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SACRED & PROFANE A Rite of Passage for Brass Septet Friday 19th September 2014, 7.30pm Royal Academy of Music, London

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SACRED & PROFANE A Rite of Passage for Brass Septet

Friday 19th September 2014, 7.30pm Royal Academy of Music, London

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Septura !SACRED & PROFANE: A Rite of Passage for Brass Septet !

Johannes Brahms (1833 - 1897) - Geistliches Lied (Op. 30) arr. Matthew Knight ! Robert Schumann (1810 - 1856) - Vier Doppelchörige Gesänge (Op. 141) arr. Simon Cox Ungewisses Licht Zuversicht Talismane ! Anton Bruckner (1824 - 1896) - Two Motets ! Ave Maria (WAB 6) arr. Simon Cox Os Justi meditabitur (WAB 30) arr. Stephen Hicks ! Felix Mendelssohn (1809 - 1847) - Sonata in C minor (Op. 65 No. 2) arr. Simon Cox !

~ interval ~ ! Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683 - 1764) - Suite from ‘Dardanus’ arr. Simon Cox Overture Marche pour les différente nations Menuet tendre Tambourin ! John Blow (1649 - 1708) - Venus and Adonis: A Mournful Masque arr. Matthew Knight Chorus of the Graces Gavatt Sarabande for the Graces A Ground Act Tune Aria: With Solemn Pomp Let Mourning Cupids Bear Chorus: Mourn for They Servant ! George Frideric Handel (1685 - 1759) - Suite from ‘Rinaldo' (HWV 7) arr. Simon Cox ! Overture Aria: Sibillar gli angui d’Aletto (solo: Matthew Gee) Aria: Il vostro maggio (solo: Alan Thomas) Sinfonia March ! Trumpets: Huw Morgan, Alan Thomas, Simon Cox Trombones: Matthew Gee, Matthew Knight, Daniel West Tuba: Sasha Koushk-Jalali

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To those who revere the great composers of the past, their works are practically sacred. Transcribing these for brass is an almost criminal profanity, and Septura is the culprit. !Why brave the wrath of the music lover? Well, the brass septet is a brand new creation, so we have no choice: driven to thieving by the paucity of the established repertoire. The aim is not to produce cheap counterfeits though; rather it is to shed new light on masterpieces, to re-imagine them as if they had been written for brass, and so to instigate in our audience a rite of passage: a re-evaluation of what the essence of a piece of music is, how brass instruments can illuminate it; in short, what is sacred and what profanes? !In fact, that distinction has always been somewhat blurred — think of Titian's Sacred and Profane Love (above), a painting which begs the obvious question, which figure is which? — and this programme explores the two concepts through the music of Septura’s first two recordings for Naxos: the broadly religious nineteenth-century choral and organ works of our first disc; and the secular suites from baroque opera of our second. !Perhaps the most concerted effort to define the sacred and profane dichotomy came from French sociologist Emile Durkheim, who proposed that it lay at the root of all religion: religion existed to bridge the gap between the sacred — numinous, other-worldly, collective — and the profane — phenomenal, worldly, individual. And so it is

with Brahms’ Geistliches Lied, the text of which implores us to forget the worldly woes of the human condition, principally grief, and put our trust in the will of God. The likely recipient was Clara Schumann: Brahms composed the piece, his earliest accompanied choral work, in 1856 as Schumann was on the brink of death in an asylum. Meeting Schumann in 1853 had instigated Brahms’ interest in historicism, and in particular the intense study of counterpoint, and the text of the Geistliches Lied is set as a double canon. It is this technical mastery, along with the clear ternary (ABA) structure, that makes the piece work in a purely instrumental context: cup mutes are used to recreate the organ accompaniment, and paired trumpets and trombones play the choral canons. And of course the strict counterpoint doesn’t preclude heartfelt emotion — nowhere more evident than in the soaring lines of the ‘Amen’ coda, in which the order of the canons is reversed. !Schumann, influenced by the humanist works of writers like Goethe, described himself as late as 1830 as "religious without religion", and the Vier Doppelchörige Gesänge demonstrate that sacred and profane does not simply equate to religious and secular: whilst a spiritual quality permeates the set, only the last, Talismane, has an overtly religious text. The ‘sacred’ element in the first two is very much of the nineteenth-century Humanist kind. Ungewisses Licht follows an intrepid traveller through the stormy wilderness, the dramatic power of the septet enhanced by antiphonal effects, before he is “drawn mightily”

Titian: Sacred and Profane Love

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towards a mysterious light, about which the final line asks “is it love, is it death?”, intoned here by a lone trombone. Zuversicht mirrors the Geistliches Lied in advising the grieving to put their trust in something greater, but it is not God here: the pervasive rocking rhythms give way to peaceful harmonies underpinned by a lengthy tuba pedal for the lines “how could you be forsaken if you still have love?”. Despite all this, in January 1851 Schumann wrote that “to devote his powers to religious music probably remains the artist’s ultimate goal”, and Talismane is a joyous celebration of God’s omnipotence, a musical microcosm of sacred and profane: every mention of His name heralded by a cascade of bell-like rising fourths through the ensemble; by contrast, man’s fallibility (“my errors bewilder me”) is represented in an intensely chromatic six-note motif, with a legato solo trombone initiating a series of imitative entries. !In Durkheim’s analysis, a common thread of all religion was the use of idols, and rituals surrounding them, the purpose of which was to reaffirm the sacred by maintaining its distinction from mundane everyday life (the profane). The Catholic Church is no exception, with a rich tradition of liturgy — and, in particular from a ritual point of view, musical liturgy — a mainstay of which is the Ave Maria. Bruckner was a devout Catholic, and set the Ave Maria three times; in this setting he alternates passages for high and low voices in the opening bars, and our alternation of trumpets and trombones adds an antiphonal aspect. The two groups come together to unleash the full power of the septet for the ecstatic pronouncement of the blessed name “Jesus”; by contrast, the closing section (“pray for us sinners”) again uses the full group, but in quiet dynamics, creating a rich, blended warmth. !The second half of the Nineteenth Century saw the establishment of the Cecilian Movement in Germany, which aimed to restore to church music chant and the purer modality of early polyphony. The Cecilians objected to the lack of piety and the “unduly profane seductiveness” of modern ecclesiastical works, and Bruckner, with his Wagnerian harmonic language, must have been seen as a principal offender. In response he wrote Four Graduals in 1886, and Os Justi was

dedicated to a prominent Cecilianist, Ignaz Traumihler. Bruckner wrote to him: “I should be very pleased if you found pleasure in the piece. It is written entirely without any sharps or flats…and also without any chordal combinations of four and five simultaneous notes.” But despite all this the work is profoundly emotional, imbued with Bruckner’s Romanticism, demonstrated not least by the huge chains of melismatic suspensions. And even when it is pared down at its culmination to the ultimate simplicity, a unison plainchant Alleluia, it seems like mere lip-service to the Cecilian ideals. !Religious tension was a significant feature of Mendelssohn’s early life: his father, responding to the pressures of an anti-Semitic environment, decided to abandon his family’s Jewish heritage, and so from the age of 7 Mendelssohn was raised as a Catholic. This Christian conversion brought him to the music of J. S. Bach, and in time he became an exceptional organist. Mendelssohn was commissioned by an English publisher to write a set of organ sonatas, and the second works most successfully for brass: the 6-part homophonic writing of the opening Grave, the interweaving contrapuntal lines of the following Adagio, and the dramatic ending of the fugal finale are a perfect fit, musically and technically, for the natural compass of the septet. There is a 'rite of passage' of sorts as these movements progress, as organist William Whitehead notes: the opening two movements evoke Bach (the Ruht wohl of the John Passion in the first, the final chorus of the Matthew Passion in the second), but the third movement shifts to an ‘English’ influence, and, originally penned in the ‘trumpet and drum’ key of D “resolutely turns to tuneful, march-mode Handel”. Thus for Whitehead the sonata describes “a westbound arc from Luther to Albion”, but for our purposes we might recast this as a downwards spiral, from Sacred to Profane. !A brief, but interesting interlude in our sacred and profane exploration is provided by a small collection of vibrant dances from the prologue of Rameau’s opera Dardanus. Whilst the main opera was so absurd (a convoluted love story with sea monsters, magicians and dream sequences) that it had to be extensively

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Titian: Venus and Adonis

re-written after its premiere, the prologue, f o l l o w i n g a L u l l i a n c o n v e n t i o n , i s a straightforward allegory rooted in classical mythology. Cupid banishes Jealousy, but Love can’t survive without her — Cupid and the Pleasures fall into a deep sleep, and Venus has to recall Jealousy to bring them all back to life. The allegory itself is not particularly interesting for our purposes; what perhaps is, though, is the deification of elements of human nature in classical mythology — almost everything represented by a particular deity — further blurring the distance between sacred and profane. Maybe more important, though, is the music: the classic ‘French’ overture, with its grandiose dotted-rhythm opening giving way to a compelling energetic movement, is a musical highlight of the opera; and as the mortals pay homage to Cupid through dance, Rameau’s ballet music, for which he was rightly renowned, is especially colourful — demonstrating the revolutionary use of harmony, melodic and

rhythmic quirks, and range of emotional expression that conservative ‘Lullistes’ found so grotesque. !Widely regarded as the earliest English opera, B l o w ’ s Ve n u s & Ad o n i s w a s a t r u l y groundbreaking work: the model for Purcell’s more famous Dido & Aeneas, it is largely through-composed, rather than resorting to separate set-pieces and distinct arias, and this greatly heightens its dramatic impact. The story of Venus and Adonis, as told by both Ovid and Shakespeare, is interesting for us specifically because it bridges the gap between sacred and profane: Cupid accidentally pricks his mother, Venus, with one of his arrows, and she falls in love with mortal Adonis — even the goddess of love is not immune from her own domain, and succumbs to love’s destructive power. In the earlier versions Adonis snubs Venus to go on a fatal hunting trip; in Blow’s account, by contrast, Venus encourages Adonis to go hunting despite

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his protestations: !Adonis:

Adonis will not hunt today: I have already caught the noblest prey. !

Venus: No, my shepherd haste away: Absence kindles new desire,

I would not have my lover tire. !The significance of this alteration is that it places Venus at the centre of the tragedy, with her hubris, rather than that of the human Adonis, culminating in her downfall. Thus the sacred is profaned, the goddess exposed as fallible, and the deity re-cast as human. !Our ‘mournful masque’ focuses on this mortal end of the opera, beginning with the Act II Chorus of the Graces, which emphasises the human element of love, mirroring the intense eroticism of Shakespeare’s version (Venus will “beget desire and yield delight”). The form of Blow’s opera was heavily influenced by Lullian French opera, not least in the instrumental dances that follow the chorus: an energetic Gavatt, a portentous Sarabande, and a fateful Ground. The unfolding tragedy is ushered in by the mournful Act II Tune, after which Adonis, gored by a boar, dies in Venus’ arms. Struck by grief she laments her lover in a heart-rending Aria; not only does her intense grief humanise her, but she explicitly renounces her immortality: “[Adonis] shall adorn the heavn’s, here I will weep till I am fall’n into as cold a sleep”. The final G minor chorus (“Mourn for thy servant”) takes the form of a funeral march and offers scant consolation for the fallen goddess, “the wretched Queen of Love in this forsaken grove”. !If Blow cuts the sacred down to size, Handel’s Rinaldo, the first Italian-language opera composed for the London stage, aims at precisely the opposite. Set in Jerusalem during the first crusade, its theme is fairly transparent: the Christian Rinaldo is pitted against the Muslim King of Jerusalem, Argante, and his powerful sorceress lover Armida; these two use their dark magic for trickery but, having been unfaithful to each other, are ultimately vanquished by the

honest and true Rinaldo; Jerusalem falls, Armida and Argante undergo a Christian rebirth and are forgiven. Argante’s affair and the Christian conversion are additions to the myth by the librettist, casting the plot unquestionably a triumph of Christianity over Islam — and for 18th-century London we can surely read that as Sacred over Profane, painting that dichotomy in a wholly new subjective light. !Handel composed the opera in just two weeks, aided by the recycling of much existing material — so much that it has been described as an “anthology” of his Italian period. Our two arias are recycled: “Sibillar gli angui”, here an aria for solo trombone, was lifted completely from a dramatic cantata, and has a “ludicrously inappropriate” text for Argante’s grand Act I entrance; also from an earlier cantata, “Il vostro maggio” is here a trumpet solo, in which mermaids lead Rinaldo astray with a song about love’s delights. So the story serves as a loose pretext for virtuoso vocal numbers, and the supernatural subject also gives Handel an opportunity to demonstrate his orchestral prowess: after a gripping and incredibly varied overture, a particular instrumental highlight is the Act III Sinfonia — the film music of its day, portraying the horror of Armida’s magic mountain, and culminating in two shocking rests for the entire group, moments of terrifying suspense, perhaps just before Goffredo’s soldiers are swallowed up by the mountain. The opera was particularly noted for Handel’s innovative use of brass instruments, harnessing their uniquely expressive powers for the war and pageantry scenes. Argante’s entrance is a fine example, and according to Dean and Knapp, the sudden blast of trumpets provides “an effect of splendour and exhilaration that time has not dimmed”. !Matthew Knight

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Septura !Founder & Artistic Director: Simon Cox Artistic Director: Matthew Knight !Trumpets: Philip Cobb, Simon Cox, Huw Morgan, Alan Thomas Trombones: Matthew Gee, Edward Jones, Matthew Knight, Daniel West Tuba: Sasha Koushk-Jalali, Peter Smith !Septura aims to redefine the brass ensemble as a serious artistic medium by creating a canon of classical art-music for brass septet, through transcriptions, arrangements and an ever-increasing number of new commissions. !Currently Ensemble in Residence at the Royal Academy of Music, London, the group is recording a series of 10 discs for Naxos over the next 5 years, each focused on a particular period, genre and set of composers, creating a ‘counter-factual history’ of brass chamber music. The first disc—Brahms, Bruckner, Mendelssohn, Schumann: Music for Brass Septet—was released August 2014, reaching No. 3 in the UK Specialist Classical Chart in its first week. The second—Baroque theatre music by Blow, Purcell, Handel and Rameau—was recorded in May 2014 for release in 2015. !Septura’s members are the leading players of the new generation of British brass musicians, holding principal positions in the London Symphony, Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony, Scottish Opera and Aurora orchestras. !They share a passion for live performance, and believe in the idea of the concert as a real event: drawing people into their (perhaps unfamiliar) ever-increasing repertoire with imaginative and interesting programming, built around strong concepts and themes, and presented in a captivating manner. !Septura is represented worldwide by Percius Artists and Project Management. !www.septura.org

Photo: Bethany Clarke

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