Jason Liebson

Compendium
Dr. Graziano
Early Music Concert
For this concert report, I attended the Chapman Early Music Ensemble concert at
the Salmon Recital Hall at Chapman University on May 1 at 5:00PM. The performance
was titled Artusis Nightmare, and focused primarily on Renaissance and early Baroque
composers, and the distinction between the prima pratica and seconda pratica that arose
at the turn of the 15th Century. The many composers covered a vast span in the
compositional timeline; the middle Renaissance composers included Josquin des Prs,
Luys de Navares, Christbal de Morales, Adrian Willaert, Gioseffo Zarlino, Vincenzo
Galilei, High Renaissance composers included Giovanni Gabrieli, Claudio Monteverdi,
Alessandro Grandi, and early Baroque composers included Alessandro Grandi, Biagio
Marini, Salome Rossi, Tarquinio Merula, Giulio Caccini, and Heinrich Schtz. The
group was the Chapman Early Music Ensemble, a group of about twenty-five music
students, directed by Dr. Bruce Bales, who introduced each work, as well as played
alongside the students for a majority of the program. The concert as a whole was very
well put together, drawing inspiration for the programming from a lecture by Dean Giulio
Maria Ongero taken by Dr. Bales during his doctoral studies at the Thornton School of
Music. While the program was inspired, and clearly had a through-line (as thoroughly
explained in the brief program notes), I feel that it is very difficult to create an engaging
concert that is entirely Renaissance and early Baroque music. As a lecture, this line-up
was thrilling. The use of music to describe Artusis grievances with this new practice of

music was a fantastic method of teaching. But in a concert setting, the program was
strange; the works were presented with the entire ensemble playing at the beginning,
followed by many trios, quartets, quintets, and other small group works, and finished
with another full ensemble piece. While the small groups were playing, the rest of the
ensemble sat on stage and watched lethargically, which made myself, as an audience
member, discredit the value and quality of the performance.
One piece performed was Sanctus from Missa Mille Regretz by Christbal de
Morales. This piece was a cantus firmus mass, with Mille Regretz, a 14th Century
Chanson, used as the basis for the movements of the entire mass. The original chanson is
a secular, French song with text centralizing around courtly love, but the melody
expresses praise of God. The musical mass is a sacred Catholic work, meant to be used
during the service of the Mass. This movement, Sanctus, is the fourth movement of the
five movements of the mass. The musical mass is also a polyphonic work. Being from
the High Renaissance, it has other characteristics as well; this mass shows signs of
homorhythm, less imiation between voices, with more thirds and sixths in the intervals.
The work is also highly polyphonic, allowing homorhythm to exist. With separate
melodic lines in the different instruments (which ranged from violin to sacbut to organ), it
was difficult to find a melodic line to ground the listener in this pre-Monteverdi style of
writing a musical mass.