Hail Star of the Sea

I heard one of my favourite pieces today, a lovely unaccompanied choral miniature by Edvard Grieg called Ave Maris Stella. In it we hear two verses followed by a short 'Amen'. Grieg hymns the Virgin Mary with all the harmonic freshness for which he's known. Each verse begins with a memorable two-bar melodic phrase over a deep drone in the basses. The phrase is then repeated but with new harmonies - harmonies that sound like those favoured by our own Frederick Delius. Each verse ends with just the high voices left floating like angels. 

Grieg was not the only composer to set the words of this old plainchant vesper hymn, whose title in English means "Hail Star of the Sea". The old plainchant melody that originally accompanied those words is itself a beautiful one. You can here the Gregorian chant here.

You can also here the plainchant melody unadorned in this piece by Guillaume Dufay. The plainchant, however, alternates with Dufay's own take on the melody. Simply put, Dufay writes his own variation on the the Ave Maris Stella chant which he gives to the uppermost voices of his three-part texture. Using a popular technique of the time known as fauxbourdon, the middle voices then sing this same melody a perfect fourth below the upper voices - the same melody proceeding in parallel with the upper voices. The lowest voices, however, sing a more elaborate variant of the tune in the uppermost voices but regularly shadow the others by moving in parallel at the distance of a sixth with the upper voices. Simple but magical in effect, don't you think?

Moving on a century and a half to the Ave Maris Stella of Hans Leo Hassler, who died 400 years ago this year. Hassler is a very significant figure in German music, being the man who essentially brought the new Venetian style of the Gabrielis to Germany, leading to the start of the Baroque in that country. His 4-part setting of Ave Maris Stella shows off his style charmingly, though it is still strongly redolent of the late Renaissance. Again you will here the Gregorian plainchant melody alternating with the composer's own take on the melody. Hassler embellishes its opening phrase, sending it out like with the sopranos like a chorale before going off at a melodic tangent of his own devising. Isn't there an intriguing foretaste of Bach in Hassler's handling of those opening phrases?

Back in Venice Claudio Monteverdi was to compose one of the earliest and greatest masterpieces of the Baroque, the glorious Vespers of 1610. In the Vespers there is, for me, what is indisputably the finest of all these settings of Ave Maris Stella. Monteverdi's take is fascinating in that it juxtaposes passages of pure late Renaissance writing with others in the new Baroque style. You'll hear the Gregorian chant threading its dignified way through the opening Renaissance-style section before being transformed into a memorable and lively melody set against a typical Baroque triple-time lilt. A magical instrumental ritornello from the same Baroque family tree links the various repetitions of this passage. Textures, both choral and instrumental, change delightfully as the two Baroque sections step before us again and again before all the forces join in splendour for the final section. The result is very charismatic, is it not? 

Grieg's little gem didn't use the old plainchant however. He wrote his own tune. Moving back to Grieg's time, his contemporary Franz Liszt did pretty much the same in his Ave Maris Stella, S34 for mixed choir and organ, though you are unlikely to miss the fact that he begins with a short, ironed-out, non modal quotation of the second phrase from the chant - and re-uses this phrase several times later before making an explicit reference to the first phrase of the chant in his closing bars. His setting is quite simple and surprisingly homely in its harmonies (compared with Grieg); however, it is thoroughly charming. 

Composers are still setting the words of Ave Maris Stella. One popular (and masterly) setting is by Grieg's fellow countryman, Trond Kverno (b1945). It's composed in that vein of open-hearted tonality spiced with bitter-sweet dissonances which modern audiences appreciate so much, with a gentle tunefulness at its heart that Grieg himself might well have enjoyed.

Catching incense

As I've explored more and more music from the past thousand years, I've found that I've ended up liking music from each and every era. As composer after composer and period after period fell into place (some more easily than others), I found that the last period of music to fall was the Renaissance - specifically Renaissance choral polyphony. I was OK with music from Dufay (first half of the 15th century) backwards and from Monteverdi (very end of the 16th century) onwards, but the music of that age that spread from roughly 1450 through to 1600 seemed hard to penetrate. It all sounded much the same to me, whether it be a Kyrie by Ockeghem, a Credo by Josquin or a Sanctus by Byrd. Instrumental music, Renaissance songs, homophonic choral music were fine, but unaccompanied choral polyphony all drifted through my ears without engaging my understanding. I felt as if I were hearing the same bland cloud of musical incense in pretty much every piece. I gave it time, however, and listened again and again and eventually it clicked with certain composers - Gesualdo, Victoria, Tallis - and the light then spread ever wider, until even Ockeghem, Josquin and Byrd fell. And when they fell, I could for the life of me think why I didn't love their music earlier. It was so beautiful, so masterful, so full of imagination.

I've tried to fathom it out ever since, and I now think I have an explanation.

The music of Dufay and, before him (going backwards in time), Dunstable and Machaut and Perotin and Hildegard is more immediate in its melodic appeal - as is the music of the Gabrielis and Monteverdi from the other end of the period and on. In other words, it's more tuneful. The emphasis was on melody because the melody the composers wanted their listeners to hear was placed where it could be heard most clearly - at the top of the texture. In a four-part piece, say, the sopranos (or more accurately 'superius') would have the tune, the tenors would have a plainchant melody to accompany it, the basses would provide a harmonic foundation and the altos would fill in the gaps (to put it simply!). The uppermost line - the one the ear catches onto easiest - was supreme. Come Ockeghem and Josquin - and those who came in their wake across the length and breadth of Europe - and this changed. All four voices became musically interesting in their own right and stopped specialising. The topmost line lost its primacy (however much its brightness of sound seems to magnetically draw our ears to it.) All lines were equal, and none were meant to be more equal than others (well, most of the time!). Therefore, it's not so easy to hear tunes because tunefulness isn't what the music's about.You are listening instead to a flow of harmony, expressed through interweaving lines. It's a luminous web of counterpoint. The lines are usually beautiful in their own right, but you don't (for the most part) hear them in their own right. They are blended. I'm sure many of you have had little difficulty in just enjoying hearing this blending of voices as they float dreamily across a stained-glass window, or the face of your radio. I'm afraid I need more. When I started following individual lines or listening to the flow of harmony, the clicking process began. After all, counterpoint where (say) four voices interweave and none has primacy is pretty much what Bach was about when writing his fugues. There's no reason why anyone who loves Bach fugues shouldn't take to Renaissance polyphony as well, is there?

Well, as I loved Bach fugues and yet didn't take to Renaissance polyphony anywhere near so readily, there must be more to it than that. What?

Well, composers before and after this period phrased their pieces in a different way to the composers of this period. The key is the way melodic phrases reach their cadences. Listen to Machaut or Dufay, for example, and you hear long, clearly-shaped melodic phrases built from distinctive shorter phrases, whereas with Ockeghem and Josquin the phrases seem to wander around without purpose. With Machaut and Dufay there are clear, punctuating cadences to which these phrases lead, whereas with Ockeghem and Josquin the cadences just seem to turn up - plus we have to wait longer for them to arrive. As a result, the feel of tonal-sounding harmony (which does seem to be something people respond to easily, even in modal music) is much less strong in the music from the heart of the Renaissance age than in any other period up till the 20th century. The freedom of the bass voice is another factor in the undermining of the sense we tonally-attuned modern types have of familiar tonal-sounding harmony in the music of Ockeghem, Josquin and Co. None of these 'problems' exists with a Bach fugue.

So, the music of the period I'm describing is less obviously tuneful and less harmonically familiar than either the music that preceded it or the music that succeeded it. (Yes, I know Machaut's music sounds unfamiliar too, but the unfamiliarity seems almost modern - unlike the unfamiliarity of the Renaissance masters). It is also far less concerned with contrast, especially as regards texture. That, I believe, is why I found it hard to come to terms with for so long. It seemed simultaneously strange and boring. Spend time with it though and it will surely cast its spell over you. Then it will cease to be strange and become anything but boring. The counterpoint can nourish the imagination, the entwining melodic lines carrying you along on one voice after another through lovely harmonies. 

Hopefully, you 'got it' much more quickly than me!

As examples of what I mean, please compare Dufay's motet Ave regina caelorum with the Kyrie from Ockeghem's Missa Prolationum or the Kyrie from Josquin's Missa l'Homme Armé. Or compare the Kyrie of Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame with Ockeghem's mesmeric Deo Gratias. (Some truly stunning music here!)