John Sheppard: Media vita - stile antico

John Sheppard: Media vita & other liturgical works - stile antico

Harmonia Mundi USA HMU 807509

John Sheppard (c. 1515-1558)
Responsory: Gaude, gaude, gaude Maria
The Lord's Prayer
Anthem: I give you a new commandment
Antiphon: Media vita
Anthem: Christ rising again
Anthem: Haiste thee, o God
Hymn: Te Deum


Performers:
stile antico:
Helen Ashby, Kate Ashby, Rebecca Hickey. sopranos
Emma Ashby, Eleanor Harries, Carris Jones. altos
Jim Clements, Julian Forbes, Andrew Griffiths, Benedict Hymas, tenors
Will Dawes, David Stuart, baritons
Oliver Hunt, Matthew O'Donovan, basses

Recording site and date:
All Hallows Church, Gospel Oak, London, England [March 2009]
Released: January 2010

It's been more than 20 years since the Tallis Scholars recorded the dense, hypnotic antiphon Media vita by John Sheppard (c.1515-1558). It was a groundbreaking recording at the time. This disc by the young British group Stile Antico is no less so - in part because it is a sign that the torch has passed to a younger generation of singers.

Media Vita is the fourth CD from this amazing, Grammy-nominated group of six women and eight men. Their albums have been charting on Billboard, they toured with Sting as part of his John Dowland project, and they have won a host of prizes. They perform without a conductor and they reconstruct and prepare their own performing editions. Critics have been falling over themselves to praise Stile Antico's tone, blend, intensity, style, dynamics,, phrasing, insight, historical sense - just about everything that makes an early music vocal group great - and I willingly join that heap. In fact, this CD is extremely difficult to review because it is, well, perfect. Even the engineering is perfect - just the right amount of natural reverb and slow decay on the sound.

Media Vita, the antiphon, is Sheppard's 25-minute plea for a peaceful demise (it begins, "In the midst of live, we are in death"). It's an intense, wickedly difficult piece. The beginning, in particular, is so dense that is washes over you in waves, almost like a group of Tibetan monks chanting. As sung by Stile Antico, you are transported inside the music, swept up by its transcendence.

The CD also includes three English anthems, a setting of The Lord's Prayer, and a latin responsory (Gaude, gaude, gaude Maria virgo) and hymn (Te Deum). In each, Stile Antico cuts to the heart of the text and music, presenting both aspects perfectly sung, perfectly felt, perfect in every way.

Beth Adelman, Early Music America

The early life of John Sheppard (c.1515-1558) remains a mystery. Tradition holds that he was a chorister at St Paul's Cathedral, but the first time he appears with any certainty is on his appointment to the post of Informator Choristarum at Magdalen College, Oxford in 1543. He left Magdalen in 1548 to become a 'Gentleman of the Chapel Royal', though the exact date of his taking up this post is uncertain. He seems to have maintained some unofficial association with Magdalen in the 1550s, though he is not to be confused with the unruly Richard Shepper, a fellow of Magdalen, whose violent physical abuse of young boys on two occasions in 1555 has at times been erroneously attributed to the composer.

Sheppard can certainly be counted amongst the latecomers in the modern revival of sixteenth-century music; it has only been in the last two or three decades that his music has been performed or recorded in any quantity, and even now his reputation still has a good deal of catching-up to do. This is in stark contrast to his contemporary in the Chapel Royal Thomas Tallis, for example, whose music has been in the British choral repertoire for over a century.

There are several reasons for this apparent neglect. First, Sheppard's music survives almost exclusively in manuscript form; much of Tallis's music was published. Secondly, many of his Latin works are preserved in an incomplete source, requiring time-consuming editorial reconstruction in order to produce performing editions. As a result, these works did not make it into the original Tudor Church Music edition in the 1920s, because the project was abandoned on financial grounds after only ten of the projected twenty volumes had been completed. Thirdly, the successful resurgence of many Tudor composers partly rested on their English anthems which, until recent decades, were far more welcome in the Anglican liturgy than Latin motets. Although some enduring anthems have lasted from Edward VI's time (1547-53), it was really under Elizabeth that the Tudor anthem reached its zenith; Sheppard died barely a month after Elizabeth's accession. Fourthly, Sheppard's music is frequently simply more difficult to sing than that of his contemporaries, often spanning a vast vocal range, with disjunct vocal lines and unexpected harmonic progressions common features; furthermore, he had a penchant for writing music in many voice parts: six is common in the Latin motets, and he further subdivides the parts on a regular basis.

That Sheppard can be ranked amongst the very finest composers of his generation, however, is in no doubt. His musical style is bold, inventive, and thoroughly individual. His counterpoint is often dense, more concerned with the colourful interweaving of his parts and the harmonic effect than with strict imitative technique.

This programme presents a sample of his work in different liturgical genres. As a general principle, the Latin works date from either the reign of Mary I (1553-58) or Henry VIII (up to 1547). Of the three included here, the Te Deum seems the most likely candidate for an earlier date of composition on stylistic grounds, while Gaude, gaude, gaude Maria and Media vita probably date from the 1550s. These Latin pieces provide the greatest scope for large-scale composition, and each one is based on a plainchant melody presented as a monorhythmic cantus firmus, around which Sheppard weaves intricate counterpoint. By contrast, the English-texted anthems —probably all Edwardine with the possible exception of The Lord's Prayer— reflect the Protestant desire for textual clarity epitomised by Archbishop Cranmer's personal preference for syllabic word setting.

The colossal antiphon Media vita ranks amongst the largest-scale pieces of the entire century, and is certainly amongst the most powerful in terms of its cumulative emotive effect. It is a setting of a Lenten Nunc Dimittis antiphon at Compline — but its scale seems to point beyond this liturgical purpose alone; it must surely have been written with a particular event in mind. As Richard Turbet has speculated, it may have been written in memory of Ludford, who died in the summer of 1557, and whom, as a fellow parishioner of St Margaret's, Westminster, Sheppard must have known well. Alternatively, the influenza epidemic of 1557-59 — the deadliest to hit London since the Black Death, and quite probably the cause of Sheppard's own death — may well have provided the impetus for this most soul-searching of pieces [1]. Its gravitas is evident from the very opening; indeed, Sheppard could hardly have gone to greater lengths to give the piece more weightiness: it is one of only a few works in which he presents the cantus firmus in breves rather than semibreves. Furthermore, the full sections of the piece are notated in double-length note values compared with the shorter passages for reduced forces, suggesting that a slow tempo is envisaged. The Nunc Dimittis itself is presented in simple plainchant, as would have been the liturgical custom in such an antiphon.

Equal in richness, but wholly different in mood is the magnificent responsory Gaude, gaude, gaude Maria, which opens the programme. This is Sheppard at his sunniest: the texture of the full sections is warm and radiant, with luminous turns of harmony, a strikingly developed tonal sense which seems several decades ahead of its time, and colourful use of false relations. These sections are interspersed with plainchant and with gymel passages in which the upper two voices divide into four parts and are combined in turn with the bass and contratenor voices. The Te Deum, another work of impressive grandeur, is an alternatim setting of the medieval Latin hymn and the petitions from the Psalms which traditionally follow it, in which plainsong verses alternate with richly-scored polyphony in six parts. It displays notable similarities with a similar setting by John Taverner, which may well have influenced it.

Of the English anthems included, two are settings of texts which were amongst the most commonly set during Edward's reign. Christ rising again is a serenely joyful setting of the 'Easter Anthems' as prescribed in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer. I give you a new commandment is stylistically very similar, though smaller in scale, with less jubilant melodic lines, and following the 'ABB' form so popular amongst English anthems of the time. In both pieces, Sheppard employs a tightly woven imitative texture with largely syllabic word setting and passages of homophonic writing in order to ensure clear declamation of the text.

The origin of the remaining two pieces is harder to pin down. Haste thee, O God, recorded for the first time on this disc, has traditionally been attributed to Sheppard, though of the four sources, one ascribes it to Tye, whilst another gives the name Thomas Shepherd — either a mistake, or a very obscure composer about whom we know nothing else. Such conflicting attributions are commonplace in this period, but the music doesn't particularly help us here. While it seems to contain some traits in common with Sheppard's other English anthems — indeed, it is full of vigour and character, and has many appealing features — in other places it seems rather to lack his consistency of invention and contrapuntal skill; perhaps the listener should be left to reach his or her own verdict on its authenticity.

The splendid five-part setting of The Lord's Prayer is perhaps the crowning glory of Sheppard's vernacular output, and we can be grateful for its survival: it is transmitted in just one source of which only the tenor part survives. Luckily, it appears in another manuscript as an untexted viol piece; indeed, it is not inconceivable that it started off life in this form. The appearance of the same piece in two different guises in this way usually suggests that it was highly regarded by the musicians of the day, and it is not difficult to see why. The work's beautifully crafted vocal lines, carefully sustained counterpoint and sublime touches of harmonic colour place it on a par with the finest of his Latin music.

MATTHEW O'DONOVAN

More info at stile antico website

This album was originally shared by Pancho Villa on February 07, 2010