THE CLOISTER GARDEN
Lamentations and States of Grace
Thursday, March 3, 2022, at 7:30 PM
Church of the Heavenly Rest, NYC
WATCH THE LIVE PERFORMANCE of Les Lecons de Tenebres of Couperin with preludes.
Recorded on Thursday, March 30th, 2022 at the Church of the Heavenly Rest, NYC
WATCH THE LIVE PERFORMANCE of works by Purcell and Biber
Recorded on Thursday, March 30th, 2022 at the Church of the Heavenly Rest, NYC
THE ARTISTS
Pascale Beaudin, soprano
Thomas Cooley, tenor
Chloe Fedor, violin
Loretta O'Sullivan, cello
Scott Pauley, lute
Andrew Appel, harpsichord & director
THE PROGRAM
Trois Leçons de Ténebres for one and two voices--F. Couperin
Three Préludes--J. H. d'Anglebert, L. Couperin, L. Marchand
Three Sonatas--H. Biber
The Annunciation--Agony in the Garden--The Crucifixion
Four Songs from Harmonia Sacra--H. Purcell
The Blessed Virgin's Expostulation
Lord what is Man
In the Black Dismal Dungeon of Despair
Evening Hymn
I could state that Couperin’s Leçons de Ténebres are the most beautiful, skillful, expressive setting of text in the classical vocal canon. In these three penitential, profound, and soul-revealing soliloquies, Couperin masters the many possibilities of weaving texts and tones. I might make this statement but you might demand that I back it up!
These Old Testament lamentations of Jeremiah with chest-thumping admonishments, pointed condemnations, and tearful regrets at the people who have moved so far away from virtue, from integrity, from grace, challenge the composer who dares to support and match their intensity. These are some of the Bible’s most beautiful and painful lines and demand a powerful musical setting.
If the lamentations of Couperin are not quick or easy to love, once understood they become uniquely treasured. Then, what do we listen for in these motets, two for one voice, and one for a duet, and how can we enter into Couperin and Jeremiah’s world?
Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn - Jeremia treurend over de verwoesting van Jeruzalem
First, the text, each biblical verse is preceded by a Hebrew letter, not unlike an illuminated manuscript from a Middle Ages book of hours in which the first letter is writ large, florid with arabesques and shimmering with gold. Couperin takes these Hebrew letters and sets them to music in a melismatic or florid fashion. One vowel is sung over many measures and draws a most graceful line. The music becomes calligraphy, uniting ear and eye. The varied harmonies of these meditative sections are rich. All the color and sensuality of French style with its 7th and 9th chords enrich each letter. These measures also allow the singer considerable rhythmic freedom and serve as affecting preludes to the recitation ahead.
Second, the verses explore the dark emotions of a separation from God. Some lines are harsh rehashings of past transgressions. Some are tearful recognitions of abandonment that all friends and protectors have fled. And some are observations on how low the people have fallen. When Couperin sets these words of Jeremiah he calls upon many forms to best express the oration. Is the text about weeping in the night or remembering better days? He composes exquisite and tragic arias. He calls upon grandiose energy when Jeremiah speaks of princes or battles. He relies on clear enunciation of the text when Jeremiah lectures or admonishes. This variety, however, is as subtle as the most refined art and requires that we listen with attention and care, just as we would listen to an archbishop charting out our sacred course, necessary to an ailing soul.
Finally, each lamentation concludes with the exhortation, “Jerusalem, return to your God.” It is hard to decide which moments are the most touching, but Couperin manages to write three settings of these words that offer hope, relief, and redemption.
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Pieta (1876)
I could state that Couperin’s Leçons de Ténebres are the most beautiful, skillful, expressive setting of text in the classical vocal canon, however we will hear these masterpieces alongside four sacred songs of Henry Purcell. These songs from Harmonia Sacra show Purcell as the master of the natural setting of the English language. No one after Purcell and until George Gershwin and Irving Berlin knew how to translate words into melodies, text into music. These composers hear the rhythm and tonal direction of words, and transform dry text into song. And Purcell wrote songs that are confessions of the most intimate and vulnerable states of fear and longing, despair and joy. Whether he approaches a text about romantic love, or loss, or drinking, or dying, he brings us into the spirit of each character. But when he speaks of the injured or celebratory soul, he elevates our consciousness.
Couperin expresses with noble restraint. Purcell’s fashion of probing the depths of a search for meaning is extreme, explosive, and passionate. The rising and falling in The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation…her screams for the angel Gabriel to return and assure her are shocking, even today. The grumbling of grief and fear in the person who has ignored God for a lifetime, wondering if there can still be hope for pity and even redemption. In the Black Dismal Dungeon of Despair is twisted and tortured and begs for our pity. By contrast, the incredulous joy in Lord what is Man in which we are astonished that we have been saved through a God’s sacrifice. It ends in a Hallelujah of vivacious joy. How different from the interior Hallelujah of the Evening Hymn demonstrating the parameters of expression that define Purcell’s genius.
Abstractions or Songs without words
There is a repertory of 17th century German instrumental music that astonishes all who are introduced to the Fantastic Style, best represented by Heinrich Biber and his virtuoso and visionary violin works. In history, Biber and his contemporaries make an argument for abstraction and powerful expression through wordless music. Biber makes the violin conjure imagery and raise tides of feeling without the encumbrance of words. The best introduction to this extreme expressivity is his Rosary Sonatas, depictions of the miracles and life of Christ. We have chosen three contrasting sonatas to accompany Purcell’s songs: The Annunciation with its mystical swirls and waves of the angel Gabriel’s wings: The Agony in the Garden, a lamentation, despair at abandonment and the harsh road ahead: and The Crucifixion, violent, horrifying and indicting. Each of these sonatas opens with a pictorial or programmatic depiction of a scene but proceeds to a meditation, a prayer in the form of variations on a simple theme. Rhetoric and the violin’s available color are the language and Biber even tunes the open strings of the violin differently for each sonata (scordatura), calling on contrasting sonorities for each work.
Matthias Grünewald - The Crucifixion
For the beginning of this Lenten season,
Four Nations has constructed a program of music with origins in Christian faith, music inspired by sacred ritual and poetry, music that implores for relief, joy, and transcendence. But those texts and rites are rooted in a universal hunger for meaning and need to understand our lives. These central searches are unifying and not isolating, and art drives this home. Our purpose is to offer you the most moving music whose effect must be to place us all closer in mutual affection, understanding and admiration.
Andrew Appel
Craryville, NY
March 3, 2022