I. Music of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1170)

The twelfth-century German abbess, author, and composer Hildegard von Bingen was raised from the age of six in a cloistered religious community near the Benedictine Abbey of Disibodenberg. After the age of forty she began writing down her visions, mystical revelations that often concern the relationship between the soul and the hierarchy of celestial beings. Her other books include some that address more earthly subjects, such as healing with herbal remedies, and a discourse on the gospel. Her music has both mystical and liturgical aspects. It utilizes standard Gregorian chant musical form and highly creative religious imagery. Hildegard was well respected in her day. Manuscripts survive for sixty of her individual songs and for her lengthy mystery play, the Ordo virtutum. Her musical output is among the largest of any composer in the medieval era, and her extraordinary musical and poetic expression exceeds the usual boundaries of chant.

O ignis spiritus Paracliti --- Kate Humrickshouse, Cami Davis, soloists; Kristin Roust, vielle

The sequence O ignis spiritus Paracliti provides powerful creative imagery that connects the physical world with the spiritual realm by comparing the physical senses to holy virtues.

O virtus sapientiae

The creative power of Wisdom, whom Hildegard sees as the feminine form of the creator, circles and embraces all creation in the antiphon O virtus sapientiae.

II. Songs and Instrumental Music of the Fifteenth & Early Sixteenth Centuries

The most characteristic type of German song in the Renaissance is the Tenorlied, a polyphonic composition built around a tune, often of popular origin, in the tenor voice. Es taget vor dem Walde, the chorale Aus tiefer Not, and the two pieces played on crumhorns exemplify this type of song. Although musicians such as the town pipers routinely played such music on instruments, composers began to experiment with new ways of writing music especially for instrumental ensemble; these pieces are often labeled "Carmen," a generic term for an instrumental piece, or are named after an individual, as is probably the case with Das Lang.

Greiner, Zanner --- cornett, sackbuts --- Heinrich Finck 1445-1527

Melodia tono primo --- recorders --- Johannes de Stokem c. 1445-1487

Carmen en La --- viols --- Ludwig Senfl c. 1492-1555

Tandernac a 5 --- recorders --- Ludwig Senfl

Das Lang --- viols --- Ludwig Senfl

Es taget vor dem Walde --- voice, viols, recorder --- Ludwig Senfl

Ich weiss mir ein Maidlein --- crumhorns --- Caspar Othmayr 1515-1553

Ein Maidlein zu dem Brunnen ging --- crumhorns --- Ludwig Senfl

Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir --- singers & sackbuts --- Johann Walter 1495-1570

Walter worked closely with Martin Luther in developing music for the nascent Lutheran church. Often hymn tunes were set polyphonically in the style of the Tenorlied, as is the case here.

Da Jacob nu das Kleid ansach --- singers --- Ludwig Senfl

For his plaintive setting of Jacob's lament Senfl abandoned the Tenorlied style and employed the equal-voiced polyphony of the contemporary motet, a style afforded him greater expressive possibilities.

III. Two Motets from Schütz's Cantiones sacrae (1625)

Schütz published his Cantiones sacrae, a collection of forty polyphonic Latin motets, during the early years of the Thirty Years War, a devastating conflict that arose out of the Reformation and Counterreformation. In dedicating the collection to the Catholic Prince Eggenberg of Dresden, who had converted from the Lutheran faith to assume a role in the Imperial court, rather than to his own sovereign, the Elector of Saxony, who was Lutheran, Schütz may have been seeking a broader audience for the publication. The music is suitable for the chapels of both Lutheran and Catholic princes. The texts come mainly from a prayerbook by the Lutheran theologian Andreas Musculus, and were intended for the Christian's private use. Schütz conveys the intimacy of the prayers in his musical settings, which draw on the expressive style of the Italian madrigal as much as the motet.

Spes mea, Christe Deus --- Heinrich Schütz --- 1585-1672

Dulcissime et benignissime Christe --- Heinrich Schütz

IV. Seventeenth-Century Instrumental Music & Sacred Concertos

Padovana - Ballet - Corrente --- viols & organ --- Paul Puerl d. 1625

Invenerunt me custodies civitatis --- solo voices, viols, organ --- Heinrich Schütz

Kate Humrickshouse, Cami Davis, soloists

During his second sojourn to Venice, Schütz published his first collection of sacred concertos for solo voices in the new Italian style, the Symphoniae sacrae (1629). This work offers music in the latest Italian manner for a variety of combinations of solo voices and accompanying instruments, along with basso continuo. In his dedication to the Elector of Saxony, Schütz wrote that in these works "the ancient rhythms [i.e., of the polyphonic motet] have been set aside in favor of teasing the ears with new devices." He was referring to the new rhythmic devices and rhetorical figures used to convey the affect of the music.

Sonata a 4 --- sackbuts & organ --- Daniel Speer 1535-1707

Speer, a Stadtpfeiffer, or town musician, and music theorist, wrote several sonatas for three or four sackbuts, the first pieces of their kind.

Selig sind die da geistlich arm sind --- voices & instruments --- Johann Hermann Schein 1586-1672

Wendy Smith, Crystal Baer, Ted Johnson, Gabe Koxlien, Chris Proczko, soloists

Schein was the first German composer to publish sacred concertos for solo voices and continuo in the new Italian manner. He issued his sacred concertos in two parts under the title Opella nova (A New Little Work) in 1618 and 1626. This setting of the Beatitudes appears in the second volume.

 

V. Seventeenth-Century Dance Music

Many collections of instrumental music were published in early 17th-century Germany. This music was played by the many municipal bands as well as by amateurs. Although these pieces are all styled after dances of the period, this does not necessarily mean that they were intended for dancing. In courtly settings they were used as dinner music; in fact, the titles of the collections from which the pieces by Posch and Schein come (Musikalische Tafelfreudt and Banchetto musicale) specifically designate this. The occasional presence of English popular tunes, such as "Go from my Window," in this repertory testifies to the presence of a several prominent English viol players active in Germany at the time, one of whom was William Brade. His Pilligrienen Tanz comes from a collection of music for the masque.

Intrada a 6 --- cornett & sackbuts --- Hans Leo Hassler 1564-1612

Suite no. 6 --- recorders --- Johann Hermann Schein

Galliard "Go from my Window" --- cornett & sackbuts --- Valentin Hausmann 1565-1614

Der Pilligrienen Tanz --- recorders --- William Brade 1560-1630

Intrada & Couranta (1621) --- viols --- Isaac Posch c. 1591-1622/23

Pavane de Spagne --- crumhorns, cornett, sackbuts --- Michael Praetorius 1567-1621

Besides producing many fine settings of chorales, Praetorius issued a large collection of dance music, eintitled Terpsichore, from which this Spanish pavane comes, and an influential musical encyclopedia, the Syntagma musicum. One section of this treatise is devoted to musical instruments, and its many illustrations, several of which are reproduced in this program, make it one of our most valuable sources of information on Renaissance instruments.

Tantzen und Springen (Gagliarda) --- tutti --- Hans Leo Hassler

Like a number of the songs in his Lustgarten, Neuer Teutscher Gesäng, Balletti, Gagliarden und Intraden (Nuremburg, 1601), this dance song is modeled directly on a balletto of the popular Italian composer Giovanni Gastoldi.