San Francisco Classical Voice

Palo Alto offered an embarrassment of riches last week by way of music from around 1600 for the Christian feast of Candlemas, or the Feast of Purification. Officially celebrated on February 2, this feast marks the presentation in the temple of the Christ child in fulfillment of Jewish law.

On Tuesday, the preceding evening (February 1), a service at St. Thomas Aquinas Church, featured music from William Byrd's Gradualia (1605), directed by William Mahrt. On Friday the 4th and just a few blocks away in the First Lutheran Church, Magnificat, the ensemble directed by Warren Stewart, presented Frescobaldi's Missa sopra la Monica in a concert format with various liturgical refinements.

With both masses stemming from the Roman Catholic tradition, there were some musical similarities between them. Both featured singing that was one on a part. Yet as these performances last week were so close together in time, the differences between the masses were highly noticeable.

The Frescobaldi mass was scored for two choirs of just male voices. For each, Randall Wong and Ken Fitch served as the sopranos. Hugh Davies, the tenor of Choir II, sang admirably as the celebrant. The Byrd mass was for a single choir of five voices, consisting of three women and two men. Although in both performances there were occasional problems with intonation, and blemishes of blend in the one-on-a-part textures were too audibly amplified in both venues, each mass was striking in its own way, the strengths outweighing weakness.

The outer parts of the Frescobaldi mass were reinforced by instruments, strings (violin and violone) for the first choir, and winds (cornett and curtal) for the second. The capable string players, Rob Diggins and John Dornenburg, and wind players, Stephen Escher and Herb Myers offered one of the evening's highlights as several items in the mass were replaced, in observance of Italian tradition, with canzonas for these instruments. Complementing the instrumentalists on the portative organ, co-director Susan Harvey accompanied the program and played a Frescobaldi toccata.

The origins of Frescobaldi's mass remain obscure, its date unknown. Parallel uses of its theme, "La Monica", numerous in the 1630s and 40s, remained in evidence in variation suites throughout the seventeenth century. The style of the mass (particularly its use of a secular melody) seems more suggestive of Mantua, where the composer sojourned briefly in 1615, or Florence, where he spent six years (from 1628), than of Rome, where he otherwise served as organist at St. Peter's Basilica from 1608 until his death in 1643. In any case, it is possible that the work was intended for performance in a convent chapel, because the text for the underlying tune was originally a lament for a novice who was forced to become a nun. The use of instruments to reinforce voices and to play pieces of their own as substitutes for liturgical passages is more characteristic of northern Italy than of Rome.

The Feast of Purification was one of many marked by processions in the Middle Ages, acquiring its nickname, Candlemas, after the blessing of the candles. Candles played a central role in Tuesday's performance of Catholic mass at St. Thomas Aquinas as the congregation processed around the church in observance of medieval rites, chanting the Ordinary parts of the mass, the Kyrie, Gloria, Creed, etc. For his Gradualia, Byrd set only the Proper elements as musical numbers, in contrast to the practice of his Italian brethren. Candles were also used in the performance of the Frescobaldi mass but in a more limited way. However, the chant that began the mass was sung in falsobordone (simple harmony).

As a convert to Catholicism, Byrd joined the ranks of those who worshipped secretly in England, much as early Christians had done in Rome in the third century. Thus, Byrd's processional antiphon, introit, gradual, and communion single out some of the same items for which instrumental substitutes were offered in the Frescobaldi performance. Byrd's gradual and offertory corresponded to two Frescobaldi canzonas, Byrd's communion to Frescobaldi's toccata for the elevation. Another interesting difference occurred at the Agnus Dei. In the Frescobaldi performance, the motet O Jesu mi dulcissime (beautifully rendered by Neal Rogers) was interposed after the Agnus Dei, while at the same place in the Byrd mass, the polyphonic antiphon Senex puerum portabat ("The old man [Simeon] carried the child") was given.

The Frescobaldi mass closed with Palestrina's Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine ("Now dismiss thy servant, O Lord," a text strongly associated with this feast through the person of Simeon) in lieu of the Deo gratias in Byrd's liturgy.

(Eleanor Selfridge-Field, the author of numerous books and articles in early music, is Consulting Professor of Music at Stanford University.)

©2000 Eleanor Selfridge-Field, all rights reserved