London Consorts of Winds

• William Byrd - Mass in Five Voices, Kyrie, Christe, Kyrie
• John Taverner - Western Wynde Mass, Kyrie, Christe, Kyrie
• Alan Taylor - Lugubrian Dances Nos. 1 and 2 - world premiere
• Max Brauer - Pan, Suite for Ten Winds and Double Bass
• Johann Pachelbel - Canon. arr Kevin Riley
• George Enescu - Romanian Rhapsody No1, Op11. arr Ioana Osoianu
• Giles Brindley - The Four Temperaments

---

Programme Notes

William Byrd - Mass in Five Voices

Kyrie, Christe, Kyrie

William Byrd, as a Catholic in Elizabethan and early Jacobean England, had to watch his step. In spite of being established as the most prominent musician of his time, he was repeatedly fined for his religious beliefs. His religious music, consequently, has a private character, and in fact was written for performance in small ceremonies, almost in secret, in the houses of the Catholic nobility - a far cry from the sumptuous catherdral masses written by Italian composers during the same period.

John Taverner - Western Wynde Mass

Kyrie, Christe, Kyrie

John Taverner was a composer writing during the reign of Henry VIII, and lived through many of the political and religious changes of that period, and appears now as the most prominent English composer of his time, and one who helped English music regain contact with changes taking place elsewhere in Europe. By the end of the Fifteenth Century, English music had become a conservative backwater, a far cry from a hundred years before when composers of the generation of John Dunstable represented the cutting edge of musical innnovation.

Taverner had moved on from that English conservatism, and adopted techniques such as writing a mass based on a pre-existing melody - the best example being the Western Wynde Mass, which uses a popular melody which would have been known to people of the time. The melody is always present, but while it is sometimes displayed in the top part, it can also be found in the bass or in a middle part, providing the harmonic framework for decorations around it.

Alan Taylor - Lugubrian Dances Nos. 1 and 2

Lugubria is a small province in southern Albania, whose Italianised name is the result of its many years as a colony of the Venetian Republic - abruptly terminated by the Ottoman Turkish conquest of 1776. The local Albanian majority and Greek-speaking minority have freely absorbed musical influences from these imperial cultures, borrowed musical ideas from one another, and absorbed motifs and ideas from the small Roma and Macedonian populations in some parts of the provinces, as well as from the former Ladino-speaking (mediaeval Spanish) Jewish population who lived there from their expulsion from Spain in 1493 until the Nazis came. The result is a folk music or remarkable variety, but with the common element that the songs and dances frequently end inconclusively. These dances reflect the music of this little known region.

Max Brauer, (1855-1918) was a German conductor, composer, and founder of several ensembles. Amongst his other works are two operas 'Der Lotse' (1895) and 'Morgiane' (1899), a romance for violin and piano, a sextet for wind quintet and piano, a string quartet and a string suite.

In the late nineteenth century Pan became an common figure in literature and art. He appears in poetry, in novels and children's books such as The Wind in the Willows during this period. Brauer's Pan suite consists of five movements and was first published in 1934. It is Romantic in style, and is for double wind quintet with double bass.

• 1. Entering Pan's area
• 2. Dance. Trio: Satyrs and Nymphs
• 3. Night and Phantoms
• 4. Morning song. Dance
• 5. Together - art by all musicians

The opening movement is a jolly Allegretto with a flowing melody interspersed through the ensemble. The sweet ending fades us into the second movement, marked Allegro non tanto (not so much) in a waltz-like feel. The Satyrs and Nymphs bound gracefully through dotted-rhythm motifs and triplets, with some punctuation by short, sharp notes.

Night and Phantoms starts solemnly, in the clarinet and bassoon, with sighs from the other instruments. At the Allegro Vivace, we pick up the tempo and listen to ghosts and ghouls emerging from the darkness. After the night comes the Morning song, at a walking pace the sweet clarinet and oboe sound the initial melody. The dance that follows in a canon style is reminiscent of a lederhosen-slapping affair, with all instruments having a turn at the melody.

Johann Pachelbel was a German Baroque composer, organist and teacher, famous during his lifetime for his sacred and secular music and especially for his 'Canon in D Major', originally composed for three violins and basso continuo. The Canon was originally followed by a Gigue in D Major. Pachelbel's music was influenced by southern German, Italian and French composers. His style of composition is contrapuntal with harmonic and melodic clarity.

Enescu ( 1881- 1955) is undisputedly one of Romania's greatest composers. Enescu started studying the violin at the age of 4 and at the age of seven he was admitted to the prestigious Vienna Conservatory. By the age of fourteen he became already an accomplished composer and violinist, when he moved to Paris and studied with Faure and Massenet. Enescu had a great influence on the Romanian music. He encouraged performances, lectured, conducted, wrote articles and encouraged the interest in a national tradition of concert music.

His First Rhapsody consists of a collection of folk songs, opening with a high-spirited drinking song and ending with a whirlwind.

This short piece consists of a 16-bar quotation from the 2nd movement of Schoenberg's first strictly serial work, the wind quintet op.26, followed by three variations on it. The theme is played three times with different instrumentation, the first being Schoenberg's. The first and third variations are serial, and slower than the theme. The second variation is faster, and acerbic in tone. The fourth variation in the same tempo as the theme, and is successively in the Phrygian, Lydian and Aeolian modes.

Return to the top of the page