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PROGRAM NOTES
By
Frederic Palmer
At the end of the 16th century there was a major shift in Western music that
was centered in Italy and the San Marco Basilica in Venice in particular. It was at
San Marco that composers, the most influential of which was Giovanni Gabrieli,
cultivated forms that added a spatial dimension to the music by taking advantage
of the multiple choir lofts found throughout the basilica and using two or more
separate ensembles at different locations to create dramatic antiphonal effects.
This antiphonal style later developed into the form we now know as the concerto.
Although composed over four hundred years ago, Gabrieli’s Canzon Septimi Toni
still impresses today’s listeners with its majestic grandeur and the freshness and
power of its antiphonal writing that was meant to thrill and amaze those who first
heard it.
The Burgundian period was the shortest in the history of Western music,
spanning just fifty years from 1400 to 1450. It played a crucial role, however, by
serving as the transition from the music of the Middle Ages to that of the
Renaissance. While Burgundian music retains much of the medieval harmonic
vocabulary, its texture is smoother and often displays a principal melody in the
highest part supported by an underlying accompaniment. One of the leading
Burgundian composers was Guillaume Dufay, whose works are distinguished for
their originality and imagination. Adieu ces bons vins de Lannoys is a rondeau, a
vocal composition based on a medieval poetic form with a rather intricate
repetition pattern. The text of this rondeau by Dufay, describes, in a lighthearted
way, the regret of someone leaving the inhabitants of Lannoys and their earthly
pleasures.
Nancy Bloomer Deussen earned a BM and MM degree in composition and
theory from the Manhattan School of Music, and her teachers included Vittorio
Giannini, Ingolf Dahl and Lukas Foss. She also holds a second bachelor’s degree
in music education from the University of Southern California. Her compositions
have been performed throughout the United States and have received numerous
awards, and she is the recipient of several grants. She is also the founder of the
San Francisco Bay Area chapter of The National Association of Composers USA
and currently serves as Vice-President of that organization. She teaches
composition privately and regularly performs as a pianist. Over the years, the
Mid-Peninsula Recorder Orchestra has performed her works for recorder
ensemble. Impressions Around G was composed in 1964 and originally scored for
six parts. A four-part setting dates from 1968 and was subsequently published,
and it is this version that will be heard this afternoon. Impressions Around G
reflects Nancy Bloomer Deussen’s belief in melody with emotional content and
that modern music is capable of expressing enduring, positive values.
In 1609, Michael Praetorius published a collection of chorales and other
sacred music that he entitled, Musae Sioniae. The collection included music for
the entire liturgical calendar, and the settings ranged from duets to works for
multiple choruses with virtuoso instrumental parts. The publication was
undoubtedly intended to provide any church with music for a year’s worth of
services according to its size and means. Equally important, Praetorius included
an index in which the appropriate selections contained within the collection were
given for each liturgical season. So well conceived was Musae Sioniae that it
could still be used for its original purpose today. Unlike many of the other
settings found in this collection by Praetorius , Psallite, unigenito appears in only
one four-part version. This could be due to the nature of the music and text that
suggest a pastoral nativity scene with the melodies and drones of shepherd’s pipes.
For this reason, recorders and early double reeds would seem to be an appropriate
way of presenting the selection on this afternoon’s program.
At the beginning of the 18th century, the composer who had the greatest
influence on the course of Western music was Arcangelo Corelli. In his seventytwo published works, Corelli made a clean break with the modal writing which
had been used since the time of the ancient Greeks and ushered in tonal harmony
which is still in use today. While modal harmonies tend to meander, Corelli’s use
systematic chord progressions that create a feeling of inevitability and produce a
powerful dramatic effect never before heard in music. Corelli’s twelve concertos
Opus 6, like much of the composer’s life, are shrouded in mystery. This is
compounded by the fact that Corelli refused to publish them during his lifetime.
The earliest reference we have to any of these concertos dates from 1689, but it
was not until 1714, one year after Corelli’s death, that they first appeared in print.
The most likely scenario is that the concertos were composed over a length of
time, and if their numerical order roughly reflects the date of each concerto’s
composition then the one heard this afternoon is a relatively early work in the set.
This assumption is reinforced by the structure of the Concerto Op. 6, No. 2 in
which many of the sections rapidly alternate in mood and tempo as opposed to
being extended, well-defined movements.