CD Review: "Reformation" Keyboard Works: Lamenting Walsingham

I chanced to see a post by Damian Thompson on social media about a new Hyperion CD of Elizabethan keyboard music by William Byrd, et al, so went to his Spectator "Holy Smoke" page to listen to his interview with the performer, Mishka Rushdie Momen (yes, she's related to Salman Rushdie; he's her uncle). Then, of course, I ordered the CD after perusing the Hyperion website for samples, etc.

The soloist wrote the liner notes for the CD and she laments the losses of culture and freedom in Recusant England, not just for Catholics at the time, but for the world (some of that regret comes through even more clearly in the "Holy Smoke" interview linked above). An excerpt:

Thinking about pilgrimages in England also involves confronting a great absence. English culture has been predominantly Protestant for half a millennium and the cult of St Thomas no longer exists. Thomas Becket’s shrine in Canterbury, described by Erasmus as ‘a shryne of gold … [where] all thynges dyd shyne, florishe’, was demolished in 1538 by the agents of Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to Henry VIII and architect of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The relics of Thomas Becket also vanished; in her novel The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel suggests they might have been thrown into Cromwell’s cellar. Subsequently, a royal proclamation ordered the destruction of any image or mention of Becket in the Church; in Missal books, Becket’s name is redacted more consistently than references to the Pope.

Our picture of the Renaissance is severely fractured and incomplete as a result of the sheer scale of the cultural vandalism caused by the English Reformation. Many paintings and works of art were destroyed in this Puritan [sic] environment. A rare example of a medieval wall painting which has survived is in Pickering, Yorkshire, where I gave a recital for the Ryedale Festival underneath an image depicting the chaplain Edward Grim pleading with the four knights of Henry II who murdered Thomas Becket. Over 700 Catholic religious institutions were destroyed between 1536 and 1540, and a great number of trained musicians and composers lost their positions. Some would have found work in the new Church of England and others in secular environments such as private homes, but I wonder if a wealth of musical treasures and talent may have been squandered. . . .

One might quibble with the "Puritan environment" description as anachronistic, but it does represent the views of someone like Latimer who wanted to purify English churches and shrines of their statues of the Mother of God and the saints. Here's a link to a page describing the wall paintings in Saints Peter and Paul church in Pickering, Yorkshire Momen refers to.

I received the CD Friday and have been listening to it with delight. She performs these pieces on the modern piano instead of the period instruments Byrd and Bull and Gibbons would have used, and I like the range and dynamics of the performances. While through the years I've listened to many recordings of William Byrd's liturgical music, including the three Masses, this is the first time I've listened to his keyboard works for such a stretch, and the soloist's notes about her methods of playing them on a concert piano, including fingering and use of the pedals, were enlightening to me. Her final comment from the notes:

Research has provided us with many details about people’s lives in this era and yet our imagination is compelled to fill in so many gaps. Musically speaking, exploring this repertoire on the piano gives me a sense of encountering a palace of riches, and at the same time a feeling of venturing into relatively uncharted territory. I would love it if works from this period were to become fully integrated into the modern pianist’s canon and for this inspiring repertoire to enter into a dialogue with masterpieces from throughout history.

Please note that this is Hyperion's "Record of the Month" and Momen was featured on BBC Radio's In Tune program Thursday, July 4, and there's a Gramophone interview. 

I think this would be a good CD for any collection. 

Image Source (Fair Use for a Review).

William Byrd's Three Masses on the BBC's "Listening Service"

We are celebrating the 400th anniversary of William Byrd's death on July 4, 1623 throughout this year. Of course, it's being celebrated mostly in England!

The BBC has published a Composer of the Month article on his life and times in their classical music magazine, Tom Service has commented particularly on his Three Masses on his BBC program, Stile Antico has released a new CD, his works were performed at the Proms in Londonderry, and the Latin Mass Society in England is sponsoring a Byrd Festival with his Masses and works from the Gradualia including in the celebration of Mass at Corpus Christi Maiden Lane and other churches, etc., etc.

What's so good about the Latin Mass Society's effort is described in their program for the Festival:

This year, 2023, witnesses the four hundredth anniversary of the death of William Byrd, one of England’s greatest Renaissance composers. The Latin Mass Society is marking the occasion with a Byrd 400 Festival ofsacred music. From September 2023 the Southwell Consort, under the direction of Dominic Bevan, will perform music from Byrd’s Masses, Cantiones Sacrae, and sacred motets, as well as his organ music. 

Byrd’s sacred music was composed for the Roman Catholic Mass during a time when English Catholics faced religious persecution. Despite the clandestine climate in which it was composed, much of Byrd’s polyphony is sumptuous. It represents the last artistic flowering of an English liturgical tradition almost stamped out at the Reformation. 

The words, chant and ritual actions of the traditional Latin Mass were ancient in Byrd’s own day, and they have remained essentially unchanged ever since. It is within this context that this festival of sacred music will take place, presenting Byrd’s work in the original liturgical context for which it was composed.

In his "Listening Service" program, Tom Service makes a suggestion about these three Masses--meaning the ordinary text of the Mass, the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus/Benedictus, and Angus Dei--were integrated into the celebration of the secret Masses for which the works were intended. He notes the presence of the "custos" mark at the end of each part, suggesting that it means that the Mass parts were sung as the Mass was being "spoken". Service suggests that the Masses lasted as long as the Byrd Mass settings, around 20 minutes.

But I wonder about that, because not all Masses include all the parts of the ordinary, depending on the feast or feria being celebrated. In the Traditional Latin Mass, a Missa Cantata is sung/chanted by the priest, not spoken, and not all parts of the Mass, like the Roman Canon, are audible to the congregation even at a Missa Cantata; a Low Mass is a mostly silent Mass and usually these parts of the Mass are not sung. (That's assuming that the Mass revisions that Pope Pius V approved in 1570 for the Roman Missal, the Masses Catholic missionary priests were offering in England at the time Byrd was a Catholic and wrote these three Masses, are comparable to the Missa Cantatas and Low Masses I attend today.)

The Masses Byrd attended in Stondon Massey in Essex were celebrated under duress because it was illegal to say or attend Mass and everyone there, especially the priest, was in great danger, and so Service thinks these 20 minute Masses would have been practical, safe, and even politic, under the circumstances--to sum it up, serviceable.

As John Milsom wrote in the cover notes to the 2013/2014 CD of Byrd's Three Masses and the Ave Verum Corpus depicted above:

. . . In the 1590s, when his Masses were composed, there were no Catholic church choirs in England, and he never imagined them being sung proudly and publicly in cathedrals for all to hear. Few hard facts survive about the kinds of performances Byrd’s Catholic works received in his lifetime, but we can speculate with a fair degree of confidence. In the age of the Spanish Armada and the Gunpowder Plot, England’s Roman Catholic community celebrated Mass covertly behind closed doors, taking pains not to be found out and punished or fined. Their secret services took place in rooms hastily converted into chapels, led by priests who led surreptitious lives. If music was used, then it was sung and played by whoever came safely to hand: family members, invited guests and trusted servants. By definition, then, Byrd’s Masses are really chamber music, not choral repertory, and it was never Byrd’s intention that they should be sung in the resonant ambience of a great church by a choir such as that of Westminster Cathedral. . . .

Milsom comments on Byrd's Court career and the Anglican service music he wrote there and then states:

In private, he moved in the network of England’s Catholic community, whose religious beliefs he shared, and for whom he also wrote music—initially motets, but latterly also works for liturgical use, such as the three Masses and, later, the impressive cycle called Gradualia. As Byrd grew older his allegiances shifted, and he spent less time in London and more time with the Catholics in rural Essex, where he set up home. But his retreat never became a rift. Up to his death Byrd remained loyal to his queen [and king: James I from 1603 to 1623!] and his country, and he was tolerated at court even by those who knew of his double life.

He continues the discussion by contrasting the differences between the way Byrd sets words to music in the Anglican and Catholic works, noting that Catholic works "savour their words more meditatively, and speak with a more personal voice." (Please read the rest there.)

When Charles Cole reviewed the CD from the Westminster Cathedral Choir for the New Liturgical Movement website, he noted that Martin Baker had departed from the usual method of recording the choir:

It was perhaps partly in deference to these original performances in Tudor times that Martin Baker, the Master of Music, decided to make quite a radical change to the way the choir was recorded. Most of the Cathedral Choir’s recordings are made in the Apse, the usual liturgical singing position of the choir, however for this recording, the choir stood on the Sanctuary in a large square facing inwards towards Martin Baker, who stood at the centre. The effect is very different, both intimate and powerful, with a noticeable change in the acoustics. There is a heightened sense of dynamic range, with diminuendi of extraordinary control which taper into nothingness. And although this music will be very familiar to anyone in regular proximity to a traditional Catholic choir, there is a real sense of a new experience when listening to this recording.

I guess the only way we could come closer to hearing this music as Byrd and the congregation heard it would be to record an amateur choir in a small space!

Finally, I do have to make one comment about the "Composer of the Month" article from the June issue of BBC Music Magazine: Andrew Stewart writes that "Byrd risked punishment to compose sublime settings of outlawed Latin texts, especially during the 1580s when Jesuit missionaries from the continent were being burned at the stake . . ." (p. 60) 

No, they were being hanged, drawn, and quartered!

William Byrd and the "Non Nobis" Canon

Thinking of the "Non nobis" reference in the article from The Guild of Our Lady Ransom's The Ransomer, and anticipating the broadcast of Laurence Oliver's Henry V on TCM yesterday, I searched for more information about that canon. I also heard the echo of Patrick Doyle's setting of "Non nobis" in Kenneth Branagh's version of Shakespeare's play.

At one time the music for that canon or round was attributed to William Byrd. But this posting from the Choral Wiki indicates a more complicated history:

This famous canon at the fifth and unison or octave is now generally accepted by musicologists as not having been written by William Byrd (1542/3–1623); the late, eminent Byrd specialist Philip Brett came to the view that most of the canons attributed to Byrd were spurious.

Recent research has shown that the two related figures which form the basis of the Non nobis, Domine canon were extracted from the 5-voice motet Aspice Domine by Philip van Wilder (c. 1500–1554). In the motet both figures are set to the text-phrase Non est qui consoletur (“there is none to console”) which was presumably the text to which the original version of the canon was sung by the Elizabethan recusant community as an expression of nostalgia for the old religious order. 

The words of the motet, taken from the Vulgate Latin of Jeremiah's Lamentations:

Aspice, Domine, quia facta est desolata civitas plena divitiis. 

Sedet in tristitia, non est qui consoletur eam, nisi tu, Deus noster. 

Behold, O Lord, how the city full of riches is become desolate. 

She sits in mourning, there is none to comfort her save only thou, our God.

But the words of the Non nobis version of the motet have a different source, according to the Choral Wiki article:

The Non nobis, Domine text to which the canon is sung today was apparently taken from the first collect from the thanksgiving service added to the Book of Common Prayer to celebrate the thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot on 5 November 1605.

And Wikipedia's entry on Non nobis has this note about its occurrence in Shakespeare's play and in a 1542 report on the Battle of Agincourt:

Shakespeare, in Henry V Act IV Scene 8, has the king proclaim the singing of both the Non nobis and the Te Deum after the victory at Agincourt. The canon is sung in the 1944 film of Henry V (starring Laurence Olivier) and also in the 1989 film of the same title (starring Kenneth Branagh), though we now know that the retexted version was not in existence as early as 1599, when the play was written. There is no stage direction in the play to indicate the singing of Non nobis Domine , but if Shakespeare had a specific setting in mind he was probably thinking anachronistically of a Protestant metrical psalm tune. However, in Hall's Chronicle (1542) Non nobis is sung as part of the complete psalm, presumably to plainsong [plainchant] or faburden.

When the kyng had passed through the felde & saw neither resistence nor apparaunce of any Frenchmen savyng the dead corsses [corpses], he caused the retrayte to be blowen and brought al his armie together about, iiij [4]. of the clocke at after noone. And fyrst to geve thankes to almightie God gever & tributor of this glorious victory, he caused his prelates & chapelaines fyrst to sing this psalme In exitu Israel de Egipto, commaundyng every man to knele doune on the ground at this verse. Non nobis domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam, whiche is to say in Englishe, Not to us lord, not to us, but to thy name let the glory be geven: whiche done he caused Te deum with certeine anthemes to be song gevyng laudes and praisynges to God, and not boastyng nor braggyng of him selfe nor his humane power.

In plainchant, this might have been what the English sang at Agincourt. (And that's the Plainchant Mode we use at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament when we chant Psalm 115 in Sunday Vespers during Advent and Lent!) 

This makes for an interesting juxtaposition of memories, depending on when the play was performed. After 1605, Non nobis reminded audiences of the Gunpowder Plot; before and after 1605, it might have  reminded some Recusant Catholics in the audience of the "old religious order."

Not to us, O Lord, but to Your Name be the Glory! Amen.

"Rorate Caeli Desuper" and "Ne irascaris, Domine"

On the First Saturday of December (12/4), the Saturday of the First Week of Advent, I attended an early morning Mass, a "Rorate Caeli" Mass in the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite. It was celebrated by candlelight, with candles only illuminating the darkness of the church. Candles on the Altar and the side altars, candles on window ledges beneath each stained glass window, candles--lit just before Mass began--held by the members of the congregation. It was a Votive Mass of Our Lady in Advent and is called the "Rorate Caeli Mass" because of the first words of the Introit of the Mass:

Roráte caéli désuper, et núbes plúant jústum. (Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness.) (Isaiah 45:8)

During this Ember Week in the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite according to the Roman Missal of 1962, this Wednesday was the Ember Wednesday of the Advent Season, and was also a "Rorate Caeli" Mass, celebrating the Incarnation of Christ Our Lord by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary, the Blessed Virgin: the Annunciation.

The "Rorate Caeli" antiphon is also used in Advent Prose, as the Cantica Sacra website explains:

The complete text is assembled with passages from different chapters by the prophet Isaiah. When sung in a liturgical setting, the first two lines of the text are often treated as an antiphon: the passage is chanted at the beginning and end of the entire text and at the end of each stanza by the entire choir and congregation.

The first verse of the Advent Prose is also from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah:

Ne irascaris, Domine, satis

et ne ultra memineris iniquitatis nostrae.
Ecce, respice, populus tuus omnes nos.

Civitas sancti tui facta est deserta.
Sion deserta facta est,
Jerusalem desolata est.

(Be not angry, O Lord,nor remember our iniquity forever.
Behold, look upon us, we are all thy people.

Thy holy cities are deserted.
Zion has become a wasteland,
Jerusalem a desolation.) (Isaiah 64:9-10)

This is the text of one of William Byrd's famous motets, which is often seen as reflection of the status of Catholics in Elizabethan England and was published in his 1589 Cantiones Sacrae.

As this article by Richard Evidon on the Schubert Club website analyses Byrd's setting of this text:

This is a double motet, composed of two symmetrical parts. Part I, the exiles’ plea for divine mercy, begins with the lower voices darkly intoning “Ne irascaris, Domine, satis” (“Be not angry, O Lord”), a calming phrase that moves into the upper voices and then is taken up by all five vocal parts. After another set of supplicating entries on the words “Et ne ultra memineris iniquitatis nostrae” (“Nor remember our iniquity forever”), the musical flow comes to a stop. What follows is a chordal appeal to the Lord – “Ecce, respice” (“Behold, look upon us”) – with a change in tone and texture that quietly yet dramatically conveys the captives’ sense of being abandoned. But the real center of gravity – in both parts of the motet – comes in a concluding, greatly extended contrapuntal phrase. Here it’s a long set of imitative entries on the text “Populus tuus omnes nos” (“We are all thy people”) that builds up in pitch, texture and intensity to depict the anguishing multitudes. . . .

Please read the rest there, including his analysis of the second part of the motet. Evidon recommends this performance by VOCES8, licensed by the group for publication.

The Catholic Encyclopedia includes this comment at the end of its article by Joseph Otten on William Byrd:

Two of his motets, "Domine, ne irascaris" and "Civitas sancti tui", with English texts, are in the repertoire of most Anglican cathedrals. In spite of the harrowing religious conditions under which he lived, in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James I, Byrd remained faithful to his principles and duties as a Catholic, as is shown in his life and by his works. In his last will and testament he prays "that he may live and dye a true and perfect member of the Holy Catholike Churche withoute which I beleeve there is noe salvacon for me".

Three Things about July 4th

First of all, it is our country's Independence Day, celebrating our Declaration of Independence from Great Britain as first published on July 4, 1776:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. . . .

We the people, with our Constitution, our local, state, and federal governments, our actions, our causes, and our blood, have been living out these words, struggling to fulfill them, fighting over what they mean, and uniting again around those ideas expressed 243 years ago.

Happy Independence Day!

Second: On July 4 in 1603 Philippe de Monte, a Spanish composer died; on July 4 in 1623 William Byrd, an English composer, died. They had collaborated, long distance, on a setting of Psalm 136. Gallicantus made a CD of the music and the ideas that brought de Monte and Byrd into collaboration:

The connection that brings together the music of William Byrd (c1540-1623) and Philippe de Monte (1521-1603) is a most unusual one: a very rare documented instance of two composers from distant parts of Europe engaging in a personal musical exchange. According to an 18th-century manuscript in the British Library, de Monte had come to England in 1554 as a singer in the choir that accompanied his employer, the Spanish king Philip II, as he contracted a dynastic marriage to Mary Tudor. It seems that de Monte may have made contact with the young William Byrd, for some 30 years later he sent him the eight-part motet Super flumina Babylonis, and the following year, Byrd responded with his own eight-part Quomodo cantabimus, whose words are drawn from verses of that same psalm, No 136. Exactly what occasioned this musical transaction is not known, but the words must have held particular resonance for Byrd at that time, as this famous psalm of captivity and exile would surely be interpreted as a barely veiled allusion to the dangerous situation that he and his fellow recusant Catholics were facing under a Protestant regime in England at a time when political tensions were aggravating the existing religious ones; perhaps word of these developments had reached de Monte, either in Prague or via his benefice at Cambrai, near the Catholic English College at Douai.

Third: on July 4, 1594, one Catholic priest and three laymen were executed under Queen Elizabeth I's penal recusancy laws in Dorchester: 

Blessed John Cornelius, SJ priest and martyr

Blessed Thomas Bosgrave, martyr
Blessed John Carey, martyr
Blessed Patrick Salmon, martyr

They were all from Ireland! They are numbered among the Chideock Martyrs.

On July 4, 1597, one Catholic priest and three laymen were executed under Queen Elizabeth I's penal recusancy laws in York: 

Blessed William Andleby, priest and martyr
Blessed Henry Abbot, martyr
Blessed Thomas Warcop, martyr
Blessed Edward Fulthorp, martyr

More about these eight martyrs here. As Robert Hugh Benson asked in the title of one of his novels, "by what authority" did Queen Elizabeth I execute men for being Catholic priests and other men for helping Catholic priests? Only by the power and authority of "absolute Despotism"!

Blessed martyrs of England and Ireland, pray for us!

The English Reformation in Art and Music

Two packages arrived on Monday: one containing a fine used copy of of Margaret Aston's The King's Bedpost: Reformation and Iconography in a Tudor Group Portrait and the other a newly released CD from Stile Antico, In a Strange Land: Elizabethan Composers in Exile.

I've listened to the CD twice and am still reading the book.

I'm familiar with the stories of most of the composers on the CD (Dowland, Byrd, Dering, Philips, White, and De Monte) and have CDs with some of the same works (Byrd's "Tristitia et anxietas" and his "Quomodo cantabimus", written in response to Philippe de Monte's "Super flumina Babylonis"; Robert White's "Lamentations a 5", etc).

Richard Dering's "Factum est silentium" was an exciting and exuberant discovery:

Factum est silentium in caelo,
Dum committeret bellum draco cum Michaele Archangelo.

Audita est vox millia millium dicentium:
Salus, honor et virtus omnipotenti Deo.
Millia millium minestrabant ei et decies centena millia assistebant ei.
[Alleluia.]

There was silence in heaven
When the dragon fought with the Archangel Michael.

The voice of a thousand thousand was heard saying:
Salvation, honour and power be to almighty God.
A thousand thousand ministered to him and ten hundreds of thousands stood before him.
[Alleluia.]

Here it is sung by the Choir of Clare College! As another record label, Hyperion, describes Dering and this work, which is the Antiphon for the Benedictus canticle during the Lauds of Michaelmas:

Dering was, like Philips, an English Catholic musician who went into exile in the Spanish Netherlands (or, according to another account, converted to Catholicism while visiting Rome in 1612). By 1617 he was organist to the convent of English nuns in Brussels, and in the same year published his first collection of Cantiones Sacrae; the publisher was the noted Phalèse of Antwerp who also published music by Philips. Factum est silentium comes from a second collection which appeared in 1618; its declamatory, dramatic style shows clearly the influence of the new Italian Baroque style which Dering’s compatriots in England were perhaps slower to embrace.

The new work on the CD, a setting of Shakespeare's poem, "The Phoenix and The Turtle", underwhelmed me. The words were lost in the music of Huw Watkins. The liner notes explain that he "portrays the busy hustle and bustle of funeral preparations, before a slower sublime setting of the concluding threnody." "Busy hustle and bustle of funeral preparations"? I don't hear that in the poem's opening:

Let the bird of loudest lay 

On the sole Arabian tree 

Herald sad and trumpet be, 

To whose sound chaste wings obey. 

But thou shrieking harbinger, 

Foul precurrer of the fiend, 

Augur of the fever's end, 

To this troop come thou not near. 

From this session interdict 

Every fowl of tyrant wing, 

Save the eagle, feather'd king; 

Keep the obsequy so strict. 

Let the priest in surplice white, 

That defunctive music can, 

Be the death-divining swan, 

Lest the requiem lack his right. 

And thou treble-dated crow, 

That thy sable gender mak'st 

With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st, 

'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go. . . .

This sounds more directions first for who should not attend the funeral and then who should, not running around making arrangements! The notes do mention the theory that Shakespeare is paying tribute to St. Anne Line and her exiled husband Roger.

More on Aston's study of the meaning and date of "King Edward VI and the Pope" which is in the National Portrait Gallery in London after I've finished reading the book.

Catholic Composers in Exile

Stile Antico has a new CD coming out tomorrow, focusing on the Catholic composers who fled in England and composed sacred and secular works on the Continent:

The regime of Queen Elizabeth I dealt harshly with supporters of the old Catholic religion. Torn between obedience and conscience, some of England’s most talented musicians – Philips, Dering and Dowland – chose a life of exile abroad. Others chose to remain in spiritual isolation in England, comparing themselves to the exiled Israelites in Babylon. Amongst them were Robert White, whose five-part Lamentations are one of the glories of English music of any age, and William Byrd, whose anguished Catholic music is referenced in Shakespeare’s enigmatic poem The Phoenix and the Turtle, vividly set by Huw Watkins especially for Stile Antico, and receiving its first recording here.

The works on the CD are:

John Dowland [1562/1563-1626] Flow, my tears  

William Byrd [1543-1623] Tristitia et anxietas  

Richard Dering [-] Factum est silentium 

John Dowland [1562/1563-1626] In this trembling shadow 

Peter Philips [1560-1628] Gaude Maria virgo 

Philippe de Monte [1521-1603] Super flumina Babylonis 

William Byrd [1543-1623] Quomodo cantabimus  

Peter Philips [1560-1628] Regina cæli lætare  

Huw Watkins [01/01/1976-] The Phoenix and the Turtle  

Robert White [1538-1574] Lamentations 

Other CDs have matched Philippe de Monte and William Byrd's settings of portions of Psalm 136. The inclusion of John Dowland is interesting, because his music was very popular at Elizabeth's Court and even as he travelled in exile--he had converted to Catholicism in Paris while in the service of two English ambassadors in the early 1580's--he wanted a Court position. He wrote to Sir Robert Cecil in 1595 that he had reverted to Anglicanism, according to Peter Warlock's chronology.

I'm not familiar with the work of Huw Watkins, but you can hear an excerpt from his setting of Shakespeare's poem, which some suggest refers to St. Anne Line and her exiled husband Roger Line. Including a new work reflecting on that era reminds me of the ORA project, which started with a commissioned work by Alexander L'Estrange, "Show me, deare Christ", contrasting John Donne, St. Edmund Campion, and St. Robert Southwell.

It makes sense that artists appreciate the struggle of artists against any censorship or oppression, but in the field of English Recusant History, as I've noted before, sympathy for Catholic composers during the English Reformation and after has been clear in the many CD releases.

The Catholic English Martyrs in England and the USA

I stated yesterday that the Feast of the English Martyrs is celebrated in the Dioceses of England, but the Memorial of the English Martyrs is celebrated in the United States by the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. St. Gregory the Great Ordinariate parish in Chestnut, Massachusetts provides these notes on today's Feast/Memorial:

A feast day not celebrated in the United States anywhere except the Ordinariate falls today, the fourth day of May; it honors those Catholics martyred for remaining true to the “old faith,” mostly during the century and a half following Henry VIII’s decision to split the English Church from its ancient submission to the See of Peter.

These men and women were called “Recusants” because they refused to attend the services of the new Anglican church; the name comes from the Latin verb “recusare” — to refuse or object. The laws under which they suffered began under Elizabeth I with a statute against “Popish recusants” in 1593; it and subsequent laws (levying many penalties, up to and including death) were finally repealed by Oliver Cromwell (of all people) in 1650: but his intention was the relief of “other” non-conformers, the Calvinist Puritans; during the Puritan Commonwealth Catholics and Anglicans were united through persecution by Government. The recusant laws, per se, were not reinstated with reestablishment of the monarchy in 1660; but legal persecution of English Catholics only came to an end with Catholic Emancipation — in 1829. . . .

Looking farther afield--the nearest Ordinariate Parish to me is in Kansas City, Missouri--I noted that the Men's Choir of Westminster Cathedral in London is singing one of the Masses composed by William Byrd and two of his motets at the evening (17:30) Mass to celebrate the Feast of the English Martyrs. Martin Baker has selected the Mass for Three Voices, Ne Irascaris Domine, and Civitas sancti tui.

Since William Byrd knew some of the of the Jesuit missionaries and certainly met St. Robert Southwell, singing his work at Mass today is most appropriate. As John Milsom wrote in the liner notes of the Westminster Cathedral Choir's 2014 recording of Byrd's Three Masses:

The Englishness of Byrd’s Masses must also be mentioned, for these settings do not sound remotely like the Masses of Lassus or Palestrina. This is partly because of the way they were made, partly because of the way they allude to their Tudor past. Unlike most other Catholic composers of his generation, Byrd composed his three Masses freely, without directly quoting any pre-existing music. Hence the contrast with Palestrina and Lassus: those two composers habitually based their Masses on models, such as a motet or a plainchant melody, so that the Mass becomes a commentary on that model. Byrd, in contrast, simply took the words of the Mass as they came to him, and savoured them intuitively, using whatever melodies came into his head. Sometimes he makes audible allusion to the musical styles of his Tudor past, for instance through the turn of a melodic phrase or the choice of a chord or a selection of texture. By doing so, he invoked the music of his boyhood—the truly Catholic music of the reigns of Henry VIII (died 1547), and of England’s last Catholic monarch, Queen Mary (reigned 1553–8), which coincided with the years when Byrd was a boy chorister. A nostalgia for the Tudor past therefore haunts these works, especially in the Mass for four voices, which was the first to be composed.

It is in fact possible to date the three Masses with reasonable precision. In 1589 and 1591, Byrd published two collections of motets—called by him ‘sacred songs’ (Cantiones sacrae)—that summed up his achievement to that date. Immediately after that, Byrd’s mind seems to have turned to the words of the Catholic Mass, and his three settings were published in quick succession between around 1592 and 1595. The precise years of publication are unknown, since the prints themselves have no title pages; they are simply slender pamphlets of sheet music, headed with the name ‘W. Byrd’. Careful detective work, however, shows that the Mass for four voices, which is the most intimate and intense of the settings, came first. It was followed a year later by the Mass for three voices, which is a smaller and tighter work, and then by the Mass for five voices, which is the most serene of the three. This five-voice Mass sets the tone for Byrd’s next and final project, the great cycle of Gradualia—settings of liturgical texts for the Catholic calendar from Advent to Trinity—which went to press in two volumes in 1605 and 1607.

The two motets are usually interpreted to refer to the situation of Catholics in England:

Ne irascaris Domine satis,
et ne ultra memineris iniquitatis nostrae.
Ecce respice populus tuus omnes nos.

Be not angry, O Lord,
and remember our iniquity no more.
Behold, we are all your people.

Civitas sancti tui facta est deserta.
Sion deserta facta est,
Jerusalem desolata est.

Your holy city has become a wilderness.
Zion has become a wilderness,
Jerusalem has been made desolate.

David Cashman offers this analysis:

Ne irascaris Domine is a five-part Latin motet by the Catholic English composer, William Byrd (1543-1623). It is one of three works known as the 'Jerusalem' motets (along with Tribulations civitatum and Vide Domine afflictionem nostram). Byrd wrote these motets in the 1580s as an act of protest against the Elizabethan Catholic persecutions. As his text, Byrd cunningly chooses here an irreproachable passage of scripture from Isaiah, telling of the Babylonian captivity.

Ne irascaris' general atmosphere of quiet contemplation coupled with solid polyphonic writing make this a deservedly well known work. Departing from his usual tradition, Byrd sets the appeal to God of Ne irascaris Domine polyphonically, continuing this writing throughout the work. Byrd uses minimal resources (in particular, the melody, which does not move out of the range of a fourth until the end of the work) to create a classic.

The second part of this work (from Civitas sancti) is well-known as the Anglican hymn Bow thine ear. Despite the structure being thus truncated, the skilled contrapoint and expressive writing of the original make this one of the gems of the Anglican hymn tradition.

Holy Venerable, Blessed, and Canonized Martyrs of England and Wales, pray for us!

William Byrd and Dmitry Shostakovich

I've often seen the comparison offered between William Byrd in sixteenth century England and Dmitry Shostakovich in 20th century Russia. This article by Jeremy L. Smith in the Winter 2007 issue of Music & Politics describes the situation much more completely:

Was Byrd the Shostakovich of his time? Surely the aptness of this analogy has occurred to others. Few matters in musicology were more widely discussed not too long ago than the premise that Dmitry Shostakovich had a close if, as some fervently argued, essentially dissident relationship with Josef Stalin, the de facto leader of the Soviet Union for nearly a quarter century (c.1929-53).[1] Evidence of a similar political relationship between Byrd and England’s long-reigning ruler Elizabeth I (r.1558-1603) is mainly confined to discussions in the traditional musicological literature. But readers of the widely distributed New York Review of Books have lately been exposed to claims that Byrd’s great contemporary William Shakespeare had strong ties to the Catholic cause during a time when England was under statutory Protestant rule.[2] Thanks to a seminal essay Joseph Kerman had placed in those same pages some time ago—that has now been complemented and furthered by Kerman himself, Philip Brett, David Mateer, Craig Monson, and others—the NYRB audience at least has been alerted to the circumstance that if there were indeed a dissident platform on which Shakespeare stood, Byrd stood alongside him, and on a much surer footing.[3]

Shostakovich won the remunerative Stalin Prize twice (1947 and 1953).[4] He wrote sincerely patriotic music during wartime, praised Stalin's leadership enthusiastically, and offered a musical tribute to the dictator's grandiose but ill-conceived project to halt the desiccating winds from eastern deserts by planting a vast forest belt. He held various positions of leadership in the Soviet system and eventually joined the Communist Party in 1963. Yet he also composed bitterly satirical works, such as his Antiformalisticheskii Rayok, attacking Soviet positions on the arts that he found objectionable. Overall, many feel that at the core of his work, where he could bring to bear a highly developed musical language fraught with “colossal emotional power,” Shostakovich expressed a consistent and profound disaffection for the Stalinist reign, if not for the Soviet system as a whole.

Byrd enjoyed a position of cultural and economic power in his musical world too, thanks to official ties.[5] Notably, he was a leading member of Elizabeth’s prestigious Chapel Royal. Along with his mentor Thomas Tallis, he also held a royal patent for twenty-one years (1575-96) that put him in charge of a monopoly for printed music, printed music paper and music importation. Not surprisingly, Byrd wrote works for the English state and its religion and in these he often evoked Elizabeth herself, as in his “Queenes Alman” for keyboard, his anthem “O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth our queen,” and two madrigalian settings of “This Sweet and Merry Month of May,” which celebrated “Eliza” as “the queen of second Troy.” No one has detected any irony in these works. Yet there is a larger body of music by Byrd, featuring many settings of sacred texts in Latin, which seems poignantly to betray his ties of allegiance to some of the more militant forces of Catholicism, among them the Jesuit missionary movement that was antithetical to the Elizabethan Settlement.

Please read the rest there.

How "Crisis inspired Art" during the English Reformation

The English tenor Ian Bostridge reviews Andrew Gant's O Sing Unto The Lord: A History of English Church Music for The New York Review of Books. What caught my eye was, of course, his comments on the English Reformation and the influence of religious change on English Church Music:

Yet while the fifteenth century was in many ways a glorious age for English music and saw individual composers, no longer anonymous, moving for the first time into the limelight, it was the trauma of the English Reformation from the 1530s on that somehow resulted in an outpouring of immortal music that still speaks to us today. The Reformation was, as Gant pithily puts it, siding with a particular revisionist strand of recent historiography, “an insurrection by the government against its own people…with the added complication that the government kept changing sides.” It produced the dissolution of the monasteries, with the attendant destruction of much of the musical fabric of the country, a revolution in but also a prolonged uncertainty about the status of the liturgy, and a devastating loss of existing books and manuscripts comparable in its effects on musical life to that of the iconoclasm of the 1530s and 1540s upon the visual arts.

Crisis inspired art. If the Elizabethan age was the age of Shakespeare, it was also that of Thomas Tallis and William Byrd. The politico-theological ferment that so obviously fed the playwright’s imagination may have, less directly, lent a certain expressive tension to the masses and motets of these two great composers, both royal servants who remained orthodox Catholics in a period of Protestant ascendancy that, for some, amounted to a Protestant terror.

In 1581 the Jesuit missionary Edmund Campion was hanged, drawn, and quartered for treason; a fellow Jesuit, Henry Walpole, wrote a poem in protest, “Why do I Use my Paper, Ink and Pen?” Byrd set it to music. The Recusancy Act of 1593 imposed fines and eventual house arrest on those who failed to attend Anglican worship; between 1592 and 1595 Byrd nonetheless wrote and published his three great settings of the Latin Mass, a service officially outlawed under the new dispensation. Yet Byrd was also, in the midst of all this, a loyal servant of the state: in 1588, after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, Queen Elizabeth had written a poem extolling her triumph, “Look and bow down thine ear, O Lord, from thy bright sphere behold and see thy handmaid and thy handiwork.” Byrd set it to music as part of the victory celebrations.

Please read the rest there.

Gant dedicates four chapters to the period before, during, and after the English Reformation:

4. Keeping Your Head: The Approach of the Reformation, 1509–1547
5. The Children of Henry VIII: Reformation and Counter-Reformation, 1547–1558
6. Church Music and Society in Elizabeth’s England, 1558–1603
7. Plots, Scots, Politics and the Beauty of Holiness, 1603–1645

Assumpta est Maria

This site has a great list of appropriate hymns and musical selection for today's feast, including this hymn by Father John Lingard:

Hail, Queen of heaven, the ocean star, 
Guide of the wanderer here below, 
Thrown on life's surge, we claim thy care, 
Save us from peril and from woe. 

Mother of Christ, Star of the sea 
Pray for the wanderer, pray for me. 

O gentle, chaste, and spotless Maid, 
We sinners make our prayers through thee; 
Remind thy Son that He has paid 
The price of our iniquity. 

Virgin most pure, Star of the sea, 
Pray for the sinner, pray for me. 

And while to Him Who reigns above 
In Godhead one, in Persons three, 
The Source of life, of grace, of love, 
Homage we pay on bended knee: 

Do thou, bright Queen, Star of the sea, 
Pray for thy children, pray for me. 

Father John Lingard (5 February 1771 – 17 July 1851), of course, was the Catholic priest who wrote the great eight-volume work The History of England that did so much to overturn the Whig view of English history--or at least to present a more balanced view of the English Reformation.

Before declaring the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Pope Pius XII surveyed the bishops, asking them for input. The tradition and practice of the Church had long been to depict and celebrate Mary's triumph in Heaven with her Son and because of her Son. In his 16th/17th century Gradualia, for example, William Byrd set the Propers of the Mass of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (the Introit, Gradual and Alleluia before the Gospel, Offertory, and Communion). The Cardinall's Musick devoted a CD in their complete cycle of Byrd recordings to his Marian music. As Andrew Carwood noted of Byrd's setting of the Mass for the Assumption:

Byrd produces a vigorous setting for the Assumption Introit, fresh sounding and vibrant with a concentration on the joy displayed at Mary’s arrival in heaven. Once again, Byrd uses triple time to conclude his setting of the Gradual and Alleluia, this time to reiterate the final words of the verse (a rare occurrence) after which he resolutely remains in three until the very end of the movement. The Offertory verse Assumpta est Maria is most remarkable for its final Alleluia which must classed as one of the most imaginative settings of this word ever produced, whilst the Communion Optimam partem elegit is exquisite in every detail.

More on the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the English Reformation here.

William Byrd's "Ave Verum Corpus"

I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show with Anna Mitchell this morning--a little after 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central--to talk about the great eucharistic hymn "Ave Verum Corpus" and about William Byrd.  Please listen live here! Podcasts will be uploaded there too.

She's following up on my blog post at the National Catholic Register last week:

Before the evening Mass this Sunday at my parish in Wichita, Kansas, the schola was practicing William Byrd’s setting of the “Ave verum corpus” (Ave Verum):

Ave verum corpus, natum
de Maria Virgine,
vere passum, immolatum
in cruce pro homine
cuius latus perforatum
fluxit aqua et sanguine:
esto nobis praegustatum
in mortis examine.
O Iesu dulcis, O Iesu pie, (Or: O clemens, O pie)
O Iesu, fili Mariae.
Miserere mei. Amen.

Kneeling in my pew, praying the Glorious Mysteries, I could not help, sotto voce, singing along with the “Miserere mei”. Because I listen to Byrd’s music often, I recognized his composition; because I listen to liturgical music often, I recognized the prayer:

Hail, true Body, born
of the Virgin Mary,
having truly suffered, sacrificed
on the cross for mankind,
from whose pierced side
water and blood flowed:
Be for us a foretaste [of the Heavenly banquet]
in the trial of death!
O sweet Jesus, O holy Jesus,
O Jesus, son of Mary,
have mercy on me. Amen.

The schola went over a couple of tricky passages and at first sang the motet with piano accompaniment. During Mass, they sang it at the Offertory.

As I heard it, I joined in the prayer of adoration of Jesus, present in the Blessed Sacrament, and of His Paschal Sacrifice about to be re-presented on the Altar. This Eucharistic hymn also reminds me of my mortality and hopes for a happy and holy death.

Knowing that William Byrd had composed it during a time when the Mass was illegal in England, his setting of this hymn made me grateful not only for freedom of religion in our country, but for the bounty our diocese has received from God recently. Our bishop ordained ten priests and ten deacons this May; our parish, Blessed Sacrament, received two of the newly ordained priests as Parochial Vicars, and one of the deacons has been serving us this summer. Next May, God willing, Bishop Carl Kemme will ordain ten more priests!

And some background on William Byrd here.

Four Martyrs: One Canonized; Three Beatified

Four martyrs on April 7: two in 1595 and two more in 1606:

St. Henry Walpole, who is one of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales canonized in 1970, was influenced by the martyrdom of St. Edmund Campion to become a priest and return to England as a Jesuit missionary (drops of blood from Campion's torturous death fell on Walpole). 

A poem celebrating Father Campion's death is ascribed to Henry Walpole, "Why do I use my paper, ink and pen", which William Byrd set to music (leaving out some of the more controversial verses that warned Queen Elizabeth I that she was misled about Catholic missionaries' efforts in England):

Why do I use my paper, ink and pen?
And call my wits to counsel what to say?
Such memories were made for mortal men;
I speak of Saints whose names cannot decay.
An Angel’s trump were fitter for to sound
Their glorious death if such on earth were found.

That store of such were once on earth pursued,
The histories of ancient times record,
Whose constancy great tyrants’ rage subdued
Through patient death, professing Christ the Lord:
As his Apostles perfect witness bare,
With many more that blessed Martyrs were.

Whose patience rare and most courageous mind,
With fame renowned perpetual shall endure,
By whose examples we may rightly find,
Of holy life and death a pattern pure.
That we therefore their virtues may embrase
Pray we to Christ to guide us with his grace.

According to this blog, after studying for the priesthood on the Continent, becoming a Jesuit, and enduring imprisonment while serving English Catholics in the Spanish Netherlands, Walpole returned to England on December 4, 1593 and was betrayed and captured almost immediately.

One night of freedom in England was followed by 16 months of imprisonment. Walpole admitted during his first interrogation that he was a Jesuit and had come to England to convert people. He was transferred to York Castle for three months, and was permitted to leave the prison to discuss theology with Protestant visitors. Then he was transferred to the Tower of London at the end of February, 1594, so that the notorious priest-torturer Richard Topcliffe could wrest information from him. 

Walpole was tortured brutally on the rack and was suspended by his wrists for hours, but Topcliffe stretched the tortures out over the course of a year to prevent an accidental death. Walpole endured torture 14 different times before being returned in 1595 to York to stand trial under the law that made it high treason for an Englishman simply to return home after receiving Holy Orders abroad. The man who had once aspired to be a lawyer defended himself ably, pointing out that the law only applied to priests who had not given themselves up to officials within three days of arrival. He himself had been arrested less than a day after landing in England, so he had not violated that law. The judges responded by demanding that he take the Oath of Supremacy, acknowledging the queen's complete authority in religion. He refused to do so and was convicted of high treason. 

On April 7, Walpole was dragged out of York to be executed along with another priest who was killed first. Then the Jesuit climbed the ladder to the gallows and asked the onlookers to pray with him. After he finished the Our Father but before he could say the Hail Mary, the executioner pushed him away from the ladder; then he was taken down and dismembered. The Jesuits in England lost a promising young priest whom they had hoped would take the place of Father Southwell; they received another example of fidelity and courage. 

Blessed Alexander Rawlins:

Alexander was born in Worcestershire, England, where he was jailed twice for his fervent Catholicism. In 1589 he went to the English seminary in Reims and was ordained there in 1590. Returning to England the following year (with another future martyr and saint, Father Edmund Gennings), Alexander was arrested. He was condemned to death and on April 7, 1595, and along with Henry Walpole was hanged, drawn, and quartered in York, England. He was beatified in 1929.

For the stories of Blessed Edward Oldcorne and Blessed Ralph Ashley, click here. They were arrested, tortured, and executed in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot during the reign of James I.

Saint Henry Walpole, Blessed Alexander Rawlins, Blessed Edward Oldcorne, Blessed Ralph Ashley, pray for us.

The Merton College Choir at St. Peter's

From Vatican Radio, describing the Anglican Choral Evensong celebrated on Monday, March 13 in Rome:

An ecumenical milestone was marked in the Vatican on Monday as a traditional Anglican Choral Evensong was celebrated for the first time in St Peter’s Basilica.

Cardinal Angelo Comastri, Archpriest of the Basilica, gave permission for the historic event during meetings with Archbishop David Moxon, Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome.

The renowned choir of Merton College, Oxford came to sing music written at the time of the Reformation, as well as contemporary compositions and well-loved Anglican hymns. . . .

Specifically, the choir sang works by William Byrd and used an historical Book of Common Prayer service:

Music by the great English composer William Byrd filled the basilica, as well as some more contemporary works, while the words of the liturgy and readings were those of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

The Anglican News website points out that this musical exchange began with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI:

Merton College Choir followed in the footsteps of Westminster Abbey choir, which has sung previously in Rome with the choir of the Sistine Chapel – a collaboration that has grown out of closer ties between the two traditions, in particular following Pope Benedict XV1’s (sic) visit to London in September 2010.

The date was selected to be closest to the date of Pope St. Gregory the Great's original feast day of March 12, the date of his death in 604. Because that date so often falls in Lent, his feast was moved to September 3, the date of his episcopal consecration in 590. After Evensong, there was a procession to the tomb of St. Gregory. Of course, St. Gregory sent St. Augustine of Canterbury to Kent in 597.

Pope St. Gregory the Great, pray for us! St. Augustine of Canterbury, pray for us!

Misery and Mercy

I am not a music critic so I cannot judge the performances on this CD according to a professional jargon; my response is emotional and/or devotional. The 80-plus minutes of this music, all dealing with psalms or prayers of misery and mercy, is spread over two CDS. You can hear samples here, here, here, and here. Scattered Ashes: Josquin's Miserere and the Savonarolan Legacy compiles great Renaissance polyphonic renditions of Psalm 50 and 30 with Fra Savonarola's meditations on those prayers for mercy, written while he was in prison before his public execution for heresy.

The BBC Music Magazine liked the CD set very much in June, 2016:

Despite his condemnation of earthly pleasures, the iconoclastic Dominican friar Savonarola inspired a surprising legacy of musical outpourings. Among these 'scattered ashes' are the Latin motets recorded here, based on the psalm meditations he wrote whilst imprisoned awaiting execution. After his death, Renaissance composers across Europe, of the stature of Byrd, Gombert, Josquin, and Lassus, carved musical monuments from his words - ironically, in the polyphonic idiom against which the friar had railed because it charmed the senses and obscured the words. Savonarola's texts are deeply penitential in quality, yet the music on these two discs ranges from austere to luxuriant, urgent to serene. Magnificat's director Philip Cave shape's poised, subtly expressive and finely balanced readings from the vocal ensemble he founded a quarter of a century ago. His measured tempos reflect the predominantly contemplative tone of these works, and the sable hues and unwavering timbres of his singers are aptly evocative of Savonarolan sobriety. Fleeting visions of light illuminate the pervasive melancholy, notably in the radiant performance of Palestrina's Tribularer, si nescirem. Here, and throughout the programme, are constant allusions to Josquin's hauntingly introspective motet Miserere mei, Deus, echoes of which turn and return like obsessive memories. By offsetting single voices with the richer sound of the full ensemble, Cave throws sections of this statuesque motet into high relief- and to vivid effect.

If nothing else, this CD set introduced me to Josquin des Prez's Miserere which is so different from the Allegri Miserere with all its secret cache. With its haunting repetition of the prayer "Miserere mei, Deus" throughout the text of the psalm, it is quite effective. I enjoyed the variety of polyphonic styles on the first disc most of all, but the entire set is perfect listening for Lent. The liner notes are excellent, providing an overview of European court history and highlighting William Byrd's version of one of Savonarola's prayers, Infelix ego in the context of Recusant England. Beautiful!

The Bonfire of the Vanities

Today is the 520th anniversary of the Bonfire of the Vanities, led by Fra Girolamo Savonarola in Florence, Italy. As the History Channel summarizes the event:

On this day in 1497, the Bonfire of the Vanities took place in Florence, Italy, as supporters of the Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola burned thousands of objects deemed to be associated with vanity, temptation, and sin. Artworks, books, cosmetics, dresses, mirrors, musical instruments and much more were burned. It was seen as a religious act, as a cleansing of the soul and a rejection of worldly pleasures. His bonfire took place on the day of the Mardi Gras festivities—traditionally a series of carnival celebrations beginning on the Epiphany and ending on the day preceding Ash Wednesday.

Although the 7 February Bonfire of the Vanities was the most notorious of these fanatical fires—involving thousands of objects all going up in smoke in front of the Florentine public—it was not the only one. Rather, these sorts of burnings had been a regular accompaniment to the Franciscan missionary San Bernardino di Siena’s outdoor sermons in the first half of the 15th century, only on a smaller scale.

Many great cultural works were incinerated in Girolamo Savonarola’s day of destruction, including copies of books thought to be immoral, including works by Boccaccio, as well as manuscripts of secular songs. Many antique sculptures and paintings were burned, including pieces by successful artists such as Fra Bartolomeo and Lorenzo di Credi. It is even thought that several masterpieces by the great Sandro Botticelli—most famous for painting the Birth of Venus—were willingly burned by the artist, who was a follower of Savonarola’s. According to Giorgio Vasari’s The Lives of the Artists (the first ever book of art history), “Botticelli was so ardent a partisan that he was thereby induced to desert his painting, and, having no income to live on, fell into very great distress!”

The Bonfire of the Vanities was orchestrated by the charismatic, passionate Savonarola, who was known for his apocalyptic sermons. After the ruling Medici dynasty was overthrown in 1494, he was effectively the political—as well as spiritual—leader of the city of Florence, and his great bonfire was the high point of his career. However, his popularity fell away at an astounding rate afterwards, and the following year he was excommunicated and executed.

There is a new recording from the ORA project, combining Renaissance polyphony with a modern commissioned work in honor of Savonarola:

Following the stunning success of their best-selling debut, Suzi Digby’s crack vocal ensemble ORA presents their new album: ‘Refuge from the Flames’. Dedicated to the legacy of Girolamo Savonarola, 15th century Dominican and religious reformer, this new CD further showcases ORA's commitment to bringing together Renaissance choral masterpieces and commissioned reflections from contemporary composers. ORA bring a wealth of experience that gilds these pieces, both new and old, into the lustrous works of art they truly are.

“We begin and end this second ORA album with two contrasting settings of the Miserere mei (Psalm 50, Vulgate). Over the centuries this text has inspired reflections by many Christian writers, none more influential than those by Girolamo Savonarola, and we have devoted much of this album to his extraordinary legacy. Central to the recording is Savonarola’s meditation on the psalm, 'Infelix Ego', written shortly before his execution. We present it here in William Byrd’s justly famous setting, and in a newly commissioned masterpiece by the Latvian composer Eriks Ešenvalds.”
Suzi Digby OBE [artistic director & conductor]

1 Allegri: Miserere [edited by Ben Byram Wigfield]
2 Animuccia/Savonarola: Iesù, sommo conforto
3 Anon/Savonarola: Alma, che sì gentile
4 Anon/Savonarola: Che fai qui, core?
5 Bettini: Ecce quam bonum
6 Verdelot: Letamini in Domino
7 Byrd: Infelix ego
8 Eriks Ešenvalds (b.1977): Infelix ego *world premiere recording commissioned by ORA*
9 Richafort: O quam dulcis
10 Le Jeune: Tristitia obsedit me, magno
11 Anonymous: Ecce quomodo moritur
12 Clemens non Papa: Tristitia obsedit me, amici
13 James MacMillan (b.1959): Miserere

There was a CD set dedicated to Savonarola last year too, from Magnificat, centered around the Miserere by Josquin de Pres, but with the same works by William Byrd, Le Jeune, and Non Papa.