NOTA BENE PROGRAM NOTES

Continental Drift: In the 16th century communication was limited by distance, and distance was constrained by geography. In an age when travel required walking, riding, sailing, or rowing, rough terrain and vast seas were major obstacles. Works of European music that turned up far from where they originated are particularly interesting to us today when we consider what it took for them to end up there and why it mattered to those who transported it.

A Spaniard in the Works: Our exploration of the “continental drifting” of European music begins in Spain with Cristóbal Morales, whose works were so widely admired throughout Europe that they traveled far beyond its borders. When his motet Andreas Christi Famulus was printed in 1556 in Antwerp (1200 miles north of its origin in Seville) Morales had already been dead for three years, yet the publishers chose this Spanish work to head up their motet collection. His reputation was so great that his mere presence in the book served to enhance the works of the Flemish composers it featured. The litany to St. Andrew, familiar to listeners anywhere on the continent, can be heard throughout the piece, alternating in pitch between two hexachords. This same motet made its way by sea to Mexico, where it was found in a cathedral manuscript, and - even more surprisingly–to the African continent. A letter from the Governor of Angola in August of 1578 recounts that it was performed at the newly established church of São Paolo da Assumpção in Luanda by a group of locally-born singers and players. Morales’ “Missa Cortilla” (Short Mass) was also performed at the same event. The brevity of the work and the repetition of the six-note melody fa re ut fa sol la that serves as its underpinnings would have made it an apt didactic piece for musicians receiving their first introduction to European music. Not surprisingly, it appeared in collections scattered throughout the New World as well.

From the Continent to the British Isles: Spanish musical influence had come to the north countries long before Morales’ time in the form of dance tunes, one of the most popular of which was known as “Il Re di Spagna” (the King of Spain) or simply “La Spagna.” This melody became the basis of innumerable improvisations and polyphonic compositions, and inevitably was taken up by the Flemish composer Josquin des Pres, who used it as the cantus firmus of a five-part motet which circulated widely without text. Josquin’s influence throughout the European continent is well-recognized, but there are fewer references to his music in English sources. Anne Boleyn brought a songbook back from the French court including music by Josquin and his contemporaries, and Henry VIII was given a sumptuous choirbook including some of his works, but there are only a few other instances of Josquin’s work appearing in England. One is an early Elizabethan portrait of four children from an unidentified English family. The daughter sits at a keyboard, while the sons hold partbooks in which the music is so carefully painted that a recent scholar was able to identify not only the piece - Josquin’s motet Domine ne in furore–but the exact book, a collection of continental psalm settings published in Nuremberg in 1538. Featuring the book among their possessions in the portrait would have signaled the education and status of the family, and the piece seems a good choice for young musicians with its alternation of duets and four-part sections. Another English source includes a copy of Josquin’s Stabat Mater, first published in Venice in 1519, and using a much older French song as its cantus firmus. In the English copy another part has been added anonymously, which we incorporate into our performance. Thus a Flemish piece with a French tune at its core, published in Italy, was given an English twist.

Eastern Europe enters the mix: There was a steady flow of music between Eastern and Western Europe in the 16th century. The renowned lutenist Valentin Bakfark, born in Hungary, spent much of his service at the Polish court, where he probably first heard the folk song “Czarna Krowa” that he eventually set for lute. He later traveled to France and Italy, dying in Padua in 1576. There, the Paduan lutenist Barbetta, influenced by his skill, dedicated one of his dances to him. Although Diomedes Cato was himself born not far from Padua, his family moved to Poland when he was a child. As a musician at the Polish court, he traveled with the king to Sweden, where he was recognized as one of the finest foreign composers. Travel between Eastern Europe and England was also common, and at the cusp of the new century a wealthy young man from Elbing in Prussia (now part of Poland) crossed the Channel to cultivate connections in England, carrying with him his liber amicorum, in which his new acquaintances could record their messages, drawings, and advice. In 1604 he met John Dowland, who wrote for him a short piece for lute, and soon after he made friends with the composer Thomas Campion, who took the time to set down an entire song in his honor, ending with these lines: “Through the peril, and the toyle/Which both sea and land attends,/Mayst thou safe arrived be,/Myndful of thy love and me.” Sadly, the book was lost in the Russian invasion of Poland in World War II, so we have had to substitute another Campion song with similar sentiments. We round out this set with a popular English tune intabulated for lute in an anonymous Polish manuscript dating from the start of the 17th century which also included dances from Poland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and the Netherlands. Once thought lost like the previous book, it resurfaced in Moscow after the war and was eventually sent to a library in East Berlin.

From Old England to New England: Research into music in the early American colonies shows that in just one Massachusetts county alone there were seven viols recorded in 17 th -century household inventories, as well as over a dozen virginals. Although the strictest Puritans may have focused on singing psalms with viol accompaniment, it is clear that few travelers would have gone to the trouble of packing large and delicate instruments and music books for the transatlantic voyage if these were not an essential part of daily life. Private libraries in the colonies included copies of Parthenia, or the Maydenhead of the first musicke that ever was printed for the Virginalls, as well as manuscript copies of other works by William Byrd and John Bull. We can imagine New England viol-players gathered around a keyboard score, making the most of the resources they had, with titles that transported them back across the Atlantic like the English song All in a Garden Green, or the exotic Spanish Paven which had taken the Elizabethan court by storm a generation before.

From Iberia Eastward: Portuguese traders arrived in Japan in 1543 during the rule of King João III, and were followed soon after by Jesuit missionaries. By the 1560s they had introduced viols to their mission schools, where they were used to train boys to sing and play polyphony. The head of the Jesuit order at that time was Francisco de Borja, a Spanish-born member of the influential Borgia family and a composer in his own right; it is likely that his own mass settings were among the books that traveled to Japan along with the viols. Heliodoro de Paiva was born the same year as the king, and his mother became the royal wetnurse, while his father was a prominent courtier. A theologian and philosopher, he was esteemed as a composer, singer, and organist who also played the viol. His music would have been readily available to the King’s envoys to the East. In 1613 the government expelled Christians from Japan, and the Portuguese missionaries fled to Macao. A catalog of books in the college at Macao in 1632 included a mass by Duarte Lobo which had been brought there from Japan.

… and Westward: As its missionaries were teaching the viol in Japan, Portugal was also extending its reach to outposts in India and Africa and colonies in Brazil. Meanwhile Spanish colonizers were using music as a tool for evangelizing in other parts of South and Central America. Indigenous pueblos in the Huehuetenango region of Northeastern Guatemala became the site of European-style choir schools. When the Spanish abandoned the area, the locally-copied choirbooks were preserved by native shamans, and continued to be a part of important festivals. One such book, from San Juan de Ixcoi, resides now in the Lilly Library at Indiana University, where a diligent scholar noticed that a number of the untexted and uncredited sacred works were actually rough copies of early 16th-c. French chansons and Italian madrigals, whose original sources were likely unknown to the indigenous copyists. The poetry at the heart of these European love songs was lost, but the sounds of the four-part polyphony became a venerated part of local tradition living on in a new landscape.

A new spin on old Spain: Over the following centuries, in the major cathedral cities of Spain and its colonies, manuscripts of instrumental music were a treasured resource for church minstrels, regularly recopied and expanded. One such source, from the cathedral at Puebla, Mexico, contains several works by 16th-century Spanish court composer Philippe Rogier. The dates of other works contained therein suggest that his canciones were still considered staples of the repertoire in Mexico a hundred years after his death. Copied in the same source are motets by Francisco Guerrero, chapelmaster at the cathedral in Seville. The boats that plied the network of rivers in New Spain to supply its churches were regularly provided with copies of music from the scriptorium in Seville, so Guerrero’s music was dispersed widely. Though he himself never saw New Spain, Guerrero was famous for his adventurous travels to the Holy Land. An inventory of the library of the Mexico City Cathedral dated 1589 listed a book of motets by Tomás Luis de Victoria published in Rome four years before, including his setting of Duo Seraphim. The cathedral’s choirbooks received heavy use and were periodically recopied, interspersed with later interpolations. A century after its original publication, Victoria’s four-voice motet was reworked into an eight-voice piece to fit contemporary usage; later in the 18th century it was again updated to include two newly composed violin parts and full basso continuo. Thus, Victoria’s motet became one of the longest-used pieces in the cathedral repertoire, performed regularly there in some form for over 200 years.

With great thanks to Yukimi Kambe (Portuguese music in Japan), Paul Borg (European music in Guatemala), and Douglas Kirk (Spanish music in Mexico) for sharing their research and insights, and to Kathleen Spencer for her help in finding artwork for our slide-show.

INDIVIDUAL BIOGRAPHIES

Joanna Blendulf has performed and recorded with leading period-instrument ensembles throughout the United States and abroad. She is currently co-principal cellist and principal viola da gamba player of the Portland Baroque Orchestra and has performed as principal cellist of Pacific MusicWorks, Pacific Baroque Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire Baroque Orchestra, and the New York Collegium. She performs regularly with the Catacoustic Consort, Ensemble Electra, Ensemble Mirable, Music of the Spheres, Nota Bene Viol Consort, and Wildcat Viols. Joanna is Associate Professor of Music in baroque cello/viola da gamba at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.

Wendy Gillespie has performed with ensembles worldwide ranging from the English Concert to Ensemble Sequentia, and her name can be found on more than 100 recordings. She has performed on five continents as a founding member of Fretwork and long-time member of Phantasm. In 2017, after 32 years at Indiana University, Wendy became Professor Emerita at the Jacobs School of Music. She is Past President of the Viola da Gamba Society of America, and has served on the jury for the Bach-Abel International Viola da Gamba Competition in Kôthen, Germany since its inception in 2000. In 2011, she received EMA’s Thomas Binkley Award for outstanding achievement in performance and scholarship by the director of a university early music ensemble.

Sarah Mead is a sought-after teacher of viol and Renaissance performance practice who has performed extensively in the U.S. and as far afield as New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Brazil, and the UK. She served for seven years as Music Director of the annual Conclave of the Viola da Gamba Society of America. Her performing editions of historical and original works for viols are published by PRB Productions. In 2007 she received the Thomas Binkley Award from Early Music America for her work with the Early Music Ensembles at Brandeis University, where she is Professor of the Practice of Music and has chaired the program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Emily Walhout discovered her love for baroque bass lines at Oberlin Conservatory, where she played baroque cello and viola da gamba. Captivated by the music of the 16th and 17th centuries, she found her calling in The King’s Noyse, La Luna, and Les Délices. In orchestras throughout the U.S., she has played principal cello, bass violin, viola da gamba, and lirone. Recently Emily has become certified as a therapeutic musician, playing bass viol one-on-one for the sick and dying. The viol duo Heart’s Ease, her collaboration with colleague Sarah Mead, was formed with the same intent—to bring healing music to those in healthcare settings.

Guest artist

A viol specialist since 1976, Julie Jeffrey has performed throughout the U.S., in Canada, Mexico, Europe and Australia. She is a founding member of Sex Chordae Consort of Viols, Wildcat Viols, Antic Faces, and The Barefoot All-Stars, and she embodies half of the viol duo Hallifax & Jeffrey. Ms. Jeffrey is co-founder and co-director of Barefoot Chamber Concerts, and has served on the board of directors of The Viola da Gamba Society of America, The Pacifica Viola da Gamba Society, and The San Francisco Early Music Society.