PROGRAM NOTES

By

Frederic Palmer

At the end of the 16^th century there was a major shift in Western music that was centered in Italy and the San Marco Basilica in Venice in particular. It was at San Marco that composers, the most influential of which was Giovanni Gabrieli, cultivated forms that added a spatial dimension to the music by taking advantage of the multiple choir lofts found throughout the basilica and using two or more separate ensembles at different locations to create dramatic antiphonal effects. This antiphonal style later developed into the form we now know as the concerto. Although composed over four hundred years ago, Gabrieli’s Canzon Septimi Toni still impresses today’s listeners with its majestic grandeur and the freshness and power of its antiphonal writing that was meant to thrill and amaze those who first heard it.

The Burgundian period was the shortest in the history of Western music, spanning just fifty years from 1400 to 1450. It played a crucial role, however, by serving as the transition from the music of the Middle Ages to that of the Renaissance. While Burgundian music retains much of the medieval harmonic vocabulary, its texture is smoother and often displays a principal melody in the highest part supported by an underlying accompaniment. One of the leading Burgundian composers was Guillaume Dufay, whose works are distinguished for their originality and imagination. Adieu ces bons vins de Lannoys is a rondeau, a vocal composition based on a medieval poetic form with a rather intricate repetition pattern. The text of this rondeau by Dufay, describes, in a lighthearted way, the regret of someone leaving the inhabitants of Lannoys and their earthly pleasures.

Nancy Bloomer Deussen earned a BM and MM degree in composition and theory from the Manhattan School of Music, and her teachers included Vittorio Giannini, Ingolf Dahl and Lukas Foss. She also holds a second bachelor’s degree in music education from the University of Southern California. Her compositions have been performed throughout the United States and have received numerous awards, and she is the recipient of several grants. She is also the founder of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of The National Association of Composers USA and currently serves as Vice-President of that organization. She teaches composition privately and regularly performs as a pianist. Over the years, the Mid-Peninsula Recorder Orchestra has performed her works for recorder ensemble. Impressions Around G was composed in 1964 and originally scored for six parts. A four-part setting dates from 1968 and was subsequently published, and it is this version that will be heard this afternoon. Impressions Around G reflects Nancy Bloomer Deussen’s belief in melody with emotional content and that modern music is capable of expressing enduring, positive values.

In 1609, Michael Praetorius published a collection of chorales and other sacred music that he entitled, Musae Sioniae. The collection included music for the entire liturgical calendar, and the settings ranged from duets to works for multiple choruses with virtuoso instrumental parts. The publication was undoubtedly intended to provide any church with music for a year’s worth of services according to its size and means. Equally important, Praetorius included an index in which the appropriate selections contained within the collection were given for each liturgical season. So well conceived was Musae Sioniae that it could still be used for its original purpose today. Unlike many of the other settings found in this collection by Praetorius , Psallite, unigenito appears in only one four-part version. This could be due to the nature of the music and text that suggest a pastoral nativity scene with the melodies and drones of shepherd’s pipes. For this reason, recorders and early double reeds would seem to be an appropriate way of presenting the selection on this afternoon’s program.

At the beginning of the 18^th century, the composer who had the greatest influence on the course of Western music was Arcangelo Corelli. In his seventy-two published works, Corelli made a clean break with the modal writing which had been used since the time of the ancient Greeks and ushered in tonal harmony which is still in use today. While modal harmonies tend to meander, Corelli’s use systematic chord progressions that create a feeling of inevitability and produce a powerful dramatic effect never before heard in music. Corelli’s twelve concertos Opus 6, like much of the composer’s life, are shrouded in mystery. This is compounded by the fact that Corelli refused to publish them during his lifetime. The earliest reference we have to any of these concertos dates from 1689, but it was not until 1714, one year after Corelli’s death, that they first appeared in print. The most likely scenario is that the concertos were composed over a length of time, and if their numerical order roughly reflects the date of each concerto’s composition then the one heard this afternoon is a relatively early work in the set. This assumption is reinforced by the structure of the Concerto Op. 6, No. 2 in which many of the sections rapidly alternate in mood and tempo as opposed to being extended, well-defined movements.