Commentary on the Program by Alexander Blachly Queen Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, ruled England for only five years, but they were good years for music. Mary’s first priority was the restoration of the Catholic Church, recently outlawed by her father and younger brother in favor of the new Church of England. Considering music to be an important part of the restoration, Mary encouraged composers to write elaborate sacred music similar in style to the monumental English works from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries—works as different as possible from the simplified music for the Church of England composed in the years immediately preceding her reign. Upon Mary’s death, Queen Elizabeth I ascended the throne. She, like Mary, was a fine musician, much enamored of the sacred works by Tallis, White, and the young William Byrd. As a Protestant, she officially catered to the Protestant ethic of uncomplicated music for churches throughout the realm, but for her private enjoyment she commissioned Latin works in a far richer style. When Henry VIII died in 1547, having broken with the church in Rome in 1534 over the pope’s refusal to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, English sacred music was still large-scale, intricate, complex, and dominated by grand effects. This all changed when the nine-year-old Edward VI, Henry VIII’s youngest child, took the throne in 1547. The boy’s regents, his protector, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, all took advantage of the opportunity afforded by the king’s youth to impose a wholly new style of music on the young Anglican church, a style of simplicity and modesty, the primary purpose of which was to project words clearly, one syllable per note, the words being entirely in English. For composers who had previously luxuriated in the flamboyant and challenging musical environment supported by Henry VII and VIII, this must have been a great disappointment. Such disappointment was not to last. Edward reigned only six years. In 1553, he died at the age of fifteen, at which point his half-sister, Mary Tudor, Henry VIII’s oldest child, became England’s first queen regent. In her self-selected mission to re-establish Catholicism as England’s national religion, Mary gave composers free rein to write in the old style. The resulting large-scale works, predominantly based on Gregorian chant and sung in Latin, delayed what many regard as the musical Renaissance in England, for their intent was to revive a “Golden Age” of the past. But, cut off from developments on the Continent, Mary’s composers were not concerned with such novelties. The tradition they aspired to continue was the dizzyingly decorative art exemplified by England’s perpendicular Gothic architecture, which had reached its zenith with the fan vaulting of Henry VII’s Lady Chapel, Westminster Abbey (1503), and King’s College Chapel, Cambridge (1515). This may not have been the “Renaissance” of the humanists and the master artists of Italy, but it was a magical self-contained world of extraordinary effects and stunning craftsmanship. What could have been more inspiring to a composer working in the new King’s College Chapel or similar building than the mathematically-derived designs of its walls and ceiling—designs which we today still find breathtaking? Our program in this CD presents a representative sampling of music from the reign of Mary Tudor (1553-1558), Henry VIII’s oldest child, and that of her half-sister, Elizabeth I (1558-1603), Henry VIII’s middle child—the fifty-year period of the two Tudor queens. Both Mary and Elizabeth played keyboards at a high level, and both had a keen ear for music of quality. Following her coronation, Elizabeth allowed composers to continue producing complex sacred music—especially her favorite composers, Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, both Catholics. They were apparently permitted to compose whatever they wished so long as they continued to write some (increasingly sophisticated) music in English for the Anglican church at large. This both did, while expending their greatest efforts on elaborate contrapuntal edifices in Latin. Byrd retired from active participation in the Chapel Royal in the 1590s, nearly thirty years prior to his death in 1523, preferring to devote all his efforts from that time on to secret music for the recusant Catholic church rather than divide his loyalties between two antithetical camps. Tallis’s seven-voice Mass on the Christmas introit chant Puer natus est deserves special discussion. It appears to have been written in the fall 1554 for joint performance by the Chapel Royal, the choir of St. Paul’s, and the “Flemish” chapel singers (the Capilla Flamenca) of king Philip II of Spain, who had arrived in England in time to marry Mary Tudor the previous July 25. The seven voices of the Puer natus est Mass serve as an allusion to Mary Tudor as the earthly counterpart of the heavenly Mary, whose number was traditionally understood to be seven because of her seven sorrows and seven joys. Tallis’s large-scale piece had a further reference: its choice of cantus firmus was intended to celebrate not only the upcoming Christmas season but also what was believed to be the imminent birth of Mary and Philip’s first child, who, if a boy, would become the future king of England. (Mary did not bear a child, however, having had what is now thought to have been a phantom pregnancy.) Tallis’s huge work survives incomplete (most of the Credo is lost, as well as several voice parts of the Sanctus and Agnus Dei; it probably never had a Kyrie). Joseph Kerman first detected how the surviving fragments should be reassembled, and also recognized the untitled cantus firmus and the manner in which Tallis had arranged it in sections, in each of which the sequence of pitches and their duration are controlled by a different obscure algorithm. An edition of the Gloria, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei, with missing voices supplied by Sally Dunkley and David Wulstan, appeared in 1977. In listening to this great work, our ears hardly register an underlying foundation voice or its complicated presentation. We instead are captivated by seven-voice textures of unprecedented grandeur and melodic beauty, striking for their seemingly effortless unfolding. As Kerman explained, the cantus firmus in each movement is governed by progressively more arcane principles. First, Tallis divides the introit chant melody into six segments. Then, in the Gloria, he assigns each cantus firmus note of the first segment a duration based on the vowel associated with it in the original chant words. The vowels have the values a=1, e=2, i=3, o=4, u=5. Thus, for the first three notes of the cantus firmus, G, d, d, originally sung to the word “Puer” (G-d on the syllable “Pu-” and d on “er”), the durations are: five units of G, five units of d, followed by another two units of d—thus, five units of G followed by seven units of d. In the first two sections of the Gloria, the unit is the semibreve. In the third section (“Qui tollis), the unit is the breve. In the first two segments of the Sanctus, segment 1 of the chant is presented in original note order, then repeated in retrograde. Here the unit is the minim. When the vowel requires a note of five units or even four in duration, the units tend to be divided up and recombined to accommodate the Mass words, further clouding the underlying plan. In the Pleni, Tallis adds another twist. Here each time the original chant had a two- or three-note neume, that neume is repeated in retrograde before continuing on to the next part of the chant. In the Benedictus, the vowel values are reversed. Agnus Dei I has the longest time units thus far, and covers segment 4 of the chant, first in dotted breve units, later in dotted semibreve units. This results in some very long cantus firmus notes, which Tallis takes a special delight in disguising; indeed, he does this so well that we are hardly aware of the prolonged pedal tones. His primary strategy is to have the top two voices echoing one another, with melodic phrases that slowly change over the course of repetitions. We find these so mesmerizing that we tend to lose track of the harmonic stasis underneath. Agnus Dei II, with a minim unit, uses segments 5 and 6 of the chant and subjects them to the most abstract formula yet: Kerman represents the repetition scheme by the series n1 n2 n1 n2 n3 n2 n3 n4 n3 n4 n5…n20 n21 n22 n21 n22, where the n’s represent successive notes of section six of the cantus firmus. Daniel Bennett Page, in his dissertation on music for Mary’s chapel, speculated that Tallis’s cantus firmus procedures in the Puer natus Mass might allude to Mary’s motto Veritas temporis filia (“Truth, the daughter of time”) by way of its “highly atypical manipulation of temporal values.” On a purely technical level, we see Tallis challenging himself to write effective music under the most extreme constraints—and to do it in such a way that we are not aware of the constraints. Why? Perhaps because he writes music as a metaphor of the two realities of the medieval world view: on the one hand, there is the underlying mathematical truth of God’s design, which can only be apprehended by the intellect. On the other hand, there is the world of sensory experience, of music as melody and harmony, of motifs and patterns, of pervasive imitation and block chords. This aspect of music takes nearly all of our attention, and it is what we normally judge when we assess the value of a musical composition. The more rigorous and unyielding the underlying framework, however, the more closely such music mirrors the “unseen” as well as the “seen” order of the cosmos. “Rigorous” in this context means “mathematical.” And what could be more inspiring as mathematical models of art for Mary’s composers, especially, than the churches in which they worked? Using just two tools, a straight-edge and a compass, the architects had shown that mathematical precision and complexity could produce elaborate patterns of fan vaulting, window tracery, and floor-tile designs that dazzled the eye. Composers working within the same aesthetic environment must have felt compelled to create ambitious musical works in a similar way that could dazzle the ear. The Tudor composers learned music in cathedral choir schools. Those active in Mary’s reign experienced a daily diet of Gregorian chant, the greatest source of pure melody in the Western tradition. It is not surprising, therefore, that their polyphonic music is so expressively melodic, featuring particularly telling interplay of tuneful motifs in all voices. Where most music on the Continent (with the notable exception of the “Roman school” of Palestrina) became progressively more harmonic in orientation in the course of the sixteenth century—meaning that it more and more featured a prominent melody in the top voice supported by lower voices that created a chordal foundation—English sacred music continued its pursuit of truly independent voices engaged in a polyphonic conversation. Such music is less dramatic than the almost theatrical effects of Continental polyphony of the time, but it is richer in detail, more inticate in counterpoint, more harmonically subtle. This is the glory of the Tudor tradition, from the Eton Choirbook ca. 1500 to the death of Elizabeth in 1603, with the greatest composers active and the greatest music originating in the reigns of the two Tudor queens. Like the Renaissance generally, music printing came late to England, with the first musical print from movable type appearing in 1575, three quarters of a century after Ottaviano de’ Petrucci’s pioneering music prints from movable type, the first of which appeared in Venice in 1501. None of the music composed for Mary Tudor, therefore, appeared in print during her lifetime. Even in Elizabeth’s reign, most music continued to be transmitted in manuscript. Frustratingly for historians, much of the sacred music of both Mary and Elizabeth’s reigns only survives undated in anthologies copied many years after the fact. How then can we separate what was written for Mary from what was written for Elizabeth, since both monarchs showed a liking for sacred music in Latin? Daniel Page first proposed what now seems an obvious method: since Elizabeth had banned the Latin Sarum rite in 1559, and all the Gregorian chant associated with it, any music from the time of the two queens that places a premium on chant, whether as cantus firmus, as a model for paraphrase, or in verses that alternate with verses in polyphony in alternatim fashion, can be considered a product of Mary’s reign, for her composers championed the chant of the Sarum rite as one means of restoring England’s religion from Anglican back to Catholic. This explains why all the pieces attributed to Mary’s reign in this recording feature Gregorian chant prominently (as in White’s Regina coeli, where the chant is in the tenor voice in an unbroken stream of long notes) or foundationally (as in the Tallis’s Puer natus Mass, where the chant cantus firmus determines the harmonies but is itself almost inaudible within the sea of other voices). It is unlikely that the Latin music for Elizabeth, on the other hand, would ever have been based on chant, since Elizabeth herself had banned the Sarum rite and its music. Nevertheless, the same sublety, elegance, and compositional mastery is evident in Elizabeth’s Latin music as in Mary’s. William Byrd may only have composed a few pieces by the time Mary died in 1558. Nearly all his output, therefore, can be assigned to Elizabeth’s reign. (His setting of Christe qui lux es, clearly modeled on a similar setting by White, is thought to be one of his earliest works. We position it in this recording on the cusp, as it were, between Mary and Elizabeth, since it might have been composed during the final years of one queen or the first years of the other.) With Tallis, who was already in his prime when Mary ascended the throne in 1553, we are forced to rely on Page’s method to separate the works for Mary from those for Elizabeth. The significant point that emerges from comparing the music for the two queens is that both presided over the creation of Latin music of extraordinary skill and aural appeal. It is posterity’s good fortune that Mary considered sacred music important enough to subsidize its return to an elevated style after the experiments of Edward’s reign; and posterity’s further good fortune that Elizabeth similarly valued elevated music sufficiently to patronize complex Latin works for the Chapel Royal at a time when sacred music for the Anglican church was prescribed to be easily accessible and in English. While, therefore, we can differentiate Mary’s Latin music from Elizabeth’s by the filter of Gregorian chant, in actual compositional quality and style the works of both monarchs seem nearly indistinguishable. The only evident difference is that the most extended and imposing works seem to be from Mary’s reign, Elizabeth’s works being rather less extended and grandiose. In the case of Tallis, a further stylistic difference between music for Mary or for Elizabeth is that the late works from the 1570s—music, therefore, for Elizabeth, such as In ieiunio et fletu or Derelinquit impius—show greater harmonic daring than the Salvator mundi setting and the Puer natus Mass from Mary’s reign. Strikingly, each of the five voices in the later pieces enters on a different pitch of the scale, the last voice to enter in In ieiunio doing so on a note that is not even in the initial scale. Do we see here the teacher (Tallis) taking a cue from his student (Byrd)? For Byrd in even his earliest works shows unusual harmonic daring, a case in point being the third section of his six-voice O lux beata Trinitas, where three of the six voices are in a highly irregular canon at the lower fifth and upper fourth, with the lead voice introducing C-naturals and F-naturals in harmonies defined by F-sharps and C-sharps in the non-canonic voices, causing the resolutions at the lower fifth and upper fourth to introduce F-naturals and B-flats. The rapid-fire and continuing cancelations of C-sharps, F-sharps, and B-naturals in the non-canonic voices by the C-naturals, F-naturals, and B-flats in the canonic ones stretch our conception of what was theoretically possible in Renaissance style. Henry Purcell began his career with a look back to the glories of the Tudor years. In June, July, and August of the year 1680, at the age of 20 (he was born 10 September 1659), he wrote fifteen “fantazias” for from three to seven melody instruments. The instruments he had in mind were violas da gamba. The nine four-part fantazias are dated (10 June 1680, 11 June 1680, 14 June 1680, 19 June 1680, 19/22 June 1680, 23 June 1680, 30 June 1680, 18/19 August 1680, 31 August 1680), from which it can be seen that Purcell completed these works quickly, in one case in a single day—a further aspect of the tour-de-force nature of this repertoire, considered by many to be the greatest works for gamba consort ever written. Purcell’s fantazias mark the end of the era of gamba consort music that began under Henry VIII and flourished throughout the first half of the seventeenth century. Our justification for including two of these works here is that the gamba tradition arose in the milieu of vocal music, specifically of sacred polyphony, for most of the English gambists began their careers as choirboys in the cathedrals. Their training included singing, playing keyboards, and playing gambas. The music for gamba consort drew perforce from the choral style the choirboys practiced day in and day out. It was, as a result, a vocal style, idiomatic to the human voice. That feature is still present in the Purcell fantazias, which harken back in their compositional technique to the contrapuntal tradition of motets and anthems by the likes of White, Tallis, and Byrd. Indeed, the harmonic language of Purcell’s fantazias seems directly derived from Tallis’s and Byrd’s most harmonically adventurous efforts. Not surprisingly, Purcell’s fantazias practically beg to be sung. Importantly, from our point of view, they are the only such vocally-friendly instrumental music that Purcell wrote, for he soon thereafter moved on to music for violins and for the theater. Having myself admired the Purcell fantazias for many years, it struck me one day that a search might yield a contemporaneous poem that could be set to one of them as a contrafact so that Purcell’s wonderful polyphonic lines could be sung. The tradition of texting instrumental music for singers goes back to the early years of the sixteenth century, when we find works like Heinrich Isaac’s three-voice instrumental carmen La Morra supplied with a Latin sacred text, Reple tuorum corda fidelium, in the Nikolaus Apel Codex. By a stroke of luck I came across the seventeenth-century poet Richard Crashaw’s Song early in my search for a Purcell contrafact poem, and this turned out to be an uncannily good fit for Purcell’s Fantazia Upon One Note—an bravura composition in five parts, one voice of which simply sounds a single note throughout, while the other parts engage in music of such harmonic diversity that it doesn’t seem possible that they all revolve around one pitch. One was forced to wonder whether it was purely coincidence that each succeeding new mood of the poem fit an appropriate new idea introduced in the music. Pomerium premiered the texted Fantazia Upon One Note in a public performance in 2010. The next search was for a poem that could serve as a contrafact for the equally virtuosic four-part Fantazia à 4, No. 7. John Donne’s Holy Sonnet I, Thou hast made me, has just the right mood of anguish to correspond to the excruciating cross relations that characterize the long first part of this piece. And when the music moves to a new section in fast notes, the poem fortuitously introduces the words “and death meets me as fast.” To set the entire poem comfortably to the existing music required repeating the final musical section as a petite reprise, which seems not to have had a negative effect on the Fantazia as pure music. First premiered in a private performance by Pomerium in December 2013, this Fantazia in its sung form will be heard by most listeners for the first time in this recording. The adaptations of the Purcell fantazias heard here did require considerable rearranging of passages from one octave to another, even occasional exchanges of parts, and the transposition of the Fantazia Upon One Note from F major to C major, for viols have a larger range than most human voices. The goal of the arrangements, however, was for the musical character, the motifs, and the harmonies of the originals to be retained intact. It is to be hoped that both Purcell pieces heard here will be recognized as true reminiscences of the gamba fantasia’s origin as a choristers’ genre in the sixteenth century, hence closely atuned spiritually and melodically to the vocal and instrumental polyphony of the Tudor queens. Texts & Translations Te lucis ante terminum Thomas Tallis Te lucis ante terminum, To you before the end of light, rerum creator poscimus, Creator of the world, we pray Ut solita clementia that with your accustomed clemency sis praesul ad custodiam. you would our guard and keeper be. Procul recedant somnia Let dreams recede then far away, et noctium fantasmata; also phantasms of the night; Hostemque nostrum comprime, and restrain, we pray, our enemy, ne polluantur corpora. that our bodies uncorrupted stay. Praesta Pater omnipotens, All-powerful Father, your promise keep per Iesum Christum Dominum; through Jesus Christ our only Lord; Qui tecum in perpetuum who with you reigns perpetually, regnat cum Sancto Spiritu. Amen. together with the Holy Ghost. Amen. Salvator mundi Thomas Tallis Salvator mundi, Domine, O Lord, savior of the world, qui nos salvasti hodie who has saved us this day, in hac nocte nos protege protect us through this night et salva omni tempore. and save us in all times. Adesto nunc propitius Be present to us now in your kindness et parce supplicantibus and spare your suppliants: tu dele nostra crimina blot out our sins tu tenebras illumina. and illuminate the shadows. Ne mentem somnus opprimat Let not sleep oppress the mind, nec hostis nos surripiat nor the enemy steal us away: nec ullis caro petimus let not our bodies be stained, we pray, commaculetur sordibus. with any foulness. Te reformator sensuum To you who reshape the senses, votis precamur cordium we implore with the prayers of our hearts, ut puri castis mentibus that we may arise from our beds surgamus a cubilibus. pure and chaste in mind. Deo Patri sit gloria To God the father be the glory, eiusque soli Filio and to his only son, cum Spiritu Paracleto with the spirit, the paraclete, et nunc et in perpetuum. Amen. now and forever. Amen. (Hymn for the Nativity and other seasons) Gloria, Missa Puer natus est Thomas Tallis Gloria in excelsis deo. Et in terra pax Glory be to God on high, and on earth hominibus bone voluntatis. Laudamus peace to men of good will. We praise you. te. Benedicimus te. Adoramus te. Glorifi- We bless you. We worship you. We camus te. Gratias agimus tibi propter glorify you. We give thanks to you for magnam gloriam tuam. Domine deus, your great glory. Lord God, heavenly rex celestis, Deus Pater omnipotens. King, God the Father omnipotent. Domine fili unigenite Jesu Christe. O Lord, the only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris. O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father. Qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. Who take away the sins of the world, have Qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe mercy on us. Who take away the sins of the deprecationem nostram. Qui sedes ad world, hear our prayer. Who sit on the right dexteram patris, miserere nobis. Quoniam hand of the Father, have mercy on us. For you tu solus sanctus. Tu solus dominus. Tu only are holy. You only are the Lord. You only solus altissimus, Jesu Christe. Cum Sancto are the most high, Jesus Christ. With the Holy Spiritu, in gloria Dei Patris. Amen. Ghost, in the glory of God the Father. Amen. In manus tuas I John Sheppard In manus tuas, Domine, commendo Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spiritum meum. Redemisti me, Domine, spirit. You have redeemed me, O Lord, Deus veritatis. Commendo spiritum God of truth. I commend my spirit. meum. (Responsory for Compine, Passion Sunday to Maundy Thursday) Sanctus, Missa Puer natus est Thomas Tallis Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, dominus deus Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth. Sabaoth. Pleni sunt celi et terra gloria Heaven and earth are full of your tua. Osanna in excelsis. Benedictus qui glory. Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is he venit in nomine domini. Osanna... who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna.... Regina coeli Robert White Regina coeli laetare, alleluia, Queen of Heaven, rejoice, alleluia, Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia, For He whom you were worthy to bear, alleluia, Resurrexit sicut dixit, alleluia, Has arisen, as He said, alleluia. Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia. Pray for us to God, alleluia. (Marian antiphon for the Easter season) Agnus Dei, Missa Puer natus est Thomas Tallis Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: Lamb of God, who take away the sins of the miserere nobis. Agnus Dei, qui world: have mercy on us. Lamb of God, who tollis peccata mundi: miserere nobis. take away the sins of the world: have mercy Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: on us. Lamb of God, who take away the sins dona nobis pacem. of the world: grant us peace. Christe, qui lux es et dies William Byrd Christe, qui lux es et dies, Christ, who art light and day, noctis tenebras detegis, who uncovers the dark of night, lucisque lumen crederis, whom we believe to be the light of light, lumen beatum predicans. proclaiming blessed light: Precamur, sancte Domine, We beseech you, holy Lord, defende nos in hac nocte, to defend us this night. sit nobis in te requies, May our rest be in you, quiemtam noctem tribue. as you grant us a quiet night. Ne gravis somnus irruat, Let not heavy sleep seize us, nec hostis nos surripiat, nor the enemy take us, nec caro illi consentiens, nor the flesh, yielding to the enemy, nos tibi reos statuat. make us sinful unto you. Oculi somnum capiant, Let our eyes grasp sleep cor ad te semper vigilet, but our heart remain vigilant to you; dextera tua protegat may your right hand protect famulos qui te diligunt. your servants who love you. Defensor noster aspice, Our defender: look on us, insidiantes reprime, restrain the insidious, guberna tuos famulos, govern your servants quos sanguine mercatus es. whom you have redeemed with your blood. Memento nostri Domine, Be mindful of us, O Lord, in gravi isto corpore, in this burdensome body, qui es defensor animae, who art the defender of the soul: adesto nobis, Domine. be with us, O Lord. Deo Patri sit gloria, Glory be to the Father Eiusque soli Filio and to his only Son, Cum Spiritu Paraclyto, with the Spirit Paraclete, Et nunc et in perpetuum. Amen both now and evermore. Amen. (Hymn for Compline) In ieiunio et fletu Thomas Tallis In ieiunio et fletu orabant sacerdotes, With fasting and weeping the priests prayed: Parce, Domine, populo tuo et ne des Spare, O Lord, your people, and give not haereditatem tuam in perditionem; your heritance to destruction; inter vestibulum et altare plorabant Between the porch and the altar the priests sacerdotes, dicentes, Parce, Domine, wept, saying: Spare, O Lord, spare your parce populo tuo. people. —Joel 2: 12a, 17b Derelinquit impius Thomas Tallis Derelinquit impius viam suam, May the wicked one forsake his way, et vir iniquus cogitationes suas, and the evil man his thoughts. et revertatur ad Dominum, et Let him turn to the Lord, and miserebitur eius, quia benignus he will have mercy on him, for he is et misericors est, Dominus Deus. kind and merciful, the Lord our God. —Isaiah 55: 7 O lux, beata trinitas William Byrd O lux, beata Trinitas, O light, blessed Trinity Et principalis unitas, and principal unity: Iam sol recedit igneus now as the fiery sun recedes, Infunde lumen cordibus. infuse light in our hearts. Te mane laudum carmine, To Thee we sing a morning song, Te deprecamur vesperi, at evening time we pray to Thee: Te nostra supplex gloria, let our prayer to Thee [increase] Thy glory, Per cuncta laudet sæcula. and may it praise thee for eternity. Deo Patri sit gloria, Glory be to God the Father Eiusque soli Filio, and to His only Son, Cum Spiritu Paracleto, together with the Holy Ghost, Et nunc et in perpetuum. Amen. now and forever. Amen. (Hymn for Trinity Sunday) Laetentur coeli William Byrd Laetentur coeli et exultet terra. Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad. Jubilate montes laudem, quia Dominus Sing forth praise, ye mountains, for our Lord noster veniet, et pauperum suorum shall come, and he shall take pity on his afflicted miserebitur. Orietur in diebus tuis people. There shall arise in thy days justitia et abundantia pacis. Et pauperum righteousness and an abundance of peace. And suorum miserebitur. he shall take pity on his afflicted people. (Responsory for Advent I) Holy Sonnet I Thou hast made me, And shall thy worke decay? Repaire me now, for now mine end doth haste, I runne to death, and death meets me as fast, And al my pleasures are like yesterday. I dare not move my dimme eyes any way, Despaire behind, and death before doth cast Such terrour, and my feeble flesh doth waste By sinne in it, which it t’wards hell doth weigh; Onely thou art above, and when towards thee By thy leave I can looke, I rise againe; But our old subtle foe so tempteth me, That not one houre my selfe I can sustaine; Thy Grace may wing me to prevent his art, And thou like Adamant draw mine iron heart. —John Donne A Song Lord, when the sense of thy sweet grace Sends up my soul to seek thy face, Thy blessed eyes breed such desire, I dy in love's delicious Fire. O love, I am thy Sacrifice. Be still triumphant, blessed eyes. Still shine on me, fair suns! that I Still may behold, though still I dy. Though still I dy, I live again; Still longing so to be still slain, So gainfull is such losse of breath, I dy e’en in desire of death. Still live in me this loving strife Of living Death and dying Life. For while thou sweetly slayest me Dead to my selfe, I live in Thee. —Richard Crashaw (1613 - 1649) TENOR on one note: O Lord in thee have I put my trust. Let me never be confounded. —Psalm 31:1 POMERIUM, founded by Alexander Blachly in New York in 1972 to perform music composed for the famed chapel choirs of the Renaissance, derives its name from the title of a treatise by the 14th-century music theorist Marchettus of Padua. In the introduction, Marchettus explains that his Pomerium (literally, “garden”) contains the fruits and flowers of the art of music. Widely known for its interpretations of Du Fay, Ockeghem, Josquin, Palestrina, and Lassus, the modern Pomerium is currently recording a series of compact discs of the masterpieces of Renaissance a cappella choral music, of which the fourteenth to be recorded, titled “A Voice in the Wilderness: Mannerist Motets of the Renaissance,” was released on the Old Hall Recordings label in 2012. POMERIUM Kristina Boerger, Melissa Fogarty, Michele Kennedy, Dominique Surh, Elizabeth Baber Weaver – sopranos Luthien Brackett, Silvie Jensen – mezzo-sopranos Robert Isaacs - countertenor Neil Farrell, Thom Baker, Michael Steinberger – tenors Jeffrey Johnson, Thomas McCargar – baritones Kurt-Owen Richards, Peter Stewart – basses Alexander Blachly has been active in early music as both performer and scholar for more than 42 years. He earned his post-graduate degrees in musicology from Columbia University and is a recipient of the Noah Greenberg Award given by the American Musicological Society to stimulate historically aware performances and the study of historical performing practices. Prior to assuming the post of Director of Choral Music at the University of Notre Dame in 1993, Mr. Blachly taught early music and directed collegia musica at Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, Rutgers University, and the University of Pennsylvania, where for eight years he directed the a cappella ensemble Ancient Voices. For fourteen years Mr. Blachly directed a summer workshop in Renaissance a cappella performance sponsored by the Syracuse (NY) Schola Cantorum; he has also been on the faculties of the Oberlin Conservatory Baroque Performance Institute, the Amherst Early Music Festival, and Pinewoods Camp Early Music Week. In addition to Pomerium, Mr. Blachly directs the University of Notre Dame Chorale and Chamber Orchestra. Recorded February 20, 21, 22, 23, 2014 in The R.C. Church of the Ascension, New York Engineering: Ryan Streber, Oktaven Audio, Yonkers, NY Production: Joseph Gascho Digital editing and mastering: Ryan Streber, Oktaven Audio, Yonkers, NY Special thanks to Rev. Daniel S. Kearney, Rev. Raymond Rafferty, and Preston Smith, Music Director, Church of the Ascension, and to Janice L. Dugan, Phyllis Townley, and Anne Rudder of the Church of the Ascension Music Committee Funding support from The Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, College of Arts and Letters, University of Notre Dame and from the many contributors to Pomerium’s 2014 Kickstarter campaign: Learn more about Pomerium at www.pomerium.us