Palestrina's
Lute
Introduction
The
art of intabulation -- putting instrumental and vocal part music into
tablature, the lute's "finger" notation -- is a continuous
tradition that unites lute players across the centuries. In the 16th
century, an era before scores became commonplace, lute tablature was
an important medium for the preservation, transmission, and study
of polyphonic music. Vocal counterpoint, in particular, figures prominently
in surviving sources of both lute solo and lute consort music.
The
Venere Lute Quartet's arrangements for lute ensemble are informed
by the intabulation techniques described in Adrian Le Roy's treatise
on lute intabulation (c. 1571), publications of Giovanni Pacoloni
(1564), Vincenzo Galilei (1584), Giovanni Terzi (1599), Emanual Adriansen
(1584), and Nicolas Vallet (c. 1616), and works found in the Thysius
Lute Book (c. 1600).
When
intabulating vocal polyphony, the voice parts are generally assigned
to their corresponding lutes -- soprano, alto, tenor and bass. In
addition, all the players may double the bass, fill out the harmony,
and add occasional melodic ornamentation to their parts. The original
vocal work is thus enlivened and transformed by the players' tactile
sensibilities. This is particularly appropriate when considering the
music of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525/26-1594), since, as
the following essay suggests, much of Palestrina's music may have
sprung to life on the strings of a lute.
Composing on the Lute
Jessie Ann Owens*
A
study of composers' autograph sketches, drafts and fair copies shows
that Renaissance composers tended to work in the format usually used
in performance.1 Organists and other keyboard composers employed either
open score (with each part on its own staff) or a kind of compressed
score on two staves. Composers of vocal music, which was typically
sung from separate parts, either in choirbook format or as separate
partbooks, often wrote music with the individual parts spatially separated
from one another. When space was limited, composers might stack the
voices one on top of the other; this format, sometimes called "pseudo-score,"
usually does not have the features associated with scores, such as
bar lines, vertical alignment and positioning of the voices high to
low. It is thus no surprise to discover that at least some of the
composers who were lutenists wrote sketches and drafts in lute tablature,
and presumably they sounded out the music they were composing on the
lute. As a "perfect" instrument, the lute would have been
very useful in composition since it allowed composers to hear the
full range of sounds -- motives as well as harmony.
The
documentary evidence that Palestrina may have used a lute for composing
comes from a series of letters in the Mantuan archives. Palestrina
was composing masses on a commission given by G. Guglielmo Gonzaga,
Duke of Mantua, an avid patron of music and amateur composer. The
Duke specified that the masses be alternatim (divided between chant
and polyphony), based on the newly revised chants of the Santa Barbara
liturgy, and imitative throughout. Palestrina thought that he could
compose one mass every ten days. In fact, the chronology drawn from
the correspondence shows that he was working at the rate of approximately
one mass every three weeks between October 1578 and April 1579.
The
Duke's agent in Rome, Don Annibale Capello, reported on 18 October
1578:
Having
passed recently through a serious illness and being thus unable to
command either his wits or his eyesight in the furtherance of his
great desire to serve Your Highness in whatever way he can, M. Giovanni
da Palestrina has begun to set the Kyrie and Gloria of the first mass
on the lute, and when he let me hear them, I found them in truth full
of great sweetness and elegance. […] And as soon as his infirmity
permits he will work out what he has done on the lute with all possible
care.2
This
letter suggests that Palestrina was "setting" portions of
a mass to the lute, in effect using the lute for composing. He was
also using it to show Capello what the music sounded like, giving
him a taste of music intended for a choir, perhaps playing the essential
sonorities and the main motives, a kind of reduction for the lute.
We don't know what effect Palestrina's illness had on his working
methods. Was he composing in his mind, and simply playing the music
on the lute? Was he jotting down his ideas in lute tablature, waiting
until he was well to write down "what he has done on the lute
with all possible care," that is, in mensural notation?
The
Venere Lute Quartet's Palestrina project offers some additional evidence
for consideration: one of the compositions from this Mantuan commission,
the Kyrie of the Missa duplicibus minoribus I, fits quite nicely under
the lutenist's hand. This supports the notion that Palestrina may
have used the lute in composing this piece, and affirms that Capello's
account is entirely plausible. The opening Kyrie section, here performed
on a solo lute, is thus an attempt to reconstruct what Palestrina
might have played for Capello in 1578.
*This
material is drawn from Jessie Ann Owens, Composers at Work: The Craft
of Musical Composition (New York: Oxford, 1997). For a more detailed
view of the role of the lute, see John Griffiths, "The Lute and
the Polyphonist," Studi musicali 31 (2002).
2Translation: Oliver Strunk, Essays on Music in the Western World
(New York, 1974), 99-100.
©2006
by Jessie
Ann Owens.
All rights reserved.
Musicologist
Jessie Ann Owens is Dean of the Division of Humanities, Arts &
Cultural Studies at the University of California Davis.
Reflections on the Missa Brevis
James Olesen+
Palestrina's
setting of the mass is always motivated by the words, with each phrase
of text accorded its unique musical meditation. Although the lute
quartet's musical phrasing is informed by word rhythms, an instrumental
performance loses moment-to-moment connections between text and music.
The transparency of plucked strings instead focuses attention on melodic
development, contrapuntal technique, and harmonic progression. But
the Missa Brevis performed without words still has a story to tell,
and one can hear in the piece a spiritual narrative with a salient
dramatic arc.
The
opening Kyrie gently invites us into a world of contemplation. Each
voice appears in formal, evenly spaced entrances, announcing the melodic
basis of the mass, not Gregorian chant or secular song, but a simple
motif, the falling minor third. If this interval has a feeling of
ease and inevitability, it is probably because we all began our musical
lives singing it: the familiar "teasing" motif is discovered
and used spontaneously by children around the world.
Palestrina slowly
expands the motif, using simple formulas like those found in 16th-century
ornamentation manuals. In the Christe phrase, the interval is filled
in; for the return to Kyrie, it is embellished with an additional
note. Palestrina begins a process of gradual intensification that
culminates in the Amen of the Credo, where the motif descends in rapid
sequence through all the voices in an intricate polyrhythmic web.
With the Sanctus, Palestrina signals the shift from contemplation
of the Word to the experience of the Eucharist. A state of inner exaltation
is suggested by an abrupt extension of the upper register; it is maintained
in the Benedictus
(click
here to continue on next column...)
|
Program
Notes
(...continued
from previous column)
by removing
the bass voice and assigning florid divisions to the other three parts;
and it is confirmed in both the Benedictus and Hosanna by suspending
harmonic resolution until the final cadences. The
stage is now set for a final release of energy. The Agnus I is based
on a slow, steady ascending scale. As the scale is inverted to begin
the Agnus II, the soprano splits into two equal voices, trading phrases
in perfect imitation. Palestrina's flexible lines and asymmetric entrances
now give way to a new paradigm: a strict canon on top, supported by
regular, round-like cadences below. The effect is hypnotic, soothing,
and timeless -- an extraordinary expression of repose, reassurance,
and certainty of faith.
©2006
by James Olesen. All rights reserved.
+James
Olesen is a conductor and Professor of Music at Brandeis University.
Mass, Motet, and Madrigal
At
the core of Palestrina's prolific output are his 104 mass settings.
Many of these are skillful re-workings of motets and madrigals, some
by Palestrina himself, others by such eminent composers as Josquin,
Verdelot, de Morales and Cipriano de Rore. Several masses are based
on plainsong, while others, like the Missa Brevis, are freely composed.
Like most Renaissance composers, however, Palestrina also composed in
a wide variety of other genres, both sacred and secular.
Palestrina's
first book of secular madrigals, which includes "La ver l'Aurora,"
was reprinted eight times in forty-five years, a good indication of
its popularity in its own time. However, few of these pieces are familiar
to modern singers or audiences. His madrigali spirituali are similarly
neglected. These pieces were intended for the use of devout lay Catholics,
and the texts often have the ecstatic spirituality characteristic of
Counter-Reformation piety. Palestrina evokes this quality of the poetry
with some of his most poignant harmonies, as in the slow-moving suspensions
of "O Sol'incoronato" and "Vergine Bella." In "Vergine
Bella," Palestrina's unusual repeat of the opening section affords
the performers in this recording an opportunity to embellish their parts
on the reprise, adding an improvisatory dimension to the musical conversation.
Three
of the motets in this recording come from the Song of Songs collection
of 1584. In his dedication to Pope Gregory XIII, Palestrina apologizes
for having set secular love poems while a foolish youth, and offers
these songs of "the divine love of Christ and his spiritual Betrothed
for each other" in atonement for his earlier indiscretion. The
sincerity of his repentance is called into question by the fact that
his second book of secular madrigals was published just two years later:
"Amor ben puoi" and "Cosi la fama" are from this
book. Of the remaining motets, "Veni Sancte" and "Lauda
Sion" are settings of liturgical sequences for double choir, while
"Sicut cervus," perhaps Palestrina's best known piece, uses
a text from the Easter Vigil.
Palestrina's
madrigal "Cosi le chiome mie" is heard twice in this recording,
first as the seconda parte of "Vestiva i colli," and then
as the basis for a lute duet by Giovanni Antonio Terzi. Terzi was an
esteemed singer and lutenist from Bergamo who is mostly remembered today
for his daunting lute fantasias and intabulations. In Terzi's setting,
one lute plays a strict intabulation of the madrigal while the other
-- playing the contrappunto part -- embellishes it with extravagant,
single-line passaggi. In the surviving repertoire of duets for "unequal"
lutes, rapid diminutions are generally assigned to the smaller, higher
pitched lute; here the contrappunto is played on the lower of two lutes
pitched a fourth apart. Terzi exploits the extremes of this large lute's
register, running from the lowest note (the open seventh course) to
the highest notes and beyond; in one diminution, fret "13"
is called for, and probably would have been played on the bare wood
of the lute's belly, as done here.
Among
lutenists today the piece is regarded as something of a tour de force.
Terzi's virtuosic groppi, sequences, syncopations and word painting,
balanced by moments of lyricism and reflection, create a remarkable
arabesque that rivals contemporary settings of "Cosi le chiome
mie" by division masters Girolamo dalla Casa (1584), Giovanni Bassano
(1591), and Orazio Bassani (ca. 1622). It is a fitting testament to
a lutenist who "loved vocal [music] but that of instrumental music
even more; and if with his voice he emulated the harmony of the spheres,
with the sound of his lute he challenged that of the angels."*
*Donato
Calvi: Scene letteraria de gli scrittori bergamaschi (Bergamo, 1664),
319. "Amò la vocale ma più la sonara, & se
con la voce emulava l'armonia de Cieli, col suono del Liutti gareggiava
con quella degl'Angeli."
The Venere Lute Quartet
One
of few professional lute ensembles today, the Venere Lute Quartet is
named after the Italian Renaissance luthier Vendelio Venere, who (like
Antonio Stradivari) was regarded among the finest luthiers of his age.
Members of the Quartet are busy lute professionals in four of America's
leading early music centers (Boston, New York, Chicago, and Minneapolis)
who share a love of ensemble playing, lute scholarship, and audience
education. Longtime friends, they began playing together while teaching
at Lute Society of America Seminars.
Instrument makers and musicians of the Renaissance were highly influenced
by the theoretical and philosophical ideas attributed to Pythagoras,
such as the relation of pitch to the length of a vibrating string and
the belief that the "symphony" of sounding numbers in music
expressed the orderly workings of the universe. Indeed, for many humanists
of the Renaissance, the harmony of the universe was most clearly revealed
in the well-tuned, well-played strings of the lute.
The exquisitely crafted "family" of Renaissance lutes on which
the Quartet performs are all strung in gut and modeled after instruments
from Venere's workshop by luthiers Grant Tomlinson and Lawrence K. Brown.
The Quartet's set of soprano, alto, tenor, and bass lutes is sized according
to Pythagorean proportions; that is, in relation to the vibrating string
length of the bass lute, the tenor lute is three quarters as long and
tuned a fourth higher (4:3), the alto lute is two thirds as long and
tuned a fifth higher (3:2), and the soprano lute is half as long and
tuned an octave higher (2:1).
The Quartet performs a wide range of Renaissance and Baroque music,
and is actively expanding the lute ensemble repertoire with its own
arrangements. Venere's work also provides opportunities for today's
composers to explore the unique sound of the lute ensemble, while editions
of the Quartet's arrangements encourage student, amateur, and professional
lutenists to keep the intabulation tradition alive.
©
2006 by the Venere Lute Quartet
All Rights Reserved.
Unauthorized duplication of music or materials
on this website is prohibited.
|
The Lute Society of America