This programme pays tribute to Orlando Gibbons (ca 1583-1625), a composer whose fourth centenary of the death we are celebrating this year, to his musical environment across the Channel and, spanning a century, to another giant, George Frideric Handel (1685-1759).
The 1620s marked a remarkable flowering of organ music, and keyboard music in general, throughout Europe. There are countless masterpieces – by Frescobaldi in Italy, Correa de Arauxo in Spain, Titelouze in France, Sweelinck in the Netherlands and the countless authors of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book in England, which curiously included the famous Sweelinck, organist of the Old Church of Amsterdam. It has to be said that the English Renaissance had begun under the reign of Henry VIII (1509-1547), a very fine musician, organist, harpsichordist and flautist, who owned a collection of three hundred richly decorated instruments. His daughter Elizabeth I enjoyed a reign lasting forty-five years (1558-1603), during which small ensembles of viols and flutes, known as “consorts”, flourished, accompanied by a remarkable profusion of vocal music, particularly religious, and extraordinary keyboard pieces (mainly virginal, harpsichord and organ). We are amazed by the birth of a new keyboard school, borrowing from vocal polyphony, but above all flourishing in new virtuoso and inventive formulas. This nascent style was probably influenced by the presence of Antonio de Cabezon, a blind organist at the court of Charles V and later Philip II, who travelled with the sovereigns and passed on to the English school a flourishing tradition originating, in particular, from Flanders. As it is, Cabezon had accompanied Philip II during his stay in London, which lasted almost a year and a half, at the time of his marriage to Mary Tudor in 1554.
Orlando Gibbons was the son of William Gibbons, who was director of music at Cambridge and Oxford, and the brother of the choirmaster at King’s College. He became court keyboardist in 1603 and organist of the Chapel Royal two years later. He then resided at Westminster, where he held the keyboards from 1623. Gibbons was the favourite musician of pianist Glenn Gould. Pierre Boulez also had scores by Gibbons and other Elizabethan composers on his piano and, according to Bruno Mantovani, relished in playing them.
Tonight we’ll hear pieces with a wide variety of contours. Italian Ground is music based on an obstinate bass, a single principle over which Gibbons’ instrumental imagination unfolds. A French Ayre is a secular polyphony. And finally, the Pavin is a slow two-beat dance.
Peter Philips (1561-1628) was, because of his Catholic faith which led him to the priesthood, a tireless traveller during the first part of his life. He journeyed to Rome, Genoa and eventually settled in Flanders, where he met Sweelinck. A prolific composer of vocal music, he adapted some of his own madrigals for the keyboard, which are true polyphonic poems, as here in the sublime Fece da voi, enriched with instrumental figures.
John Bull (ca 1562-1628) was, among other things, an organ builder. He was expelled from England because of his private life, considered too promiscuous, and settled in the Netherlands. He ended his brilliant career in Antwerp. Bull’s Goodnight is a lovely, skillful “ground” (recurring melodic pattern) that foreshadows Bach’s Goldberg Variations, though obviously on a more modest scale, but in the same tone.
Little is known about the career of Giles Farnaby (1563-1640), author of fifty-three known pieces for keyboard to date. Loth to Depart expresses the melancholy of departure, with a small suite of increasingly elaborate variations on a somewhat haunting polyphony that plays on the ambiguity between two modes.
William Byrd (ca 1540-1623) was a pupil and later collaborator of the prestigious Thomas Tallis. Although a devout Catholic, he enjoyed the support and protection of the Queen. The Bells is one of the first pieces in a genre that would delight the French in the following centuries, imitating the sounds of carillons.
Let’s skip a century and stay in London, with one of the few Baroque composers recorded by Pierre Boulez, namely George Frideric Handel. A cosmopolitan musician, he started out as an organist before composing operas and then oratorios in England. The latter were often interspersed with Organ concertos, performed by the virtuoso himself. These brilliant scores were remarkably successful, so much so that when they were published Handel deleted the most sought-after passages, reserving them for his own use in performances. He also wrote a number of less developed but beautiful pieces, notably Fugues, which make us regret that his output for the organ is not more extensive.
This evening sketches out two golden ages of instrumental music. The development of a truly autonomous repertoire for the keyboard is matched by the ebullience of an eloquent Baroque style inspired by Italy – journeys through time and space!
Éric Lebrun
