In the name of Taverner

Here's a strange English tale. There was an old Gregorian plainchant melody, Gloria tibi Trinitas ('Glory to the Trinity').  This tune was used, somewhere around 1520, as the cantus firmus (i.e. the melodic basis) of a substantial mass setting by the great Tudor composer John Taverner (c.1490-1545), namely his Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas. The chant pops up repeatedly throughout the mass, appearing in every movement. One of its appearances, however, is especially noteworthy. Please listen to part of the Benedictus - the exceptionally beautiful part beginning at 4.56 in this recording - where the mass's six-part texture shrinks to just four parts - the sopranos singing a deliciously florid line while the altos below it sing the plainchant melody in long notes. The passage sets the words "in nomine Domini". The particular beauty of this passage struck Taverner's contemporaries and arrangements of it began to be made, including for instruments, and this stand-alone extract became known as Taverner's In Nomine. Its melancholy, lyrical quality, especially when performed on viols (as it often was), helped spread the music's appeal yet further. 

More than that, Taverner's contemporaries began composing their own contrapuntal pieces, weaving their own descants around the old plainchant melody. These pieces were all given the name In Nomine. My favourite Tudor composer Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585) seems to have been first out of the traps, writing two such works - In Nomine I and In Nomine II, both in four parts. Christopher Tye (c.1505-c.1572) went even further, composing over twenty In Nomines. Most are in five parts, though there is a four-part piece and a six-part one too. Whereas both of Tallis's takes kept the melancholy tinge of Taverner's original, Tye took the form into all manner of moods. His In Nomine XIV (subtitled Reporte) sticks close to the that original spirit while his In Nomine XX (subtitled Crye - seemingly reflecting the cries of street vendors) is positively frolicsome. In the In Nomine a 5, Farewell my good one forever the slight melancholy of the Taverner turns to deep melancholy. Other composers also took the form into contrasting moods, as with the pleasingly upbeat (and florid) In Nomine by Robert Parsons (c.1535-c.1572).

The intention seems clear. This was a case of composers trying to match or even outdo the beauty and skill of Taverner's original. It was a tribute to Taverner but also a show of that other composer's own compositional prowess. Tye's In Nomine XIII (Trust), for example, is audibly more complex than the original - as are many others. 

What is so remarkable is just how many English composers wrote In Nomines. All the greats of Tudor music wrote them, including those of later generations - including Tudor England's undisputed master William Byrd (c.1540-1623). Just listen to his 4-part In Nomine No.2 and 5-part In Nomine No.5 (the latter with some particular juicy dissonances - those false relations beloved of the composer) for music that more than rivals the original setting. John Bull (1562-1628) also wrote several examples, including this ingenious piece a 3 which brings the utmost fantasy to bear on the old chant, beginning in syncopated simplicity but growing ever more complex and brilliant. 

As the Tudors gave way to the Stuarts, the craze for writing In Nomines continued unabated. Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) wrote several. His In Nomine a 5 No.2 initially has something of the grave beauty of the original but begins to smile and dance as the pace quickens. 

Most remarkably of all, 150 years or so after John Taverner, along come the greatest of all English composers, Henry Purcell, and started writing his own In Nomines. He was, however, writing at the very end of the craze. With Purcell's passing so passed the In Nomine - at least for the time being. As you would expect Purcell's examples are among the richest and most beautiful. Please try his In Nomine a 7 for a piece that might well have blown old Taverner's socks off!

Intriguingly, composers of the last hundred years have started composing In Nomines again - and the form has left our shores and spread its wings. Here, for instance, is a lovely example from 2001 by the Austrian spectralist composer Georg Friedrich Haas, simply called In Nomine. And, rather unexpectedly, there's an In nomine à 3 by Brian Ferneyhough. Both are part of a specific new music project. In several of the pieces that came out of that project the references to the Taverner original/the old plainchant - always apparent in the music of the Tudor-and-Stuart-era composers - are very difficult to hear. Ours is clearly a very different age to theirs. See if you can spot them in Wolfram Schurig's In Nomine for vibraphone, piano and string trio or in In Nomine -- all'ongherese by the wonderful György Kurtág. It's good to know though that some great ideas never quite die. 

Complex-Simple

After the peak of the post-Webern avant-garde (Boulez, Stockhausen, Berio, Babbitt et al), there were various reactions. Beginning in the 1970s and flourishing in the 1980s, one was labelled 'New Complexity' and another 'New Simplicity'. Both labels pretty much tell you what the composers involved were aiming at!

The New Complexity folk - figures including Michael Finnissy, James Dillon and Brian Ferneyhough - sought to take the 'progressive' serial mission of Boulez & Co. much further. The New Simplicity folk - including Walter Zimmermann, Christopher Fox and Kevin Volans - sought to rebel against that serial mission. The New Complexity crowd favoured elaborate, microscopically-planned scores that would challenge both players and audiences. The New Simplicity crowd wanted to create an impulsive music that would speak directly to audiences. New Complexity scores were aimed primarily at sympathetic new music audiences  while New Simplicity scores hoped to appeal to a general audience. New Complexity was to make the most 'advanced' playing techniques and virtuosity a hallmark of its style. New Simplicity was much less interested in such things. The New Complexity composers wanted to make as few concessions to the dreaded 19th century tradition as humanly possible, whereas the New Simplicity composers often courted its forms and the tonal language. New Complexity was to be full of tension, dissonance, effects of fragmentation and avoid old-fashioned tunes at all costs. New Simplicity was to allow consonance, coherence and even some old-fashioned tunes. Whereas the New Complexity movement embraced the aim of objectivity found in the old avant-garde the New Simplicity movement sought to restore subjectivity to music. Most obviously, the world of New Complexity music exulted in textural complexity while the textures of New Simplicity music are much simpler. New Complexity scores are a thicket of notes covered in dynamic markings while New Simplicity scores are far sparser and far less fussed about markings. New Complexity works are ultra-sophisticated and intellectual while New Simplicity pieces aim for an impression of spontaneity and naivety.

Now this overview has entailed a lot of simplification and generalisation - so much so that it could be described as Extreme Simplicity music writing! - but hopefully contains enough grains of truth to help make sense of why the two pieces of music I'm about to link to - as examples from each encampment - are so very different.

Brian Ferneyhough: Adagissimo (1983)

Kevin Volans: White Man Sleeping (1982)

I swooped on the Ferneyhough piece because (a) it's a useful example, (b) it's short and therefore easier to grasp and (c) it's actually one his most approachable pieces. I chose the Volans because it's his most popular work and shows the distinction between his and Ferneyhough's music clearly and because I like it! (I suppose to have really shown the contrast it might have been better to have chose a longer, more fiendishly complex piece from Ferneyhough!)

There's a score on the video for Adagissimo that shows that the string quartet is divided into two parts, with the two violins playing one kind of music and the viola and cello playing another. (The image above shows a page from the score). The violins play fast music and, even if you don't read music, you'll be able to see just how complicated their parts are, especially compared to the comparatively spare parts for viola and cello. Those violin parts are New Complexity instrumental writing - and its notation - in another nutshell! Though the viola and cello parts with their many sustained notes and far slower movement aren't really what you expect from Ferneyhough and help give the piece its uncharacteristically easier-on-the-ear feel, they do underline the serialist roots of Ferneyhough's writing. 

There's no score on the White Man Sleeping video, but then you don't really need it. (Still, there's an image of a page from the first violin part above). The piece is Kevin Volans's first string quartet and is in five movements. The energetic first movement has a folk-like character, with an unusual and engaging 13/4 time metre. The materials are, however, simple and the music's closeness to minimalism is clear to hear. Repetition is an important element. (Ferneyhough tries to avoid repetition like the plague.) In the piece the composer attempted to fuse the folk music of his native South Africa with Western music traditions, like a contemporary Bartok (in that sense at least)! The second movement, called 'Panpipes', is also mostly fast and rhythmic. No constant changing of dynamics, you will note - so unlike the Ferneyhough. Also unlike Ferneyhough are the catchy melodies that appear in the middle of the movement. There is also a lovely passage though where sustained notes overlap and where time seems to stop for a short while. The central movement uses some extended playing techniques, but the old kind of extended playing techniques (harmonics, pizzicato, col legno) to delightfully fresh effect. The fourth movement is a magical ethereal lullaby, quietly, quietly singing to us in long, overlapping notes before turning into a lilting, lulling dance. The uniformity of technique in this movement would not appeal to Ferneyhough, not its soothing immediacy. The Finale sounds a little like a hundred drums heard from afar and is full of gently seething energy. 

We live in what people call a post-modern age where 'pluralism' reigns supreme. We can have Ferneyhough and Volans, Tavener and Carter, Birtwistle and Rutter, John Williams and Helmut Lachenmann. The once powerful enforcers are now ignored when they speak of music having to do such and such. Some disapprove of this, others rejoice. I rejoice.