The program opens with Bach's Kyrie in G major, from one of his Lutheran short masses. The music was originally part of Cantata 17, but was rearranged and retexted as a Kyrie. It is a study in chromatic fugal technique, and as such was a modernist experiment on the old style, the stile antico, of Bach's time. The intellectual nature of this fugue is apparent from the beginning of the piece, where the fugue subject in the bass is answered by its inversion in the tenor.

    The next work takes us back to the very beginnings of polyphony, the Ars Antiqua of Notre Dame. Jacet is an organum in Perotin's style, although it can only tentatively be assigned to him. Beneath the highly rhythmicized surface lies the source of the repertoire: a responsory chant in the bass drawn out to very great lengths--a cantus firmus upon which the music of the other two voices is founded.

    Johannes Ciconia is one of the earliest figures in the long series of Flemish composers that forms the backbone of Capella Alamire's repertoire. In the Gloria, occasional imitative passages appear, as in the passage at "Domine Deus." Yet overall, Ciconia's music is written with considerable emphasis on the harmonic perspective: clear phrasing and frequent cadences break up the linear flow. This effect almost disappears in Dufay's motet, for here the lines are drawn out and overlapping. There is also now a consistent use of imitation in which all three voices take part, although the span of time between imitating voices is so great that the effect is more formal and subliminal than in the fugal style of later music. The bass carries the cantus firmus in Anima mea at a slightly slower pace than the upper lines, thus continuing the technique present in Perotin's ancient organa.

    Cantus firmus technique is also the primary constructive device behind Ockeghem's Credo Sine Nomine, while imitation plays a lesser role. The Credo I chant is used as a cantus firmus, but it appears in all four voices at two different pitch levels rather than in one voice only. The two pitch levels account for the presence of contrasting key signatures (the tenor has one extra flat), as well as the gentle alternation of E-flat and E-natural throughout the work, as different voices highlight one and then the other transposition of the melody.

    Finally, with Josquin's motet In Domino confido do we come to consistent use of the point of imitation style. Josquin's textures are thinner than Ockeghem's in general, and the phrase structure is much clearer. At the same time, the cantus firmus method of organizing large forms is often abandoned in favor of imitation around units of text, especially in motets with such bountiful and colorful text as is found in the psalm "In domino confido." This style was later adopted in the Italian madrigal and French chanson of the 16th century, and was a perfect vehicle for expressing and "painting" the individual phrases of text.

    Nicholas Gombert is known today as one of a number of composers of the "post-Josquin" generation. In the music of Gombert and his Flemish contemporaries, the imitative style, initiated by Josquin's generation, was consolidated and spread throughout Europe with the help of the new technology of music printing. The musical style of the 16th century was an international style, practiced in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and England. Later generations, including J.S. Bach and students of today, came to know this style essentially through Italian composers and theorists, such Palestrina and Zarlino, who purified and perfected the Flemish compositional art on a diatonic basis.

    We have included a work by Monteverdi on the program, not so much as an example of the imitative stile antico, but as an example of the some of the other currents that made the new style of the Baroque possible. Monteverdi is known for having consciously composed in two styles: the prima pratica continuing the austere polyphony of Gombert and Palestrina, and a modern style which Monteverdi helped to create. The Laetaniae has elements of both; the homophonic texture, solo writing, and continuo accompaniment are a few of the new elements of the Baroque.

    The Kyrie "Christe, du Lamm Gottes" is an early work of Bach's, and was later incorporated in the F major Lutheran mass in the mid-1720's. It is a self-consciously stile antico work and reflects Bach's interest in renaissance style during his Weimar years. As in the Kyrie in G major, inversion of the opening motive is employed: the Kyrie I motive appears inverted in the Christe, while both appear together in the Kyrie II. This basically imitative texture in three voices is sandwiched between two cantus firmi, one in the bass on the Kyrie text, and one in the soprano employing the text and melody of a Lutheran hymn on the Agnus Dei text. Thus, this Bach Kyrie combines once again techniques which had been in use for hundreds of years, and forms a fitting conclusion to our brief overview of ancient styles of music.

Capella Alamire
Peter Urquhart, dir.

Sopranos: Janna Frelich, Betsy Hopkins, Kate Schenck
Tenors:  Adam Finkel, Michael McDonald
Altos: Jill Gleim, Nellie Hauke, Sally Whitney
Basses: Gene Faxon, Erik Gross, Bruce Ohr, Michael Thaddeus

with assistance from:
Leslie Hall, Consuelo Sañudo, Anne Stone-Nichols, sopranos; Doug Freundlich, lute, Massimo Ossi, lute, Emily Walhout, gamba

Capella Alamire would like to thank the following for their support:
North House, Harvard College, Mrs. Margaret Urquhart
The Society of St. John the Evangelist, Christ Church Episcopal, Church of the Messiah
Jameson Marvin, Christoph Wolff, Andrew Hughes
Dan Melamud and Barbara Haag
Isham Library and The Music Department, Harvard University