"Vij mi venec"; "Jizt' mi pan Zdenek z Konopiste jede"; "Vej, vetrícku, vej, vetrícku z Dunaje" ("Make Me a Wreath"; "My Lord Zdenûk Is Just Leaving Konopiste Castle"; "Blow, You Danube Wind")
These are three sixteenth-century Czech folk-songs taken from a collection published in 1892 by Otakar Hostinsky, a prominent nineteenth-century Czech musicologist. Hostinsky's principal source was hymnals, which contained not only ecclesiastical songs but also folk tunes, to which religious texts were sung.
"Vij mi venec" is a love song, "Jizt' mi pan Zdenek z Konopiste jede" is a wedding song, and "Vej, vetrícku..." served as the basis for a text named "How Differently and Securely Do We Sin." These tunes, along with many others from the same period, were recorded by the ensemble Chorea Bohemica in the mid-1970s on the Supraphon label and are kept alive today by groups such as Chorea Bohemica and the Prague Madrigal Singers.
Harvesting songs such as "Handsome Johnny," from the village of Zasová in the Valassko region of Northeastern Moravia, were an inspiration to the composer Leos Janácek (1854–1928). At sunset after working in the fields, the girls would gather behind the barn and the one with the best voice began the song. The others then joined in, creating layers of sound echoing throughout the hilly countryside.
The style is similar to recitative, with the music being shaped to the rhythm of the language. The themes for such songs were drawn from everyday life. An interesting feature of these songs is the use of a drone, held as one singer finishes a verse and then by the second singer after she echoes the preceding phrase. Vocal drones are not otherwise encountered in Czech or Moravian folk songs, although the folk bagpipes (gajdy or dudy) can often be found providing an instrumental drone.
One of the oldest Polish religious songs is "Bogurodzica" ("Mother of God"). It is the very first known Polish national hymn, a song sung by the knights as they rode into the Battle of Grunwald (1410) and as they fought in the Crusades. Its author is purported to be Saint Wojciech (Adalbert), bishop of Prague and a Martyr; thus the hymn would date from the end of the tenth century. The melody is undoubtedly a paraphrase of a Gregorian liturgical chant. A copy of the manuscript dating from 1407 is kept in the Jagiellonian Library in Kraków.
"Pres hory, pres doly" and "Listecek z javora" ("Through Mountains and Valleys" and "The Maple Leaf") are two folk melodies from the Northeast Moravian region of Wallachia (Valassko), not to be confused with the Romanian region of the same name. "Pres hory, pres doly" is a rather melancholy tune with a poignant alteration of major-minor modes. It gives way to the lively "Listecek z javora" which, though quicker in tempo and lighter in spirit, also ends in minor after a major beginning.
"Nad Lobodicama" ("Above the Town of Lobodice"). The songs of the Hana region in Central Moravia are somewhat more sedate than those of their neighbors to the east in Valassko or the south in Slovácko. Here the natural major and minor scales predominate, as do simple meters: 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4. The song "Nad Lobodicama" ("Above Lobodice") is interesting; although it begins in the major, it ends in minor as if to foretell the pessimistic ending.
A variant of this song can be found in a collection authored by Leos Janácek and Pavel Vasa called "Moravské písne milostné" ("Moravian Love Songs"), published two years after Janácek's death in 1930.
"Oj, radza z wiosna, radza" ("The People Rejoice With the Coming of Springtime"). This is a lively oberek (a quick version of the mazurka, usually notated in 3/8 time) from the region of Lowicz in Central Poland. Its Lydian scale gives it a primitive flavor. In the villages of Poland these simple songs were often accompanied by no more than a country fiddle and a drum.
"Hej, zarosly chodnicki" ("Hey, the Paths are Overgrown"). At the extreme southern tip of Poland in the high Tatras exists a style of singing unique to the region. This vocal projection, called white voice (bialy glos) was brought to the Tatras centuries ago by the Valachs, or Wallachians, a sheep herding people. Due to the isolation of the area by high peaks, low valleys and mountain lakes, the style survives to this day relatively unchanged.
"Hej, zarosly chodnick" is one of many Polish highland songs honoring the brigand Janosik, the Polish equivalent of Robin Hood. The dialect borrows some words from Slovak, others from Hungarian, and is difficult to understand even for native Polish speakers from other areas of the country.
"Gnevala se sevcula" ("The Shoemaker's Wife Was Angry") comes from the region of Tesínsko, named for Cesky Tesín, a small Silesian town on the Czech side of the Polish-Czech border. The savage, driving rhythm with its characteristic ending of a quarter note and two heavily accented eighth notes is common in eastern Moravia and also in Slovakia, but nonexistent on the Polish side of the border.
Notes by Mazurka Wojciechowska. Translations by M. Wojciechowska with assistance from Slavek Hanzlik. Sources: Najpiekniejsza ze wszystkich jest muzyka polska by Józef Reiss, 8 1958 Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne, Kraków and sleeve-notes by Pavel Jurkovic, 8 1976, Prague
This last program of the Newberry Consort's 1996–97 season represents a departure both from our familiar repertoire of Western European art music, and in its presentation. We are collaborating with an equally venerable and eccentric Chicago musical organization, the Slavic Projection Folk Ensemble.
We will be approaching old Central European Music in three different ways: the Newberry Consort will play and sing German and Austrian music of the fifteenth century with its usual attention to issues of authenticity, and the Slavic Projection Ensemble will also sing early Hussite hymns in the same manner, with the participation of the Consort.
The Slavic Projection ensemble will perform music from the Central European Renaissance which is still a part of a living folk tradition in the twentieth century. These pieces will be played on "modern" instruments and sung in a contemporary style appropriate to each culture. Finally, just for fun, both ensembles will join forces for a few pieces, in a way that is known as "crossover style."
Both ensembles have long been fascinated with the idea of the "nonlinear" development of European music. Recent reexaminations of overlooked bits and fragments of repertoire have revealed that music from the medieval period flourished well into the Renaissance; guilds of meistersingers and Italian lauda societies performed pieces reminiscent of the early fourteenth century, while their aristocratic neighbors were commissioning works by Josquin des Pres or Heinrich Isaac.
The first group of pieces on tonight's program gives examples of the last great composers of the minnesang genre, Oswald von Wolkenstein and the Monk of Salzburg. Oswald was an unusual figure in many ways: He was a feisty aristocrat who pursued an important career as a diplomat, while at the same time securing a reputation as a superb if idiosyncratic poet, melodist and performer. He was present as a diplomat at the Council of Constance (1414), and doubtless heard every important choir and ensemble of minstrels that were an essential part of every prelate's entourage. Virtually all of Oswald's polyphonic compositions were adaptations of French and Italian pieces in currency at the Council.
The history of culture in Renaissance Bohemia is tied intimately to theology and martyrdom of one man—Jan Hus (c. 1371–1416). Hus was active as a student, then as Rector of the University of Prague, one of the most important European intellectual centers of the age. Through contact with English students, Hus became acquainted with the writings of John Wyclif (d. 1384), who lectured at Balliol College, Oxford.
Most thoughtful persons of the fourteenth century were outraged at the many corrupt practices that had become commonplace in the Roman Church. These feelings became particularly passionate at the onset of the Great Schism (1378), at which time there were multiple claimants to the papal tiara, and the church was in a state of virtual anarchy.
Many reformers, including Wyclif and Hus, called for an end to the wide-spread sale of indulgences. Wyclif, however, went much further, suggesting a radically altered theology and church organization. He proposed dispensing with most of the teachings of the Church Fathers, the veneration of saints, the sacrament of confession, and clerical celibacy.
Hus, embraced these radical precepts wholeheartedly, and preached them, sometimes verbatim, from his pulpit at the Bethlehem Chapel. He declared that the Holy Scripture, divested of centuries of interpretation, was the highest form of Christian authority, superseding even the pope. He suggested that the true church consisted of a congregation of the predestined.
While Czech students were eager to join in Hus's reform movement, other "nations" of students were hesitant. Most Germans left Prague by the turn of the fifteenth century; many went to Vienna, while others founded their own university in Leipzig in 1409.
By 1414, the great prelates and temporal rulers of Europe agreed that it was crucial to reunite and reform the shattered Christian Church. They met in that year at Constance, neutrally located on the borders of Switzerland, Alsace, and Germany. In addition to electing a single prince of the church, another great priority was stemming the rising tide of heretical movements.
To this end, Hus and a few of his followers were summoned to the Council, having been given a guarantee of safe passage by the Emperor Sigismund himself. Hus was imprisoned and interrogated. He and his disciple, Jerome of Prague, refused to recant. Instead, they sang the hymn "Otce, Boze vsemohúcí" ("Father, God omnipotent," also known as "Jesus Christus nostra salus"). They were burned at the stake in 1416.
Hus's and Jerome's deaths galvanized Bohemia into rebellion; civil wars raged along religious lines until well into the sixteenth century, and stimulated other reform movements throughout Northern Europe, culminating in the Protestant Reformation of the 1520s, led by Martin Luther.
The effect of Hussitism on culture in Bohemia was profound. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, Bohemia was a part of the Luxembourg dynasty. The first Luxembourg king of Bohemia was John the Blind, whose primary concern was French monarchical politics, and who died in the Battle of Crécy in 1345.
John's personal secretary was Guillaume de Machaut, arguably the greatest poet-composer of the century. John's son Charles (r. 1347–78) did involve himself in the cultural life of Prague, commissioning many great masterpieces of international Gothic architecture and founding the University of Prague in 1348.
In the second half of the fourteenth century, Prague was a part of mainstream European life.The aristocratic court maintained chapel choirs that competed for the best Franco-Netherlandish singers, and performed the same sacred music heard in Ferrara or Brughes.
The University of Prague was part of a network of intellectual centers that communicated ideas through foreign students. At the end of the fourteenth century, almost half of the Prague student body was not native to the region. Students from France, England and Germany collected songbooks containing not only monophonic tunes but also fashionable polyphony from all over Europe.
Certain monastic communities, especially the Carmelites, were perticlarly fond of music. They even sponsored minstrels' schools during Lent, and were instrumental in the copying and transmission of secular music throughout central Europe.
Even before the advent of Hus, well-to-do burghers formed brotherhoods, like the meistersinger in Nuremberg or the laudesi in Tuscany for the purpose of singing devotional songs outside of the normal liturgy. These amateur musical confraternities commissioned gorgeously illuminated songbooks, many of which are still preserved.
By around 1420, however, the more extreme Hussites, also known as Taborites, wanted to distance themselves from the Italian humanist movement and any culture that had an odor of Rome. Iconoclasts (Hus himself, like Luther, discouraged this practice), smashed images and destroyed paintings.
Hussite religious leaders encouraged the congregational singing of simply harmonized hymns, and effectively blocked the development of European art polyhony for many generations to come.
However, the Bohemian "simple polyphony" of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries is moving and characterful. The hymns "Pane Boze," "Bud prinas," and "Buóh vsemohucí" are compelling examples of the late fifteenth century Hussite musical style.
Some scholars believe that this sort of music is representative of many long-lost traditions that coexisted along side the "classical" Renaissance music that became canonized in the nineteenth century.
At the other extreme from the isolated but individualistic world of Hussite Bohemia was the thoroughly Italianized court of Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (r.1458–1490). Mattias was the son of a soldier of fortune (basically a thug) called Hunyadi. Matthias Latinized his name to Corvinus, and bought, bullied and married his way into the aristocracy. His imperial ambitions were vast: in 1458 he bacame king of Hungary; in 1469, he invaded Moravia, forcing his son to be crowned king of Bohemia.
It was perhaps in response to one such intrusion that the patriotic song "Povstan, povstan, veliké mesto prazské" ("Arise, Great City of Prague") was composed. It bristles with outrage and is a marvel of colorful Biblical invective.
In his continuing lust for territory, Corvinus marched on Austria and occupied Vienna in 1485. It was probably only his death in 1490 that prevented him from battling the Habsbugs over the prize of the Holy Roman Empire.
Corvinus maintained the most thoroughgoing Italian humanist court north of the Alps. Art historians credit him with having commissioned the purest Renaissance architecture outside of Italy. Musically, his tastes were so Italianate (that is to say, Franco-Flemish, in imitation of the Medici) that samples of Hungarian court music have very little local flavor.
For instance, Beatrice of Aragon was given, upon her marriage to Corvinus, a lavishly decorated choirbook containing a series of masses written, appropriately enough, on the "l'homme arme" cantus firmus. This is a strong piece of evidence that Franco-Flemish polyphony was standard repertoire at the Hungarian court.
There is, however, a tantalizing contemporary report that Corvinus, inspired by the Italians Giustiniani and the great lutenist and singer Pietrobono, became fascinated with the art of improvised, sung epic poetry; Pietrobono himself travelled to Buda to perform for Corvinus, who then encouraged epic singing in the Hungarian language.
Until well into the 1300s, Poland consisted of an uneasy coalition of principalities which were threatened in the north by the Teutonic knights of Prussia, and the still very pagan Lithuanians to the northeast. The first truly successful king of a more-or-less united Poland was Casimir the Great (r. 1333–70).
Like his counterpart in Prague, Charles of Luxembourg, Casimir contributed mightily to the architecture of Cracow, and endowed a university in 1364. He negotiated a series of international alliances which won an extended period of peace for the nation. He strengthened its economy by encouraging skilled workers to immigrate from amongst German, Jewish and Armenian populations.
Casimir imported French and Italian intellecuals and artists to stimulate the intellectual life of the university and to modernize Cracovian architecture. During this golden age, art, ideas and music flowed freely in and out of Poland.
The Newberry Consort will perform three compositions from a monumental anthology of fifteenth-century polyphony now known as the Codex Krásnapolski. This impressive choirbook consists mostly of pieces either by or in the style of Johannes Ciconia and Antonio Zacharias, both active in Italy around 1410. Their music came to Poland via either the international choral or student populations.
Krásnapolski also contains music by at least two native musicians, Nicolaus de Ostrorog and Nicolaus de Radom. Radom's fine motet "Hystorigraphi aciem" honors the birth of Prince Casimir Jagiello in 1426. The texts of this piece and "Cracovia civitatis" are by Stanislaw Ciolek, the Bishop of Poznan.
Casimir the Great left no lasting line of succession. In 1386 the princess Jadwiga of Poland married Wladislaw Jagiello of Lithuania. On his marriage, Wladislaw converted himself and his country to Christianity, and the united nations became the largest state in Central Europe Wladislaw proved to be as prudent a statesman as Casimir. Towards the Bohemian Hussites, he maintained (in contrast to the aggressively Roman Corvinus) a stance of tolerant nonintervention. Poland in the fifteenth century was dominated by the Jagellonian dynasty, under whom the arts continued to flourish.
There were strong ties between the prosperous German towns of Nuremberg and Munich, Cracow and Prague. The growth throughout Europe of a sense of nationhood fostered stereotypical notions about specific peoples: Germans were thought to be superb craftsmen; even their detractors admitted that, although they were "filthy eaters, boring conversationalists, and over-forward lovers," they were also "careful workers," "skilled artificers" who would "plod with great diligence upon their professions."
Even in the twentieth century, the scholar Reinhard Strohm writes of Renaissance German musicians that "instrument-makers and players were numerous, poets rare." From the end of the fourteenth century onwards, Germans were indeed unsurpassed in the manufacture of musical instruments, especially organs and brass instruments.
Virtuoso players with German names appear on court rolls from London to Ferrara. The city councils of virtually every town in southern Germany maintained a musical ensemble as a measure of civic magnificence and pride.
This area appears to have been a center for the development of instrumental ensemble polyphony. Strohm argues that a geographical location in which at least five languages were spoken (German, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, and Italian) would foster a music that was dependent on no particular linguistic structure, and thus be highly suitable for instruments.
The burghers of Nuremberg and Munich were capitalists on a high order, dealing internationally in essential goods and luxuries. With their great accumulated weath, they cultivated the arts, especially music . A fair number of these men studied in Cracow and Prague, where they were exposed to humanist trends, as well as more dangerous notions of religious reform.
We are fortunate enough to possess several songbooks compiled by businessmen and physicians while they were university students. These treasure-troves contain a mixture of sacred and secular single-line and part-music.
Pieces that have been identified are by Dufay, Binchois, Robert Morton, as well as by composers of a slightly later generation. Many of the anonymous pieces seem to be by Central European musicians.
The largest and most famous of these collections is the Glogauer Liederbuch. Its diverse contents of mostly sacred and a bit of utterly delicious secular music was assembled around 1480, perhaps in Silesia. Much of the music is untexted, to allow for translations, contrafacta (new words), or instrumental performance.
—Mary Springfels
These expanded notes are made possible in part by a grant from the Illinois Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Illinois General Assembly.
Look at other Newberry Consort programs.
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