and never gave me a lesson, but I heard him play constantly."

Lessons instead were left to Isidor Philipp and Nadia Boulanger in Paris, and if we remember Soulima now it is for the duo performance with his father in the two-piano concerto, or as the soloist in the Capriccio and Concerto for Piano and Wind Ensemble conducted by the elder Stravinsky. While Soulima was also a critic and educator, the sweet and small evocation of Three Fairy Tales may come as a surprise. Filled with the puckish wit his father often expressed, it ranges from complex coloristic touches (the rapid minor seconds in “Cinderella's Flight") to exquisite folk song-like tunes in "Jack and the Beanstalk." The choice of inserting a narrator to establish each picture in the listener's mind before we hear the music takes us quite consciously away from the concert hall and back to the time we all sat and listened to a good story with wide eyes and open heart.

Henry Barraud was born in Bordeaux in 1900, and, as you might guess by the name of his home town, came from a family of vintners. His desire to study music led to a short stint at the Paris Conservatoire with Louis Aubert in 1926-he was thrown out a year later for failing to follow the strict party line in composition. Further studies with Dukas and Caussade led to his appointment as the director of music for the International Exposition in Paris in 1937.

Paris in the late '30s was already under the shadow of the great sorrow to come; from the invasion to the liberation, Barraud served in the French army, and he wrote Offrande à une ombre in memory of his friend and fellow composer Maurice Jaubert, who was killed in action in 1940. When Barraud's brother Jean was shot by the Nazis in 1944, he amended the original dedication to include Jean as well (the work was premiered in St. Louis in November of 1946 just 18 months after V-E day).

Barraud became the music director for French Radio (Radiodiffusion Française) in that same fateful year of 1944. It was a post he held for 20 years. He continued actively composing and writing books on modern music, opera, and a well-regarded treatment of his countryman Hector  Berlioz. He received the Grand Prix National de la Musique in 1969, the same year he completed A Season in Hell, the symphonic suite dedicated to the memory of poet Arthur Rimbaud.

Nothing quite so sulfurous was on Barraud's mind in 1930 when he wrote his take on obscure tales. The very titles are laced with a faint orientalism, and reveal the architectural mastery of form most identified with Barraud's work, as if we can feel the very balcony on which the Princess stands. The individual stories in Histoires pour les enfants may not seem familiar, but the scent of Satie is in the air, and this world premiere performance may bring greater visibility to both this music and this now-neglected composer.

There is more than a faint wind of Satie in the works of the American composer Richard Wilson as well. Titles of his works are very in keeping with that beautiful eccentric: Deux pas de trois: Pavane and tango; Sour Flowers: 8 Piano Pieces in the Form of an Herbal. But Wilson's pedigree is certainly red, white, and blue: born in Cleveland in 1941, he went off to Harvard in 1959 where he counted Randall Thompson among his teachers. Piano teachers included Leonard Shure in new York and Friedrich Wüehrer in Munich. After receiving his M.A. at Rutgers, Wilson went to his teaching home of Vassar, where he has thrived for 30 years and is now the Mary Conover Mellon rofessor of Music.

A Child's London is a modern fairy tale, where the biggest of big cities stands in for the limitless forest or desert of other stories: but the adventures are just as improbable, and just as real. Wilson writes of this piece that "it was composed in London in 1984 for my daughter Katherine, then age 8, who was having piano lessons with our neighbor Ricci Horenstein. It was at Ms. Horenstein's suggestion that I wrote a suite of pieces suitable for Katherine's use."

There are a few pieces that wed narration and text which have become classics; many of those are of a historical or theatrical bent. For children, we have Carnival of the Animals, particularly when the Ogden Nash text is wedded to Saint-Saëns' wonderful music. There are a few classic personal interpretations: Leonard Bernstein with Benjamin Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. In the '40s and '50s we had the Tubby the Tuba and Ferdinand the Bull approaches; more recently we have heard biographies of composers using their own music, including the series Beethoven Lives Upstairs, for example.

But for stories, real stories with music, the field is very narrow: Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, and an even more unlikely bit of business involving a baby elephant whose momma is killed by hunters.

Everything about this work is felicitous, coming as it does from the darkest of times. We are back in Paris, in the era between the wars. Painter Jean de Brunhoff was besieged by his children one day to paint the story their mother told them of the orphan elephant who goes to the big city and then is brought home to the jungle to be King. Before his death by consumption at the tragically early age of 38, de Brunhoff had completed six Babar stories; one of the children, Laurent, kept up the series for decades.

The Story of Babar the Elephant, was an instant classic. Whether the story is true that the niece of a friend placed the original book with Cecile de Brunhoff's story and Jean's perfectly-rendered illustrations on the piano and asked "Uncle Francis" to play it, or whether it is just another layer of fairy tale, is unimportant. It is a story in keeping with Poulenc's temperament.

Entirely supportive of the modern wave, he championed music by the more avant-garde of his friends (his first piece was dedicated to Satie, and he personally recorded and promoted Satie's music). When the citizens around his country home in Touraine wanted to elect him mayor, he said that he "only wanted a solitude broken by the visits of friends." Poulenc's circle always protected and supported him, and he was deeply affected by deaths of friends (the car accident that killed Pierre-Octave Ferraud led to his rededication to Roman Catholicism and a body of religious works unparalleled in the 20th century).

His resistance during the Nazi occupation took the form of music: the Violin Sonata dedicated to Garcia Lorca, and, curiously and appropriately, Babar the Elephant. Scored for piano and narrator (the later orchestration was by Jean Françaix), it has tragedy, confusion in trying to adapt to new circumstances, triumph, and even an elegiac spirituality at the end. It evokes no emotion not immediately identifiable to a citizen in Paris from 1940-45, and, of course, no emotion not readily felt by any child.

As we have gazed at the faces of children who see these pictures as they hear this music, we have been stirred to believe that what might be universal is something witty and wise, simple and direct: in a tale of a baby elephant who loses its mother and becomes a good king, we see a  way of goodness for that "future human community."

Program notes by
Robert Aubrey Davis

Schwann 1999

A small, loosely-affiliated group of entities with mutual interests and a common challenge before them unite to pool their resources and vision, in order to form a more perfect union... eek, it sounds like the American Way! It is, therefore, both gratifying and a bit amusing to see a bunch of mostly-European labels with a limited impact on our shores band together to promote their early music releases.

The 30 or so labels represented range from a release list of one to the vast Hungaroton catalogue. Few of us in the business of dealing with recordings have not come in contact with the remarkable figure of Otto Quitner, who first brought much of the Eastern European recorded treasures to national U.S. distribution in the early 1960s. Certainly, when I first spoke to him 20-odd years ago, he was already a famous and exotic dealer in obscure wonders; that he took the time to nurture a local and late-night early music program could explain why over the succeeding decades we have enjoyed so much of the Schola Hungarica on Millennium of Music.

Tens of thousands of releases have passed through the distributorship over thirty-five years; hundreds of labels have come and gone through the group (called "Qualiton" for one of the early Hungarian labels), with about 120 currently in the catalogue. Here and there, one of the early music discs would break out and distinguish itself. Classical director Ron Mannarino and marketer Dave Osenberg had an idea: why not get the labels with a strong early music presence to band together one umbrella. Like the European Union, nobody wanted to lose their individual identity. And, like the EU (or any other "U"), everybody wanted a piece of the action. The solution was a new name with a special logo, and stickers that could be placed on the CD cases without obscuring the look of the original label. Advertising dollars could be consolidated, and a lot of relatively little guys could play in the same league with the few remaining big boys. The name chosen is Gioia Musica, and even among material at hand there is indeed much to celebrate.

Let's begin with that new label with one release. It is the first effort by Dr. Peter Czornyj since he left Archiv in the crumbling Polygram family to establish his own label, called Glissando. The release features Alexander Blachly's Pomerium ensemble, and is called Musica Vaticana (Glissando 770.001) since the material comes from Vatican Library manuscripts. Even in the light of the Czornyj/Blachly collaboration on Archiv that received a GrammyT nomination for 1998, this new effort must be considered a stellar effort. The natural ease and fluidity of Pomerium with Josquin is here; but that same effortless mastery applies to more-rarely heard pieces by Festa, Mouton, and Willaert, with an especially breathtaking addition to the many recent rediscoveries of obscure settings of The Lamentations of Jeremiah. ElzŽar Gener, called Carpentras, gave us a work that seems filled with the warmth and light of the south of France that was his home. Josquin-like polyphony gives way to homophonic, chord-based sections that give urgency and intensity to the text, and no Pope could have heard a better performance than that of Pomerium. Spain gives us two labels. Glossa was founded by a vihuelist (!), JosŽ Miguel Moreno with his brother Emilio. One may experience Moreno's range in one of those three-CDs-for-the-price-of-two sets created for last year's commemorations of the 400th anniversary of the death of Philip II, in the collection "Realities and Illusions: Music and Ideas around Philip II of Spain" (Glossa GSP-98001). Two extensive vihuela discs are enhanced with a disc where Moreno's Ensemble la Romanesca convincingly performs us some of the consort and vocal music of Spain's Golden Age. Glossa's new effort, a sub-label called "Nouvelle Vision," is characterized by a fascinating (if eccentric) dance across three centuries of music by Frans BrŸggen's new ensemble, which he calls "The Sour Cream Legacy"

One of the original Glossa founders, JosŽ Carlos Cabello, broke off in 1995 to create Cantus, a label of extraordinary aesthetic and musicological standards. Some groups simply shifted: La Venexiana, superb interpreters of Italian music at the cusp of the Baroque, gave Sigismondo d'India's Third Book of Madrigals to Glossa (GCD-920903) before passionately presenting Barbara Strozzi's First Book on Cantus (C-9612). The jewel in the Cantus crown is winning the Ensemble Gilles Binchois; the recording of Machaut's "Le jugement du Roi de Navarre" (C-9626) is the modern equivalent of an illuminated book of hours: beautiful to hold, read, and hear, it is an effort worthy of the universal praise it has acquired. Another label creator who left a previous engagement was Tim Smithies, who left Nimbus to create Metronome. Famous in the early music universe as the original home of the Orlando Consort (five recording over four years until Peter Czornyj grabbed them for Archiv), the label has since been a place of good groups and fun concept albums: the Concordia Ensemble and "Music for Mona Lisa" (MET-CD-1023), and I Fagiolini with "All the King's Horses" (MET-CD-1013).

Metronome's real coup, however, is the recent two-CD set with the Christ Church Cathedral Choir of Oxford directed by Stephen Darlington (say.didn't they used to be on Nimbus?). The recording of early Tudor masses from the Forrest-Heather Partbooks in the Bodelian Library opens a window to the time of John Taverner by revealing the quality of two lesser-known contemporaries, Thomas Ashwell and Hugh Aston. It is stunning if you know Hugh Aston for his justly famous "Hornpype" and maybe as the composer of "My Lady Carey's Dompe" to hear the fifty-minute Missa Videte manus meas (MET-CD-1030). So that's five or six of the many labels. Some deserve entire articles unto themselves: the wonderful Accent label, founded by flautist Andreas Glatt , home to some of the great recordings of 17th century repertoire; the quixotic K 617, whose "Chemins du Baroques" series put the same era on the map but with music from the New World in both Americas; Robert von Bahr's 25-year-old BIS label, who had 70-odd early music titles in his catalogue of nearly 900 recordings; the incomparable Christophorus, who supplied the material for so many of the early Nonesuch early music recordings where many of us discovered the field in the first place, and who still grow strong. Maybe this new union will survive after all.

Schwann 1999

Hers was a voice of the wine-dark sea, a voice of the old roses, deep red and richly cented, in every real sense a voice of the blood. "Voice of the Blood" was one of the many titles in the breathtaking legacy of Barbara Thornton, co-founder with her partner Benjamin Bagby of the Sequentia Ensemble for Medieval Music. It happened to be one of the series of recordings in the first complete set of performances of all of the music of the mystic, visionary artist and philosopher and composer Hildegard von Bingen.

Sequentia had already been performing for five years when their fruitful collaboration with Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne and long time WDR producer Klaus Neumann led to the stage production, film, and Deutsche armonia Mundi recording of Hildegard's "Ordo virtutum." The recording and subsequent tours brought back to the world's musical consciousness not just one of its most extraordinary figures (this "Sibyl of the Rhine" born nine centuries ago and creator of the first reconstructable play with music in world history), but also introduced us to Barbara Thornton.

As the Soul grappling with temptation in Hildegard's masterpiece, and in each of the any subsequent performances I had the good fortune to see over the next 16 years, Barbara's
character shone forth. She was a strong and intelligent woman with the intellectual authority to reinforce the countless decisions necessary when recreating music obscured by the centuries. This is not unusual among performers of medieval music, who tend to have a discipline and focus beyond that of other arts, even those where the whining is louder.

Barbara Thornton also had the spiritual electricity conjoined with a natural grounded earthiness that represent the best angels of the medieval personality. It is a blissful marriage of qualities lacking and longed-for in our time; it may account for the surprising popularity of medieval music in general and Sequentia's efforts in particular.

Her close friends often saw her lighter side, her laughter and inveterate love of dancing. Ben Bagby always took the lead role when it came to radio broadcasts, and Barbara was always distant (if pleasant) with me interpersonally. Some dozen years after first seeing the ensemble in performance, and after a number of radio broadcasts of the group (always with Ben only as commentator), I happened to be at the Holland Festival of Early Music at Utrecht when the presentation of the vast Bordeholm Lament of Mary took place. This one is unusual because it is the first liturgical drama to have stage directions, and Barbara dominated not just because of her eternally poignant role as Mary lamenting over the crucifixion of her Son

After the performance, Sequentia's label DHM with dignitaries from BMG threw a party for the various artists in their stable giving concerts at Utrecht that year. There were formal greetings picture-taking sessions, quiet talks in small groups about the Festival. That is, until Barbara took over. Somehow, she gathered a line of record executives, performers, and overworked festival organizers, jazzed up the music, and turned the whole thing into a giant chorus line. I cannot think of her voice, now still, without that snapshot engraved in my heart.

For her voice is, in fact, still; that this vibrant spirit born exactly mid-century was taken from us last autumn and did not live to see the millennium's end is a bitter tragedy for all who loved her and her art. Even for me, in the near distance, I knew of the brain tumor, the cancelled concerts, the valiant fight for health enough to complete the Hildegard recordings. Yet there is no preparation for the shock.

I began to reflect on Barbara Thornton alone, as a voice, not as I had always listened before, where she was part of an ensemble. Both the vocal quality and the choice of repertoire struck me. For example, even on the very same work, Hildegard's invocation to the spiritual muse in the sequence for St. Ursula, the 1995 version sung by Barbara on that very "Voice of the Blood" CD yields to and even greater soulfulness on l998's "Saints" two-CD set . Perhaps it is too much to read in this performance the expression of an individual calling forth to the divine in the face of impending death. When you hear the opening selection of the set sung by Barbara alone, "Great Father, we are in great need," then the answer may be: perhaps not.

The choices of solo repertoire in the secular recordings also began to reveal a pattern. Back in the l984 "Trouve [accent grav] res" set (05472-77155), she chose Jehannot de Lescurel's "Amour,
voule [accent aigu]s-vous acorder:" "My love, can you look on while I die of loving you? ...Death, relieve me of this weight, or wait no longer..."

The indispensable "English Songs of the Middle Ages" from 1989 (05472-77019) gives us the ultimate meditation on the fleetingness of human existence, "Worldes blis ne last no throwe [umlaut]." We should remember as we rarely do, that "Wordly bliss does not last for a moment...All the bliss which is here and there amounts at the end to weeping and grief." From "Philippe de Vitry" (05472-77095; 1991), there is "Ay, amours!," an uncharacteristic lover's lament by the famous satirist. From the crusty roughneck "Oswald von Wolkenstein" (05472-77302; 1993) we hear a tender query "Who is she, who shines there more than the sun's radiance?"

By 1995's "Dante and the Troubadours" (05472-77227), the full radiance of her maturity is unleashed on Peire d'Alvernhe's "Dejosta'ls breus:" "In the time of short days and long nights/when the clear air becomes dusky,/I wish my spirit to branch and sprout with a new joy/ bearing fruit and flower." If only it had been so for her. It is scary to think that Barbara's only solo contribution to the superb collection of Aquitanian polyphonic pieces recorded by Sequentia in 1997 (05472-77370 & 77383) the apocalyptic Song of the Sibyl preserved by St. Augustine in The City of God. Scary, and perhaps again, appropriate.

I think a piece, a portion of what Hildegard wrote to St. Ursula about a woman's blood became part of Barbara Thornton: "O redness of blood, who have flowed down from that height which divinity touched: you are the flower that the winter of the serpent's breath never withered."

Blame Not My Lute: Elizabethan Lute Music & Poetry

Ronn McFarlane, lute
Robert Aubry Davis, spoken word

In the liner notes for this tribute to the lute, Millennium of Music host Robert Aubry Davis writes about lute-inspired Elizabethan and Jacobean poetry and theater.

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1. Anon.: Bonny Sweet Boy--We begin with Ronn's performance of a popular Elizabethan song set for lute solo. While this version comes from one of the Matthew Holmes lute books collected at Cambridge, Thomas Robinson published a version in his 1603 The School of Musicke (where he credits himself with the composition) as “Bony sweet boy.” Robinson was a lute instructor at the court of Denmark before Dowland arrived there in 1598, and arranged some Dowland pieces for that 1603 book, including one we hear on this program (Lord Willoughby's Welcome Home). The tune itself acquired the lyric you can still hear sung today ("I once loved a boy and a bonny sweet boy").

2. Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542): Blame not my lute-- The time of Henry VIII will always be fodder for film and theater, and the passion and color of the lives of characters like Wyatt show why. His father's service with Henry led young Thomas to be given posts in various lands; it was on the 1527 journey to petition Pope Clement VII to annul Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon that he began the translations of Petrarch, which led to the sonnet form being brought to England. Even as he was dedicating to Catherine a Plutarch essay he had translated, he had fallen under the spell of Anne Boleyn. Wyatt had already separated from his wife Elizabeth Brooke who he had married in 1521 (she much later in the story was rumored to become the sixth wife of Henry after Catherine Howard was executed), and the hard evidence of the great poem “Whoso list to hunt” which warns all comers to stay away from the King's new favorite, is matched by later accounts that he had confessed to Henry that she was indeed his lover and not the right stuff to be a queen. Perhaps because Wyatt had the protection of Thomas Cromwell he was not executed in 1536 when the seven “suitors” of Anne were tried and killed-but he was almost certainly witness to Anne's beheading at the Tower of London on May 19 of that year. And, when Cromwell himself was killed in 1540, so went Wyatt's last shield against Henry's wrath. The accusation of treason in 1541 was only removed when Catherine Howard interceded, and her death left little for Wyatt at court. Perhaps it was a courtly self-inflicted death that gave the poet his last fever “contracted by hard riding” on a last diplomatic assignment for Henry. He was in his late 30s. It is fitting that this tall, rugged, passionate and magnetic figure begins and ends these readings. The music used is one of the only two or three anonymous settings we can attach to Wyatt's work. Blame not my lute, for he must sound
Of this or that as liketh me;
For lack of wit the lute is bound
To give such tunes as pleaseth me.
Though my songs be somewhat strange,
And speak such words as touch thy change,
Blame not my lute.

My lute, alas, doth not offend,
Though perforce he must agree
To sound such tunes as I intend
To sing to them that heareth me;
Then though my songs be somewhat plain
And toucheth some that use to feign,
Blame not my lute.

My lute and strings may not deny,
But as I strike they must obey;
Break not them then so wrongfully,
But wreak* thyself some wiser way; *carry out; inflict
For though the songs which I indite* *write
Do quit thy change with rightful spite,
Blame not my lute.

Spite asketh spite and changing change,
And falsed faith must needs be known,
The fault so great, the case so strange,
Of right it must abroad be blown.
Then since by thine own desart* *desert; what one deserves
My songs do tell how true thou art,
Blame not my lute.

Blame but the self that has misdone
And well deserved to have blame;
Change thou thy way, so evil begun,
And then my lute shall sound that same;
But if till then my fingers play
By thy desart their wonted way,
Blame not my lute.

Farewell, unknown, for though thou break
My strings in spite with great disdain,
Yet I have found out for thy sake
Strings for to string my lute again;
And if perchance this foolish rhyme
Do make thee blush at any time
Blame not my lute.

3. John Dowland: My Lady Hunsdon's Puffe --This relatively light piece showing the not-so-melancholic side of Dowland is an “almain” or allemande, a duple-time dance courtly French and English composers thought was au courant in Germany. While no German examples of the dance from Dowland's time have been passed down to us, we can reconstruct the dance itself from collections like Arbeau's famous Orchésographie.
4. John Dowland: Melancholy Galliard--The same dance source gives us the prescription for this, one of Queen Elizabeth's favorite dances (the head of the privy Chamber said she would “dance six or seven galliards of a morning”). It is an athletic dance of hopping and skipping, and only a person of Dowland's alleged temperament would take this bright work and make it of a darker hue. We wed it to one of the three Orphic references in the plays of Shakespeare, two of which are on the program. The mystical singer of Thrace who in Ovid pursues Eurydice to the very gates of hell had a powerful effect on the Renaissance imagination, and the transformative nature of his singing was appealing to that most music-loving of playwrights.

Shakespeare: Henry VIII, Act III, Scene 1. The Queen's apartments.

Orpheus with his lute made trees,
And the mountain tops that freeze
Bow themselves when he did sing.
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung, as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.

Every thing that heard him play.
Even the billows of the sea,
Hung their heads, and then lay by.
In sweet music is such art,
Killing care and grief of heart
Fall asleep, or hearing die.

5. Anon.: Kemp's Jig--Will Kemp was not only the early clown in Shakespeare's plays but was a stockholder in the Lord Chamberlain's Men. When bet that he could not dance all the way from London to Norwich in ten days (a hundred pounds-a small fortune for an actor and clown), he not only did so, but made the 80-odd miles in nine days. His hilarious account of the journey, “The Nine Days Wonder,” was published in 1600; this purveyor of “mad jigges and merry jestes” proves why he was so beloved by his fellow players and evidently by the young Shakespeare himself. This work commemorates his famous journey, where he asks us to “Imagine…I am now setting from Lord Mayors, the houre about seaven, the morning gloomy, the company many, my hart merry”.

6. Anon.: Packington's Pound--Another wager-this time, Sir John Packington (a favorite of the Queen) bet _3,000 that he could swim from the bridge at Westminster to Greenwich Bridge--but (according to William Chapell) “ the good Queen, who had a particular tenderness for handsome fellows, would not permit Sir John to run the hazard of the trial.” The “pound” was a pond built by Sir John that encroached on a public road; when forced to remove it, he cut out a section so it would flood the property of the complaining locals.

7. Thomas Heywood (?1574-1641): A Woman Killed with Kindness--Like Wyatt a Cambridge student, Heywood became a lead dramatist for Queen Anne's and Lady Elizabeth's Men at the Red Bull and Cockpit theaters. While he claimed 200 plays, we do have a number in autograph, as well as his 1612 Apology for Actors, a great summation of all the arguments for the stage itself. A Woman Killed with Kindness-- played in 1603 at the end of Elizabeth's life--looks at a happy, upwardly mobile couple, John and Mary Frankford. He is kind and loving, and she is beautiful and accomplished, as evidenced by her skills as a lute player. There is a subplot involving her brother Sir Francis and his altercation with one Sir Charles (over a wager again!); Francis falls in love with Charles's sisters Susan, and they all reconcile over this dowerless match made for love alone. But in the main plot, an impoverished gentleman John had befriended and invited to the estate falls under the spell of Mary, and persuades her into an affair. When it is discovered, John chooses a most remarkable path. He collects everything that was Mary's, sends her to a country home a few miles away, and promises to keep her in perpetuity, with one condition: She may never see him again. As we take up this scene in Act V, Scene iii, John is making sure every last thing of Mary's is gone; he finds her most precious possession, and dispatches the servant Nicholas to take it to her:

FRANKFORD. Her lute! O God, upon this instrument
Her fingers have ran quick division,
Sweeter than that which now divides our hearts.
These frets have made me pleasant, that have now
Frets of my hearts strings made…
Oft hath she made this melancholy wood,
Now mute and dumb for her disastrous chance,
Speak sweetly many a note, sound many a strain
To her own ravishing voice; which being well strung,
What pleasant strange airs have they jointly rung!-
Post with it after her.-Now nothing's left;
Of her and hers I am at once bereft.

NICH. I'll ride and overtake her; do my message,
And come back again.
[Exit]

Enter NICK.

NICH. There.

MRS. F. I know the lute. Oft have I sung to thee;
We are both out of tune, both out of time…
I thank him; he is kind, and ever was.
All you that have true feeling of my grief,
That know my loss, and have relenting hearts,
Gird me about, and help me with your tears
To wash my spotted sins! My lute shall groan;
It cannot weep, but shall lament my moan.
[She plays.]
MRS. F. [TO NICHOLAS] If you return unto you master, say…
That you have seen me weep, wish myself dead….
Go break this lute upon my coach's wheel,
As the last music that I e'er shall make;
Not as my husband's gift, but my farewell
To all earth's joy; and so your master tell.

NICH. If I can for crying.

8. John Dowland: Lachrimae--Much has been written about this incomparable piece, published in those dark days just after Elizabeth's death in 1603, and dedicated to James's wife Anne of Denmark. Whether we can construct backwards with this difficult and gifted man to say his self-professed melancholy was a more clinical depression is not within the purview of what we attempt here. Later commentators have likened the set of pieces centering around this tearful motif to the late Beethoven quartets; suffice it to say that when we listen to those works, or these, we are gifted with music's window into our inmost primal self, born into this world weeping and alone.

9. Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew, Act II, scene i--You may remember that a rich gentleman of Padua, Baptista by name, is father to two daughters: Bianca, and the fiery Katharina. In our scene of this tale, Bianca's suitor Hortensio has disguised himself as a music teacher to “break” this daughter Kate to the lute. Petrucchio, who is most intrigued by the spirited lady, stands nearby:

BAP. What, will my daughter prove a good musician?

HOR. I think she'll sooner prove a soldier.
Iron may hold her, but never lutes.

BAP. Why, then thou canst not break her to the lute?

HOR. Why, no, for she hath broke the lute to me.
I did but tell her she mistook her frets
And bowed her hand to teach her fingering,
When, with a most impatient devilish spirit,
“Frets, you call these?” quoth she. “I'll fume with them!”
And with that word she struck me on the head,
And through the instrument my pate made way;
And there I stood amazed for a whole,
As on a pillory*, looking through the lute *the more severe version of the stocks While she did call me rascal fiddler wherein the prisoner was forced to stand
And twangling Jack, with twenty such vile terms,
As she studied to misuse me so.

PET. Now, by the world, it is a lusty wench.
I love her ten times more than e'er I did.
Oh, how I long to have some chat with her!

10. John Dowland: Mrs. Winter's Jump-One can over think the connections here-yes Mrs. Winter was probably Jane Ingleby, in-law of famed recusant Lord Vaux and mother of two of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, and this may be tied up with the various Catholic conversions and associations Dowland made in his quest for station. Or it could simply be a delightful dance tune dedicated to a bright and charming lady: the choice is yours.

11. Samuel Daniel (1562-1619): Like as the lute-He studied at Oxford, met the pastoral poet Guarini in Italy, published the sonnet cycle Delia before he was thirty, and his brother John was a lutenist and composer. The Romantics loved him (Wordsworth thought his language “pure and manly”), but in his own age Ben Jonson wrote that he was “a good Honest man…but no poet.” In post-Romantic collections, he was one of those “Silver Poets” of the second rank. Perhaps-but as evidenced in this musical sonnet of love, Daniel plays with images of the instrument within the vast elasticity of the sonnet form to create a song any lover of the lute, or of love, would instantly recognize.

Sonnet XLVII

Like as the Lute that joys or else dislikes,
As is his art that plays upon the same:
So sounds my Muse according as she strikes
On my heart strings, high tuned unto her fame.
Her touch doth cause the warble of the sound,
Which here I yield in lamentable wise,
A wailing descant on the sweetest ground,
Whose due reports give honor to her eyes.
Else harsh my style, untunable my Muse,
Hoarse sounds the voice that praiseth not her name:
If any pleasing relish here I use,
Then judge the world her beauty gives the same.
O happy ground that makes the music such,
And blessed hand that gives so sweet a touch.

Anon.: Go from my window-This popular ballad was set by many Elizabethan composers (Morley and Dowland among them), is quoted by playwrights Fletcher & Beaumont and our friend Thomas Heywood, and has been recorded in our time by Steeleye Span. The song's them--that the lover cannot harbor safely this night--was more merry in the earlier versions, but typically with the Elizabethans, tinged with melancholy:

Go from my window, love, go
Go from my window, my dear;
The wind and the rain
Will drive you back again,
You cannot be lodged here.

12. Thomas Campion (1567-1620): When to her lute Corinna sings-After studying at Cambridge, Campion enrolled at Grey's Inn to study law, but found himself fascinated by the theater, playing in masques and dramas. He began composing and publishing, first songs, then a series of Latin epigrams. In 1601 he wrote a treatise on song (with 21 original examples) for Philip Rosseter's Book of Ayres. In fact, with his 1602 Observations on the Art of English Poesie and the 1615 A New Way of Making Four Parts in Counterpoint By a Most Familiar and Infallible Rule, later generations thought him a critic. In 1602 he acquired a medical degree and set up a practice in London (he was 40). Perhaps through the relationship with Rosseter, who was a lutenist to King James, he created masques for court. He produced four more books of ayres, and as he wrote so charmingly in the preface to one, "I have chiefly aimed to couple my words and notes lovingly together." When he died in 1620 of the plague, he had left his meager fortune-_32-to his dear friend Rosseter. This work is from the Second Book of Ayres:

VI.

When to her lute Corinna sings,
Her voice revives the leaden strings
And doth in highest notes appear,
As any challenged echo clear;
But when she doth of mourning speak,
E'en with her sighs the strings do break.

And as her lute doth live or die,
Led by her passions, so must I!
For when of pleasure she doth sing,
My thoughts enjoy a sudden spring;
But if she doth of sorrow speak
Ev'n from my heart the strings do break.

13. John Dowland: Lord Willoughby's welcome home-Dowland here re-sets the popular tune Rowland (as William Byrd called his version in the Fitzwilliam Virginal book). It changes the cast of this jig for a comic character into a celebration of the victorious return in 1589 of Lord Willoughby de Eresby, back in England after a successful command of the army in the Lowlands campaigns. When Elizabeth sent him to the aid of Henry of Navarre in September of that year, she wrote to Henry of Willoughby that “…His quality and the place he holds about me are such that it is not customary to permit him to be absent from me; … you will never have cause to doubt his boldness in your service, for he has given too frequent proofs that he regards no peril, be it what it may….”

14. Robert Herrick (1591-1674): Upon Julia's Voice-Son of a suicidal goldsmith (Robert was barely 16 months when his father leapt from their fourth story London home), Herrick was apprenticed to his uncle (also a goldsmith) before attending Cambridge. He came under the sway of Ben Jonson's magnetic circle-the “sons of Ben”-before becoming a priest and army chaplain, composing verse all the while. As a reward for serving with the Duke of Buckingham's campaign to help French Protestants, he was given a church in the South Devon village of Dean Prior. Like any cliché of the big-city boy finding himself among the country folk, his immediate disdain and isolation rapidly melted in the face of the people and their fierce humanity-he particularly loved how they kept their pagan traditions in the face of Puritan pressure. Of particular charm were the country lasses, and his pet pig could famously drink ale from a tankard he kept nearby. When the Puritans took over Parliament, they ejected this loyalist poet, and he had to live back in London off his relatives and their goldsmith trade. With the restoration in 1660, he was allowed to return, where he lived out his final years, buried in an unmarked grave. In Wordsworth's day the locals could still recite his works from memory. Many male poets (if fewer mere male mortals) claim to love everything about women; few do. But for Herrick, everything about a woman, her scent, her dress, her motion, even her voice was divine. What he learned in the fine art smithy of gold work he allied to his lapidary poems-polishing, honing, burnishing so that every word gleams.

Upon Julia's Voice

So smooth, so sweet, so silv'ry is thy voice,
As, could they hear, the damned would make no noise,
But listen to thee, walking in thy chamber,
Melting melodious words to lutes of amber.

15. William Byrd (1539/40-1623): Pavana “Bray”-Another keyboard piece in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, apparently arranged for lute by Francis Cutting (c.1550-1596), this is given the MB listing 59 in the catalogue of Byrd's works, and with the paired galliard is simply listed as “Bray's.” It would be fun to imagine that the Bray so named was of the Shropshire family that sent son Thomas to Maryland to propagate Anglicanism (and perhaps convert the citizens of that Catholic colony back to the true Protestant church), but since Byrd himself was a devout Catholic, that's unlikely. Yet Cutting, of whom we know little except for his lute works, was probably part of the circle of Lord Howard, renting a place near the Howard estate of Arundel-names from that most famous of English Catholic families that still are kept alive in Ronn McFarlane's home state.

16. Richard Barnfield (1574-1627): If music and sweet poetry agree-Raised in Shropshire and attending Oxford, Barnfield was caught up in the spirit of the time-Sir Philip Sidney died when he was still at school-so he came to London to find his heroes. He met Drayton and maybe Spenser, and began publishing in 1594, with his second collection, the twenty sonnets of Cynthia being addressed to Ganymede. This made Barnfield the only other poet of the age to address a sonnet cycle to a man outside of Shakespeare. Indeed his A Remembrance of some English poets is the earliest work to praise Shakespeare by name (sorry, Earl of Oxford partisans), placing the playwright in the same company as Spenser and Samuel Daniel. And additionally, in the same appendix to Poems in divers Humours where we take our sonnet (almost certainly addressed to a courtly male lutenist), the ode “As it fell upon a day/in the merry month of May” appears-a work for centuries attributed to Shakespeare himself. The use of the word conceit, related to “concept,” is in the poetic sense of the vast extended metaphors that guided poets from Petrarch to Donne. Phoebus in this context means Apollo, god of both music and poetry.

If music and sweet poetry agree,
As they must needs, the sister and the brother,
Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me,
Because thou lovs't the one and I the other.
Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch
Upon the lute doth ravish human sense.
Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such
As passing all conceit needs no defense.
Thou lovest to hear the sweet melodious sound
That Phoebus' lute, the queen of music, makes:
And I in deep delight am chiefly drowned
When as himself to singing he betakes.
One god is god of both, as poets feign;
One knight loves both, and both in thee remain.

John Dowland: Piper's Galliard-Captain Digorie Piper possessed not only one of those perfect Elizabethan names, but also professions: he was a licensed pirate, charged by the Queen to plunder Spanish shipping. That he cast his net rather wider, attacking other nations (including Danish ships) is entirely in character. That Dowland took to writing this piece even while he served King Christian IV of Denmark, gives us a perfect window into the temperament of the time in general, and Dowland in particular. As Dowland's dear friend Henry Peachem said in The Compleat Gentlemen, “he had slipped many opportunities in advancing his fortune.” His contrarian nature may have been more potent than his melancholy.

17. Thomas D'Urfey (1653-1723)(ed.): 'Tis but a wanton trick-Perhaps the title of this collection says all we need to say: Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy. The Restoration was like the uncorking of a champagne bottle, and every tendency held in check by the Puritans exploded out into the artistic and popular world. Young Tom, a Devonshire man of Huguenot heritage, found he had a knack not only for the stage but also for humorous song stylings. At home in the courts of the kings, he was equally beloved by the common man; among his most popular songs was The Fart. Inheriting the Playford family dance books, he expanded the charter with whatever bawdy ballad he could find. He adapted Cymbeline (as The Injured Princess); his three-part setting of Don Quixote featured music of Henry Purcell (one of the 40-odd composers who set his work); and he was still writing into the time of Queen Anne. This wild and profane take on a music tutor and his female pupil may never have you look on a lute, a viol, a bow, or a recorder quite the same way ever again.

If anyone long for a musical song
Although that his hearing be thick
The sound that it bears will ravish his ears
Whoop!, `Tis but a wanton trick

A pleasant young maid on an instrument played
That knew neither note nor prick
She had a good will to live by her skill
Whoop!, `Tis but a wanton trick

A youth in that art, well seen in his part
(They calléd him Derbyshire Dick)
Came to her a suitor and would be her tutor
Whoop!, `Tis but a wanton trick

To run with his bow he was not slow
His fingers were nimble and quick
When he played on his bass, he ravished the lass;
Whoop!, `Tis but a wanton trick

He wooed her and taught he until he had brought her
To hold out a crotchet and prick
And by his direction she came to perfection:
Whoop!, `Tis but a wanton trick

With playing and wooing, he still would be doing
And called her his pretty sweet chick;
His reasonable motion brought her to devotion:
Whoop!, `Tis but a wanton trick

He pleased her so well that backwards she fell
And swoonéd as though she were sick
So sweet was his note that up went her coat:
Whoop!, `Tis but a wanton trick

The string of his viol she put to the trial
Till she had the full length of the stick
Her white-bellied lute she set to his flute:
Whoop!, `Tis but a wanton trick

Thus she with her lute and he with his flute
Held every crotchet and prick
She learnéd at leisure, yet played for the pleasure:
Whoop!, `Tis but a wanton trick

His viol string burst; her tutor she cursed
However, she played with the stick,
From October to June she was quite out of tune:
Whoop!, `Tis but a wanton trick

And then she repented that e'er she'd consented
To have either note or prick,
For learning so well made her belly to swell:
Whoop!, `Tis but a wanton trick

All maids that make trial of a lute or a viol
Take heed how you handle the stick!
If you like not this order, come try my recorder:
Whoop!, `Tis but a wanton trick

Anon.: Peg-a-ramsey/Robin Reddock--Two pieces added by “An unknown adult hand” to William Ballett's lute book, presented to him by his teacher William Vines. Sir John Hawkins reflecting on the first tune notes that it was the same as we see in Twelfth Night linked to Malvolio (Act II, sc. 3. SIR TOBY: Malvolio's a Peg-a-Ramsey…). Dr. John Bull sets it as “Little Pegge of Ramsey” and Tom D'Urfey notes the tune was sung to one of the ballads he collected originally as “O! London is a fine town.” The robin (also called the “redduck”) is associated in medieval and Elizabethan lore with lust (thus its red breast), the natural pagan world in the Robin Hood tales, and the Crucifixion (by comforting Christ on the Cross, the formerly dun-colored bird was gifted with a mark of Christ's blood on its breast). One takes comfort in the medieval imagination understanding that these things lived in harmony, not in conflict, in their minds.

18. Shakespeare: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act III, sc. ii-Ah, yes: “Who is Silvia? What is she…?” we ask in this delightful early play. It makes elegant sense that the changeable Gentleman named Proteus would invoke in almost a throw-away quatrain not only Orpheus, but in that last line one of the most magnificent evocations of the susurration of the sea in the language. Ovid would have been pleased.

PRO. For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews,
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans
Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.

19. John Dowland: A Fancy--Of the hundred-or-so solo lute works by Dowland, a number are labeled “fancy.” This is the renaissances fantasia form, allowing the composer to have free range of expression; sometimes they are linked to a special tune ("Forlorn Hope"), sometimes to a technique ("Tremolo"). This is one of the four Fancys in the Cambridge Dowland Manuscript, and is given the Poulton listing 73.

20. Sir John Davies (1569-1626): Nosce Teipsum--Born in Wiltshire to a good family, Davies studied literature at Winchester and at Oxford, where his writings came to the attention of the Queen. He had some trouble becoming a lawyer: he was disbarred for striking his friend Richard Martin with a cudgel in the Inns at Court, after dedicating his 1596 poem with its account of the history and value of dancing (“Orchestra”) to Martin. His two 1599 works found great favor with the Queen (he dedicated The Hymnes of Astraea to her), and the one called Nosce Teipsum (“Know Thyself”) also brought Davies to the attention of Lord Mountjoy, who became Lord Deputy of Ireland. That, and the patronage of James I, leads us to the rest of Davies' life and his work in Ireland. But we will stay with that vast philosophical poem, and how in the section “Objections against the Immortality of the Soul” Davies uses the skills of a lutenist to answer two questions: Doesn't the soul get old?-look how old people behave; and How can the soul shine forth when the body itself decays?

Objection I

For what, say they, doth not the Soul wax old?
How comes it then that aged men do dote,
And that their brains grow sottish*, dull and cold, *stupefied as if by drink
Which were in youth the only spirits of note?

What? Are not souls within themselves corrupted?
How can there idiots then by nature be?
How is it some wits are interrupted,
That now bedazzled are, now clearly see?

Answer

So, though the clouds eclipse the sun's fair light,
Yet from his face they do not take one beam;
So have our eyes their perfect power of sight
Even when they look into a troubled stream.

Then these defects in Senses' organs be
Not in the soul or in her working might:
She cannot lose her perfect power to see,
Though mists and clouds do choke her window light.

These imperfections then we must impute
Not to the agent but the instrument:
We must not blame Apollo, but his lute,
If false accords from her false strings be sent.

As a good harper stricken far in years,
Into whose cunning hand the gout is fall,
All his old crochets in his brain he bears,
But on the harp plays ill, or not at all.

But if Apollo take his gout away,
That he his nimble fingers may apply,
Apollo's self will envy at his play,
And all the world applaud his minstrelsy.

Objection II

Yet say these men: If all her organs die,
Then hath the Soul no power her powers to use;
So, in a sort, her powers extinct do lie
When unto act she cannot them reduce.

And if her powers be dead, then what is she?
For sith* from everything some powers do spring, *since
And from those powers some acts proceeding be,
Then kill the power and act, and kill the thing.

Answer

Doubtless the body's death, when once it dies,
The instruments of sense and life doth kill,
So that she cannot use those faculties,
Although their root rest in her substance still.

….

(Yet) if one man well on a lute doth play,
And have good horsemanship, and learning's skill,
Though both his lute and horse we take away,
Doth he not keep his former learning still?

He keeps it doubtless, and can use it too,
And doth both the other skills in power retain,
And can of both the proper actions do
If with his lute or horse he meet again.

So, though the instruments (by which we live
And view the world) the body's death do kill,
Yet with the body they shall all revive,
And all their wonted offices fulfill.

John Dowland: Fortune my Foe-Another resetting of a popular ballad, and another masterpiece of the composer's melancholy strain, it appears in solo and consort form. Early lyrics survive what must have been a popular tune for broadside ballads, and as Falstaff flatters Mrs. Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor, he responds to her proclamation that she is but a plain woman (Act III, sc. iii):

FAL. By the Lord, thou art a traitor to say so: thou wouldst make an absolute courtier; and the firm fixture of thy foot would give an excellent motion to thy gait in a semi-circled farthingale. I see what thou wert, if Fortune my foe were not, Nature thy friend. Come, thou canst not hide it.

21. John Dowland: Queen Elizabeth's Galliard-Published seven years after the Queen's death in 1603, this was a re-working of an earlier galliard Dowland had dedicated to Kathryn Darcie around 1590. Despite the darker hue Dowland encouraged in his self-image, this lively dance form was much his favorite; we have twice as many settings of the galliard as any other type of dance he composed.

22. Sir Thomas Wyatt: My Lute Awake
John Dowland: Tarleton's Resurrection. These works fit together magically. Dowland had already written a work for Lord Strange, in whose company of actors Shakespeare had performed from the end of the 1580s. Will Tarleton had been a comic actor with the troupe, and had died in 1588. Was this meant to be a dance for him, or an elegy on his passing? No matter; through this music let us remember them all.

My Lute Awake

My lute awake! perform the last
Labour that thou and I shall waste,
And end that I have now begun;
For when this song is sung and past,
My lute be still, for I have done.

As to be heard where ear is none,
As lead to grave in marble stone, * *(lead is too soft to be used for engraving)
My song may pierce her heart as soon;
Should we then sigh or sing or moan?
No, no, my lute, for I have done.

The rocks do not so cruelly
Repulse the waves continually,
As she my suit and affection;
So that I am past remedy,
Whereby my lute and I have done.

Proud of the spoil that thou hast got
Of simple hearts thorough Love's shot,* *(Cupid's arrow)
By whom, unkind, thou hast them won,
Think not he hath his bow forgot,
Although my lute and I have done.

Vengeance shall fall on thy disdain
That makest but game on earnest pain.
Think not alone under the sun
Unquit* to cause thy lovers plain, *unrequited
Although my lute and I have done.

Perchance thee lie withered and old
The winter nights that are so cold,
Plaining* in vain unto the moon; *lamenting; complaining
Thy wishes then dare not be told;
Care then who list, for I have done.

And then may chance thee to repent
The time that thou hast lost and spent
To cause thy lovers sigh and swoon;
Then shalt thou know beauty but lent,
And wish and want as I have done.

Now cease, my lute; this is the last
Labour that thou and I shall waste,
And ended is that we begun.
Now is this song both sung and past:
My lute be still, for I have done.

The Utrecht Festival of Music Millennium of Music host Robert Aubry Davis reflects on the rich history and legacy of the annual Utrecht Music Festival, The Netherlands

There were settlements in Utrecht before the Romans came; the land begins to rise out of the fens here where the river divides, and even the fiercest storm tides spared the sandy heaths to the west. The Frisians and Franks followed the Roman lead of building below the ford (literally "uut trecht" in Old Dutch), and thus a town was born. By 635 Dagobert I, King of the Franks, founded a church there; for 13 centuries there have been bishops or, since 1559, archbishops in Utrecht. By the time Henry IV built the Maria church in the 11th century, the city was a thriving medieval trade center, while the saenredam painting on our cover reveals the beauty of a structure torn down in the 19th century, the Romanesque cloister still remains on the Mariaplaats. Henry's internal organs are still to be found in the crypt of the cathedral.

The middle ages are uniquely alive in this city: the Janskerk was also begun in the 11th century, and nearby is the University Library where the Utrecht Psalter is kept. A work of incalculable beauty and craftsmanship, it is one of the most influential manuscripts of the era. Knights returning from Crusade brought devotion to St. Catherine of Alexandria to the city; the old Catherine church remains in name only as the "Hoog Catherijne," a huge shopping mall. However the Catherine Convent, however, was reopened in 1978 as a museum of the medieval treasures of the Netherlands, and is one of the handful of great centers to experience the European middle ages.

Growth and expansion continued: churches and houses of trade were built; between 1320 and 1382 the huge cathedral tower was added with its magnificent carillon and 465 steps, the tallest ecclesiastical structure in the lowlands. With the 17th century Golden Age, Utrecht developed its world-class University. Arts and trade thrived. The ancient city walls, built in 1130, were not breached by the peacetime necessity of expansion until just over a century and a half ago; the city was the last in the lowlands to move outside its medieval confines.

With the rebirth of interest in early music by mid-20th century, it was natural that the Dutch would not only be at the forefront in terms of scholarship and performance, but that a great festival should be created to showcase this newly-rediscovered musical treasure. And the natural home for the festival was Utrecht. By 1998, the 17th Holland Early Music Festival at Utrecht, basic thematic structures had fallen into place. A composer would be celebrated; as the 900th anniversary of the birth of the great German mystic, composer, artist, and abbess Hildegard von Bingen occurred in 1998, and the Festival had always been a place where her music was heard, it was a fortunate choice to bring back the Gothic Voices, who in their Feather on the Breath of God recording first brought Hildegard to world visibility.

Sometimes broader themes are explored: War and Peace is a big topic, and never far from the minds of European musicians old or new: events in the former Yugoslavia as seen through the veil of old music are often discussed in late night coffeehouse sessions at the Festival. To have the Janequin Ensemble sing Janequin is sensible; the Battle of Marignano was the last time the Swiss fought and lost a battle, and Janequin appropriately gives us the point of view of the victorious French. The Spain of Philip II is living history for the Dutch; both their time of greatest suffering and fiercest rebellion occurred during his reign: it was in Utrecht in 1579 that seven northern provinces led by John of Nassau declared the Union that would lead to independence for the Netherlands; the music centering on the death of Philip four centuries ago in 1598 tempers the beauty of Requiem masses and motets with the memory of people glad to see the passing of an oppressor.

Certainly one of the most interesting and controversial parts of the Festival is a recognition of music outside of the strictly European mold. It is often part of what we call world music, usually not mainstream but of a living tradition. This year, After Crusades looks at the cross-pollination of Islamic cultures with Christian lands; the evidence is clear for Alfonso el Sabio in his court; what Sr. Marie does in her speculative reconstructions is almost outside of the realm of scholarship into a land of spirit: only she would suggest to us what Arabic music of the pre-Mohammed Christian tradition might have sounded like.

Finally, Florence on the Elbe gives us a chance to hear the Baroque music that has been such a specialty of the Dutch; the nice twist at the 1998 Festival was a recognition of the music from the Saxon court of Dresden, with its influence by Italians (like Lotti) and its under-appreciated composers, exemplified in typically superb performances by the Freibourg Baroque Orchestra with music of Pisendel.

Since the Festival's inception, Radio Nederland has been recording and presenting these concerts. The American radio program Millennium of Music had been a featured part of the schedule at WETA in Washington since the year before the Utrecht Festival was founded; some of the Utrecht concerts had appeared on the program as early as 1987. When Millennium became available to a national audience in 1990, it was an obvious choice to formalize the arrangement and regularly present Utrecht concerts throughout the United States. In 1996, Radio Nederland Music Director Hans Quant suggested to me that the strictures of Millennium (the thousand years of music before the birth of Bach) eliminated the chance to hear some of the very best material from the Festival. Thus, ÒThe European CenturiesÓ was born. Adding festivals from Flanders, Norway, Finland, and even the Smithsonian Institution (featuring Dutch performers!) to the wealth of music from Utrecht, The European Centuries has become a prime location for live performances of music from 1650-1850 with an emphasis on original instruments. Millennium currently is heard on over 150 stations nationally, while European Centuries is heard on around 40 stations. Both are distributed by WCLV/Seaways Productions, and are both fed via satellite and are made available by special arrangement on CD or Dat for stations without satellite capacity.

Over the years, the most characteristic response to these programs is not the breadth of audience, but the intensity and devotion of a core audience for whom this music serves a unique function: performances of integrity, presentations of intelligence and clarity, and music that enriches the mind and nourishes the soul.

- Robert Aubry Davis

Millennium of Music host Robert Aubry Davis writes a meditation on Christmas to accompany a selection of some of the program's most beloved holiday music:

He is Coming!
1. MARC-ANTOINE CHARPENTIER: Antiennes "O" de l'Avent: Troisiéme O: O
radix Jesse Les Arts Florissants/William Christie 2:22.
2. ANON.: Communion for Advent: Beata viscera (Sarum rite) Anonymous 4
1:53

The Night of Birth.
3. HANDEL: Messiah: Pifa (Pastoral Symphony) Les Arts > Florissants/William Christie 2:47
4. HEINRICH SCHÜTZ: Der Engel spracht zu den Hirten. The Choir & Orchestra of the Academy of Ancient Music/Paul Goodwin 2:35
5. DANIEL READ/NATHUM TATE: While Shephers Watched. Theatre of Voices/Paul Hillier 4:30

The Mystery of Birth.
6. ANON.: Cant de la Sibilla.. Ensemble Ars Musicae de Barcelona/Enric
Gispert 3:47
7. HANS LEO HASSLER: O Admirabile Commercium Ensemble Vocal Europeen/Philippe Herreweghe 3:35
8. THOMAS TALLIS: Salvator mundi Domine Deller Consort/Deller
Consort 5:11

A New Work is Come on Hand!
9. ANON.: Allelulia: A new werk. Hilliard Ensemble 3:40
10. NOTKER BALBULLUS: Sequence: In natali domini. Ensemble Gilles Binchois/Dominique Vellard 2:25
11. ANON: Gaudete, Gaudete, Christus est natus. Theatre of
Voices/Paul Hillier 1:27

There is no Rose.
12. ANON./THOMAS HAMMOND: Swete was the song the Virgine soong. Pro
Arte Singers/Paul Hillier 2:14
13. ANON.: Conductus: Salve mater salvatoris. Anonymous 4 3:45
14. ANON.: Ther is no rose of such vertu. Hilliard Ensemble 3:38

Mother and Baby.
15. ANON.: Lully, lulla, thow littel tyne child (Coventry Carol). Pro Arte Singers/Paul Hillier 3:19.
16. ANON.: Lullay, lullay: Als I lay on Yoolis Night. Anonymous 4 8:02

Blessings for the New Year.
17. ANON.: Novus annus adiit. Anonymous 4 4:20
18. ANON.: In hoc anni circulo. Theatre of Voices/Paul Hillier 7:37

He Shall Fedd His Flock.
19. HANDEL: Messiah: He Shall feed His flock. soloists/Les Arts Florissants/William Christie 5:48

A MEDITATION ON CHRISTMAS

The message of Christianity is encapsulated in the Easter story: it is the real story of the young faith, its image is in the daily celebration of communion, it is the center of the church year. The birth of the new Redeemer is a small part of the narrative, told in somewhat conflicting accounts only by Luke and Matthew.

The young faith had competition from established religions, some of which are still with us, some of which have nearly disappeared from memory. Conflicts arose when men of good will and brilliant intellect began to question the supernatural and seemingly impossible aspects of the story of Christ and its import. When there seemed to be competition with state religions, the crude Roman persecutions began.

There is a fight, a kind of philosophical holy war, in the first years of Christianity. It is a great study, and what was finally hammered out at the Council of Nicaea represents the digestion and clarification of a huge body of reasoned argument seasoned by faith.

The story of the celebration of Christmas is very different. Perhaps because of the sheer vulnerability and gentleness of the imagery, it arises, gradually and quietly, as a time of celebration. Despite Clemens of Alexandria's belief that a spring date for the birth should be argued, as early as the second century we see the current solstice-time celebration in Antioch. And even though Gregory of Nazainzus argued against conflating the ways of Christianity with those of the pagans, the rest of the story of Christmas is based entirely on this mixture.

From the important Roman feast of the Saturnalia (which actually lasted for a week surrounding the current winter solstice) we find feasting and exchange of gifts (particularly those emblematic of the harvest, thus establishing the much-maligned fruitcake as one of the earliest Christmas presents). Candles and torches brought back light to the world.

While most Eastern faiths had solstice celebrations, the rise of Mithraism from Persia brought about a practical faith especially favored by soldiers. Justin Martyr was already distressed because this new Sun God religion seemed to have adopted and corrupted the sacramental meal from Christianity (already a reflection of both the Jewish seder and Greek mystery faiths, like Orphism). Mithra was born of light and wisdom on December 25th, and in the third century Emperor Aurelian declared that date the Dies Invicti Solis.

Perhaps because Constantine was introduced to Christianity by his mother, Helena (who excavated the True Cross), the feeling for the time of Jesus' birth began to intensify in earnest. Scholar A.D. Nock wisely noted that "a man used Mithraism, he did not belong to it body and soul." Christianity was all-encompassing, and as you cared for the resurrected Savior, you cared for His mother and birth. Constantine oversaw the building of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and, as the celebration of the new state-sanctioned religion spread, we see Christmas celebrated in Rome by 336. In 350, Pope Julius I settled a variety of disputes by simply declaring December 25th as the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord (one of only three such birthday feasts, the other two being Mary and John the Baptist).

The next great faith that Christianity absorbed in part was that of the Celts and Germanic tribes. Often pointed to is the tale related by the eminently readable historian of the English church, the Venerable Bede. He tells how Augustine was established as the first Archbiship of Canterbury, and noted how the people celebrated their Yule (Bede thought it was their word for "winter solstice" - it is actually Old Norse jol, "a specific winter feast"). Greenery was brought indoors, livestock was slaughtered, there were bonfires and feasts. Pope Gregory the Great, wise as ever, advised Augustine "nor let them now sacrifice animals to the Devil, but to the praise of God kill animals for their own eating, and render thanks to the Giver of all their abundance.

This pattern of acceptance and adaptation becomes the Christmas story, from the pre-Christian Celts climbing the sacred oak with a golden sickle on the sixth day of the moon to cut the mistletoe so it may fall in a white cloak and bring fertility to the worshipper, to Boniface felling the oak sanctified to Odin in eighth century Germany and dedicating the young fir behind it to the Christ Child. Holly (and its berry), ivy, the yule log, the tree, the rise in importance of St. Nicholas, the increasingly child-centered cultures both of Golden Age Holland and Victorian England, the rise of mass media and advertising in the United States in the last century and a half; all are swept into the season we now celebrate (or at least see decorated) sometime after Hallowe'en only to end precipitously now even before New Year's has come and gone.

My hope for this recording is to return us all the heart of this story. It is an event that takes this tale away from the philosophers and scholastics, and puts it where it really lives: in peoples' hearts. It is still the story of the infinitely great becoming infinitely vulnerable: it is something we know we have been, as a baby; have known perhaps as a parent; and could know, as a witness to a miracle.

HARMONIA MUNDI

A Short History

Most record companies have origins that are technological; only one evolved because of a bet over a bottle of champagne. That label is Harmonia Mundi, and we can take enormous satisfaction 40 years later that the wager was won. Crazy ideas evolved when a bunch of
journalists got together over drinks, but Bernard Coutaz decided to take up his friends' challenge and sink his fortune into a spoken-word disc of contemporary French writers interspersed with organ music.

Today, a spoken-word record with organ fill would be as potentially useful as a paperweight, since there would be no radio station that would air it or retailer that would carry it. France in 1958 was different. The modest royalties from this first project allowed Coutaz to invest in the next recordings that would become the hallmark of the label's early years.

With the help of the specialist Pierre Rochas, the "Historical Organs of Europe" featured great performers and expanded to more than 100 issues. The series fostered two kinds of growth: the exploration of a vast and often unrecorded repertoire appropriate to the time and place of the instruments themselves began to identify Harmonia Mundi as an "early music" label; and Coutaz himself began to refine an already "tuned" ear.

The integrity of the HM sound remains a hallmark of the label. But in 1965, Bernard Coutaz's ear heard a sound that was entirely new to him. It was the voice of one of the fathers of the 20th-century early music movement, and the 15-year collaboration that ensued touched all of us
who love this music. In picturesque Avignon (HM has always been happily housed in Provence), Coutaz attended a recital by Alfred Deller. He had never heard Deller before, live or on disc, and, as he himself says, "I knew at once that this was a genius of the voice...so I kidnapped him!" Driving the 80-odd miles to his own home, Coutaz talked with Deller
until dawn, by which time he had persuaded the English countertenor to sign a contract that would grace Harmonia Mundi with his recordings and vision.

Twenty-some recordings later (including eight dedicated to Henry Purcell), Deller laid the foundation, in terms of both repertoire and philosophy, for what HM would become. Much of my own professional life in the world of early music flowed from Alfred Deller; unfortunately, I never got to thank him personally. It is a blessing that Bernard Coutaz recognized and acted upon Deller's vision; when Deller died in 1979, it was a sad day for all who love early music, and a great personal loss for Coutaz.

But what exquisite fruit has resulted from their unique collaboration: from the nearly 50 recordings with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants or 60 discs with Philippe Herreweghe and his various ensembles, ranging from Josquin to Fauré. HM has grown to become an
international establishment and distributor of other labels. In 1982 this led to the Los Angeles branch, which under the stewardship of René Goiffon and Robina Young has spurred the blossoming of energetic young American artists who have helped define today's early music scene.

We need hardly defend the work of Anonymous 4 in medieval music or Paul Hillier bringing the rigorous scholarship from his Hilliard Ensemble days to his work with the Theatre of Voices and the Pro Arte Singers; I am simply happy they can grace this recording. It took a while for any Harmonia Mundi release to match the sales of Alfred Deller's two-disc recording of Purcell's King Arthur. I am sure that Bernard Coutaz is gratified, and believe that Deller would himself have been pleased, that "An English Ladymass" with Anonymous 4 became the gentlest possible record-breaker for the label. That recording typifies what Coutaz has stood for these 40 years: music we rarely hear, with elegant clarity of sound and beautiful simplicity of presentation, shimmering with repercussions of possibility and meaning like a glass of champagne held up to the Provençal sun at a luncheon with friends 40 years ago, as a gentle wager was made, and the very world seemed to hum with harmony.

 

Millennium of Music CD Compilation, Volume 3

Millennium of Music host Robert Aubry Davis writes a meditation on Easter to accompany a selection of some of the program's most touching Passion music

A Meditation on Easter

The Son of God died; this is by all means to be believed, because it makes no sense. And, He was buried and rose again; this fact is certain because it is impossible.
—Tertullian

Quintus Septimus Florens Tertullian (c. 160-c.220) was from Carthage, and the first writer in Christian Latin. It was he who gave us the word for the Trinity, “trinitas” evoking the three united in one substance, and defended the distinct nature of the Father and Son apart. He wrote against the prophecies of Montanus, who claimed that true revelation in the diverse body of teachings and writings called “Christian” must come from the Holy Spirit directly (of course, Montanus claimed to have these true visions, and, with a familiarity we still recognize 18 centuries later, told of the coming “millennium”). Sadly, this wise and very witty commentator (“We Christians have everything in common, except our wives”) eventually converted to the charismatic Montanist cause.

So, one of the most visionary and important early writers on the church is sometimes dismissed by the church. Even Montanus gave the early church a gift: the impetus to organize the loosely-collected texts and teaching of the church as a clearly defined canon, a “New Testament” to set against the body of writings that defined Judaism (the faith unique in the ancient world for its reliance on written text). But Tertullian’s chief vision, that this newborn faith is beyond the power of philosophers and scholastics, is often dismissed in texts (“he was a lover of paradox”).

The central fact of Christianity, however, is irrational. Despite our best efforts to demonize the world of Roman law and Jewish faith in which the incredible events of Jesus' life and death occurred, they were actually far more reasonable than the story that we, as Christians, accept as truth.

Roman law was a profoundly civilizing force; its decay was felt keenly by the early church fathers. Jewish teaching is based on the study and disputation about the ancient law and its meaning. The "loaded questions" that were used to tease and teach His followers, the parables and keeping of the Sabbath, the reading from the Torah in Hebrew (not His native Aramaic—Luke 4: 16-30) show Jesus behaved as a rabbi.
Of course, this new faith was and is different. And while the tradition from which it arose at its earliest may be clear, what was done to the Passover seder at the Last Supper marks an entirely original movement, a New Testament. The first written document of the young church was Paul's letter to the Corinthians, about 55 A.D. It reminds the faithful of a visit Paul had made to Corinth in the 40s, perhaps a decade after the events of Jesus' last days.

Paul reminds the Corinthians of the Last Supper, the Crucifixion and Resurrection. It is not only the first time these new events leave the oral tradition, but as our greatest living scholar of Christianity, Jaroslav Pelikan, points out: "Chronologically, and even logically, therefore, there was a tradition of the church before there was a New Testament. By the time the materials of the oral tradition found their way into written form, they had passed through the life and experience of the church, which laid claim to the Holy Spirit of God."
This, then, is the first act and meaning of Christianity. In our essay on the gradual evolution of the celebrations of Christmas (Alleluia This Sweete Songe: Millennium of Music Volume II), there was much to say about multi-cultural elements and folk traditions. Much has evolved that is sentimental and lovely, as well as foolish and tragic in the history of the Christian faith. There is a natural tendency to humanize something that is beyond comprehension. There are surely things in the story of Jesus and His life that we can understand and experience, aspire to and emulate.

Yet the defining moments of the faith are not among them. We may glimpse suffering and betrayal, sacrifice and even vision in our own lives, but what makes Jesus an entity Christians call the Redeemer is not rational; perhaps para-rational is a better coinage. So while it is all well and good to view Jesus as an inspired man who was a great teacher, who had a band of followers who genuinely believed in Him and tried to do what was best at a difficult time, this alone is not Christianity.

To be a Christian is to accept the first teaching, a wholehearted embrace of the impossible: a willing death, a resurrection, a promise of redemption. No theology, no doctrine, no practitioner or mystic, no composer or artist, no church or sect or belief or even faith is greater than this one impossible Truth. Unique in world faith is a founder whose very life is defined by His death and its meaning. But so it is with Christianity, and these defining moments are the theme of the music on this recording.

For all the art and letters, all the thought and doctrine, all the poetry and music, what is true about Christ cannot be glimpsed by the mind. This is what Tertullian understood so well. As Cambridge Divinity Professor Henry Chadwick wrote: “To him the divine character of Christianity was vindicated not by its reasonableness but by the very fact that it was the kind of thing no ordinary mind could have invented.” So, let us give the last word to Tertullian: "As the wisdom of the world is foolishness to God, so also the wisdom of God is foolishness in the world's esteem."

 

Chant: Music for the Soul Universal Records This compilation of Gregorian chant from the Cistercian monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz debuted at #1 on the Billboard Classical chart. It will be featured in a special two-part show to kick off Millennium's 2008/2009 season.

Q & A with Father Jerome F. Weber, early music expert and Fanfare critic:

What is the Cistercian order? It was founded at Citeaux (the adjective Cistercian comes from the Latin form of this name) in Burgundy in 1098 to make monastic life more like the original Benedictine ideal, more simple and austere than Benedictine monasteries were observing at that time, more than 500 years after the Rule of St. Benedict was first observed. Their habit would be plain, their food simple, their liturgical prayer shorter in order to be balanced by manual labor, and even their churches would be undecorated. Their life would be purely contemplative, not distracted by serving parishes or schools. The three founders were St. Robert, St. Alberic and St. Stephen Harding, who were the first three abbots of Citeaux. The most famous Cistercian monk of the Middle Ages was St. Bernard, who in 1115 became abbot of Clairvaux in Burgundy, the third Cistercian monastery.

What is Cistercian chant? As part of the simplification of their liturgy, the Cistercians reformed the Gregorian chant by 1190. This was the earliest of many subsequent efforts to restore chant to an earlier form. Norbertines and Dominicans adopted chant editions similar to these. The melodies were sometimes altered, the more elaborate melismas were shortened, and in the process the final note was sometimes changed. Since the final note identifies the mode of a chant, this seemed to have the effect of altering the modal assignment of a chant. There is more to modality than this simple fact.
The Cistercian monks of Hauterive in Switzerland, joined by the ensemble Les Ambrosiniens, sing chants of the feast of the Holy Founders (January 26). Before the revision of the liturgical calendar in 1970, each had his own feast day, though the chants of an abbot were the same.

Heiligenkreuz is said to be the oldest continually inhabited Cistercian monastery in the order? (I can't verify that.) It was founded in 1133 and the romanesque church dates from 1187. It is situated in the Vienna Woods. Universal, the parent company of Decca, sought to make a new recording of chant. On the last day of the search, the monks of Heiligenkreuz put a recording of their chant on Youtube and sent a link to the company. The recording was set up in short order and made a week after Easter. The first three chants on the record belong to the funeral Mass. The responsory “Libera me” is exceptionally moving.

Requiem. The complete Mass for the Dead has been recorded very frequently as far back as 1933. The Cistercian version of these chants has never been recorded. Apart from the revised melodies, there are two differences. The “Dies irae” is not included because it was composed later than 1190. There is an elevation chant sung after the Sanctus at the consecration of the Mass, and this “Pie Jesu Domine” was tacked onto the end of the “Dies irae,” although it does not match the verse form.

What are the Trappist monks? Within 200 years Cistercian monasteries had become much like other Benedictine monasteries. In the 17th century some Cistercians again desired to return to a more simple and austere life. Monks at La Grande Trappe (hence the name Trappists) in Normandy formed the Cistercians of the Strict Observance, binding themselves to abstinence from meat and complete silence. (This latter practice has been relaxed in recent years.) The first permanent Trappist monastery in the U.S. was established at Gethsemani, KY in 1848. Its most famous monk was Thomas Merton (1915-68), who entered in 1941 and published his best-selling autobiography “The Seven Story Mountain” in 1948. The first chant LP recorded in America was made there in 1950 with liner notes by Merton. They made three more LPs for Columbia, including “A Child is Born” in 1956.

Maurice Robreau, a former Trappist novice, founded a record company, Studio SM, in France in 1946. He made some of his earliest recordings on shellac at Citeaux, including “Salve Regina,” and one of the discs won the Grand Prix du Disque in 1949. (We will hear “Salve Regina” in a later but similar recording made at La Trappe.) He went on to make over 20 LPs of Gregorian and Cistercian chant and other sacred music. Since 2001 many of the original recordings have been remastered on CD.

Compline. Cistercian Compline has never been recorded, although monastic (Benedictine) Compline has, twice at Solesmes under Gajard and Claire. This version moves the hymn to the beginning, a change stemming from Vatican II.

Pentecost. The disc concludes with three chants of Pentecost, the feast of the Holy Spirit. The hymn “Veni Creator Spiritus” is one of the most familiar of all chant hymns because it is sung on any occasion that requires the invocation of the Holy Spirit, such as the ordination of a priest.

This compilation of Gregorian chant from the Cistercian monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz debuted at #1 on the Billboard Classical chart. It will be featured in a special two-part show to kick off Millennium's 2008/2009 season.

>> click here for a Q & A with early music expert Father Jerome F. Weber >>

Robert Aubry Davis reviews Chant: Music for the Soul for The Bob Edwards Show:

The A & R guy for Universal Classics and Jazz in London was playing Halo one day…you know, that best-selling video game with the weird pseudo-Gregorian Chant soundtrack. “What we need here,” Universal’s Tom Lewis thought, “is a fresh new group singing this stuff”…so, he advertises in European papers for groups to submit videos—kind of like the early rounds of American Idol.

Someone gets wind of this competition and sends an e mail to a Father Karl Wallner at an old Cistercian monastery nestled in the Vienna Woods. On the last day of this contest, Fr. Karl gets a video stuck on YouTube, which Tom Lewis sees, and (according to Lewis) these monks “made, quite simply, the most beautiful sound of all entries received.”

Flash forward to today, where the recordings by these monks is on the Top 10 charts in Europe for all music; and even before it was released, became the No. 1 classical disc in America today (a week or so after young conducting sensation Gustavo Dudamel achieved the same feat)—no, that’s no mistake—that is on downloads alone, and while this is the first time this technological series of events has happened, it surely will not be the last time.

Now chant aficionados were bracing for the worse…in the past, pastiches of odd and end recordings pasted together in a helter-skelter manner were passed off as the real thing—the original recording Chant, which featured bits and pieces of recordings made over many years, famously had browned-robed Franciscans on the cover…the Monks at Silos whose recordings those were, happened to be (like most monks who record) Benedictines—and Benedictines wear black.

Other recordings passed off to catch the chant craze have been inexpensive reissues of very old discs. And young secular groups have sprung up, who have explored many different branches of the repertoire.

So—the big question: Is this recording any good? As you will face the inevitable headlines: “The New Vienna Choir Boys;” “Vienna’s Newest Boy Band;” and try to get the idea that the Cistercian Monks of the Abbey of Stift Heiligenkreuz is a name of a best-selling group, rest easy, one and all.

Against all odds and expectations, this is a superb effort by any measure. Spotlessly recorded in that Holy Cross monastery founded in 1133, the arches of their Romanesque church reverberate with devotion, passion, and yes, spirit. The Cistercians had founded their order in Burgundy in 1098 at Citeaux (thus their name) to be more simple and austere than the Benedictines from which they sprung: Plain food, undecorated churches, unadorned habits, and even a simplification of chant, which they reformed in 1190.

Tom Lewis picked up on something here—their choice of repertoire was haunting and spare. No Christmas here, no Easter…we hear their Requiem mass (without a Dies irae, which was a staple for Berlioz and Verdi—written too late for the Cistercians)…but they added the lovely little Pie Jesu, which in latter years became a kind of hit for the likes of Gabriel Faure and Andrew Lloyd Webber in their Requiems.

And we hear the Cistercian Compline service for the first time ever on disc…the late evening service sung after Vespers, including the Nunc dimitis or Canticle of Simeon which is part of every English Evensong.

Like other singing orders, these monks have actually added young men to their monastery—28 in the last five years—and when you hear these sounds that seem to call across a millennium into the hungry hearts of today, maybe, just maybe, we get a glimmer of why this is so.

--Robert Aubry Davis for The Bob Edwards Show (July 1, 2008)