Piffaro
Program Three, 43rd Indianapolis Early Music Festival
Friday, July 9, 2010, 7:30 p.m.
Frank & Katrina Basile Theater at the Indiana History Center on the Downtown Canal, 450 West Ohio Street Tickets
Waytes: English Music for a Renaissance Town Band
Since the reign of Edward III in the early 14th century, the town waytes, or shawm players, enjoyed a prominent position in the musical life of every major city in England. Like the stadtpfeiffer in Germany, the piffari in Italy and the ministriles in Spain, the waytes in the major towns of England were the finest musicians in the country, the very emblem of professional music making. From about 1550 onwards, the waytes of London enjoyed a reputation and pride of place unparalleled on the British Isles. During this time their talents became more diverse, as they added recorders, cornetto, dulcian and stringed instruments, even singers, to their standard arsenal of shawms and sackbuts.
This concert follows this fabled band through its musical adventures in the thriving metropolis of London from the latter half of the16th into the early 17th centuries. Whether ceremonial occasions of State, intimate soirees of the chamber or raucous parades in the streets, these waytes adorned each event with music appropriate to the moment, through the panoply of instrumental color available to them.
The concert will draw, as did the London waytes, on the works of some of the greatest English composers of the time, including William Byrd, Robert Parsons, Thomas Tallis, Thomas Weelkes, and John Mundy, among others, and will also include anonymous masquing ayres and Piffaro’s own arrangements of some of the great, popular tunes of the day.
Joan Kimball & Bob Wiemken, Artistic Co-Directors
Grant Herreid - lute, guitar, shawm, recorder, percussion
Greg Ingles - sackbut, recorder, krumhorn
Joan Kimball - shawm, bagpipes, recorders, krumhorn, dulcian
Christa Patton - shawm, recorder, bagpipe, krumhorn, harp
Daphna Mor - shawm, bagpipes, recorders, dulcian
Bob Wiemken - dulcian, recorders, douçaine, krumhorn, percussion
Tom Zajac - bagpipes, recorders, sackbut, pipe & tabor, percussion
London Waytes:
Music for a Renaissance Wind Band from the time of Elizabeth I
The song called trumpets……..Robert Parsons (c.1530-1570)
shawms, sackbuts, percussion
I come, sweet birds………………Robert Jones (fl. 1597-1615)
Rossignol………………………………anonymous (early 17th c.)
The nightingale so soon as April bringeth……..Thomas Bateson (c.1570/75-1630)
In midst of woods/The blackbird…………John Mundy (c.1555-1630)
recorders, lute, harp
Siderum rector…………………………. William Byrd (1543-1623)
Domine non sum dignus………………………………..Byrd
shawms, sackbuts, dulcian
Masquing Ayre: The Nobleman…Robert Johnson (c.1583-1633)
The king’s almaine……………………...anonymous (early 17th c.)
Masquing Ayre: The standing masque…anonymous (early 17th c.)
Masquing Ayre: Cupararee or Graysin…anonymous (early 17th c.)
Antimasque: The goates masque……anonymous (early 17th c.)
Antimasque: Second witch’s dance …anonymous (early 17th c.)
recorder, sackbut, dulcian, lute, harp, bagpipes, pipe & tabor, guitar
The Indian weed is withered quite…………...anonymous ballad tune (arr. G. Herreid)
Come, sirrah, Jack ho………….Thomas Weelkes (b.?-d.1623)
Hackney……………………….Clement Woodcock (fl.c.1575)
voice, douçaine, krumhorns
Pavane…………………..Augustin Bassano (fl. c.1603)
Almandes…………………............Anonymous, early 17th c.
shawms, sackbuts, dulcian, bagpipe, guitar, percussion
INTERMISSION
Tan tara ran tara, cries Mars…………………………Weelkes
Young Cupid hath proclaim’d……………………….Weelkes
Cease sorrowes now……………………………....Weelkes
Three times a day my prayer…………………………...Weelkes
shawms, sackbuts, dulcian
Sermone blando……………………………………Byrd
Fantasia a 3……………………………………...Byrd
O nata lux de lumine……………..Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585)
recorders
Goddesses…………………….Anonymous, arr. Piffaro
La bounette…from The Mulliner Book (publ. c.1570), arr. Piffaro
recorders, lute, harp, sackbut, dulcian, bagpipes, guitar, percussion
Piffaro, The Renaissance Band
Joan Kimball & Bob Wiemken, directors
Grant Herreid - lute, guitar, shawm, recorder, voice, percussion
Greg Ingles - sackbut, recorder, krumhorn, percussion
Joan Kimball - shawm, recorder, dulcian, bagpipes, krumhorn
Christa Patton - shawm, recorder, harp, krumhorn, bagpipes
Bob Wiemken - shawm, dulcian, recorder, krumhorn, percussion
Tom Zajac - sackbut, recorder, krumhorn, bagpipes, pipe & tabor
With guest:
Daphna Mor - recorder, percussion
World-renowned for its highly polished performances as the pied-pipers of Early Music, Piffaro, The Renaissance Band has delighted audiences throughout the United States, Europe, Canada and South America. The ensemble, founded in 1980, recreates the elegant sounds of the official, professional wind bands of the late Medieval and Renaissance periods, as well as the rustic music of the peasantry. Piffaro’s ever-expanding collection of shawms, sackbuts, dulcians, recorders, krumhorns, bagpipes, lutes, guitars, harps, and a variety of percussion, are careful reconstructions of instruments from the period.
Under the direction of Joan Kimball and Bob Wiemken, Piffaro tours extensively in the United States and Europe, and has performed for all the major early music series and festivals, as well as many college and community series, in the US. The ensemble made its European debut at Tage Alter Musik in Regensburg, Germany in 1993, and has returned to Europe each season for numerous festival appearances. In addition, the Band produces its own concert series in Philadelphia, with four to five programs per year, bringing to their series some of the finest talents in early music performance as their guests. Excerpts from these concerts are regularly broadcast nationwide on National Public Radio’s Performance Today.
In addition to its concert and recording efforts, Piffaro is active in the field of education. Members of the ensemble perform regularly throughout the year for elementary, middle and high school students, and hold master classes and workshops for college students and adult amateurs. The group has also been involved in week-long residencies, working with small groups of students on recorders, or their modern band instruments, and teaching Renaissance dance. For these efforts, Piffaro was awarded Early Music America’s annual “Early Music brings history alive” award in 2003.
Piffaro has recorded for Newport Classics, Deutsche Grammophon/Archiv Produktion, and Dorian Recordings. A recent recording is a collaboration with the renowned Belgian vocal ensemble Capilla Flamenca and features the music of Jacob Obrecht, released on the Eufoda label. A recording of VESPERS, a new work by composer Kile Smith, was released last season to critical acclaim (“a masterpiece of the deepest kind” - Audiofile Audition) on the PARMA/Navona label, and a CD of English music, “WAYTES”, also on PARMA/Navona, was released in January of 2010. In addition, selections of Piffaro’s music can be heard on the Wyndham Hill and Passacaille labels.
Grant Herreid performs frequently on early reeds, brass, strings and voice with Hesperus, Piffaro, ARTEK, and My Lord Chamberlain's Consort, and has appeared with the Newberry Consort, the Folger Consort, King’s Noyse, Apollo’s Fire, Brandywine Baroque, and the New York Consort of Viols. He teaches at Mannes College of Music in New York, and directs the New York Continuo Collective. He is a lecturer in the performance of early opera at Yale University, where he was music director for their recent production of Cavalli’s Giasone. He is a stage director for the Accademia d’Amore baroque opera workshop with Stephen Stubbs, and has played continuo theorbo, lute and baroque guitar for the Chicago Opera Theater, Aspen Music Festival, Portland Opera, and New York City Opera, as well as the opera programs at Julliard, Curtis, and Mannes conservatories. Grant has created and directed several theatrical early music shows, and he devotes much of his time to exploring the esoteric unwritten traditions of medieval, Renaissance, and baroque music with Ex Umbris and the plucked-string group Ensemble Viscera.
In sixth grade Greg Ingles decided he wanted to play a brass instrument in band, but since his older sister already played the French horn, he decided to take up the trombone. Greg attended high school at the Interlochen Arts Academy and went on to graduate college from the Oberlin Conservatory. Two days after graduation Greg won the position of Solo Trombone in the Hofer Symphoniker in Hof, Germany. He returned to the United States and completed both a Master’s and Doctorate degree in trombone performance at SUNY Stony Brook. It was during his graduate work that Greg became acquainted with the sackbut and historical performance. Soon after beginning his early music studies Greg became a member of Piffaro, the Renaissance Band. He has since played with such ensembles as the American Bach Soloists, Chatham Baroque, Chiaroscuro, Concerto Palatino, and Tafelmusik. Greg is also a member of Ciaramella and has just completed a recording with this group on the Yarlung Records label. Mr. Ingles has also recorded with Anakekta, Centaur, Dorian, Kleos, and reZound. Greg is the adjunct trombone professor at Hofstra University and also teaches sackbut at the Madison Early Music Festival each summer.
Joan Kimball, co-director and a founding member of the ensemble, gave full time to early music performance in 1980 after a number of years as an educator. She teaches recorder and early winds to children and adults, is on the music faculty of The Philadelphia School, an elementary and middle school, where she has a full roster of private recorder students and recorder ensembles, and organizes Piffaro’s educational programs. In addition, she collaborates with instrument maker Joel Robinson of New York City on the construction of Medieval and Renaissance bagpipes and is a maker of double reeds for Renaissance shawms, dulcians and capped winds. Joan teaches bagpipe, recorder and double reed classes at summer music workshops and festivals. In addition to her recordings with Piffaro she can also be heard on Vanguard Classical, Eudora and Vox Amadeus.
Originally from Israel, recorder player Daphna Mor began her music studies at the age of eight.
She has performed throughout Europe, Israel and the United States, giving solo recitals, as well as concerts with groups such as The New York Collegium and the Washington Bach Ensemble. She has also won numerous awards: First Prize in the Settimane Musicali de Lugano Solo Competition and twice the winner of the Boston Conservatory Concerto Competition, in 1996 and in 2000. Daphna received her Bachelor of Music degree from the Boston Conservatory, is a graduate of Thelma Yelin School for the Arts, and was awarded the prestigious status of "Privileged Musician" for her army service with the Israeli Defense Force. A strong advocate for contemporary music for the recorder, Daphna has premiered numerous new pieces for solo recorder and ensembles, and is a founding member of The New Amsterdam Recorder Trio. In addition, she has been involved in recording and performances of film scoring, popular, and world music, and as a world music musician has been seen on prestigious stages as 'Summer Stage-Central Park',NY, and in festivals throughout the United States, and in Canada, Poland, Germany, Slovenia, Austria, Greece and Israel. Daphna has been involved in education and outreach, working with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The New York Collegium. She also teaches and coaches at early music workshops and festivals.
Christa Patton specializes in early wind instruments as well as historical harps and has toured the Americas, Europe and Japan with New York's Ensemble for Early Music, Ex Umbris and Piffaro the Renaissance band. As a baroque harpist Christa has appeared with Apollo’s Fire, The King’s Noyse, The Toronto Consort, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, La Nef, and ARTEK as well as productions of Monteverdi’s “Ulisse”, “Poppea”, and “L’Orfeo” with the New York City Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, Tafelmusik, and Opera Atelier. Christa has led workshops at the Madison Early Music Festival, Pinewoods Early Music Camp, and the Medieval Summer Institute at the Longy School of Music. A former Fulbright scholar, Christa studied the Italian baroque harp at the Civica Scuola di Musica in Milan, Italy with historical harp specialist, Mara Galassi. She is currently pursuing a Doctorate at SUNY Stony Brook with early keyboard specialist, Arthur Haas.
Robert Wiemken, a French hornist for many years before turning to early music and period instrument performance, is now a multi-instrumentalist, focusing on the recorders and double reed instruments of the late Medieval through the Baroque periods, most notably the Renaissance shawm and dulcian, or curtal, and the Baroque bassoon. He is currently co-director of Piffaro, and also directs the early music ensembles at Temple University’s Esther Boyer College of Music and Dance in Philadelphia. He has performed with numerous ensembles, including New York’s Ensemble for Early Music, the Grande Band, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, King’s Noyse, the Newberry Consort, the Folger Consort, the Philadelphia Classical Symphony, Brandywine Baroque Orchestra and others. He has recorded on the Newport Classics, Deutsche Grammophon Archiv Produktion, Dorian Records, Vanguard Classics, Windham Hill, Pasacaille and Eufoda labels. He is also a noted reed maker, specializing in the double reeds of the medieval through Baroque periods.
Tom Zajac has performed on historic winds and percussion as a member of several groups throughout the years-Piffaro, Ex Umbris, the Waverly Consort and New York’s Ensemble for Early Music-touring extensively and appearing in concert series and festivals in Hong Kong, Guam, Australia, Israel, Colombia, Mexico, and throughout Europe and the United States. As a guest artist Tom appears frequently with the Folger Consort, King’s Noyse, Newberry Consort, Hesperus, and other leading US ensembles. As a director, Tom has an abiding interest in the confluence of historical and socio-cultural approaches to music making, working happily in the realm where time and place meet. He has done research and performance projects on Colonial Latin-American music as well as on the music of the three religious cultures of pre-expulsion Spain, and music in Eastern Europe, from Poland to the Ottoman court of 16th to 19th-century Turkey. Recent performance projects include a 13th-century music-theater piece, the Tournoi de Chauvency with the French-American company Ensemble Aziman, and work as percussionist for recent Boston Early Music Festival opera productions. Tom directs the Medieval/Renaissance week of the San Francisco Early Music Society workshops in Sonoma, CA, teaches at other workshops throughout the US, and directs the early music ensembles at Wellesley College near his home in Boston.
Program Notes
The term “wait” variously spelled “wayt” or “wayte”, from the old French “gaite”, carried a variety of meanings throughout its history. In the 13th and 14th centuries it referred to the watchman who stood at the walled gate of a town or castle and blew a horn to signal the approach of people requesting admittance. This “wait” however was not considered a musician. There is good evidence that the horn the watchman played was at least by the late 14th century a shawm. Thus, references to a “wayte-pipe”, as in the Black Book of the Exchequer, most certainly indicate a treble size of the shawm family. It followed then that any player of the treble shawm could be called a “wait”, whether a watchman or not. By the 15th century the plural of the term was in general use to indicate the group of civic minstrels employed by the towns and courts throughout Renaissance England.
The waits’ principal instruments, in harmony with the historical evolution of the word, were those of the loud band, including first shawms, but then adding slide trumpet and eventually sackbuts. In the late 15th century a five-part ensemble would have been comprised of three shawms and two sackbuts. By the 16th century, with the emergence of new instruments, the waits expanded their arsenals, as did the continental bands, with dulcians, recorders, krumhorns and cornetti, and the members often doubled on stringed instruments as well, especially lute and harp, but occasionally also viola da gamba and fiddle. Some of these bands also included singers, or the band members themselves sang in addition to their instrumental responsibilities. It is this later ramification of the London waits, the latter half of the 16th century into the early 17th, that is the focus of this program.
The repertoire available to these waits was extensive. Like their forebears both in England and on the continent, vocal music offered them a considerable amount of repertoire, including hymns, motets, madrigals and other secular song types. But, by the end of the 16th century these waits could turn to a sizeable amount of composed, instrumental music as well, in the form of fantasias, dances both solo and ensemble, masquing airs, canons and the like. One manuscript in particular, currently housed in the Fitzwilliam Library in London, purports to contain repertoire specifically for the waits, as opposed to other instrumental ensembles prominent at the time, such as the viola da gamba consort, for which there exists a great wealth of music, or the broken consort so popular in England. Called, subsequently, the Fitzwilliam ‘Wind Band’ manuscript, the collection provides one clear indication of what these waits were playing. Much of the music is in six parts, or more, reflecting the larger size of the ensembles during this period. The Pavane and Almandes that end the first half of the program come from this important source.
The first piece on the program harks back, perhaps, to the earlier historical function of the waits as signal men. Robert Parson’s A Song Called Trumpets, unlike most English instrumental consort music of the mid-16th century, is laid out with two treble and two bass voices, with two equal sized inner voices as well. The relatively narrow and low tessitura of each of the voices suggests that the piece was written with wind instruments in mind, rather than, say, members of the viola da gamba family. In the fashion of much continental wind playing of the time, we have taken the piece up a fifth from its original pitch, where it might surely have been intended to have been played, so that the treble shawms actually sound in the higher register that trumpets frequented, where it serves as a striking herald of things to come.
Parsons was a highly regarded composer of his time who worked for a period of his life in London. His compositions proved influential on many of the later 16th c. English composers, especially William Byrd. Unfortunately, Parsons fell victim, still a young man, to a boating accident while navigating the flood-prone river crossing at Newark. A comment by a Robert Dow in the late 1580’s reflects what was perhaps the common reaction throughout the musical world to this unfortunate event.
Qui tantus primo Parsone in flore fuisti,(Parsons, you who were so great in the first flower of life,
Quantus in autumno in morere fores.How great you would have been in [life’s] autumn, if you had not died.)
One composer who made it well into the autumn of his life was William Byrd, a figure whose reputation and works hardly need introduction to early music devotees. Though his date of birth is never mentioned, Byrd makes the comment in his will of November, 1622, that he was ‘in the 80th yeare of myne age’, which puts his birth somewhere in 1543. So great was the impact of this musical genius that he was named by one admirer ‘Brittanicae Musicae Parens’, or ‘Father of British music’. The declaration of the Cheque Book of the Chapel Royal, in recording the composer’s death, took this one step further and called him simply ‘a Father of Musick’.
Of Byrd’s two Latin-texted motets on this program, the 5-part Siderum rector, is the earliest, published in his Cantiones, quae ab argumento sacrae vocantur (London, 1575), shortly after he was sworn in as Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, succeeding Parsons following his accidental death. The six-part Domine non sum dignus, particularly apt for performance by the waits, comes from a later publication, the Liber primus sacrarum cantionum [Cantiones sacrae] of 1589, and exhibits Byrd’s mastery over the form. With these motets he is said to have achieved nothing less than the naturalization of the high Renaissance church style in the language of English music.
Another of Byrd’s older contemporaries and major influences was Thomas Tallis. Born around 1505, Tallis quickly assumed positions of importance in the world of English music and became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal as early perhaps as 1537. As a result, his tenure of service to the royal household spanned the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary Tudor and more than half the reign of Elizabeth I. A couplet from his epitaph points to a humble and unassuming man who was undoubtedly deeply respected, both by the four monarchs for whom he worked and by many generations of church musicians afterward.
As he dyd lyve, so also did he dy,
In myld and quyet Sort (O! happy Man)
His O nata lux de lumine perhaps reflects history’s estimation of the man that Tallis was.
If Tallis and Byrd were influenced by the Flemish style of northern polyphony that was the international language of mass and motet, then another composer on this program, Thomas Weelkes, found himself drawn to the new Italian madrigal, already fully adopted by Thomas Morley. Yet Weelkes’ contributions to the genre surpassed Morley’s easy fluency with the style. The three-voiced example, Cease sorrows now, comes from a 1597 publication, Weelkes’ first, that broke new ground for the English version of this native Italian form. With this piece, and its radical pathos and chromaticism, Weelkes is said to have introduced a new expressive experience into English composition.
The four madrigals by Weelkes that make up the set in the second half of the program tell a story of sorts based on the texts of the pieces. We cannot perform the words for you, though the music itself reflects the sentiments housed in them. Any good English wait would have tried to convey these sentiments in his instrumental performance of the pieces, as we attempt in this concert. The first, Tan ta ra ran tara, cryes Mars (1608) itself imitates the sounds of battle shawms or trumpets, pitting Mars against Venus in the eternal struggle of man and woman in the metaphor of love as conflict. The second piece, Young Cupid hath proclaim’d a bloody war (1597), continues the love-is-war metaphor, in particular Cupid’s assault on fair Cloris who shuns love’s advances and whose beauty Cupid fears. Cease sorrows now (1597) expresses the mournful plaint and hopeless despair of one of the battle’s victims as he bids a faint farewell to love and life. Finally, Three times a day (1600) asserts that the struggle will always continue, as the male speaker exclaims his thrice daily prayer that he may gaze on his Thoralis and hopes eternally that he may please and not offend and that she will return his love.
While Weelkes was clearly one of the masters of the madrigal form, numerous other composers tried their hand at it as well. As in his works, variations on the theme of love provided the majority of madrigals with texts, but numerous others reflected themes of nature, especially about birds. In our set of “bird” pieces in the first half, the nightingale in Thomas Bateson’s trio mournfully bewails its fate in a sad minor mode, and running musical figures in Robert Jones’ I come, sweet birds, express the swiftness of flight.
Finally, members of the waits most assuredly found themselves involved in the great courtly and theatrical productions within English society, the Masques. Based on allegorical or mythological themes and involving poetry, music and elaborate sets, these entertainments drew upon the best and finest of the musicians employed in the various ensembles of the towns, courts and cathedrals. As dancing was a major aspect of these entertainments, so ensembles like the waits could be called upon collectively to perform a pavane or gaillard or almande, such as those that end the first half. However, there were published a good number of ‘masquing tunes’ for a solo voice, with or without accompaniment, that surely decorated the events at various moments. Pieces like Cupararee or Graysin, The Standing Masque, and The Nobleman, together with the antimasques, The Goates Masque and The Second Witch’s Dance, as well as the two pieces that end the concert, Goddesses and La Bounette offer a brief glimpse into this very English world of popular entertainment.
Bob Wiemken
Program Three, 43rd Indianapolis Early Music Festival
Friday, July 9, 2010, 7:30 p.m.
Frank & Katrina Basile Theater at the Indiana History Center on the Downtown Canal, 450 West Ohio Street Tickets
Waytes: English Music for a Renaissance Town Band
Since the reign of Edward III in the early 14th century, the town waytes, or shawm players, enjoyed a prominent position in the musical life of every major city in England. Like the stadtpfeiffer in Germany, the piffari in Italy and the ministriles in Spain, the waytes in the major towns of England were the finest musicians in the country, the very emblem of professional music making. From about 1550 onwards, the waytes of London enjoyed a reputation and pride of place unparalleled on the British Isles. During this time their talents became more diverse, as they added recorders, cornetto, dulcian and stringed instruments, even singers, to their standard arsenal of shawms and sackbuts.
This concert follows this fabled band through its musical adventures in the thriving metropolis of London from the latter half of the16th into the early 17th centuries. Whether ceremonial occasions of State, intimate soirees of the chamber or raucous parades in the streets, these waytes adorned each event with music appropriate to the moment, through the panoply of instrumental color available to them.
The concert will draw, as did the London waytes, on the works of some of the greatest English composers of the time, including William Byrd, Robert Parsons, Thomas Tallis, Thomas Weelkes, and John Mundy, among others, and will also include anonymous masquing ayres and Piffaro’s own arrangements of some of the great, popular tunes of the day.
Joan Kimball & Bob Wiemken, Artistic Co-Directors
Grant Herreid - lute, guitar, shawm, recorder, percussion
Greg Ingles - sackbut, recorder, krumhorn
Joan Kimball - shawm, bagpipes, recorders, krumhorn, dulcian
Christa Patton - shawm, recorder, bagpipe, krumhorn, harp
Daphna Mor - shawm, bagpipes, recorders, dulcian
Bob Wiemken - dulcian, recorders, douçaine, krumhorn, percussion
Tom Zajac - bagpipes, recorders, sackbut, pipe & tabor, percussion
London Waytes:
Music for a Renaissance Wind Band from the time of Elizabeth I
The song called trumpets……..Robert Parsons (c.1530-1570)
shawms, sackbuts, percussion
I come, sweet birds………………Robert Jones (fl. 1597-1615)
Rossignol………………………………anonymous (early 17th c.)
The nightingale so soon as April bringeth……..Thomas Bateson (c.1570/75-1630)
In midst of woods/The blackbird…………John Mundy (c.1555-1630)
recorders, lute, harp
Siderum rector…………………………. William Byrd (1543-1623)
Domine non sum dignus………………………………..Byrd
shawms, sackbuts, dulcian
Masquing Ayre: The Nobleman…Robert Johnson (c.1583-1633)
The king’s almaine……………………...anonymous (early 17th c.)
Masquing Ayre: The standing masque…anonymous (early 17th c.)
Masquing Ayre: Cupararee or Graysin…anonymous (early 17th c.)
Antimasque: The goates masque……anonymous (early 17th c.)
Antimasque: Second witch’s dance …anonymous (early 17th c.)
recorder, sackbut, dulcian, lute, harp, bagpipes, pipe & tabor, guitar
The Indian weed is withered quite…………...anonymous ballad tune (arr. G. Herreid)
Come, sirrah, Jack ho………….Thomas Weelkes (b.?-d.1623)
Hackney……………………….Clement Woodcock (fl.c.1575)
voice, douçaine, krumhorns
Pavane…………………..Augustin Bassano (fl. c.1603)
Almandes…………………............Anonymous, early 17th c.
shawms, sackbuts, dulcian, bagpipe, guitar, percussion
INTERMISSION
Tan tara ran tara, cries Mars…………………………Weelkes
Young Cupid hath proclaim’d……………………….Weelkes
Cease sorrowes now……………………………....Weelkes
Three times a day my prayer…………………………...Weelkes
shawms, sackbuts, dulcian
Sermone blando……………………………………Byrd
Fantasia a 3……………………………………...Byrd
O nata lux de lumine……………..Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585)
recorders
Goddesses…………………….Anonymous, arr. Piffaro
La bounette…from The Mulliner Book (publ. c.1570), arr. Piffaro
recorders, lute, harp, sackbut, dulcian, bagpipes, guitar, percussion
Piffaro, The Renaissance Band
Joan Kimball & Bob Wiemken, directors
Grant Herreid - lute, guitar, shawm, recorder, voice, percussion
Greg Ingles - sackbut, recorder, krumhorn, percussion
Joan Kimball - shawm, recorder, dulcian, bagpipes, krumhorn
Christa Patton - shawm, recorder, harp, krumhorn, bagpipes
Bob Wiemken - shawm, dulcian, recorder, krumhorn, percussion
Tom Zajac - sackbut, recorder, krumhorn, bagpipes, pipe & tabor
With guest:
Daphna Mor - recorder, percussion
World-renowned for its highly polished performances as the pied-pipers of Early Music, Piffaro, The Renaissance Band has delighted audiences throughout the United States, Europe, Canada and South America. The ensemble, founded in 1980, recreates the elegant sounds of the official, professional wind bands of the late Medieval and Renaissance periods, as well as the rustic music of the peasantry. Piffaro’s ever-expanding collection of shawms, sackbuts, dulcians, recorders, krumhorns, bagpipes, lutes, guitars, harps, and a variety of percussion, are careful reconstructions of instruments from the period.
Under the direction of Joan Kimball and Bob Wiemken, Piffaro tours extensively in the United States and Europe, and has performed for all the major early music series and festivals, as well as many college and community series, in the US. The ensemble made its European debut at Tage Alter Musik in Regensburg, Germany in 1993, and has returned to Europe each season for numerous festival appearances. In addition, the Band produces its own concert series in Philadelphia, with four to five programs per year, bringing to their series some of the finest talents in early music performance as their guests. Excerpts from these concerts are regularly broadcast nationwide on National Public Radio’s Performance Today.
In addition to its concert and recording efforts, Piffaro is active in the field of education. Members of the ensemble perform regularly throughout the year for elementary, middle and high school students, and hold master classes and workshops for college students and adult amateurs. The group has also been involved in week-long residencies, working with small groups of students on recorders, or their modern band instruments, and teaching Renaissance dance. For these efforts, Piffaro was awarded Early Music America’s annual “Early Music brings history alive” award in 2003.
Piffaro has recorded for Newport Classics, Deutsche Grammophon/Archiv Produktion, and Dorian Recordings. A recent recording is a collaboration with the renowned Belgian vocal ensemble Capilla Flamenca and features the music of Jacob Obrecht, released on the Eufoda label. A recording of VESPERS, a new work by composer Kile Smith, was released last season to critical acclaim (“a masterpiece of the deepest kind” - Audiofile Audition) on the PARMA/Navona label, and a CD of English music, “WAYTES”, also on PARMA/Navona, was released in January of 2010. In addition, selections of Piffaro’s music can be heard on the Wyndham Hill and Passacaille labels.
Grant Herreid performs frequently on early reeds, brass, strings and voice with Hesperus, Piffaro, ARTEK, and My Lord Chamberlain's Consort, and has appeared with the Newberry Consort, the Folger Consort, King’s Noyse, Apollo’s Fire, Brandywine Baroque, and the New York Consort of Viols. He teaches at Mannes College of Music in New York, and directs the New York Continuo Collective. He is a lecturer in the performance of early opera at Yale University, where he was music director for their recent production of Cavalli’s Giasone. He is a stage director for the Accademia d’Amore baroque opera workshop with Stephen Stubbs, and has played continuo theorbo, lute and baroque guitar for the Chicago Opera Theater, Aspen Music Festival, Portland Opera, and New York City Opera, as well as the opera programs at Julliard, Curtis, and Mannes conservatories. Grant has created and directed several theatrical early music shows, and he devotes much of his time to exploring the esoteric unwritten traditions of medieval, Renaissance, and baroque music with Ex Umbris and the plucked-string group Ensemble Viscera.
In sixth grade Greg Ingles decided he wanted to play a brass instrument in band, but since his older sister already played the French horn, he decided to take up the trombone. Greg attended high school at the Interlochen Arts Academy and went on to graduate college from the Oberlin Conservatory. Two days after graduation Greg won the position of Solo Trombone in the Hofer Symphoniker in Hof, Germany. He returned to the United States and completed both a Master’s and Doctorate degree in trombone performance at SUNY Stony Brook. It was during his graduate work that Greg became acquainted with the sackbut and historical performance. Soon after beginning his early music studies Greg became a member of Piffaro, the Renaissance Band. He has since played with such ensembles as the American Bach Soloists, Chatham Baroque, Chiaroscuro, Concerto Palatino, and Tafelmusik. Greg is also a member of Ciaramella and has just completed a recording with this group on the Yarlung Records label. Mr. Ingles has also recorded with Anakekta, Centaur, Dorian, Kleos, and reZound. Greg is the adjunct trombone professor at Hofstra University and also teaches sackbut at the Madison Early Music Festival each summer.
Joan Kimball, co-director and a founding member of the ensemble, gave full time to early music performance in 1980 after a number of years as an educator. She teaches recorder and early winds to children and adults, is on the music faculty of The Philadelphia School, an elementary and middle school, where she has a full roster of private recorder students and recorder ensembles, and organizes Piffaro’s educational programs. In addition, she collaborates with instrument maker Joel Robinson of New York City on the construction of Medieval and Renaissance bagpipes and is a maker of double reeds for Renaissance shawms, dulcians and capped winds. Joan teaches bagpipe, recorder and double reed classes at summer music workshops and festivals. In addition to her recordings with Piffaro she can also be heard on Vanguard Classical, Eudora and Vox Amadeus.
Originally from Israel, recorder player Daphna Mor began her music studies at the age of eight.
She has performed throughout Europe, Israel and the United States, giving solo recitals, as well as concerts with groups such as The New York Collegium and the Washington Bach Ensemble. She has also won numerous awards: First Prize in the Settimane Musicali de Lugano Solo Competition and twice the winner of the Boston Conservatory Concerto Competition, in 1996 and in 2000. Daphna received her Bachelor of Music degree from the Boston Conservatory, is a graduate of Thelma Yelin School for the Arts, and was awarded the prestigious status of "Privileged Musician" for her army service with the Israeli Defense Force. A strong advocate for contemporary music for the recorder, Daphna has premiered numerous new pieces for solo recorder and ensembles, and is a founding member of The New Amsterdam Recorder Trio. In addition, she has been involved in recording and performances of film scoring, popular, and world music, and as a world music musician has been seen on prestigious stages as 'Summer Stage-Central Park',NY, and in festivals throughout the United States, and in Canada, Poland, Germany, Slovenia, Austria, Greece and Israel. Daphna has been involved in education and outreach, working with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The New York Collegium. She also teaches and coaches at early music workshops and festivals.
Christa Patton specializes in early wind instruments as well as historical harps and has toured the Americas, Europe and Japan with New York's Ensemble for Early Music, Ex Umbris and Piffaro the Renaissance band. As a baroque harpist Christa has appeared with Apollo’s Fire, The King’s Noyse, The Toronto Consort, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, La Nef, and ARTEK as well as productions of Monteverdi’s “Ulisse”, “Poppea”, and “L’Orfeo” with the New York City Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, Tafelmusik, and Opera Atelier. Christa has led workshops at the Madison Early Music Festival, Pinewoods Early Music Camp, and the Medieval Summer Institute at the Longy School of Music. A former Fulbright scholar, Christa studied the Italian baroque harp at the Civica Scuola di Musica in Milan, Italy with historical harp specialist, Mara Galassi. She is currently pursuing a Doctorate at SUNY Stony Brook with early keyboard specialist, Arthur Haas.
Robert Wiemken, a French hornist for many years before turning to early music and period instrument performance, is now a multi-instrumentalist, focusing on the recorders and double reed instruments of the late Medieval through the Baroque periods, most notably the Renaissance shawm and dulcian, or curtal, and the Baroque bassoon. He is currently co-director of Piffaro, and also directs the early music ensembles at Temple University’s Esther Boyer College of Music and Dance in Philadelphia. He has performed with numerous ensembles, including New York’s Ensemble for Early Music, the Grande Band, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, King’s Noyse, the Newberry Consort, the Folger Consort, the Philadelphia Classical Symphony, Brandywine Baroque Orchestra and others. He has recorded on the Newport Classics, Deutsche Grammophon Archiv Produktion, Dorian Records, Vanguard Classics, Windham Hill, Pasacaille and Eufoda labels. He is also a noted reed maker, specializing in the double reeds of the medieval through Baroque periods.
Tom Zajac has performed on historic winds and percussion as a member of several groups throughout the years-Piffaro, Ex Umbris, the Waverly Consort and New York’s Ensemble for Early Music-touring extensively and appearing in concert series and festivals in Hong Kong, Guam, Australia, Israel, Colombia, Mexico, and throughout Europe and the United States. As a guest artist Tom appears frequently with the Folger Consort, King’s Noyse, Newberry Consort, Hesperus, and other leading US ensembles. As a director, Tom has an abiding interest in the confluence of historical and socio-cultural approaches to music making, working happily in the realm where time and place meet. He has done research and performance projects on Colonial Latin-American music as well as on the music of the three religious cultures of pre-expulsion Spain, and music in Eastern Europe, from Poland to the Ottoman court of 16th to 19th-century Turkey. Recent performance projects include a 13th-century music-theater piece, the Tournoi de Chauvency with the French-American company Ensemble Aziman, and work as percussionist for recent Boston Early Music Festival opera productions. Tom directs the Medieval/Renaissance week of the San Francisco Early Music Society workshops in Sonoma, CA, teaches at other workshops throughout the US, and directs the early music ensembles at Wellesley College near his home in Boston.
Program Notes
The term “wait” variously spelled “wayt” or “wayte”, from the old French “gaite”, carried a variety of meanings throughout its history. In the 13th and 14th centuries it referred to the watchman who stood at the walled gate of a town or castle and blew a horn to signal the approach of people requesting admittance. This “wait” however was not considered a musician. There is good evidence that the horn the watchman played was at least by the late 14th century a shawm. Thus, references to a “wayte-pipe”, as in the Black Book of the Exchequer, most certainly indicate a treble size of the shawm family. It followed then that any player of the treble shawm could be called a “wait”, whether a watchman or not. By the 15th century the plural of the term was in general use to indicate the group of civic minstrels employed by the towns and courts throughout Renaissance England.
The waits’ principal instruments, in harmony with the historical evolution of the word, were those of the loud band, including first shawms, but then adding slide trumpet and eventually sackbuts. In the late 15th century a five-part ensemble would have been comprised of three shawms and two sackbuts. By the 16th century, with the emergence of new instruments, the waits expanded their arsenals, as did the continental bands, with dulcians, recorders, krumhorns and cornetti, and the members often doubled on stringed instruments as well, especially lute and harp, but occasionally also viola da gamba and fiddle. Some of these bands also included singers, or the band members themselves sang in addition to their instrumental responsibilities. It is this later ramification of the London waits, the latter half of the 16th century into the early 17th, that is the focus of this program.
The repertoire available to these waits was extensive. Like their forebears both in England and on the continent, vocal music offered them a considerable amount of repertoire, including hymns, motets, madrigals and other secular song types. But, by the end of the 16th century these waits could turn to a sizeable amount of composed, instrumental music as well, in the form of fantasias, dances both solo and ensemble, masquing airs, canons and the like. One manuscript in particular, currently housed in the Fitzwilliam Library in London, purports to contain repertoire specifically for the waits, as opposed to other instrumental ensembles prominent at the time, such as the viola da gamba consort, for which there exists a great wealth of music, or the broken consort so popular in England. Called, subsequently, the Fitzwilliam ‘Wind Band’ manuscript, the collection provides one clear indication of what these waits were playing. Much of the music is in six parts, or more, reflecting the larger size of the ensembles during this period. The Pavane and Almandes that end the first half of the program come from this important source.
The first piece on the program harks back, perhaps, to the earlier historical function of the waits as signal men. Robert Parson’s A Song Called Trumpets, unlike most English instrumental consort music of the mid-16th century, is laid out with two treble and two bass voices, with two equal sized inner voices as well. The relatively narrow and low tessitura of each of the voices suggests that the piece was written with wind instruments in mind, rather than, say, members of the viola da gamba family. In the fashion of much continental wind playing of the time, we have taken the piece up a fifth from its original pitch, where it might surely have been intended to have been played, so that the treble shawms actually sound in the higher register that trumpets frequented, where it serves as a striking herald of things to come.
Parsons was a highly regarded composer of his time who worked for a period of his life in London. His compositions proved influential on many of the later 16th c. English composers, especially William Byrd. Unfortunately, Parsons fell victim, still a young man, to a boating accident while navigating the flood-prone river crossing at Newark. A comment by a Robert Dow in the late 1580’s reflects what was perhaps the common reaction throughout the musical world to this unfortunate event.
Qui tantus primo Parsone in flore fuisti,(Parsons, you who were so great in the first flower of life,
Quantus in autumno in morere fores.How great you would have been in [life’s] autumn, if you had not died.)
One composer who made it well into the autumn of his life was William Byrd, a figure whose reputation and works hardly need introduction to early music devotees. Though his date of birth is never mentioned, Byrd makes the comment in his will of November, 1622, that he was ‘in the 80th yeare of myne age’, which puts his birth somewhere in 1543. So great was the impact of this musical genius that he was named by one admirer ‘Brittanicae Musicae Parens’, or ‘Father of British music’. The declaration of the Cheque Book of the Chapel Royal, in recording the composer’s death, took this one step further and called him simply ‘a Father of Musick’.
Of Byrd’s two Latin-texted motets on this program, the 5-part Siderum rector, is the earliest, published in his Cantiones, quae ab argumento sacrae vocantur (London, 1575), shortly after he was sworn in as Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, succeeding Parsons following his accidental death. The six-part Domine non sum dignus, particularly apt for performance by the waits, comes from a later publication, the Liber primus sacrarum cantionum [Cantiones sacrae] of 1589, and exhibits Byrd’s mastery over the form. With these motets he is said to have achieved nothing less than the naturalization of the high Renaissance church style in the language of English music.
Another of Byrd’s older contemporaries and major influences was Thomas Tallis. Born around 1505, Tallis quickly assumed positions of importance in the world of English music and became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal as early perhaps as 1537. As a result, his tenure of service to the royal household spanned the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary Tudor and more than half the reign of Elizabeth I. A couplet from his epitaph points to a humble and unassuming man who was undoubtedly deeply respected, both by the four monarchs for whom he worked and by many generations of church musicians afterward.
As he dyd lyve, so also did he dy,
In myld and quyet Sort (O! happy Man)
His O nata lux de lumine perhaps reflects history’s estimation of the man that Tallis was.
If Tallis and Byrd were influenced by the Flemish style of northern polyphony that was the international language of mass and motet, then another composer on this program, Thomas Weelkes, found himself drawn to the new Italian madrigal, already fully adopted by Thomas Morley. Yet Weelkes’ contributions to the genre surpassed Morley’s easy fluency with the style. The three-voiced example, Cease sorrows now, comes from a 1597 publication, Weelkes’ first, that broke new ground for the English version of this native Italian form. With this piece, and its radical pathos and chromaticism, Weelkes is said to have introduced a new expressive experience into English composition.
The four madrigals by Weelkes that make up the set in the second half of the program tell a story of sorts based on the texts of the pieces. We cannot perform the words for you, though the music itself reflects the sentiments housed in them. Any good English wait would have tried to convey these sentiments in his instrumental performance of the pieces, as we attempt in this concert. The first, Tan ta ra ran tara, cryes Mars (1608) itself imitates the sounds of battle shawms or trumpets, pitting Mars against Venus in the eternal struggle of man and woman in the metaphor of love as conflict. The second piece, Young Cupid hath proclaim’d a bloody war (1597), continues the love-is-war metaphor, in particular Cupid’s assault on fair Cloris who shuns love’s advances and whose beauty Cupid fears. Cease sorrows now (1597) expresses the mournful plaint and hopeless despair of one of the battle’s victims as he bids a faint farewell to love and life. Finally, Three times a day (1600) asserts that the struggle will always continue, as the male speaker exclaims his thrice daily prayer that he may gaze on his Thoralis and hopes eternally that he may please and not offend and that she will return his love.
While Weelkes was clearly one of the masters of the madrigal form, numerous other composers tried their hand at it as well. As in his works, variations on the theme of love provided the majority of madrigals with texts, but numerous others reflected themes of nature, especially about birds. In our set of “bird” pieces in the first half, the nightingale in Thomas Bateson’s trio mournfully bewails its fate in a sad minor mode, and running musical figures in Robert Jones’ I come, sweet birds, express the swiftness of flight.
Finally, members of the waits most assuredly found themselves involved in the great courtly and theatrical productions within English society, the Masques. Based on allegorical or mythological themes and involving poetry, music and elaborate sets, these entertainments drew upon the best and finest of the musicians employed in the various ensembles of the towns, courts and cathedrals. As dancing was a major aspect of these entertainments, so ensembles like the waits could be called upon collectively to perform a pavane or gaillard or almande, such as those that end the first half. However, there were published a good number of ‘masquing tunes’ for a solo voice, with or without accompaniment, that surely decorated the events at various moments. Pieces like Cupararee or Graysin, The Standing Masque, and The Nobleman, together with the antimasques, The Goates Masque and The Second Witch’s Dance, as well as the two pieces that end the concert, Goddesses and La Bounette offer a brief glimpse into this very English world of popular entertainment.
Bob Wiemken
