The Tallis Scholars

Hildegard von Bingen: In principio omnes

Tavener: As one who has slept

Tavener: Funeral Ikos

Hildegard von Bingen: O virtus sapientiae

Pärt: Triodion

Hildegard von Bingen: O ignis spiritus

Tavener: Song for Athene

Tavener: The Lamb

Pärt: Da pacem

Hildegard von Bingen: O ecclesia

Victoria: Magnificat Primi Toni

Pärt: Magnificat 

This evening’s programme will feature music by four composers from three different eras. Works by the medieval nun Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), Renaissance composer Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611) and contemporary composers Arvo Pärt (1935) and John Tavener (1944-2013) will be performed. Hildegard von Bingen’s musical experience is of extreme interest: a Benedictine nun, she devoted herself to composing music to her own religious texts but, despite this compositional need, never considered herself a composer in the professional sense of the term. A factor of extreme importance is the constant presence of music in the daily scansion of the monastic office: all the Hours of the day included numerous songs such as hymns, readings, antiphons and psalmody. Despite his closeness to liturgical music, she took a deep interest in secular music and its instruments, which, from the end of the 11th century, would be characterised by the experience of the Trovieri and Trovatori, musicians active in southern and western France respectively. This interest is evident in some passages of his visionary work Scivas (1141). Also of great importance is the sacred music drama Ordo Virtutum [The Order of Virtues] dating from around 1151, of which In principio omnes is a part. Within the collection Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum [Symphony of the Harmony of Celestial Revelations] are the antiphon O virtus Sapientie and the sequences O ignis spiritus and O Ecclesia. Tomás Luis de Victoria, on the other hand, was one of the most important composers who lived between the 16th and 17th centuries: his Magnificat Primi Toni is a vocal composition for eight voices (SSAT SATB) divided into two choirs and built on the first mode of the Octoechos, also known by the ethnic name ‘Doric’. The Magnificat is a canticle contained in the first chapter of the Gospel according to Luke, also known by the name ‘canticle of Mary’. Many composers chose to set the text of this canticle to music, including Dufay, Claudio Monteverdi, Palestrina, Charpentier, Vivaldi, J. S. Bach, Porpora, Liszt and, as will be seen later, Arvo Pärt; Victoria composed eighteen of them. Pärt’s Magnificat is based on the same Latin liturgical text mentioned above but, this time, the composition is for five voices (SSATB). Composed in 1989, this piece is characterised by the compositional style ‘tintinnabuli’ (plural of the Latin word tintinnabulum, a kind of rattle), based on two different movements of two different voices: an arpeggiated movement on the tonic triad - the ‘tintinnibular voice’ - and a diatonic movement by joint degrees. The composer expressed the meaning of these passages as follows: ‘Tintinnabulation is an area I sometimes wander into when I am searching for answers - in my life, my music, my work. [...] The complex and many-faceted only confuses me, and I must search for unity. [...] The three notes of a triad are like bells. And that is why I call it tintinnabulation’. Triodion, also by Arvo Pärt, is a four-voice composition composed in 1998, based on an introduction and three prayers from the Orthodox Prayer Book: ‘To Jesus Christ’, ‘To the Mother of God’ and ‘To St Nicholas’. Finally, the four pieces by the English composer John Tavener (1944-2013) - who lived on Patmos and fell in love with the island and its history - are rich in religious meaning: ‘As one who has slept’, composed in 1996, reflects an atmosphere: ‘deeply solemn as we stand before the greatest mystery of our salvation. Christ has descended into Hades, and ‘trampled down death by death; and to those in the tomb He has given life’”. Funeral Ikos is a 1981 song with a consolatory character whose text is a translation from the Orthodox secular funeral liturgy. Song for Athene (1993) and The Lamb (1982) are two of Tavener’s best-known songs: the first of these was conceived as a mixture of the Orthodox funeral service and Shakespeare’s Hamlet, while the second is based on the text of William Blake’s poem of the same name, contained in Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789).