The Norwegian Soloists’ Choir performs Monteverdi, Xenakis, Messiaen and von Bingen, among others, at this year’s Bergen International Festival. Learn more about the works and composers here.
The Norwegian Soloists' Choir. PHOTO: ANNIKEN C. MOHR
Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643):
From Selva morale e spirituale
Beatus Vir, SV 268
Dixit Dominus, SV 264
Three years before his death Claudio Monteverdi summed up his work as a composer of sacred music in the collection Selva morale e spirituale, which consists of some thirty pieces for solo voice or choir, in most cases accompanied by instruments. He had formerly published Sacrae cantiunculae tribus vocibus (more than 20 compositions), Madrigali spirituali a 4 voci (ten, not all extant), and Sanctissimae Virgini missa senis vocibus, which consists of Missa da cappella a 6 voci and his masterpiece in fourteen movements, Vespro della Beata Vergine.
Monteverdi was born in Cremona, and worked in Mantua and subsequently in Venice (as master of music in St Mark’s Cathedral). He restored the quality of music in St Mark’s, which had declined under his predecessor. His secular madrigals are more varied and poignant than those of his contemporaries. If we add to these achievements the fact that he demonstrated the potential of the opera as an art form, there can be little doubt that he is one of the most important figures in the history of music.
The music in Selva morale e spirituale is highly varied, emanating as it does from the entire span of Monteverdi’s career. The collection contains several compositions over the same text: for instance there are three versions of Beatus vir and four of Dixit Dominus. The stylistic variety may be a result of the fact that he did not write church music at the time of his greatest development as a musician. Thus his style did not develop as part of a continuous tradition; rather it shows many signs of having developed completely independently of the prevalent conventions of the time.
Heinrich Schütz’s Musikalische Exequien (Funeral Music) was written as a tribute to an honest music-loving ruler. Schütz came from Köstritz in the small state of Reuss at Gera in Saxony, where he had enjoyed good relations with the reigning prince, Heinrich Posthumus. Later, as head of the most important musical establishment in protestant Germany – the court of Elector Johann Georg of Saxony – he never forgot his home town, and in 1617 he assisted Prince Heinrich by totally reorganising musical practice in Gera – not only ceremonial music and music for entertainment at the court, but also music for the population at large and educational music in schools.
Schütz spent two periods of study in Venice, where he received tuition from Claudio Monteverdi and composed his extensive work Symphoniae sacrae. He was attached to the court of King Christian IV of Denmark on two occasions, and it was on his return from his first period in Copenhagen that Heinrich Posthumus died in the December of 1635. He was commissioned by the late prince’s widow and son to compose what was to be his greatest contribution to the genre of funeral music.
Musicalische Exequien consists of a Concert in Form einer teutschen Messe, a motet and a collection of hymns to biblical texts. The texts in the first section were identical to inscriptions on the coffin of the deceased; the motet shares its theme with the eulogy and the final sequence combines Simeon’s Song (Nunc Dimittis) with passages from the Book of Revelations and the Proverbs of Solomon.
A motley background and comprehensive experience are typical characteristics of the composer Iannis Xenakis. He was born in Romania of Greek parents and became a French citizen. He trained as an engineer in Greece while teaching himself music. At the start of World War II he joined the resistance and in January 1945 he was wounded, lost the sight of one eye, was captured and condemned to death, but escaped and tried to get to the USA.
He got no further than Paris, where he settled in 1947, meeting the composers Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud and Olivier Messiaen. Although Xenakis impressed Messiaen with his ideas and received encouragment from him, it was his meeting with the famous architect Le Corbusier that was most fruitful. Their collaboration lasted for thirteen years, and included French housing projects, a stadium in Baghdad and one of the pavilions at the Brussels World Fair in 1958.
Subsequently Xenakis started to use mathematical and architectural models in his compositions. He claimed that music based on mathematics would transpire to be more enduring than music based on the random impulses of the composer. Unlike the American composer John Cage (1912–1992), who expected the performer to choose from several options, he maintained that there is no randomness in music. He often expressed a wish to find ‘a new open path’.
His works include orchestral music, choral music, chamber music, piano music and electronic music. Nuits for three sopranos, three altos, three tenors and three basses from 1967–69 is dedicated to ‘unknown political prisoners and the thousands of forgotten ones whose names are lost’.
When the organist at the great Trinity Church in Paris died in July 1931 his deputy, Olivier Messiaen, whose great talent was apparent even then at the age of 22, took over the position, the youngest ever to take on such a prestigious post. He had graduated with distinction from the Paris Conservatoire the year before. The church was not the most momentous in the city, but it had a particularly good organ, and Messiaen continued to work there for over forty years.
In fact he had already made the decision to make his name as a composer – not necessarily of organ music, an instrument for which he wrote comparatively little in the 1930s. Instead he concentrated on orchestral works and vocal compositions. Among works from this period we find Le tombeau resplendissant and L’ascension for orchestra, the song cycle Poèmes pour Mi and Chants de terre et de ciel for soprano and piano.
In 1932 he married Claire Delbos (nicknamed Mi), who composed and played the violin. Five years later she gave birth to their son Pascal. In the meantime he had orchestrated Poèmes pour Mi and composed Fêtes des belles eaux for the electronic instrument ondes martenot and the short communion motet O sacrum convivium! for choir.
Hildegard von Bingen came from aristocratic stock in Rheinhessen, and as the tenth child of her parents she was given up to ecclestiastical service. After living in the Benedictine convent Disibodenberg for seven years she took holy orders at the age of fifteen, and in 1136 she took over as prioress. Ten years later she founded the convent Rupertsberg at Bingen. Over the years she corresponded with the pope, emperors, kings, archbishops, abbots and laymen, and became involved in politics and diplomatic matters. She is described first and foremost as a religious mystic and author, and her writings cover a wide range: prophecies, visions, medicinal and other scientific dissertations and not least poetry which has survived along with the music that she set to it.
Her mystery play Ordo virtutum, which treats the struggle for the soul of a woman between the virtues and the devil, consists of over eighty different tunes. Around 1150 she put together the rest of her compositions in Symphoniae armonie celestium revelationum (The Harmonic Euphony of Heavenly Revelations), some seventy works, most of which are labelled antiphon, response, sequence or hymn. Together they form a liturgical cycle. O vis eternitatis is an antiphon performed by two choruses.
Posterity has held divergent opinions of Hildegard’s competence as a lyricist and composer. Her colourful imagery and impulsive melodies have been seen as inspired by some commentators and inelegant by others. Some find her songs repetitive and unimaginative while others hear them as inspired miniatures.
Text: Hans H Rowe
English version: Roger Martin