2000
Duration c. 8’
Instrumentation: Four voices (counter tenor, 2 tenors, baritone)
First Performance: The Orlando Consort, York Early Music Centre, St. Mary’s Church York, April 7th 2000
Super Flumina (2000)
for four voices (counter tenor, 2 tenors, baritone)
Commissioned for the Orlanda Consort by the York Early Music Foundation, Super Flumina was written specially for the opening of their new centre. To this end the piece marries the ideas that the Orlando Consort has begun to explore in developing works from 'fragments' of extant musical texts with the context of the piece's first performance. The piece focuses on a legend associated with St. Mary's Abbey in York whereby, in 1377, fishermen brought the lifeless body of a 14 year-old girl, who had fallen into the Ouse, into the chapel. The monks prayed that the Virgin would intercede and had begun to sing the anthem Ave Regina Caelorum when the girl regained consciousness. After a night in the chapel she recovered completely.
The piece does not attempt to tell the story in a literal way, but rather approaches the legend through a series of musical and textual fragments: the hymn Ave Regina Caelorum; the text of the Psalm "By the waters... (Psalm 137, but 136 in the old Latin bible); coincidences of phrases between the various texts, as well as divergences of text within different settings of the same material (for example, Dufay's setting of Ave Regina Caelorum sets substantially different words for the third line).
The piece was written specifically for the Orlando Consort with very particular attention to the tessitura of each voice and to the perceived ways of combining voices in different registers. One of the pleasures of working with early music performers is the intelligence and invention which they bring to the performance of music which has laid dormant or has never been heard before and which often involves decision making of a very high order. This investigative approach is also something which they bring to the performance of completely new music which, until their intervention, can only remain on the manuscript paper like faint scratches on fading parchment.
Gavin Bryars
Text of Super Flumina
Text Translation
Ave, Salve, Ave Hail, Hail, Hail
Salve radix, salve porta, Hail root, hail gate
Salve radix sancta Hail holy root
Super flumina Babilonis By the waters of Babylon
ibi sedimus et flevimus there we sat down and wept
(salve) (Hail)
Super salices in medio eius We hanged our harps on the willows
suspendimus citharas nostra in the midst thereof
Quomodo cantabimus How shall we sing
canticum Domini the Lord's songs
in terra aliena in a strange land
Super flumina Eboracis By the waters of York
ibi sedimus et flevimus there we sat down and wept
Super omnes speciosa More beautiful than all others
salve radix, salve porta Hail root, hail gate
salve radix sancta Hail holy root
Ave regina Caelorum Hail queen of heaven
Ave domina angelorum Hail mistress of the angels
Gaude virgo gloriosa Rejoice, glorious virgin
super omnes speciosa more beautiful than all the others
Vale, O valde decora Fairwell, most fair one
Ave regina Caelorum Hail queen of heaven
Ave domina angelorum Hail mistress of the angels
Salve radix sancta Hail, holy root
Ex qua mundo lux est orta from whom light sprang over the world
Gaude virgo gloriosa Rejoice, glorious virgin
Super omnes speciosa more beautiful than all others
Vale valde decora Fairwell, most fair one,
Et pro nobis semper Christum exora. and entreat Christ for ever on our behalf.
Amen Amen
Text: Blake Morrison
Duration c. 35’
Dedication: Rita and Martin Cadman
Instrumentation: 3, 4 and 5 voices (A.T.T.T.Bar)
First performance: (first 8) Espo, Finland, December 8th 2000; full set, Engers, August 2001
Duration: c. 18’
Dedication: Paul Manley and the Primavera Chamber Orchestra
Instrumentation: solo violin, strings (minimum 6.5.4.4.2)
First Performance: Paul Manley and the Primavera Chamber Orchestra, De la Warr Pavillion, Bexhill on Sea, October 22 2000
Violin Concerto ("The Bulls of Bashan") [2000]
for violin and strings
The Violin Concerto, scored for solo violin and strings alone, was commissioned by the Primavera Chamber Orchestra for its leader Paul Manley and is the second piece that I have written for them. The first, The Porazzi Fragment, for 21 solo strings, came about because of my admiration for the approach that the orchestra takes to performance - playing without a conductor, in effect as chamber musicians. In the case of the concerto I did not want to write a virtuoso show-piece, but rather to draw on the orchestra's alertness as an ensemble. The solo part is essentially lyrical and there is no cadenza as such. But I was also conscious of the fact that, as with a baroque concerto, the soloist may also direct the work - and does so here.
Given the name of the orchestra and the fact that this is a violin concerto, there are a number of allusions to Vivaldi's Four Seasons. There is also an extensive use of mutes, including staggered transitions from muted to unmuted and vice versa, like a cross-fade in recording. This use of mutes brought about the subtitle, which comes from an aside by Cecil Forsythe in his book on orchestration in which he pours scorn on the noise which string players would make when attaching mutes to their instruments (he was writing in 1914). Here is the passage in full.
"Unhappily the mutes remain something of a problem on the mechanical side of concert-room organisation. When they are required the noise and fuss is most distressing, and, as these moments always occur when a pp is approaching, the musical attention of the audience is completely distracted. About fifty or sixty players all rattle their bows down on their desks in order to be free to search their waistcoat pockets. When the mutes have been dragged out they are fitted to the bridges with a studied and elaborate caution which may be necessary to preserve the bridges from injury, but which gives an impression that the players are taking part in a solemn cabalistic rite. And all this occurs in 1914 when inventors are as thick as bulls in Bashan."
The concerto is dedicated to Paul Manley and the Primavera Chamber Orchestra.
