Felix Austriae: Music from Habsburg Vienna
VOICES & INSTRUMENTS
Tutor: Gawain Glenton
Quaker Friends’ Meeting House, Lancaster
Reviewer: Gwenda Meredith
Today’s workshop with tutor Gawain Glenton promised a musical exploration of the music in Hapsburg Courts of the later 1500s. Despite severe weather warnings, which meant NWEMF were several sackbuts short, the workshop went gloriously ahead in the Quaker Meeting House, Lancaster.
A good number of NWEMF instrumentalists and singers came from all over the North West to have a great day singing and playing sumptuous music composed for the Austrian Courts, that our knowledgeable and inspirational tutor had arranged.
Gawain Glenton has been a fine champion of Early Music for several decades and has played cornetto in many parts of Europe as well as the UK. He brings his professional musicianship and knowledge about the wealth of early music to his workshops: with a light infectious energy he encourages the best of our musical selves, detailing pronunciation and understanding of text with energy and enthusiasm so we were motivated to sing and play as if preparing for concert performance. It was a joy to work on these hitherto little known pieces and hear about the historical and cultural backgrounds that the composers worked in.
We started with Nicolas Gombert’s Felix Austriae. A Franco-Flemish composer who shone musically in Holy Roman Emperor Charles V ‘s court and travelled widely to hear and absorb the greatest of European composers of the time, possibly also having been tutored by Josquin des Prez. It was interesting to hear Gawain’s colourful anecdotes and get a sense of the cultural context of his work. Next was Philippe de Monte’s piece: Gaudent in caelis animae Sanctorum (translates as In Heaven the Souls of Saints Rejoice).
Although De Monte isn’t a household name now, he was, with Lassus, a central figure of the Golden Age of Franco Flemish polyphony and an extremely prolific composer of madrigals. His polyphony develops the significance of the sung text in its expressive use. He was in Vienna, writing complex sacred and secular music which did not rely on spectacular effects, rather expressing what Ignace Bossuyt calls “delicate gems which reveal themselves to those prepared to listen.”
I was delighted to purchase a bargain priced CD of De Monte’s music, which Gawain had recorded some years ago. A joy to listen to. Zanotti’s O di Progenitori was the next piece to read. The composer was working for Rudolf II whose eccentric passions included collecting works by great artists, such as Albrecht Durer and Brueghel and the extraordinary visual trompe l’oeil portraits of Arcimboldo, encouraging astronomers Tycho Brahe and Kepler as well as astrologists and alchemists to his court. The finest craftsmen in Europe were employed to make instruments musical as well as scientific. Gawain managed to colour in some of the culture in Rudolf’s court to keep us all in the zone of the music. Zanotti’s homage to the Emperor’s great ancestry refers to Julius Caesar. Apparently Rudolf had named his child after the said Roman Emperor.
Our next piece was by the Venetian composer who worked in several Austrian courts, Andrea Gabrieli. Commissioned to write many largescale choral and instrumental works for ceremonial occasions as part of his large output, he is a more familiar composer. The piece we worked on, Felice d’Adria e dilettose rive, was dedicated to Archduke Charles of Austria. The text references to Austria but also Europe, Asia and Africa was interesting, and the style perhaps a nod to the acoustic properties of San Marco that Gabrieli delighted to compose for in his native Venice.
Finally we read Ascendo ad Patrem by Johann Stadlmayr who worked prolifically in the Austrian courts. This fine work in ten parts, with rhythmic changes from 2 to 3, was a joyous affirmative way to end the day and we finished the piece with a glorious Alleluia!
First published in the April 2023 Newsletter
