| |
TONUS PEREGRINUS at Landshuter Hofmusiktage Festival
FRIDAY 4 JULY *Organum from Notre-Dame - a cathedral-in-progress*
Anon.: 'Vetus abit littera'
Pérotin: 'Beata viscera', 'Salvatoris hodie'
plainchant/Léonin/Pérotin: 'Viderunt omnes'
TONUS PEREGRINUS
Rebecca Hickey, Lisa Beckley, Kathryn Knight
Benedict Hymas, Alexander Hickey, Alexander Knight
Nick Flower, Andrew Olleson, Antony Pitts (director)
From plainchant via simple 9th-century harmonies and the virtuosic two-part organa of Léonin, this hauntingly beautiful sequence charts the birth of polyphony up to the first music in four independent parts - composed by Pérotin and sung during the liturgy at the new Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. The cornerstone of Notre-Dame Cathedral was laid in 1163; by c.1250 its imposing Western façade had been completed. At the same time, the vast body of polyphonic music known as the 'magnus liber organi' - the "Great Book of Organum" - was composed, compiled and edited - capped at the turn of the 12th century by Magister Pérotin's celebrated four-part organum 'Viderunt omnes'. Pérotin and his generation were building on the legacy of another "master", Léonin: the extra 2-part versions of “Dominus” were designed to replace the sections of Léonin's original setting of 'Viderunt omnes'. The foundations of polyphony and the Notre-Dame style are found in the simple organum of a 9th-century treatise. Underneath it all, and supporting a thousand years of Western musical history, is plainchant – the ancient melody of the Church.
http://www.landshuter-hofmusiktage.com
"...With the addition of a third, and then a fourth voice, the rhythmic organization of the discant style of organum was fully extended to the upper parts throughout - just as the Cathedral's original arcade, gallery, triforium, and clerestory had to be carefully co-ordinated. And just as the exceptional height of the Gothic style of architecture required new solutions to the problems of this scale of weight-bearing, there were also further harmonic implications of combining so many voices - composers had to discover how to balance intricate mixtures of consonance and dissonance (harmonic intervals which sound relatively more or less pleasing to the ear) over a long span of time. According to an Englishman visiting Paris in the later 13th century (the posthumously-labelled 'Anonymous 4') it was "Master Pérotin who made the best quadrupla", and it is these earliest surviving examples of four-part harmony which open the manuscript Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, plut. 29.1 ('F') on which our performing editions are largely based.
The performing approach of TONUS PEREGRINUS is to combine what we know of 12th- and 13th-century notational theory with the practical results of our own encounter with this celebrated style. We often alternate lower and higher voices (who would have sung in separate establishments) and occasionally combine them following the theoretical examples outlined in 'Scolica [Scholia] enchiriadis'. Above all, we have adopted a pace and an intensity to match the scale of the building for which this music was written; by so doing, we hope to convey something of the staggering cumulative effect of a Gothic cathedral-in-progress."
Verkehrsverein Landshut e. V., Altstadt 315, D-84028 Landshut, Germany
email: tourismus@landshut.de tel: +49 871-922050 fax: +49 871-89275 tickets
website: http://www.landshuter-hofmusiktage.com
http://www.tonusperegrinus.co.uk/
ENSEMBLE DISCOGRAPHY (2003-2008, original releases only)
TONUS PEREGRINUS *Antony Pitts: Alpha and Omega*
a cycle of eight motets for one to eight voices and the choral coda to the oratorio 'Jerusalem-Yerushalayim' (HYPERION CDA67668)
TONUS PEREGRINUS *The Naxos Book of Carols*
8th-21st centuries - 24 carols old and new - an Advent Calendar in sound (NAXOS 8.557330)
TONUS PEREGRINUS *Léonin, Pérotin - Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral*
9th-13th centuries - a hauntingly beautiful sequence of organum from the birth of polyphony to the first music in four parts (NAXOS 8.557340)
TONUS PEREGRINUS *Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion*
13th century - a mediaeval musical (or the first opera) by Adam de la Halle 'the Hunchback' (NAXOS 8.557337)
TONUS PEREGRINUS *The Mass of Tournai*
14th century - the earliest surviving complete polyphonic settings of the Mass and of the Passion (NAXOS 8.555861)
TONUS PEREGRINUS *Sweet Harmony - John Dunstable*
15th century - mass movements & motets by the musical godfather of the Renaissance, John Dunstaple - the composer formerly known as Dunstable (NAXOS 8.557341)
TONUS PEREGRINUS *Hymns and Songs of the Church*
17th & 20th/21st centuries - the complete Orlando Gibbons melodies and basslines as published in 1623, with new realizations and original settings by L'Estrange & Pitts (NAXOS 8.557681)
TONUS PEREGRINUS *Arvo Pärt: Passio*
20th century - Arvo Pärt's iconic St John Passion 'Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi secundum Joannem' (NAXOS 8.555860)
TONUS PEREGRINUS *Mad World*
20th/21st centuries - a cappella version of Tears for Fears hit 'Mad World' (a CD.TP exclusive on iTunes)
TONUS PEREGRINUS *Seven Letters & other sacred choral music by Antony Pitts*
a sequence of unaccompanied choral music inspired by the sacred number seven (HYPERION CDA67507)
MONDAY 21 JULY 3pm @ IAML Naples 2008 *Rewriting Musical History*
International Association of Music Libraries Annual Conference (20-25 JULY)
"The RAMline is currently installed as a prototype at the Royal Academy of Music. Directly based on multi-disciplinary research by Antony Pitts, John Drinkwater, and Hannah Riddell, the RAMline is a unique multi-dimensional index of music and musicians linked to local digitized archives and other online resources, such as manuscript sources and published editions, live performances and recordings, musical criticism and comment. This index can be used to display a timeline of musical history and the life-cycle of any piece of music, from antiquity to the present, as well as to chart musical profiles of individuals and organizations. It is multi-dimensional in that the index can be explored from the perspectives of people, works, places, events, and dates; it is unique in that the connections between musicians and musical works are categorized in a rigorous yet flexible ontology which makes sense of the processes and products involved."
IAML Naples 2008 website: http://www.iamlnapoli2008.it/
Thank you for listening,
Antony Pitts
|
|
.gif){kind=small}
