Program - Krannert Center for the Performing Arts

PROGRAM NOTES
Sebastián de Vivanco
Born circa 1551 in Ávila, Spain
Died October 26, 1622, in Salamanca, Spain
Veni, dilecte mi
Sicut lilium inter spinas
The walled city of Ávila, in the Castile and León
region in central Spain, was the birthplace of three
important Renaissance figures: composers Tomás
Luis de Victoria and Sebastián de Vivanco and
Spanish mystic Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582).
Separated in age by only three years, Victoria and
Vivanco undoubtedly received their earliest musical
training from the same teachers. But unlike Victoria,
whose career was centered in Rome, Vivanco
remained in Spain throughout his life. After tenures
at the cathedrals of Lérida (in Catalonia) and Segovia
(just north of Ávila), he was invited to become
Francisco Guerrero’s assistant in Seville in 1587. He
went so far as to visit the aging master in Seville but
instead accepted a position as maestro de capilla at
Ávila Cathedral. In 1602, Vivanco was appointed to a
similar post in Salamanca but left after less than a
year to accept a professorship at the University of
Salamanca, the oldest university in Spain. It was
through his connections there that he was able to
publish three lavish volumes of his works. Although
his music is virtually unknown today, Vivanco was one
of the leading composers of his time—a master of
counterpoint who imbued his works with deep
emotional sentiment.
mystical rapture through his use of lush suspensions
and sharply contrasting harmonies between the
choirs. The declamatory style indicates a familiarity
with the work of his Italian counterparts, most
notably Giovanni Gabrieli.
Tomás Luis de Victoria
Born 1548 in Ávila, Spain
Died August 20, 1611, in Madrid, Spain
Nigra sum sed formosa
The music of Renaissance Spain is inexorably linked
with Italy, primarily because so many of Spain’s
composers traveled there to work and study.
Composer and organist Tomás Luis de Victoria was
born in Ávila and received training as a chorister in
the cathedral there. Victoria was so promising that
he was sent to Rome at age 16 to study at Collegio
Germanico. It is possible that he was tutored by the
great Italian master Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina,
who was teaching at the nearby seminary. Victoria
was certainly one of the few composers in Rome
able to master the subtleties of Palestrina’s style.
Victoria was ordained to the priesthood in 1575 but
continued to compose throughout his life, holding a
variety of posts in Italy and, from 1587 until his
death, his native Spain. Victoria’s many masses,
motets, and other religious compositions brought
him a great deal of fame, certainly enhanced by his
ability to publish most of his works. All but one of
the eight volumes of his Opera Omnia consist
entirely of music published during his lifetime.
the liturgical use for this piece as he published it in
1576, assigning the motet “de Beata Virgine,” or “of
the Blessed Virgin.”
Maurice Duruflé
Born January 11, 1902, in Louviers, France
Died June 16, 1986, in Louveciennes, France
Ubi caritas
Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur
Born November 19, 1908, in Paris, France
Died July 2, 2002, in Paris, France
Épithalame
Plainsong, or Gregorian chant (named after Pope
Gregory I, who died in 604), is the term applied to
the vast repertoire of liturgical chant assembled over
the course of several centuries, roughly AD 700-
1300. There are almost 3,000 extant chants in the
Gregorian repertoire, with texts specific to each day
of the Roman Catholic Church’s liturgical year.
Composers Maurice Duruflé and Jean-Yves Daniel-
Lesur both utilized the flowing melodies of Gregorian
chant in their choral works.
Duruflé, a French composer and organist, was born
in Louviers in 1902. Beginning in 1920, he studied at
the Paris Conservatory, where he was later appointed
professor of harmony (a position he held until 1969).
He was very critical of his own compositions and
wrote very few works as a result. Duruflé had a
unique ability to maintain the supple flow of a
Gregorian chant melody while coloring it with modal
harmonies and polyphony. This technique is
prevalent in Ubi caritas (Where Charity Is), one of his
most performed compositions and the first in a set of
four choral pieces called Quatre motets sur des
thèmes grégoriens (Four Motets on Gregorian
Themes). Its text is a hymn of the early Western
church now most often heard on Holy Thursday,
during Eucharistic Adoration, and at weddings.
Duruflé combines the traditional Gregorian chant
melody with the refrain and first stanza of the hymn.
Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur, a French composer and
teacher, was born in Paris in 1908. His mother was a
composer and a student of Charles Tournemire, from
whom Daniel-Lesur took early organ and composition
lessons. He studied further at the Paris Conservatory.
In 1936, Daniel-Lesur was—along with Olivier
Messiaen, André Jolivet, Yves Baudrier, and Pierre
Schaeffer—a founding member of the group La
Jeune France (Young France), dedicated to a “return
to the human” and opposed to the neo-classicism
then prevailing in Paris. His collected works include
some 50 mélodies, three operas, four cantatas, a
mass, and more than 30 folk song arrangements, all
speaking to his love of the human voice. Le Cantique
des cantiques (The Song of Songs) was commissioned
in 1952 by Radio France. In Épithalame (the word
denotes a wedding-day poem), the composer
masterfully weaves together the Gregorian chant Veni
sponsa Christi (Come, Bride of Christ) with one of the
most beloved verses from The Song of Songs—“Set
me as a seal on your heart”—in an undulating
crescendo to a final, dramatic climax.
Claudin de Sermisy
Born circa 1490 in France
Died October 13, 1562, in Paris, France
Tant que vivray
Clément Janequin
Born circa 1485 in Châtellerault, France
Died 1558 in Paris, France
Toutes les nuits
The two selections, published in a volume of his
Claude Le Jeune
motets from 1610 and dedicated to the Blessed
Born circa 1528 in Valenciennes, France
Virgin Mary, are all scored for eight voices in two In Nigra sum sed formosa, Victoria sets text from
Died September 26, 1600, in Paris, France
four-voice choirs. Veni, dilecte mi and Sicut lilium The Song of Songs. The Catholic Church of the
Revoici venir du printemps
inter spinas employ texts from The Song of Songs, a Middle Ages and the Renaissance tended to
Madrigals were the popular songs of the
book of the Bible closely associated with the Spanish interpret this text as an allegorical one about the
Renaissance. They were sung by amateurs and
mystics. Quite controversial at the time, the sect, led Virgin Mary, assigning the texts to Marian feasts.
professionals alike in a variety of settings. The texts
by Teresa of Ávila, reinterpreted the quasi-erotic This particular text is used as an Antiphon for
often dealt with everyday matters, including food
poetry as a metaphor for the Christian Church’s role Second Vespers of the major Marian feasts. Victoria
and drink, the pursuit of love, and death. The
as the bride of Christ. Vivanco’s settings portray the apparently intended for this connection to Mary in
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