The University of St. Michael’s College

in the University of Toronto

Byrd, Mass for Four Voices

with music by Dowland, Campion & others

for the Lenten Season

Friday, March 18, 2016

7:30 p.m.

St. Basil’s Church 

Program

Preludium - John Dowland (1563-1626) - John Edwards, lute

Kyrie, Mass for Four Voices - William Byrd (c.1540–1623)

If that a sinner's sighs - John Dowland - Soloists

In Nomine - Robert Johnson (c. 1500-1560)

Gloria, Mass for Four Voices - William Byrd

Author of Light - Thomas Campion (1567-1620) - Graham Robinson, Bass-baritone

In Nomine - (Robert?) Golder (1510-1563)

Credo, Mass for Four Voices - William Byrd

Never weather-beaten sail - Thomas Campion - Soloists

In Nomine Thomas Tallis (c. 1505-1585)

Sanctus/Benedictus - William Byrd

In Nomine - John Taverner (c. 1490-1545) - Hallie Fishel, Soprano

In Nomine - John Baldwin (d. 1615)

Agnus Dei, Mass for Four Voices - William Byrd

Nunc Dimittis - Richard Allison (c. 1560-c. 1610) - Soloists

In Nomine - John Ward (1571-1638)

Ave Verum Corpus - William Byrd

Refugee Sponsorship Campaign

All donations collected tonight will support Syrian refugees in Canada. Initiated by the students of the University of St. Michael’s College and supported by the President’s Office, our specific campaign is designed to raise funds to sponsor a refugee family through the Archdiocese of Toronto’s Office of Refugees. From September, we will provide a family with a home on the campus. Your donations tonight will be directed to their basic needs—clothing, baby necessities, English language classes, metro passes. The campaign has been very successful so far, raising almost $9,000 towards the goal of $12,400. With your support, we are confident the goal can be reached before the academic year comes to a close.

If you prefer to donate by cheque, please speak to one of the ushers after the concert.

On behalf of those who will be helped by your gift, the students of St. Michael’s thank you in advance for your consideration and generosity.

The Musicians In Ordinary String Band 

Violin

Chris Verrette

Viola

Matt Antal

Sheila Smyth

Eleanor Verrette

Bass Violin

Amanda Keesmaat

Lute

John Edwards

St Michael’s Schola Cantorum

Soprano

Laurel-Ann Finn

Hallie Fishel*

Barbara North

Emily Sherlock

Jane Ubertino

Mikhai-Louise Vasile

Julia Warnes

Hope Aletheia Waterman

Alto

Vanessa Chan

Cindy Dymond

Charlotte Hodgkins*

Paula Owolabi

Annemarie Sherlock

Katie Stokes

Kathryn Zaleski-Cox

Tenor

Ben Kim*

Edmund Lo

Reid Locklin

Patrick Michalski

Michael Pirri

Hugo Tang

Bass

Robert Allair

Scott Hoornaert

Paul McGrath

Graham Robinson*

Guest Director

Christina Labriola

*= soloists

Named after the singers and lutenists who performed in the most intimate quarters of the Stuart monarchs’ palace, The Musicians In Ordinary for the Lutes and Voices dedicate themselves to the performance of early solo song and vocal chamber music. Soprano Hallie Fishel and lutenist John Edwards have been described as “winning performers of winning music.” A fixture on the Toronto early music scene for over ten years, in 2012 MIO became Ensemble in Residence at St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto. MIO have concertized across North America, and have performed to scholarly and general audiences, lecturing regularly at universities and museums, for the Shakespeare Society of America, the Renaissance Society of America, Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies, Grinnell College, the Kingston Opera Guild, and the Bata Shoe Museum, and the Universities of Alberta, Toronto, California at San Diego, Syracuse, Trent, and York. They have been Ensemble in Residence at Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania.

Christopher Verrette has been a member of the violin section of Tafelmusik since 1993 and is a frequent soloist and leader with the orchestra. He holds a Bachelor of Music and a Performer’s Certificate from Indiana University. He contributed to the development of early music in the American Midwest, as a founding member of the Chicago Baroque Ensemble and Ensemble Voltaire, and as a guest director with the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra. He collaborates with many ensembles around North America, performing music from seven centuries on violin, viola, rebec, vielle, and viola d’amore. He was concertmaster in a recording of rarely heard classical symphonies for an anthology by Indiana University Press and recently collaborated with Sylvia Tyson on the companion recording to her novel, Joyner’s Dream.

Charlotte Hodgkins, mezzo-soprano, has worked as a professional chorister for many ensembles, including Ottawa Bach Choir, Elora Festival Singers, Theatre of Early Music, St. James Cathedral Choir, and Soundstreams Canada. Charlotte is currently completing a BFA at York University, studying with Stephanie Bogle. In 2014, the university awarded her the Peggie Sampson Award for Early Music. Charlotte has sung as alto soloist with the York University Concert Choir in such works as J. S. Bach's St. John Passion, Mozart's Coronation Mass, C. P. E. Bach's Magnificat, and Rossini's Petite Messe Solenelle. Charlotte continues her work as a professional chorister, and plans to pursue choral conducting and historical performance at the graduate level.

Ben Kim is a composer and tenor Toronto. Originally hailing from Geoje, South Korea, he grew up playing the piano. It wasn't until in he joined a choir at the age of 20 that he started singing in earnest. As a singer, he has performed with various amateur and professional groups from the US and Canada. Currently, he is a member of St. James Cathedral Choir. As a composer, his music has been appreciated and performed throughout the world by many musicians and ensembles. Notably, his choral arrangement of a Korean folk song called Hangangsu Taryeong - a “dissonant tone painting,” as one reviewer put it - was performed in Disney Hall by LA Master Chorale. His music is often described as eclectic or prismatic. He is published by Renforth Music in Canada, and earthsongs in the US.

Graham Robinson is a bass-baritone hailing from Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Receiving his Bachelors of Music in Voice at the University of Victoria, Graham was a much sought after soloist during his time in B.C. Now based in Toronto, he has been featured with the Elmer Iseler Singers, Tafelmusik, La Chapelle de Québec, the Elora Festival Singers, the Nathaniel Dett Chorale as well as many others. Graham is a devoted supporter and patron of aesthetics who strongly believes that creativity will take us anywhere we want to go. “Putting one’s soul into any discipline is art. It is in those times one learns to fly.” When not making music Graham further extends his passion for the arts community through film and videography.

St. Michael’s Schola Cantorum is an auditioned ensemble drawn from staff, faculty, alumni/ae, students, and friends of USMC, and members of St. Basil’s parish choir. We sing three concerts per year, at Michaelmas, and during Advent, and Lent. Michael O’Connor is the founding Director of St. Michael’s Schola Cantorum. He teaches in the college programs at St. Michael’s and also directs the St. Mike’s Singing Club. His academic scholarship and practical music-making overlap in the theory and practice of liturgical music.

Christina Labriola is an alto, pianist, and choral conductor, ever interested in the intersection of music and spirituality. She earned a B.Mus. in piano at the University of Toronto, and Master of Sacred Music in choral conducting from Emmanuel College, and is currently a doctoral student at Regis College in the Toronto School of Theology. She has sung and worked with a number of choral ensembles, including the MacMillan Singers (2006–2010), and University of Toronto Women's Chorus as Assistant Conductor (2012–2013). Involved in church music ministry, Christina serves as music director at the Newman Centre and at St. Peter’s Catholic Church, Toronto. She plans to continue in the world of academia along with a varied musical career as church musician, conductor, teacher, choral singer, accompanist, and performer. Christina is delighted to have been invited to be the guest conductor for this evening’s concert.

Notes

Towards the end of his career, William Byrd was patronised by, and possibly just plain employed to provide music for secret Masses for the recusant Petre family. He had stayed with the family over Christmas in 1589 (Is this circumstantial evidence of a Christmas chapel music gig?) and in the early 1590s, moved to a village near the Petres’ country home. Though his three Mass settings were printed without a date, this is about the time the Masses were published. As well as being undated, the title pages also lack the name of the publisher, who perhaps wanted to keep his involvement on the down low, and are in a small format, perhaps to make the partbooks easy to conceal. Comparison of the Byrd Masses with their models show that rather than being influenced by contemporary continental settings, they look back past the English Reformation to Masses by Taverner and Tallis. Particular to Byrd, though, is a sometimes almost madrigalian texture and attention to the text, and the lack of repetition of words and phrases. Perhaps they needed to get a move on in case the constable peeped in the chapel window. That said, Queen Elizabeth asserted she would turn a blind eye to any ‘window into men’s souls’, and Byrd implies in a letter to her top official that his Catholicism had been tolerated when he was employed as composer for the Chapel Royal, the top church music job in the land.

The printed layout of the Dowland, Allison and Campion tells us that they were published for private devotions. These pieces are from books published in tabletop format, with the bass part upside down from the soprano and perpendicular to the alto and tenor. Place the open book in the middle of the table and the performers can crowd around the four sides and read their several parts. Unlike Byrd, John Dowland was not very serious about his conversion to Catholicism. His association with the troublesome Earl of Essex probably counted against him more than his faith in his failed attempt to get a job at the Elizabethan court. He stomped off to the continent in a huff, but reports in a letter from Florence that he has heard of a team of Jesuits being sent to England, and that he can get a gig at the Papal court and do some further spying if needed. In fact, he ended up working for James I. Campion published a songbook ‘Contayning divine and morall songs’ bound with a book ‘on the light conceits of lovers’ in 1613 from which his two ayres are taken. Books of Psalms like Allison’s, using metrical paraphrases of the Psalms and canticles, were the main way for singing psalms in England from the mid 16th century until well into the 18th. The Old Hundredth ‘All people that on earth do dwell’, to a Genevan tune, is probably the most famous of this repertoire. The setting of the Nunc dimittis paraphrase is from this psalter.

For some reason, the snippet of chant Gloria Tibi Trinitas, the antiphon for the first psalm for the feast of the Trinity in ‘Sarum’ usage (the chant used in England before the Reformation) became the subject of a fascination quite out of proportion to the 30 seconds it originally took up on one feast day at Vespers. John Taverner used the plainchant as the subject, or ‘cantus firmus’ for a Mass, where the tune is heard in its entirety first at the words ‘in nomine Domine’ in the Benedictus. The lute part of the solo voice version you will hear is a straightforward intabulation of the lower voice parts of this passage from the Mass from a manuscript in the library of the Paston family, also recusants. Composers, particularly for consorts of strings, took the plainchant and used it as a subject for hundreds of In Nomines for well over a hundred years after Taverner popped it into the texture of his Mass. The Petres and Pastons maintained a set of ‘viols’ in their households (the word ‘viol’ and ‘violin’ were used interchangeably in English at the time). All the pieces called In Nomine this evening, then, have the tune somewhere in the texture.

Translations

Kyrie

Lord, have mercy.

Christ, have mercy.

Lord, have mercy.

Gloria

Glory to God in the highest,

and on earth peace to people of good will.

We praise you, we bless you, we adore you, we glorify you,

we give you thanks for your great glory,

Lord God, heavenly King, O God, almighty Father.

Lord Jesus Christ, Only Begotten Son,

Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father,

you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us;

you take away the sins of the world, receive our prayer;

you are seated at the right hand of the Father, have mercy on us.

For you alone are the Holy One, you alone are the Lord,

you alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit,

in the glory of God the Father. Amen.

Credo

I believe in one God, the Father almighty,

maker of heaven and earth,

of all things visible and invisible.

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,

the Only Begotten Son of God,

born of the Father before all ages.

God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,

begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;

through him all things were made.

For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven,

and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,

he suffered death and was buried,

and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead

and his kingdom will have no end.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,

who proceeds from the Father and the Son,

who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,

who has spoken through the prophets.

I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.

I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins

and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead

and the life of the world to come. Amen.

Sanctus/Benedictus

Holy, holy, holy Lord God of hosts,

Heaven and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in the highest.

In Nomine

...in the name of the Lord.

Agnus Dei

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: grant us peace.

Ave Verum Corpus

Hail, true Body, born of the Virgin Mary,

who having truly suffered,

was sacrificed on the cross for mankind,

whose pierced side flowed with blood:

May it be for us a foretaste [of the Heavenly banquet]

in the trial of death.

O sweet, O holy,

O Jesus, son of Mary,

have mercy on me. Amen.