"The Little Church Around the Corner"
One East 29th Street, New York
MUSIC NOTES:
The Second Sunday of Advent - December 9, 2001
Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) was born in Oxford, and received his early musical training as a boy chorister at King's College, Cambridge. He later entered the university and took the MusB degree in 1606. Before he graduated, he had already been appointed to the Chapel Royal, an institution which he served with distinction for the rest of his unfortunately short life. The Chapel Royal is a body of priests, assistants, and musicians employed by the sovereign to perform the religious services of the sovereign and his court. Thus it is an itinerant body, which moves from place to place with the sovereign, performing services as and when required. The venues for these services could be anywhere: a palace, a cathedral, a country house, an open field. Their length also could vary considerably, depending on the time constraints of the sovereign and indeed his mood. The Service in F was composed for those occasions when a shorter service was required. Upon its publication (in Gibbons' lifetime), this straightforward and tuneful composition gained wide popularity as a service setting for parish use. After 400 years, it is still in the repertoire of cathedral, collegiate and parish choirs throughout the Anglican world.
The verse anthem (a kind of motet that alternates between solo and full choral passages) has a complex history, and was well-developed as a genre by the time of Gibbons. This is the record of John is an outstanding example of a verse anthem. Originally scored for alto solo with five viols and five-part choir, the work falls into three sections, each comprising a solo passage followed by a chorus in which words and music from the preceding solo are developed imitatively. The narrative solo passages are often designed after the contours of speech, with rising melodic lines for the questions (What art thou then? Art thou Elias?) and conversely, descending melodic lines for the responses (And he said, 'I am not.'; And he answered, 'No.'); and a subtly climactic section in the third part, set to a higher pitch than the preceding two sections, when John reveals his identity as the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, and gives the exhortation, make straight the way of the Lord. Throughout the anthem, the choir is cast in the role of a kind of audience to the soloist, repeating the substance of the narrative as if trying to come to terms with it, in turn encouraging the listener to enter into this profound encounter of John the Baptist with the priests and Levites, a pivotal event in the season of Advent.
In 1623, Gibbons was appointed organist of Westminster Abbey, and his organ-playing and organ compositions were widely acclaimed. In 1625, less than two months after arranging the music for the State Funeral of King James I in the Abbey, Gibbons himself died from a severe stroke suffered in Canterbury, while with the retinue of the new (not yet crowned) King Charles I. He is buried in Canterbury Cathedral.
The verse anthem (a kind of motet that alternates between solo and full choral passages) has a complex history, and was well-developed as a genre by the time of Gibbons. This is the record of John is an outstanding example of a verse anthem. Originally scored for alto solo with five viols and five-part choir, the work falls into three sections, each comprising a solo passage followed by a chorus in which words and music from the preceding solo are developed imitatively. The narrative solo passages are often designed after the contours of speech, with rising melodic lines for the questions (What art thou then? Art thou Elias?) and conversely, descending melodic lines for the responses (And he said, 'I am not.'; And he answered, 'No.'); and a subtly climactic section in the third part, set to a higher pitch than the preceding two sections, when John reveals his identity as the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, and gives the exhortation, make straight the way of the Lord. Throughout the anthem, the choir is cast in the role of a kind of audience to the soloist, repeating the substance of the narrative as if trying to come to terms with it, in turn encouraging the listener to enter into this profound encounter of John the Baptist with the priests and Levites, a pivotal event in the season of Advent.
In 1623, Gibbons was appointed organist of Westminster Abbey, and his organ-playing and organ compositions were widely acclaimed. In 1625, less than two months after arranging the music for the State Funeral of King James I in the Abbey, Gibbons himself died from a severe stroke suffered in Canterbury, while with the retinue of the new (not yet crowned) King Charles I. He is buried in Canterbury Cathedral.
