Allegri
Missa in Lectu L o Meo
Missa c hristus r esurgens
Miserere Motets
the choir of King’s college London
David Trendell
Gregorio Allegri
Missa in Lectu L o Meo
Missa c hristus r esurgens
Miserere
Motets
the choir of King’s college London
David Trendell conductor
Missa In lectulo meo
Credo
4 In lectulo meo Pierre Bonhomme (Bonomi) [00:00] 5 Sanctus & Benedictus [00:00]
Agnus Dei
Simon Hogan organ continuo
Miserere [00:00]
Marie Macklin & Poppy Ewence sopranos
Maria McCarthy alto
Julian Leang bass
Joshua Edwards cantor
Missa Christus resurgens 8 Kyrie
Credo
Christus resurgens ex mortuis
Sanctus & Benedictus
Agnus Dei
playing time
Recorded in St John’s Church, Upper Norwood, London on 14-16 June 2011 by kind permission of the vicar and churchwardens.
[1-6] edited by David Trendell
[7] published by Oxford University Press
[8-10, 12-13] edited by Timothy Teague
[11] edited by Martyn Imrie and published by Mapa Mundi
Producer and Engineer: Paul Baxter
24-bit digital editing: Adam Binks
24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter
Design: John Christ
Booklet editor: Henry Howard
Cover image: Detail from St. Joseph the Carpenter by Georges de La Tour (1593-1652), Paris, Musée du Louvre. Photograph © Peter Willi
Choir photography: Giampiero Innocente Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.co.uk
It is not unusual for a composer’s fame to rest on a single piece; but perhaps the greatest irony relating to Gregorio Allegri’s setting of Psalm 51, Miserere mei Deus, is that the version that is most frequently performed today bears, in the words of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ‘little or no resemblance either to [his] original or to the piece as it was performed before 1870’. Very few pieces have had such a convoluted genesis – or perhaps evolution might be a better word, though this too is shrouded in mystery.
Psalm 51 was customarily sung at Lauds which immediately followed the service of Tenebrae during the triduum (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday). Allegri’s original version consisted of a fairly straightforward falso bordone harmonization of the plainchant melody. This survives in the five-voice sections where the so-called tonus peregrinus (pilgrim’s chant) of the plainsong is clearly heard in the first soprano. The confusion is largely centred on the verses for solo quartet. Right from the start, Allegri’s relatively simple original was ornamented by what are called ‘abbellimenti ’, perhaps freely improvised by the skilled singers of the Sistine Chapel. It was these parts of the Miserere that were wrapped in secrecy since performance of the piece was limited to the papal choir, and anybody who copied the piece out was liable to excommunication.
published an edition in 1771, but this did not include the famous ornamentation. The piece acquired a considerable reputation in the first half of the nineteenth century, with Mendelssohn and Spohr amongst others giving vivid accounts of what they heard. What has contributed most to the enduring popularity of the Miserere has undoubtedly been the famous high soprano Cs heard towards the end of the solo quartet verses. These first appear copied out in a letter of Mendelssohn’s. He apparently heard the piece performed in the key of C minor, whereas Burney’s edition is in G minor; modern editors, starting with Ivor Atkins in 1951, have combined the two tonalities, so that there is an awkward leap of a tritone – at that time a forbidden interval – in the bass to take us to the new tonality and the high Cs. Such a technical solecism has certainly not detracted from the extraordinary popularity of the work. That is not just due to the intrinsically fine qualities of the piece (and perhaps the edge-of-the-seat experience as the top Cs approach) but also for its potential for making the most of the spatial element of the building in which it is being performed.
Various people did indeed copy the piece out, including the young Mozart, and Charles Burney
It is perhaps unfortunate that the fame of the Miserere has seemingly discouraged the performance of his other works, for Allegri was very much a product of Counter-Reformation Rome and well reflects its spiritual and musical vibrancy. If one view of the CounterReformation has traditionally been to see it
as a reactive movement, responding to the Protestant reformations taking place across Europe, another, highly persuasive view would be that it represents a hugely confident (and indeed assertive) spiritual renewal from within, as seen in the new religious movements, such as the Jesuits and Oratorians and the burgeoning confraternities in Rome and other cities, as well as in the writings of such mystics as St Teresa of Ávila and St John of the Cross in Spain. It was into this heady atmosphere that Gregorio Allegri was born in 1582. He was a chorister and later a tenor at the church of San Luigi dei Francesi. After spells at the cathedrals in Fermo and Tivoli, he returned to Rome as maestro di cappella of Santo Spirito in Sassia before joining the papal choir in 1629, rising to the post of maestro in 1650, two years before his death. One reason that may have contributed to the neglect of much of Allegri’s music is that he largely composed in the stile antico associated with Palestrina and, amidst the flourishing and more vivid secunda prattica (the new dramatic style developed by Monteverdi and associated with the rise of opera), he came to be viewed by history as a conservative, languishing in a musical backwater. Such was the importance of Palestrina in not only providing music for every temporal and liturgical occasion in the post-Tridentine Church, but also for forming a musical style that seemed to embody CounterReformation ideals, that the stile antico became
almost the ‘official’ style of the Church in Rome for over a century after his death, as can be seen in the motets of someone like Balthasar Sartori, writing as late as the early eighteenth century.
Allegri wrote five masses and the two included on this recording are both scored for eight voices. Although masses for eight voices are far from common in Palestrina’s output, three were published together posthumously in 1601, including perhaps the most famous of them, the Missa Hodie Christus natus est. Eight-voice settings do incur certain stylistic limitations –slow-moving harmony and a restriction on the amount of imitation possible in the full sections – but there are compensations: vivid antiphonal effects, perhaps using spatial elements of the building; musical decoration in the form of overlapping scales in the full sections that turns the slow-moving harmonic rhythm to its advantage; and above all, weight and grandeur in the full sections, with their suggestion of magnificence. This, like the even more lavish polychoral style in Venice, is supremely confident music that also projects the aura of religious certainty and wealth: as if to say, we have the means for opulent provision for music and here is the result.
Allegri’s Missa Christus resurgens very much fits into this mould. Based on his own Easter motet, Allegri’s setting of the text is concise and declamatory, clearly reflecting Counter-
Reformation ideals of intelligibility. Like much of the motet it is antiphonal, making use in the full sections of the ascending scales found in the motet on the word ‘resurgens ’ (‘rising again’). Aside from antiphonal effects, perhaps most pronounced in the Gloria, and the richness of the full eight-voice passages, Allegri achieves variety through changes into triple metre towards the end of the Gloria, the ‘Et resurrexit ’ and ‘Et in spiritum ’ sections of the Credo and the final Hosanna in the Sanctus. Though there are two polyphonic Hosannas, he provides no polyphonic Christe or Benedictus, and these were presumably sung to plainchant. The Missa Christus resurgens culminates in two wonderfully spacious settings of the Agnus Dei with one or two telling dissonances in the ‘miserere nobis ’ of the first setting that Palestrina might have put a red pen through, thus showing that the stile antico was not quite the static entity that some have claimed.
The other mass on this recording, the Missa In lectulo meo, is based on a motet by Pierre Bonhomme. Originally from Flanders, Bonhomme (c.1555-1617) spent some years in Rome and his motet In lectulo meo appears in a Vatican manuscript under the name P. Bonomi. Setting one of the more sultry sets of verses of the Song of Songs, the motet is almost entirely antiphonal in construction, perhaps reflecting the dialogue in the text. Allegri makes a great deal more of the material than Bonomi does, and a lot
of the writing is in imitative counterpoint leading to more variety and indeed more substance. The opening of the Kyrie is a case in point, where Allegri extends the short melisma that Bonomi had crafted on the final syllable of ‘meo ’ and turns it into a flexible line of great expressivity. This is parody mass writing at its finest, taking an idea from the model and building it quasi una fantasia into a vibrant new work. In fact, many of the subsequent sections of the mass, such as the two settings of the words ‘Christe eleison ’, are based on points of imitation that Allegri himself fashioned, showing a composer of considerable imagination. This double Christe, incidentally, suggests a ninefold performance of the Kyrie (similar to some settings by Lassus), again with the interspersion of chant between the polyphonic sections.
Whilst there is little in the mass to surprise us stylistically, the alternation of extensive imitative counterpoint with the stock-in-trade antiphony of double-choir writing, the opulence of the full-choir passages contrasted with the more intimate sections for reduced voices (such as the second Christe, the ‘Crucifixus ’ section and the Benedictus), and the fine ear for melodic inventiveness and dissonance show that in the hands of Allegri there was plenty of life left in the stile antico well into the seventeenth century. © David Trendell 2012
1,8 Kyrie
Kyrie eleison.
Christe eleison.
Kyrie eleison.
2,9 Gloria
Gloria in excelsis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. Laudamus te. Benedicimus te.
Adoramus te. Glorificamus te.
Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam, Domine Deus, Rex caelestis, Deus Pater omnipotens.
Domine Fili unigenite, Jesu Christe; Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris.
Qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe deprecationem nostram.
Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris, miserere nobis.
Quoniam tu solus sanctus, tu solus Dominus, tu solus altissimus, Jesu Christe, cum Sancto Spiritu in gloria Dei Patris. Amen.
Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.
Glory be to God on high
And in earth peace, goodwill towards men.
We praise thee, we bless thee, we worship thee, we glorify thee, we give thanks to thee for thy great glory;
O Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father almighty.
O Lord, the only-begotten Son, Jesu Christ; O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.
Thou that takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer.
Thou that sittest at the right hand of God the Father, have mercy upon us.
For thou only art holy; thou only art the Lord; thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the glory of God the Father. Amen.
3,10 Credo
Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium. Et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum, filium Dei unigenitum, et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula, Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero. Genitum non factum, consubstantialem Patri; per quem omnia facta sunt. Qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de caelis. Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto, ex Maria Virgine; et homo factus est. Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato, passus et sepultus est. Et resurrexit tertia die secundum scripturas, et ascendit in caelum, sedet ad dexteram Patris, et iterum venturus est cum gloria judicare vivos et mortuos, cujus regni non erit finis. Et in Spiritum Sanctum Dominum et vivificantem, qui ex Patre Filioque procedit, qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur, et conglorificatur, qui locutus est per prophetas. Et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam. Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum, et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum, et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.
I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, Begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man. And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried. And the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father. And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end. And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spake by the prophets. And I believe one holy catholic and apostolic church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. And I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
4 In lectulo meo
In lectulo meo per noctem quaesivi quem diligit anima mea: quaesivi illum, et non inveni. Surgam et circuibo civitatem: per vicos et plateas quaeram quem diligit anima mea: quaesivi illum, et non inveni. Invenerunt me vigiles, qui custodiunt civitatem: num quem dilexit anima mea vidistis? Paululum cum pertransissem eos, inveni quem diligit anima mea.
Song of Songs 3:1-4
5,12 Sanctus & Benedictus
Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth: Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua. Hosanna in excelsis.
Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini: Hosanna in excelsis.
6,13 Agnus Dei
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.
In my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, and found him not. I will rise and will go about the city: in the streets and the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him and I found him not. The watchmen who keep the city found me: Have you seen him, whom my soul loveth? When I had a little passed by them, I found him whom my soul loveth.
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts.
Heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest.
O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.
O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.
O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace.
7 Miserere
Miserere mei Deus secundum magnam misericordiam tuam: et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum dele iniquitatem meam.
Amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea: et a peccato meo munda me.
Quoniam iniquitatem meam ego cognosco: et peccatum meum contra me est semper.
Tibi soli peccavi, et malum coram te feci: ut justificeris in sermonibus tuis, et vincas cum judicaris.
Ecce enim in iniquitatibus conceptus sum: et in peccatis concepit me mater mea.
Ecce enim veritatem dilexisti: incerta et occulta sapientiae tuae manifestasti mihi.
Asperges me hyssopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.
Auditui meo dabis gaudium et laetitiam: et exsultabunt ossa humiliata.
Averte faciem tuam a peccatis meis: et omnes iniquitates meas dele.
Cor mundum crea in me, Deus: et spiritum rectum innova in visceribus meis.
Ne projicias me a facie tua: et Spiritum Sanctum tuum ne auferas a me.
Redde mihi laetitiam salutaris tui: et spiritu principali confirma me.
Docebo iniquos vias tuas: et impii ad te convertentur.
Libera me de sanguinibus, Deus, Deus salutis meae: et exsultabit lingua mea justitiam tuam.
Have mercy upon me, O God, after Thy great goodness: according to the multitude of Thy mercies do away mine offences.
Wash me throughly from my wickedness: and cleanse me from my sin.
For I acknowledge my faults: and my sin is ever before me.
Against Thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight: that Thou mightest be justified in Thy saying, and clear when Thou art judged.
Behold, I was shapen in wickedness: and in sin hath my mother conceived me.
But lo, Thou requirest truth in the inward parts: and shalt make me to understand wisdom secretly.
Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Thou shalt make me hear of joy and gladness: that the bones which Thou hast broken may rejoice.
Turn Thy face from my sins: and put out all my misdeeds.
Make me a clean heart, O God: and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from Thy presence: and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.
O give me the comfort of Thy help again: and stablish me with Thy free spirit.
Then shall I teach Thy ways unto the wicked: and sinners shall be converted unto Thee.
Domine, labia mea aperies: et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam.
Quoniam si voluisses sacrificium, dedissem utique: holocaustis non delectaberis.
Sacrificium Deo spiritus contribulatus: cor contritum, et humiliatum, Deus, non despicies.
Benigne fac, Domine, in bona voluntate tua Sion: ut aedificentur muri Jerusalem.
Tunc acceptabis sacrificium justitiae, oblationes, et holocausta: tunc imponent super altare tuum vitulos.
Psalm 51 (50 Vulgate): tr. from the Book of Common Prayer
11 Christus resurgens ex mortuis
Christus resurgens ex mortuis jam non moritur: mors illi ultra non dominabitur; quod enim mortuus est, peccato mortuus est semel; quod autem vivit, vivit Deo. Alleluia. Mortuus est semel propter delicta nostra et resurrexit propter justificationem nostrum. Alleluia. Quod enim mortuus est, etc.
from Romans 6:9-10, 4:25
Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, Thou that art the God of my health: and my tongue shall sing of Thy righteousness. Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord: and my mouth shall shew Thy praise.
For Thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it Thee: but Thou delightest not in burnt-offerings.
The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God, shalt Thou not despise.
O be favourable and gracious unto Sion: build Thou the walls of Jerusalem.
Then shalt Thou be pleased with the sacrifice of righteousness, with the burnt-offerings and oblations: then shall they offer young bullocks upon Thine altar.
Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Alleluia. He died once for our offences and was raised again for our justification. Alleluia. For in that he died, etc.
The Choir of King's College London
The Choir of King’s College London is one of the UK’s leading university choirs. Consisting of about thirty choral scholars and two organ scholars, the choir’s principal role is singing at services in the College Chapel during term time. In addition, the choir gives many concerts, both in the UK and abroad. In the UK the Choir has performed recently at the Oundle International and Spitalfields Festivals and abroad it has given concerts in France, Germany, Italy, Russia (St Petersburg International Choir Festival) and the USA. The choir has made several notable recordings, including Rodion Shchedrin’s The Sealed Angel jointly with the Choir of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (recorded by Delphian: DCD34067), as well as discs of sixteenthcentury music by such composers as William Byrd, Alonso Lobo, John Taverner, Philippe Rogier and Sebastián de Vivanco. The Byrd recording was nominated for a Gramophone Early Music award. In addition, the choir regularly broadcasts for BBC Radio 3 Choral Evensong.
Soprano
Charlotte Drummond
Poppy Ewence
Victoria Holden
Emily Kirby-Ashmore
Marie Macklin
Charity Mapletoft
Amber Nunn
Isolde Roxby
Elizabeth Thompson
Hannah Wight
Alto
Charlotte Baly
Harriet Hougham-Slade
Rose Martin
Maria McCarthy
Joel Newsome
Tenor
Jack Aisher
Hugh Benson
Robert Busiakiewiecz
Timothy Cunningham
James Green
Henry Lowe
Thomas Loyn
Bass
Alexander Blakeney
Charles Dalton
Joshua Edwards
Thomas Friberg
Alexander Jones
Julian Leang
Charles Ovenden Filsell
David Trendell
Born in 1964, David Trendell received his early musical education as a chorister at Norwich Cathedral, during which time he was the soloist on a recording of Mendelssohn’s famous Hear My Prayer. He was later an alto choral scholar there before going up to Oxford where he was Organ Scholar of Exeter College. Subsequently, whilst Assistant Organist at Winchester College, he embarked upon research into the works of Alexander Zemlinsky. In 1989 he was appointed Organist of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford and College Tutor at St Hugh’s, St Hilda’s and, later, Oriel Colleges. He moved to London in 1992 to become College Organist and Lecturer in Music at King’s College London.
Trendell is also Director of Music at St Mary’s, Bourne Street in London, having held a similar post at the Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great for over thirteen years. He was also Director of the Edington Festival, a festival of music within the liturgy, and conducted the Nave Choir there for ten years, broadcasting frequently for BBC Radio 3, for whom he has also presented programmes. He has written
on the music of William Byrd and lectures and performs each year at the International William Byrd Festival in Portland, Oregon. He has also made many editions of the work of Spanish sixteenth-century composers, among them Alonso Lobo and Sebastián de Vivanco. Since 2001, Trendell has conducted a number of choral workshops with Chorus Angelorum in Houston. In addition, he is well known as a record producer, having worked with such choirs as The Clerks’ Group, New College, Oxford, Oxford Camerata, Schola Cantorum of Oxford, Westminster Abbey, Winchester College and in France the Maîtrise de Caen.
John Taverner: Sacred choral music
Choir of St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh
Duncan Ferguson conductor
DCD34023
John Taverner (c.1490-1545) brought the English florid style to its culmination. This disc presents his music with forces akin to those of the 16th century: a small group of children and a larger number of men. The singers respond with freshness, and an emotional authenticity born of the daily round of liturgical performance.
‘Treble voices surf high on huge waves of polyphony in the extraordinary Missa Corona spinea, while smaller items display the same freshness, purity and liturgical glow. Duncan Ferguson, the Master of the Music, is plainly a wizard.’ — The Times, 6 February 2010
William Turner (1651-1740): Sacred choral music
Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge / Yorkshire Baroque Soloists
Geoffrey Webber conductor
DCD34028
It is easy to forget that the great English choral tradition was once silenced by Act of Parliament. The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 subsequently ushered in one of the finest periods of English music. Turner, in 1660 a precocious nine-year-old, went on to become one of the best-known composers and singers of his day. This disc presents a crosssection of his sacred music, ranging from small-scale liturgical works to one of his grandest creations, the Te Deum and Jubilate in D.
‘The music really comes alive.’ — Church Music Quarterly, September 2007
‘invigorating and highly persuasive … a reminder of the still unknown riches of English Baroque music’ — Gramophone, October 2007
Rodion Shchedrin: The Sealed Angel
Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge & The Choir of King’s College London
Geoffrey Webber & David Trendell conductors, Clare Wills oboe
DCD34067
Two of Britain’s finest young choirs join forces to take on the sublime expressiveness of Rodion Shchedrin’s ‘Russian liturgy’, an astonishing statement of faith composed in the early days of perestroika. Shchedrin’s choral tableaux juxtapose tenderness with bracing sonic impact, and are shadowed throughout by the plangent voice of a solo oboe representing the soul of the Russian people.
‘Caught here in fine sound, this is a … multifaceted, many-layered modern masterpiece.’ — Gramophone, June 2009, EDITOR’S CHOICE
‘glittering precision… marvellous choral sheen’ — I.R.R., June 2009
The Lamentations of Jeremiah The Lay Clerks of St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle
Timothy Byram-Wigfield conductor DCD34068
Not since the early 1600s have the refulgent strains of John Mundy’s Lamentations setting been heard in Windsor. It has been reconstructed especially for this recording, made in Windsor Castle’s Albert Memorial Chapel by gracious permission of Her Majesty The Queen. The men’s voices resonate in the resplendent chapel acoustic, transcending the desolation of the texts’ anguished laments in singing of extraordinary conviction and certainty.
‘[Mundy’s work] is the real revelation of the disc. It is a work of searing intensity and concentrated drama that loses nothing when heard alongside the established masterpieces by Tallis and Byrd … Byram-Wigfield shapes the performances with care and great musicality.’ — I.R.R., May 2009
