Songs of the Earth
This program begins and ends with two related 'Songs of the Earth' by the Swedish composer Karin Rehnqvist, (winner of the 2023 Nordic Music Prize). Her vocal music is rooted in traditional Nordic singing techniques, which carry us back to a time when European art music barely existed, and the idea of song was something that calls to us from the outside. But now our concert moves towards more familiar music, with a group of English madrigals, and a brilliant instrumental fantasia by Byrd, here vocalised by the singers: voices without words, except for a short burst of Greensleeves. Then we move to France for Janequin's famous imitation of birdsong in Spring, forever prodding us to wake up, because the season of love is for humans as well as birds.
In the middle of the programme stands Monteverdi's madrigalian Sestina, 'Tears of a Lover at the Tomb of the Beloved'. Monteverdi composed this wonderful music to commemorate a young and talented singer, Caterina Martinelli, who was to have sung the title role in his opera Arianna, but then caught smallpox and died at the age of nineteen. (The text of the work doesn't tell us this, but a courtier's letter survives that makes the background clear.) The poem by Scipione Agnelli is, in its own way, a song of the earth as well, albeit pictured within the stylised conventions of Renaissance epigrammatic poetry. The text invokes rivers and fields, sun and moon, tree and wood nymphs, and takes the name of 'Corinna' for the dead teenager, and 'Glaucus' for her heart-broken lover. If there was a lover, then some say it may have been the poet Agnelli himself.
A different kind of purpose and singing style awaits us in Orlando Gibbons' 'Cries of London'. Here the voices sing in the raucous manner of street vendors selling their wares. Inside this 'street' music however runs a slow cantus firmus taken from a Mass by John Taverner. (The text at this point began with the words 'in nomine', and Taverner's setting became so popular that countless 'in nomines' were composed, usually for keyboard or viol consort.) The program then briefly enters the field of sacred music in the company of Arvo Pärt, then comes John Wilbye's evergreen madrigal, Draw on sweet night, often sung at the end of a concert, but here followed by the return to Rehnqvist and the second 'earth' song.
KARIN REHNQVIST
Sånger ur Jorden I. Natt över jorden
WILLIAM BYRD
Fantasia à 6
ORLANDO GIBBONS
Now each flowery bank of May
WILLIAM BYRD
Tho Amaryllis dance in green
JANEQUIN
Le Chant des Oiseaux
CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI
Sestina – Lagrime d’Amante al Sepolcro dell’Amata
—PAUSE—
ORLANDO GIBBONS
The Cries of London, part 1
JOHN TAVERNER
In Nomine
ORLANDO GIBBONS
The Cries of London, part 2
ARVO PÄRT
Most Holy Mother of God
ARVO PÄRT
Morning Star
JOHN WILBYE
Draw on sweet night
KARIN REHNQVIST
Sånger ur Jorden II. Var inte rädd för mörkret
THEATRE OF VOICES
-Else Torp
-Kate Macoboy
-Laura Lamph
-Paul Bentley-Angell
-Jakob Skjoldborg
-William Gaunt
Paul Hillier, artistic director