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
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
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