John SHEPPARD
Missa Cantate
Gabrieli Consort · Salisbury Cathedral Boy Choristers


IMAGEN

worldcat.org
musicweb-international.com

2000
Deutsche Grammophon Archiv 457 658-2

november, 1996
Salisbury Cathedral






1 - PROCESSION BEFORE THE THIRD MASS OF CHRISTMAS   [9:27]
Descendit de celis

2 - ANTIPHON   [2:07]
Hodie Christus natus est


THIRD MASS OF CHRISTMAS

3 - INTROIT   [5:26]
Puer natus est nobis

4 - KYRIE   [2:40]
Deus creator omnium

5 - GLORIA   [8:10]
Gloria in excelsis Deo

6 - COLLECT   [0:58]
Dominus vobiscum… Oremus. Concede quesumus

7 - LESSON   [1:31]
Lectio Ysaie prophete

8 - EPISTLE   [3:21]
Lectio epistole beati Pauli apostoli

9 - GRADUAL   [2:48]
Viderunt omnes fines terre

10 - ALLELUIA   [2:00]
Alleluia. Dies sanctificatus illuxit nobis

11 - SEQUENCE   [3:24]
Celeste organum hodie sonuit in terra

12 - GOSPEL   [2:59]
Dominus vobiscum… Initium sancti evangelii

13 - CREDO   [8:54]
Credo in unum Deum

14 - OFFERTORY   [1:58]
Dominus vobiscum… Tui sunt celi

15 - SECRET   [2:27]
Oremus. Oblata Domine munera

PREFACE
Dominus vobiscum… Sursum corda

16 - SANCTUS   [4:15]
Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus

17 - BENEDICTUS   [2:48]
Benedictus, qui venit

18 - PATER NOSTER   [1:47]
Per omnia secula seculorum

19 - AGNUS DEI   [5:20]
Agnus Dei, qui tollis

20 - COMMUNION   [2:22]
Viderunt omnes fines terre

POSTCOMMUNION
Dominus vobiscum… Oremus. Presta quesumus

ITE MISSA EST



21 - Verbum caro factum est   [6:30]







Gabrieli Consort
Paul McCreesh

Tessa Bonner • treble
Susan Hemington Jones • treble
Ruth Holton • treble
Sally Dunkley • mean
Carys Lane • mean
Sarah Pendlebury • mean
Julian Podger • tenor I
Warren Trevelyan Jones • tenor I
Steven Harrold • tenor II
Angus Smith • tenor II (Mass)
Andrew Carwood • tenor II (Verbum caro)
Robert Evans • baritone
Charles Pott • baritone
Simon Birchall • bass
Francis Steele • bass



Chant:

Jonathan Arnold
Simon Birchall
Andrew Carwood
Simon Davies
Robert Evans (celebrant)
Donald Greig (sub-deacon)
Alastair Hamilton
Steven Harrold
Michael McCarthy (deacon)
Julian Podger (lesson clerk)
Charles Pott
Angus Smith
Francis Steele
Warren Trevelyan Jones
Laurence Whitehead
Henry Wickham





The Boys of Salisbury Cathedral Choir
Dr. Richard Seal

Benjamin Simpson (Bishop's Chorister)
Patrick Flanaghan (Vestry Monitor)
Harry Preedy
Christopher Martin
Frederick Line
Edward Pattenden
Edward Heaven
Oliver Lyon
Edward Lee
Richard Norman
Clement Hetherington
Thomas Gatten
Alexander Aitchison
Andrew Littlemore
Charles Stephenson
James Ings
William Heaven




IMAGEN




The Sarum Rite

By the 15th and 16th centuries most of the parish churches of England worshipped according to an archaic form of the Latin ritual of the Roman Church, evolved at the Cathedral Church of Salisbury or "Sarum", and so known as the Use of Sarum, or the Sarum Rite.

In the world before printing, uniformity of worship was an impossibility, if only because, being handwritten, no two service books were identical. But in any case, each of the major religious orders had their own special customs in worship, and every cathedral church and diocese in England, while observing the same major feasts, had its own sacred calendar, in which the anniversaries of local saints loomed larger than elsewhere. These regional variants were usually matters of relatively minor detail, but some cathedrals, like Bangor, Lincoln, Hereford, St Paul's London, and York, had their own distinctive "Use" or Rite for the Mass and other daily services, which was followed by the other churches of the diocese. A few of these Uses persisted right up until the Reformation, but in the course of the later Middle Ages most adopted or adapted the Sarum Use, which was considered the last word in coherence, liturgical fashion and theological correctness. So, as early as 1327, when Bishop Grandisson of Exeter set about modernising his cathedral, it seemed natural to him to follow Salisbury customs. Similarly, when Bishop Elphinstoun of Aberdeen set about producing a printed Breviary (the book for the daily choir services other than Mass) for the Church in Scotland nearly two centuries later at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, he took the Sarum Breviary as his foundational text.

All over Western Europe in the Middle Ages the celebration of Mass and daily "Hours", such as Lauds (morning prayer) and vespers (evensong), was close in most essentials to the forms which continued to be used by the Roman Catholic Church up until the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. But the ceremonial of services at Salisbury was more elaborate than in Rome. At celebrations of High Mass up to seven deacons and seven sub-deacons assisted the priest at the altar, and the choir was presided over by two or even four "rulers of the choir", clerics robed in coloured copes and carrying staves of office. Both the main Sunday Mass and solemn Vespers in the Sarum Rite were preceded by elaborate processions to musical accompaniment, during which all the altars in the church were incensed.

So the Sarum Rite called for elaborate music: its texts included many "farsed" kyries, in which the simple threefold sung litany: "Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy" was expanded with more elaborate invocations and petitions. The Sarum Missal also prescribed more than 90 elaborate "sequences", rhymed and rhythmic texts sung between the epistle and gospel readings on feast days. These customs could be followed closely in cathedrals and great churches with a large clerical staff and a choir of boys and men, but we can only speculate about how they were adapted for use in humbler buildings, and in communities with few or no musical resources. The complex processions of the Sarum Rite, for example, had been devised for a cathedral with 19 separate altars, before each of which the processions paused for prayer, but most country churches had only two or three altars, and many had only a single priest to conduct the ceremonies.

However, both in town and countryside there were many wealthy churches which did maintain a larger clerical staff and an active musical tradition. Even while serving as Lord Chancellor of England, Sir Thomas More sang at evensong in his parish choir at Chelsea. And on the eve of the Reformation, English parishioners were competing to equip their churches for splendid worship. Church interiors glittered with lights, jewelled altars, gilded and robed statues, while the clergy celebrated the services vested in velvet, silk and cloth of gold, donated by well-to-do men and women driven by a mixture of devotion and desire for status and lavish display.

Much of this pious investment was addressed specifically to the provision of splendid music. Testators left money to pay priests who would sing private masses for the repose of their souls, but who would also contribute to the music of the major parish services. In the prosperous London parish of St Mary at Hill the priest who served the chantry altar of the Causton family was also expected to be in the choir at all parish services, and after evensong each night to lead parishioners in the singing of the solemn Antiphon to the Virgin Mary, the Salve Regina, "or elles help the Syngers after his cunnyng". In rural Lincolnshire, John Lang left money in 1516 to his parish church to pay for the services of "an able priest, and in especiall a syngynge man yf he may be gotten", skilled in plainsong at the least, but preferably also in "pricksong" or polyphony. At Ranworth in Norfolk there survives a magnificent "Antiphoner" or illuminated choirbook with the plainsong settings for all the main parish services of the Sarum Rite, together with customised settings for the feast day of St Helen, the parish's patron saint. The clergy of the Suffolk College of chantry priests at Mettingham included musicians who specialised in the copying of such manuscript service books, annotated for singing, for what was evidently a booming market.

There were skilled musicians even in the parishes, then, and above all in the "Great Churches" – cathedrals, monasteries , the Chapels Royal, and the many collegiate churches round the country which maintained musical establishments and trained choirs. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the Sarum Rite not only possessed its own versions of the universal Latin plainsong tradition, but also generated a magnificent body of polyphonic settings of the Mass and other offices in the century before the Reformation. These were often so elaborate that whole sections of texts like the Creed were routinely omitted to keep the length of services within bounds.

The 16th-century Protestant reformers attacked these settings of Latin words, whose musical complexity they believed obscured the meaning of the word of God for the sake of sensual delight. The Sarum Rite was abolished, along with all the other medieval Catholic Uses of England and Wales, in August 1549, when Cranmer's first Book of Common Prayer became the only permitted form of worship. This new Protestant worship rejected altogether the rich heritage of liturgical music addressed to Mary and the saints, and the elaborate settings of Mass and Hours, and demanded instead simpler music for English words taken from the Bible. From 1550 onwards there followed a holocaust of liturgical books from cathedrals, colleges and parish churches, ruthlessly enforced by the young King Edward's Council. As a result, most of the musical heritage of late medieval England perished in Protestant bonfires, or was torn leaf from leaf to serve as wrapping paper for butter and beef.

Edward died of tuberculosis in 1553 and was succeeded by his Catholic sister Mary. The Sarum Rite once more became the official worship of England, with a renewed demand for modern musical settings of its texts. One of those who met this demand was John Sheppard, a professional musician who had been choirmaster at Magdalen College, Oxford in the last years of Henry VIII. He had then joined the staff of Edward VI's Protestant Chapel Royal, where he had performed and written settings for the English service, in which scriptural words have primacy over music. In musical taste at least, however, he was no Protestant, and his real greatness lies in the mature Latin works, such as the Missa Cantate, which must have been produced for the Catholic Chapel Royal of Queen Mary and her Spanish husband King Philip. In its expansive and leisurely spirit, it marks a return to the golden elaboration of the worship of the pre-Reformation era.

Eamon Duffy




John Sheppard and the Missa Cantate

Though his music has only relatively recently begun to receive the attention it deserves, John Sheppard (b.c. 1510–15, d. 1558 or '59) was without doubt a composer of the highest stature, and one of the most distinctive voices of his time. Like Tallis and Tye, he was active in the turbulent years that witnessed both the culmination of Latin polyphony and its subsequent abandonment in the Reformation. Though he turned his hand to writing for the Anglican church during the six-year reign of Edward VI, by far the most significant part of his surviving output consists of Latin music for the Sarum Rite: masses, responds and hymns.

Sheppard held the post of informator choristarum at Magdalen College, Oxford, between 1543 and 1547, and his name subsequently appears in the lists of the Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal, suggesting that he joined this prestigious body shortly after 1547. In 1554 he supplicated for the degree of DMus at Oxford, apparently without success. His continued association with the Chapel Royal and his residence in Westminster are documented, and his death must have occurred no later than January 1559, for his will was presented for probate at the end of that month.

The main reason that Sheppard's music remained unknown for so long lies simply in the vagaries of manuscript survival. Many of his hymns and responds are now preserved only in the anthology compiled mostly in the late 1570s by John Baldwin (Christ Church, Oxford, MSS 979-983), which lacks its tenor partbook. The process of reconstruction delayed the preparation in the 1920s of the relevant volumes of the series Tudor Church Music, which ran out of funds before the Sheppard works were ready. Although a few pioneers championed Sheppard's music – such as R. R. Terry, who performed the Cantate Mass at Westminster Cathedral, London, in 1917 – it was not until the late 1960s that it began to be available in printed editions.

The Cantate Mass is by far the most elaborate of Sheppard's five settings, and stands as a supreme example of that particularly English genre, the festal Mass. It follows the well-established technique of drawing some material – notably the cantus firmus that appears from time to time in the baritone part, and the opening bars common to each movement – from another work, presumably entitled 'Cantate' and apparently no longer extant. Sheppard conformed with the practice of his time in not setting the Kyrie (which in the Sarum Rite was chanted, as here, with the addition of extra words), and in dividing each of the four movements into distinct sections. The Sanctus and Agnus Dei are characterised by more extended melismatic writing than the Gloria and Credo, substantial parts of whose text are omitted, again following English convention.

Sheppard's intuitive mastery of vocal scoring is nowhere more in evidence than in the Cantate Mass. Its six voices – treble, mean, two tenors, baritone and bass – together span a range of just over three octaves, and are employed to thrilling effect in sonorous writing for full choir. Each section opens with more delicate three and four-part material in which high voices are set off against low ones, a technique familiar from the votive antiphons of Taverner's generation. Like all his English contemporaries, Sheppard seems to have adopted a devotional rather than an overtly expressive approach to text setting, which allows the music an effortless sense of continuity. Text repetition is relatively rarely employed, and once a new phrase has been highlighted by imitative entries passed from voice to voice, the music seems to generate its own momentum in free counterpoint. The Christmas respond Verbum caro factum est follows the customary scheme of alternating sections of chant with polyphony that incorporates the chant as a cantus firmus, moving inexorably and rather more slowly than the vigorous counterpoint of the other parts. By any standards, its final chord must be one of the most thrilling moments in this entire repertoire.

Sally Dunkley




The pronunciation of the texts

Samuel Johnson wrote in 1779: "He who travels, if he speaks Latin, may soon learn the sounds which every nation gives to it ... and if strangers visit us, it is their business to practise such conformity to our modes as they expect from us in their own countries." Like Erasmus some 250 years earlier, Johnson was aware that Latin, that pan-European language of education and culture, was actually pronounced strikingly differently in each country, often leading to baffled incomprehension or mutual ridicule. On this recording we have shed the anachronism of Church Latin pronunciation – not adopted until the 20th century – in favour of the traditional English Latin that Sheppard would have used. This alters one or two of the consonants and many of the vowels, matching them with the sounds of English itself, which was undergoing radical changes in pronunciation at the time. The vowel quality varied according to quite complex phonological rules, relating to word stress and the surrounding consonants, but they were the same rules as for English, so singers would have achieved uniformity quite naturally. (A version based on modern English, would be equally natural for us today and would sound like English Legal Latin.) What makes the pronunciation on this recording sound so unusual is not the Latin itself, but the sounds of the 16th-century English imposed upon it.

Alison Wray




IMAGEN


Missa Cantate


PROCESSION BEFORE THE THIRD MASS OF CHRISTMAS

On Christmas Day, whenever it fall, after Terce or Sext the procession is formed at the quire-step in this order:

two vergers in surplices carrying staves;
water-boy in surplice;
three acolytes in albs and amices carrying crosses;
two taperers in albs and amices;
two thurifers in albs and amices;
officiating subdeacon in tunicle carrying a text;
officiating deacon in dalmatic carrying a text;
officiant in alb, amice and silken cope;
boys of the choir in silken copes;
clerks of the second form in ascending order of seniority in silken copes;
clerks of the highest form in ascending order of seniority in silken copes;
the bishop in cope and mitre with staff.

When the procession is ready the cantor begins the responsory; the members of the procession continue it and the procession moves off. The procession leaves the quire by the west quire door, turns right and goes clockwise round the outside of the quire (that is, around the ambulatory). It passes down the south side of the church and enters the cloisters by the nearest available door, circuits the cloisters and re-enters the church by a door at the western end of the nave. It returns along the central aisle of the nave and makes a station before the quire-screen. During this first part of the procession a responsory and a series of proses are sung with their verses: the station before the quire-screen lasts until they are ended. The cantor then begins the antiphon and as the participants take it up the procession returns to the quire through the west quire door. The leaders stand before the altar and the other participants return to their places in the stalls. The procession concludes with a versicle, response and prayer.

Three clerks of the highest form, wearing silken copes and walking in the middle of the procession together sing the following proses (Felix Maria, mundi regia…) and the choir sings the verses and partial repetitions of the responsory. Note that the procession halts whenever the three clerks sing and resumes its progress whenever the choir sings.

After the following prose (Te laudant alme rex…) and each of its verses the choir repeats the melody to the sound of the final vowel.

The procession halts before the quire-screen until the foregoing items are finished. The re-entry to the quire is then made to the following antiphon which is begun by the cantor and taken up by the choir as the procession begins to move. If this antiphon is not long enough to allow everybody to re-enter the quire it is repeated from "hodie in terra" to the end. The leaders of the procession stand before the altar and the other participants resume their places in the stalls. After the antiphon the procession ends with a versicle and response and prayer.


ANTIPHON

The leaders of the procession now retire to the sacristy to vest for Mass. The cantor and rulers come out from the stalls to their desks in mid-quire. The other participants wait in the stalls for Mass to begin; the cantor and rulers will begin the Introit when a bell from the sacristy signals that the celebrant and his assistants are ready to make their entry.


THE THIRD MASS OF CHRISTMAS

The members of the choir have resumed their places in the stalls after the procession and the celebrant and his assistants are vesting in the sacristy. The rulers (two from each side, joined by the cantor because of the high grade of the feast) come to their desks in mid-quire. A bell is rung from the sacristy as a signal that the celebrant's procession is ready; the cantor knocks on his desk as a signal to the choir, and then he and the rulers begin the Introit and the choir takes it up. The celebrant's procession enters as the "Gloria patri" is sung.


INTROIT

The rulers chant the first half of the psalm verse and the choir chants the second half.

The choir repeats the entire antiphon including the first word (note that there is no need for the rulers to begin it because the pitch has already been set). All then turn to the altar for the "Gloria patri", begun by the rulers and continued by the choir.


The choir turns back to face across the quire and repeats the whole antiphon again, as after the psalm verse. The Kyrie follows at once. The rulers begin the Kyrie and the choir takes it up. In the absence of decisive evidence about the performance of the Kyrie, the rulers on one side begin it, the choir on that side completes the first verse, the other side sings the second verse, and the performance continues alternatim to the end.

KYRIE

After the Kyrie the cantor intimates the intonation of the Gloria to the principal ruler; the latter intimates it to the celebrant; the celebrant, facing east at the altar, begins the Gloria and the choir continues it. The choir turns to the altar at "Gloria in excelsis deo", Adoramus te", "Suscipe deprecationem nostram" and from "Jesu Christe" to the beginning of the Lesson; all cross themselves at "in gloria Dei Patris".

GLORIA

After the Gloria the celebrant turns west to salute the choir; the choir replies; the celebrant turns east and chants the Collect.

COLLECT

The Lesson is read by a clerk of the highest form, in a surplice, at the lectern in the rood-loft, facing east. The choir turns to face him; it may sit during the Lesson, Epistle, Gradual and Alleluia (but on Doubles must stand while it sings in the Alleluia).

LESSON

The Epistle follows at once. The Epistle is read by the officiating sub-deacon at the lectern in the rood-loft, facing east.

EPISTLE

The Gradual, Alleluia and Sequence follow at once.

GRADUAL

The Alleluia follows immediately without the Gradual responsory being repeated.

ALLELUIA

The Sequence follows immediately without the Alleluia melisma being repeated.

SEQUENCE

The choir bows to the altar at the end of the Sequence before turning to the reader of the Gospel. After the Sequence the officiating deacon reads the Gospel from a lectern at the north side of the rood-loft. He turns east to address the choir and then turns north for the reading.

GOSPEL

The Credo follows at once; it is begun by the celebrant facing east at the altar. The choir turns to the altar for the beginning and turns to face across the quire for the continuation. All turn to the altar from "Et incarnalus" to "sepultus est", bowing at "Et incarnatus", "Et homo" and "Crucifixus". All turn again to the altar from "Et vitam" until the beginning of the Offertory.

CREDO

The Credo is immediately followed by the Offertory. After the Credo the celebrant turns east to salute the choir and then turns back to the altar for the Offertory prayer, which he recites quietly. Immediately after "Oremus" the rulers begin the Offertory chant and the choir continues it, during which the choir is censed.

OFFERTORY

After the Offertory the celebrant says the Secret quietly, terminating it aloud as follows. The Preface then follows and leads directly into the Sanctus, during which the celebrant recites the Canon. The choir faces the altar from the end of the Offertory to the end of the Mass.

SECRET – PREFACE

The Sanctus follows at once (unless it be necessary to reset the pitch). During the Sanctus the celebrant recites the Canon.

SANCTUS – BENEDICTUS

After the Sanctus the celebrant chants aloud the end of the Canon and sings the Paternoster; the choir sings the final clause.

PATER NOSTER

The celebrant says "Amen" quietly and continues with the "Libera nos..." reciting the termination aloud. He then turns to the west and gives the Pax.

The Agnus Dei follows at once.

AGNUS DEI

After the Agnus Dei, and while the ablutions are being performed, the rulers begin the Communion and the choir continues it.

COMMUNION

After the Communion the celebrant recites the Postcommunion.

POSTCOMMUNION

After the Postcommunion the celebrant takes his leave of the choir, the principal deacon chants the dismissal and the choir replies.

ITA MISSA EST



IMAGEN