2016 CONCERT SERIES Saturday 19 March, 7.30pm RICHARD BOOTHBY & CHRISTOPHE COIN L’entente Cordiale: Music for two viols St Bene’t’s Church Saturday 25 June, 7.30pm THE SOCIETY OF STRANGE & ANCIENT INSTRUMENTS Sound House: The musical experiments of philosopher Francis Bacon Wesley Methodist Church Saturday 16 July, 7.30pm ANNEKE SCOTT (natural horn) & GOEFFREY GOVIER (fortepiano) The Concert of Europe: Napoleon and the musical world Howard Theatre, Downing College 31 July - 13 August 2016 SUMMER SCHOOLS SHOWCASE The Parley of Insruments, Philip Thorby & Friends, The Intrepid Academy and the Students of our Baroque and Renaissance Summer Schools Jesus College Chapel

2016 FESTIVAL OF THE VOICE 12-15 May 2016 Thursday 12 May, 8.00pm VOX LUMINIS Light & Shadow: Music at the time of Elizabeth I St John’s College Chapel Friday 13 May, 1.00pm THE GESUALDO SIX Old & New: Monteverdi, Gesualdo & Ligeti St Bene’t’s Church Friday 13 May, 7.30pm VOCES8 Bach Motets Trinity College Chapel Saturday 14 May, 3.30pm THREE MEDIEVAL TENORS Conductus: The forgotton song of the Middle Ages Little St Mary’s Church Sunday 15 May, 1.00pm VOCES8 Lassus: Sacrae Lectiones ex Propheta Job Jesus College Chapel Sunday 15 May, 7.30pm JAMES GILCHRIST (tenor) & ANNA TILBROOK (fortepiano) Songs by Schubert, Haydn and Beethoven Howard Theatre, Downing College

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2016 CONCERT SERIES www.CambridgeEarlyMusic.org

MAGNIFICAT Scattered Ashes

Friday 26 February, 7.30pm

Emmanuel United Reformed Church By kind permission of the Minister and Churchwardens

The Legacy of Savonarola

MAGNIFICAT, directed by Philip Cave Emily Atkinson & Amy Haworth – soprano Sally Dunkley & Caroline Trevor – meane Guy Cutting & Benedict Hymas – tenor

William Dawes & Giles Underwood – bass

Programme

Ecce quam bonum attr. to Nicolas Gombert (c.1495-c.1560) Missa Ecce quam bonum: Jean Mouton (1459-1522) Kyrie & Gloria in excelsis

* * * * Laetamini in Domino Philippe Verdelot (1475-1552) Missa Ecce quam bonum: Jean Mouton Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei I & II

Interval Miserere mei Josquin des Prez (c.1450-1521) Tribularer si nescirem Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c.1525-1594)

* * * *

Tristitia obsedit me Claude LeJeune (c.1528/30-1600) Infelix ego William Byrd (c.1540-1623) Your applause is welcome at the places marked with asterisks, and if you would like to take Magnificat home with you, CDs will be on sale during the 15-minute interval and after the concert.

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Cambridge Early Music / 2016 Festival of the Voice Thursday 12 - Sunday 15 May 2016 Vox Luminis, VOCES8, The Gesualdo Six, Three Medieval Tenors, James Gilchrist and the Choirs of St John’s and King’s Colleges perform an eclectic range of music from medieval Conductus, Monteverdi, Lassus, Bach, Schubert and many others in some of Cambridge’s most beautiful and historic venues. Tickets from £5.00 to £23.00 (FREE under-18s) available now. For more information see our website www.CambridgeEarlyMusic.org/festival-of-the-voice

Programme notes

The 15th-century Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) preached passionately for spiritual, political and social reform in Florence. He became celebrated for his prophecies of civic regeneration, the destruction of secular art and culture, and his calls for Christian renewal. He denounced clerical corruption, despotic rule and the exploitation of the poor. Savonarola lashed out against the worldly vanity of religious ceremony, including the use of elaborate polyphonic music. He claimed that such music merely charmed the senses and obscured the words, thus preventing meditation on the real meaning of the sacred texts. In one sermon he excoriated polyphony: ‘These choirs create a roaring sound, because there stands a loud singer who sounds like a calf and the others howl around him like dogs, and one can’t make out a word they are saying’. But, in one of the ironies of history, many composers selected the friar’s own writings for treatment in gloriously expressive polyphony. The friar advocated simpler music that allowed the words to be clearly audible: Latin hymns in Gregorian chant, or simple, sacred songs in Italian. Savonarola himself wrote texts for several such pieces. One setting that achieved widespread appeal was Ecce quam bonum, the opening of Psalm 576. It struck a chord with Savonarola’s millennial message of renewal and was eagerly adopted as a motto by the piagnoni – the bands of youths recruited by Savonarola to spread his message around the city of Florence – who stoked the famous “Bonfires of the Vanities” burning art, books and other “worldly” items. Tonight’s programme opens with a motet based on Ecce quam bonum attributed to the Franco-Flemish composer Nicolas Gombert; his motet in turn provided musical material for a mass setting by the French composer Jean Mouton. The same melody Ecce quam is also contained in Verdelot’s motet Letamini in Domino, where the inner parts sing the text and tune in canon. Savonarola’s social and political zeal was initially received with some enthusiasm in Florence, which was in a perilous state of political and economic flux. His supporters included powerful men such as Lorenzo de Medici, Ercole I d’Este, and the artist Sandro Botticelli, who even added one of his own paintings to the Florentine bonfires. But the friar also made powerful enemies: his outspoken criticisms of Pope Alexander VI ultimately led to Savonarola’s excommunication, imprisonment, admission of heresy under torture, and execution. Whilst in prison, Savonarola wrote two passionate meditations based on Psalms 30 and 50. His followers smuggled these writings out of his prison cell, and had them printed all over Europe. Reformers such as Martin Luther read them with approval, and several European aristocrats commissioned musical settings of Savonarola’s texts.

The first of these was a work commissioned by Ercole I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, who had managed to engage the services of Josquin des Prez. In his meditation, the desperate friar reiterated the opening words ‘Miserere mei, Deus’ several times; Josquin likewise turned these words into a refrain that returns at the end of each verse in a rhetorical manner hitherto unseen in the genre of the motet. The melodic subject at the opening is simple in the extreme: a single reiterated note leads to an upward inflection by just a semitone on the word ‘Deus’. Other works followed by composers such as Richafort, Verdelot, Willaert, Clemens, Lheritier, Palestrina and Lassus. Although elaborate sacred music was one of the “vanities” decried by Savonarola, his writings inspired some of the greatest compositions of the 16th century, including Josquin’s exquisite Miserere mei, Deus and Byrd’s masterpiece Infelix ego.

© Philip Cave

About the artists

Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, Magnificat was formed in 1991 by its conductor, Philip Cave, to explore the rich diversity of choral music from the last five centuries. The ensemble specializes in the restoration and performance of neglected choral masterpieces with particular emphasis on music from post-Reformation England and from late Renaissance Spain. Magnificat’s focus on Latin-texted music from sixteenth-century England includes several CDs on Linn Records: The Tudors at Prayer features William Mundy’s great antiphon Vox patris caelestis, and the album Where late the sweet birds sang explores works by William Byrd, Robert Parsons and Robert White. Magnificat’s recording of Thomas Tallis’s forty-part motet Spem in alium was hailed as ‘quite the best recording’ by Gramophone. That album also includes the four-part Mass and Latin motets, and was selected as BBC Radio 3’s recommended performance of Tallis’s Lamentations of Jeremiah. Magnificat has released three recordings celebrating the music of composer Philippe Rogier: Music from the Missae Sex offers the first complete recordings of both Missa Inclita stirps Jesse and Missa Philippus Secundus Rex Hispaniae. The ensemble’s recordings of music by Rogier on Linn also feature Missa Ego sum qui sum and Missa Domine Dominus noster. The latter recording, accompanied by His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts, casts new light on the Spanish polychoral tradition, and includes the premiere recording of Rogier’s rediscovered twelve-part motet Domine, Dominus noster. Other recordings of music from the Golden Age include an album of motets by Gesualdo, Guerrero, Josquin, Rebelo and Victoria together with Allegri’s Miserere and Palestrina’s Stabat mater, a highly acclaimed recording of Victoria’s Officium Defunctorum of 1605, and an album of Palestrina’s twenty-nine motets from the Song of Songs.

Infelix ego, omnium auxilio destitutus, qui coelum terramque offendi. Quo ibo? quo me vertam? ad quem confugiam? quis mei miserebitur? Ad coelum levare oculos non audeo, quia ei graviter peccavi; in terra refugium non invenio, quia ei scandalum fui. Quid igitur faciam? desperabo? Absit. Misericors est Deus, pius est salvator meus, Solus igitur Deus refugium meum; ipse non despiciet opus suum, non repellet imaginem suam. Ad te igitur, piissime Deus, tristis ac moerens venio, quoniam tu solus spes mea, tu solus refugium meum. Quid autem dicam tibi, cum oculos levare non audeo? verba doloris effundam, misericordiam tuam implorabo, et dicam: Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam. Translations by Jeremy White

Unhappy I, bereft of all succour, who have offended against heaven and earth. Whither should I go? Where shall I turn? To whom can I fly? Who will have pity on me? To heaven I dare not lift my eyes, for against her I have grievously sinned; on earth I find no refuge, for I have become an outrage to her. What then shall I do? Shall I despair? Let it not be! Merciful is God, loving is my saviour; therefore God alone shall be my refuge; he will not despise the work of his hands, will not reject what he has made in his image. To you, then, most loving God, sad and sorrowing I come, for you alone are my hope, You alone my refuge. But what should I say to you, since I dare not raise my eyes? I shall pour out words of sorrow; I shall implore your mercy and shall say: Have mercy on me, O God, according to your great mercy.

Cambridge Early Music / 2016 Summer Schools The Spanish Baroque World: Spain, Naples and the Netherlands 31 July - 7 August | The Parley of Instruments Peter Holman (course director & continuo), Judy Tarling (upper strings), Mark Caudle (lower strings), Gail Hennessy (woodwind), Philip Thorby (voices) Los Reyes Catolicos: Music from the Courts and Chapels of sixteenth-century Spain 7 - 13 August | Philip Thorby & Friends Philip Thorby (course director & choir), David Hatcher (viols), Emma Murphy (recorders), Lynda Sayce (lutes), Frances Eustace (wind) For more information see our website www.CambridgeEarlyMusic.org/summer-schools

Sacrificium Deo spiritus contribulatus: cor contritum et humiliatum, Deus, non despicies. Miserere mei, Deus. Benigne fac, Domine, in bona voluntate tua Sion: ut aedificentur muri Jerusalem. Miserere mei, Deus. Tunc acceptabis sacrificium justitiae, oblationes et holocausta: tunc imponent super altare tuum vitulos. Miserere mei, Deus. Tribularer, si nescirem misericordias tuas, Domine. Tu dixisti: nolo mortem peccatoris, sed ut magis convertatur et vivat. Qui Cananaeam et publicanum vocasti ad poenitentiam. Secundum multitudinem dolorum meorum in corde meo: consolationes tuae laetificaverunt animam meam. Qui Cananaeam et publicanum vocasti ad poenitentiam. Tristitia obsedit me. Magno et forti exercitu vallavit me, occupavit cor meum clamoribus et armis die noctuque contra me pugnare non cessat. Vocabo Dominum; veniet profecto nec me confundet. Ecce iam venit, gaudium attulit. Pugnare me docuit dixitque mihi: ‘Clama ne cesses’. Et aio: ‘Quid clamabo?’ ‘Dic’, inquit, ‘confidenter et ex toto corde: In te, Domine, speravi: non confundar in aeternum.’ [Cantus] In te, Domine, speravi

True sacrifice to God is a spirit that struggles: a contrite and lowly heart, God, you will not despise. Have mercy on me, God. In your good will, Lord, be favourable to Sion: that the walls of Jerusalem may be built up. Have mercy on me, God. Then you will accept the just sacrifice, the offerings and the burnt offerings: then will they place young bullocks on your altar. Have mercy on me, God. I should be in distress, if I knew not your mercies, Lord. You have said: I desire not the death of a sinner, but that rather he should turn from his ways and live. You who called the Canaanite woman and the publican to repentance. No matter how great the multitude of sorrows in my heart: your consolations have given joy to my soul. You who called the Canaanite woman and the publican to repentance. Sadness has besieged me. With a great and mighty army she has encompassed me, has taken possession of my soul with her war cries and with force of arms night and day she never ceases to fight against me. I will call on the Lord; he will come at once and will not leave me bewildered. See now he has come, bringing me joy. He has taught me to fight and said to me: ‘Never cease crying out’. And I replied: ‘What should I cry?’ ‘Say’, he said, ‘trustingly and with all your heart: In you, Lord, have I put my trust; let me never be confounded’. [Cantus] In you, Lord, have I put my trust.

Information about upcoming Magnificat concerts and projects is available online at www.magnificat-consort.uk. With an international reputation as a singer and conductor, Philip Cave’s career began as a chorister at the age of seven, followed by musical studies at Oxford University with Simon Preston and David Wulstan. In 1991, he founded Magnificat, which has since attracted much critical acclaim for its vibrant performances and recordings. Cave takes a poised and expressive approach to early music, combining close attention to text, carefully crafted phrasing and subtle individual expression within a coherent whole. Philip was a joint recipient (with Sally Dunkley) of the American Musicological Society’s Greenberg Award for work on Philippe Rogier’s music; he has received the Byrne Award of the London Handel Society; and he is an Honorary Fellow of London’s Academy of St Cecilia. Now based in the USA, Philip is Executive Director of Chorworks (www.chorworks.com), a non-profit organization that provides singers and conductors with opportunities to study and perform choral music with special emphasis on works from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Cambridge Early Music gratefully acknowledges the support of its generous Patrons & Benefactors for 2016:

Dame Mary Archer Sue Edwards & David Lavender Mick Swithinbank Keren & Jo Butler Linda Gower Alex Thornton Peter Cains Bill Janeway Christopher Thorpe Anne Culver Anne Jordan Prof. Tony Watts Martin Darling Annabel & Gerald Malton Ann Wintle Sue Davies Brent Mendelsohn Stephanie Rosenbaum Clare Dawson George Smerdon Adrian Lush Stephen Keynes Mark Williams Roger Mayhew and those Patrons & Benefactors who wish to remain anonymous Honorary Patrons: Sir Gregory Winter, The Master of Trinity College; Suzi Digby, Lady Eatwell Peter Nash

Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum habitare fratres in unum. Sicut unguentum in capite, quod descendit in barbam, barbam Aaron, quod descendit in oram vestimenti ejus; sicut ros Hermon, qui descendit in montem Sion. Quoniam illic mandavit Dominus benedictionem, et vitam usque in saeculum. Letamini in Domino et exultate iusti, et gloriamini omnes recti corde. Alleluia. (Tenor & Quintus: Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum habitare fratres in unum. Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam: et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum dele iniquitatem meam. Miserere mei, Deus. Amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea: et a peccato meo munda me. Miserere mei, Deus. Quoniam iniquitatem meam ego cognosco: et peccatum meum contra me est semper. Miserere mei, Deus. Tibi soli peccavi, et malum coram te feci: ut justificeris in sermonibus tuis, et vincas cum judicaris. Miserere mei, Deus. Ecce enim in iniquitatibus conceptus sum: et in peccatis concepit me mater mea. Miserere mei, Deus. Ecce enim veritatem dilexisti: incerta et occulta sapientiae tuae manifestasti mihi. Miserere mei, Deus.

Behold, how good and joyful a thing it is: brethren, to dwell together in unity. It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down unto the beard: even unto Aaron’s beard, and went down to the skirts of his clothing. Like as the dew of Hermon: which fell upon the hill of Sion. For there the Lord promised his blessing: and life for evermore. Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice you just, and glory all you true of heart. Alleluia. (Behold, how good and joyful a thing it is: brethren, to dwell together in unity.) Have mercy on me, God, according to your great mercy: and according to the multitude of your mercies, expunge all my sinfulness. Have mercy on me, God. Wash me more thoroughly from my iniquity: and cleanse me of my sin. Have mercy on me, God. For I acknowledge my iniquity: and my sinfulness is ever before me. Have mercy on me, God. Against you alone have I sinned, and done evil in your sight: so that you are just when you pass sentence and carry conviction when you judge. Have mercy on me, God. For see, I was born in iniquity: and amid sins did my mother conceive me. Have mercy on me, God. For see, you delight in the truth: the secret and hidden ways of wisdom have you shown me. Have mercy on me, God.

Texts & Translations Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor. Miserere mei, Deus. Audi, auditui meo dabis gaudium et laetitiam: et exsultabunt ossa humiliata. Miserere mei, Deus. Averte faciem tuam a peccatis meis: et omnes iniquitates meas dele. Miserere mei, Deus. Cor mundum crea in me Deus: et spiritum rectum innova in visceribus meis. Miserere mei, Deus. Ne proicias me a facie tua: et spiritum sanctum tuum ne auferas a me. Miserere mei, Deus. Redde mihi laetitiam salutaris tui: et spiritu principali confirma me. Miserere mei, Deus. Docebo iniquos vias tuas: et impii ad te convertentur. Miserere mei, Deus. Libera me de sanguinibus, Deus, Deus salutis meae: et exsultabit lingua mea justitiam tuam. Miserere mei, Deus. Domine, labia mea aperies: et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam. Miserere mei, Deus. Quoniam si voluisses sacrificium, dedissem utique: holocaustis non delectaberis. Miserere mei, Deus.

You will sprinkle me, Lord, with hyssop, and I shall be clean: you will wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Have mercy on me, God. To my hearing you will grant sounds of joy and gladness: and the crushed bones shall rejoice. Have mercy on me, God. Turn your face away from my sins: and wipe away all my iniquities. Have mercy on me, God. Create a pure heart in me, God: and put a new spirit of righteousness into my heart. Have mercy on me, God. Do not cast me away out of your sight: and do not take your holy spirit away from me. Have mercy on me, God. Give me back the joy of your saving help: and confirm in me a pristine spirit. Have mercy on me, God. I will teach your ways to sinners: and the unholy will turn back to you. Have mercy on me, God. Free me from the guilt of blood, O God, the God of my salvation: and my tongue will extol your justice. Have mercy on me, God. Lord, open my lips: and my mouth will declare your praise. Have mercy on me, God. For if you had wanted sacrifice, I would have given it: but you take no delight in burnt offerings. Have mercy on me, God.