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Ancient Echoes: Stylistic Influences in Healey Willan's Liturgical Music
York University,
Stephanie Martin
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Brian E. Power
Brock University,
St. Catherine's,
Ontario, Canada
Healey WilIan, sometimes given the moniker "the Dean of Canadian composers,"
was actually British by birth. Born in 1880 in London, he was already a well-established
organist and church musician by the time he emigrated to Canada at the age of 33 to
take up appointments
as head of theory at the Toronto Conservatory and organist of St.
Paul's Church, Bloor Street (Bryant, 1972, p. 14). He is, of course, best known as the
long-time precentor, that is, director of liturgical music, at the high-Anglican church of
St. Mary Magdalene, Toronto, a position he held from 1921 until his death in 1968
(Clarke, 1983). It was specifically for the magnificent acoustic of this church that a great
deal of Willan's liturgical music was written.
Willan's early compositions, up to about 1916, reflect the absorption of chromatic
harmonies of the nineteenth century; they recall both Charles Stanford and, in the case
of his organ works, Max Reger (Brown & Bryant, 1992). He was a self-admitted
Wagnerian (Clarke, 1983, p. 10) and even harboured ambitions of performing the piano
works of Brahms, which he studied as a youth (Brown & Bryant, 1992).
By contrast, his liturgical compositions, shorter works intended for use at specific
services, are very different in style and show much earlier compositional influences;
they illustrate what seems to be a conscious attempt to belie the lush chromatics of
Romanticism in favour of the modality of Gregorian plainchant and the textures of
Renaissance polyphony. Nowhere are these more strongly reflected than in his Masses
and motets.
Willan's love of plainchant, probably established early in his life, took tangible form
with his membership in the London Gregorian Association in 1910; he was also
encouraged by the Gregorian chant revivalist Francis Burgess. Later, Will an cofounded
the affiliated Gregorian Association of Toronto with a mandate to promote the use of
plainchant in the city; this society was active until the early 1980s.
220
Ancient Echos
Willan's
Masses
Willan composed several Masses, mostly for Communion services. Some are Latin
works for unison voices with organ, including the Masses for St. Peter, 1927, and for St.
Theresa, 1930. Others have English text settings, such as St. Mary Magdalena, 1928, and
St. Hugh, 1935, while still others were intended for the Lutheran use. Willan also wrote
14 English settings of the Missa brevis, which, in the Anglican rite, is often used during
Holy Communion. In these short Masses, Will an sets the Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei
texts polyphonically; the remainder of the liturgy was often sung to the appropriate
plainchant by the congregation at St. Mary Magdalene (Clarke, 1983). While many of
these polyphonic settings use melodies deliberately reminiscent of plainchant, two are
based on actual chants: Missae breves nos. 4 and 12.
Missa brevis NO.4 has as its inspiration the hymn Corde natus ex parentis, commonly
translated "Of the Father's love begotten," written by Aurelius Clemens Prudentius, a
Roman citizen and a Christian poet of the late fourth century (Campbell, 1908). But the
music here is from an eleventh century trope of the Sanctus of the Roman Mass, with
the text Divinul11 mysterium, a title by which the tune is now fairly widely known in
modern hymn books. In the Kyrie of his Missa brevis setting, WiIIan's approach to the
plainchant is not merely to relegate it to a single voice with accompaniment,
though he
is known to have occasionally used this technique, but rather to set the notes of the
chant across all the voices with each part at some point taking up fragments of the
melody, in the manner of a fifteenth century paraphrase Mass. When one hears this
work, and others like it by Willan, one cannot help but recall some of the compositional
methods used by composers of late Medieval and early Renaissance Europe,
particularly the generations of Guillaume Dufay and, later, Josquin Desprez. These
composers experimented with what had become, even by then, an old-fashioned
technique, that is, cantus lirmus, or direct incorporation of a preexistent melody, often a
chant, into a polyphonic composition. Josquin, like Willan almost 500 years later, was
not content with simply stating the chant melody in a single voice (an approach already
500 years old by his time). Hence the birth of the paraphrase Mass with fairly equal
distribution across the parts of the melody, which was itself often ornamented and
modally adjusted (Atlas, 1998). Example 1 shows an excerpt from a quintessential
paraphrase Mass by Josquin: the first section of the Kyrie from his Missa pange lingua,
introduced by its chant, a hymn, with text by Thomas Aquinas, sung at Vespers on
Corpus Christi (Atlas, 1998, p. 302).
221
Stephanie Martin and Brian E. Power
i
@nJl~
~r.\
Pan - ge lin - gua
~
f. EEH~
glo - ri •
si
0
Cor
-
po - ris my - ste • ri - urn,
Example 1a: Pallge linglla gloriosi (plainsong hymn).
Example 1b: Josquin DesPrez (C. 1450-1521), Missa pange linglla, Kyrie (opening).
To illustrate Willan's approach, Example 2 shows the Kyrie of his Missa brevis NO.4,
introduced with the chant on which it is based.
-k[FD
"DL
I'l-nwnmy
$R FE
et
mens
rrn T 1tfIj] IT£J r
-
Tzd i
E££j
m -
f1
-
ptr
~ll'-n-um
de - Ii .
lUll
J J
tIJ-
de. cla-
1
mens
LJ J
i
i
ex -
~llC
.
ell
_
til!
[SilnGtu.~1
Example 2a: Divillllttl ttlysterilll1l (Sanctus trope. eleventh century) .
."
'
Soprano
e-le.i-son
K~' I
ri-e
i-son.
cole
Alto
'- •
:---..
oJ
,..,
,H.
K~'-n.e
c.le-
i-son.
I(v
n-t
K~'
ri.e
~
'--"*
d
- I-son.
e -Ie
Tenor
Ky-n.e
e-ie-i-sotl
e - Ie
Example 2b: Willan, Missa brevis NO.4, Kyrie (opening).
222
j-son.
Ancient Echos
Willan's Motets
While still in England, Willan was greatly influenced by Sir Richard R. Terry who
was at the cutting edge of a movement to revive the performance of sixteenth century
choral music. As organist of Westminster Cathedral in London, Terry edited
performing editions and led groundbreaking
performances of early music within the
Roman Catholic liturgy.
Willan made no secret of his own admiration for Renaissance composers. When he
toured with his famous St. Mary Magdalene Choir in New York City in 1945, his concert
repertoire included music by Byrd, Palestrina, Philips, and Vittoria, as well as selected
Russian liturgical pieces and, of course, his own Masses and motets.
With the exception of a few miscellaneous
major collections:
examples, Willan's motets fall into four
•
•
Six Motets, published by W. H. Gray in 1924
Eleven Liturgical motets, published by Oxford University Press between 1928 and
•
Seven Works of Renaissance Masters, edited and adapted by Will an and published
•
by Flammer, New York, in 1938, including sixteenth century motets by Adrian
Batten, Vincenzo Ruffo, King John of Portugal, Jacobus Gallus, Giovanni Croce,
and Hans Leo Hassler
Seven Late Motets, published by Concordia, 1949-1951
1937
Willan was a musical chameleon, capable of writing comfortably in the style of Elgar
or William Byrd. However, in the 11 liturgical motets, he seems to have hit his musical
stride and successfully combined elements of historical style with his own personal
expression. A theatrical composer at heart, Willan needed to create a fitting
accompaniment
to the mystical drama of the Eucharist at the Church of St. Mary
Magdalene where the liturgy expressed a rare synthesis of discipline and extravagance
in ritual and music. Echoes of Palestrina and Byrd surface regularly in these motets
through strict imitative counterpoint, modal harmonies, and flexible phrases married to
the rhythms of English speech.
Motet No.7, "Lo, in the time appointed," is the most overtly contrapuntal of the set,
offering an exposition in classic Palestrina style. To illustrate strict sixteenth century
223
---'--::',-:~-'-:;;).:"-;'-
Stephanie Martin and Brian E. Power
counterpoint, Example 3 shows the opening of the Sanctus from the Missa aeterna Christi
inunera. Willan's approach is evident in Example 4.
,
•...
Cantus
,
.J
San
'J
,
cluS"
ctus,s.'Ul
Altus
<>
81111
..
.
clu$, San
San-
S!m
•
..:hlll ~<ln -
Tenor
\'
Sao
-
elliS,
San
-
Bassus
SIUl
..:lu:;.San
Example 3: Giovanni da Palestrina (c. 1525/6-1594),
Missa aeterna Christi 1Il1i1lera, Sanctus (opening).
,
Soprano
oJ
Le. in the time
Alto
oJ
,
,,;,,;
10,
..
ap - point
"
in
~
the time
.. -_. .....• .. ...
the
-~.cd
-
np
-
point
•
Lord
-
-
ed the
~
will
Lord
Tenor
11
Lo, in
the
rime
np
Bass
Lo,
Example 4: Willan, Motet, "Lo, in the time appointed"
1II
Ihe
(opening).
Willan's publishers for the first seven motets, Oxford University Press, were able to
print a bar line that can best described as "wavy;" a curled vertical line (similar to an
arpeggio symbol), which indicates a free-flowing metre that changes with every phrase,
according to textual accentuation. This unique wavy bar-line disappeared from the last
four motets after the publication was taken over from Oxford by Carl Fischer. The
middle section of Motet No.3, "1 beheld her, beautiful as a dove," (Example 5)
demonstrates Will an's escape from the hJranny of the bar line, with gestures that
alternate four, three, six, and five quarter notes per phrase. This example also
demonstrates Willan's signature modal cadences that resolve with an exquisite lack of
musical tension.
224
Ancient Echos
Puc" I'm "", •••"
Sopr3J1Q
,
.
Chh__
_~o
. "lh
up
•
IIJI
from
the
oc
.Alto
,
_~o
~l!l
T~oc
\'
.':";!'''
"=
.ethup
"
,
of
"lcatil
,
~",,,,,t
W
.,~'"
h",,~
~-
•
CeI\.SC
_ '" . 0""""
JlId
lIl~nh'
~n,J ",."'~~
~
<mole " • ri~.
wg flnm
n.s-i~
lmln
Example 5: Willan, Molel, "I beheld her, beautiful as a dove" (excerpt).
Finally, Wilian leaves no doubt at all about the influences on his motet style with one
particular example of a direct quotation in a Christmas setting. In Motet No. la, "Bodie,
ChrishlS natus est," the musical homage to the late sixteenth century Dutch composer,
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, is obvious. As Examples 6 and 7 demonstrate, Willan
borrows SweeIinck's work in the initial phrases of this motet.
of
-
Example 6: Jan Pielerszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621),
Motet, "Hodie, Christus nalus est" (excerpt).
225
Stephanie Martin and Brian E. Power
Allrgro
J-72
pcrest'.
Soprano
1/0-<1;-",_
Alto
I'"
•
<1i.".
---~--_.
_
Tenor
Iln.dj."._
P,!,'sr.
Bass
bo
-
d;.".
p
p
A
Chris
-
esl:
'"
p
Chm.
Example 7: Willan, Motet, "Hodie, Christus natus est" (excerpt).
Clearly, Healey Willan was a product of the nineteenth century in more than one
way. While his orchestral and early organ works could be classified as Romantic, his
liturgical service music, composed mostly for the use of a specific Toronto church, is
strongly influenced by both chant and polyphony, a result of Willan's connections with
the often-overlooked
early music revival of late nineteenth century England. Willan's
Canadian liturgical legacy, including some of the most sublime Mass and motet settings
in the vernacular repertoire, owes much to the influence of his forbearers, like Francis
Burgess and Sir Richard Terry at Westminster Cathedral who, at the turn of the last
century, first sparked Willan's interest in both plainchant and the polyphonic Masses
and motets of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
References
Atlas, A. (1998). Rellaissance music: Music ill Westerll Europe, 1400-1600. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.
Brown, T. C, & Byant, G. (1992). Willan, Healey. In Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, 2nd ed.[electronic
version]. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Retrieved March 31, 2005 from
http://www.collectionscanada.ca/emc/index-e.html
Bryant, G. (1972, suppl. 1982). Healey Willall catalogue. Ottawa, ON: National Library of
Canada/Bibliotheque Nationale du Canada.
Campbell, D. (1908). Hymns alld hymn makers (41h ed.). London, UK: A & C Black.
Clarke, F. R. C (1983). Healey Willall: Life alld music. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.
226
Ancient Echos
Editions Consulted
Liber usua/is, with introduction and rubrics in EI/g/ish. Tournai: Desclee Co., 1963.
Josquin
Missa pallge /itlgua. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1977.
Palestrina
Missa aetema Christi m/mem. London, UK: Chester Music, 1953.
Sweelinck
"Hodie, Christus natus est." Vox Ncerlalldica: oijj eellwell gemeHgd koor, a cappella. Loosdrecht, Holland:
Harmonia, 1995.
Willan
!-Jodie, Christus natus est. New York, NY: Carl Fischer, 1935.
I beheld her, beautiful as a dove. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1928.
La, in the time appointed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1929.
Missa brevis NO.4. New York, NY: Carl Fischer, 1934.
227