A Monk’s Life

Program: #24-45   Air Date: Nov 04, 2024

NOTE: All of the music on this program is from The Brabant Ensemble directed by Stephen Rice.  It is on the Hyperion label and is CD # CDA68447.

For more information:

www.brabantensemble.com

As the monasteries of the German-speaking countries emerged from the ravages of the Reformation, they found themselves in quite a different religious landscape. Gone were the days of absentee abbots who preferred hunting to chanting, or illiterate monks who feasted rather than fasted. In the wake of the Council of Trent, monks and nuns, friars and sisters, were expected to contribute to the religious regeneration of the Catholic Church, and to find a new sense of purpose for their cloistered existence. Music played an important part in this project, both as a tool of monastic discipline and as a source of spiritual joy. In a healthy religious institution the daily round of prayers, the Liturgy of the Hours, was sung diligently and devoutly with the correct melodies. Monks brushed up their skills in writing chant books, nuns introduced the Roman breviary, and novice masters and mistresses spent hours teaching the boys and girls Latin and singing. Towards the end of the sixteenth century many religious orders, especially the Benedictines and Augustinians, embraced polyphonic music for the celebration of solemn feasts, with singing, organ playing and even instruments. Masses, motets and Magnificats by renowned contemporary composers—and a good number of talented monks as well—not only adorned the sacred spaces for the greater glory of God, but also reached out to the people beyond the cloister. Music was intertwined with the monastic existence, and this album, entitled A monk’s life, charts the life cycle of a monk through the music he might have heard, sung or composed.

The programme is framed by two motets by Orlande de Lassus, music director of the Munich court chapel and the most prolific and prominent composer of his generation. Sponsa Dei and Quis rutilat Triadis? celebrate the Virgin Mary, the patroness of those who embraced a celibate lifestyle. However, the motets originated in the secular sphere, their original texts praising Emperor Maximilian&nsbp;II on the occasion of his coronation in 1562 (Pacis amans) and Bavarian Duke Albrecht V and his wife Anna respectively (Unde revertimini). Around the turn of the century they were entered, with their Marian texts, in a choirbook belonging to the Benedictine abbey of Neresheim in Swabia, close to the border between today’s Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. An unusually large number of musical sources survive from this rather modest and remote religious institution, starting in the late 1560s when the new quire of the church was consecrated. In 1584 the community numbered only eighteen monks, and one wonders how they and the choirboys from the monastery school would have performed music written for princely chapels requiring two discant parts. The opening of Quis rutilat Triadis? takes some time to settle into its mode, reflecting the questions of the text, until at ‘O felix nimium’ (3'44) the rays of the sun literally burst through. Sponsa Dei opens with spacious chords evoking the image of the starry sky held up by the Virgin; in the livelier second part the poet has written into the text the monks of Neresheim (‘Nörlheimicolas’), who are asking for Mary’s help to stay true to their monastic vows.

Entering the religious life was a momentous decision. Some monks had already received their education as choirboys in a monastery school—the only route to social mobility in rural areas—while others decided to enter a religious order in their late teens, where they would have received further training and, if they were gifted, would be sent to university. Taking the vows of chastity, obedience and poverty meant leaving behind family and friends, but religious life had its compensations, as enumerated in Bernhard Klingenstein’s four-part motet De vita religiosa. The long-standing Kapellmeister of Augsburg Cathedral illustrates the catalogue of spiritual benefits with word-painting, such as the runs at ‘surgit velocius’ (‘gets up more quickly’) or the calmly meandering chords at ‘quiescit securius’ (‘rests more securely’), and there might even be a touch of humour in the idea that monks are ‘bedewed more frequently’.

At the core of the life of a monk or nun were contemplation of God and near-continuous prayer. Their day was structured by the canonical hours of Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, Nones, Vespers, Compline and the night-time office Matins, which were celebrated collectively. Times for individual study or meditation, manual work, meals, recreation and sleep were fitted around the prayer rota. Already before the Reformation the late-afternoon office of Vespers had attracted musical elaboration, not least because it was a service that lay people could also attend. An easy way to add musical interest was to chant the Vesper psalms in ‘falsobordone’, a recitation model for several vocal parts, but on feast days Vespers would have been celebrated more lavishly. Christian Erbach’s setting of the versicle Deus in adiutorium is uniquely transmitted in a choirbook from the Augustinian monastery of Polling in Bavaria. The manuscript belongs in the context of an ambitious refurbishment of the church under Provost Kilian Westenrieder in the 1620s, which saw not only the installation of twelve altars but also of four organs. Erbach was first city organist in Augsburg and afterwards Klingenstein’s colleague at Augsburg Cathedral. He was also sought after as an organ teacher; in 1607 he was paid by the Benedictines of Ochsenhausen for teaching Frater Georg Reiner, the son of music director Jacob Reiner at neighbouring Weingarten. The chiming ‘Alleluias’ at the end of the versicle remind one of the bells calling the community to prayer.

Carolus Andreae was likewise a gifted organist, and after he became abbot of the Swabian monastery at Irsee in 1612, he also had a new organ built for his church. A chronicle praises him as ‘one of the most celebrated musicians of his time’, which is perhaps somewhat exaggerated: he was no doubt an accomplished composer, but none of his works appeared in print; they were reserved for use at Irsee. In 1614 he created, together with his fellow brother Gregor Stemmele, polyphonic settings for the feast of their patronal saint Benedict, including the Magnificat based on Jacob Reiner’s motet Si ignoras te. The text is presented alternatingly in chant and polyphony, which anchors the piece in the liturgy while allowing for creative flourishes. The swift declamation at the start of the ‘Magnificat’ and at ‘Abraham et semini eius’ is reminiscent of contemporary madrigals, and Andreae frequently divides the six vocal parts into an upper and a lower choir to create a polychoral effect. The return of the opening material at the end is a popular ploy to illustrate the text ‘as it was in the beginning’.

Although monks and nuns were supposed to have only two meals per day, to eat in silence while listening to an edifying reading, and to abstain from meat and rich dishes for most of the year, eating and drinking played an important role on religious feasts, especially during the Christmas period and before the beginning of the Lenten season. The text of Cipriano de Rore’s motet Agimus tibi gratias belongs to a suite of benedictions said before a meal and was possibly written for a meeting of Duke Albrecht of Bavaria and Emperor Ferdinand I in 1558. It would have opened a lavish banquet rather than a sparse monastic meal, but it is not inconceivable that a high-status guest of an abbot or abbess, many of whom were rulers of independent territories in their own right, would have been entertained musically during dinner. On such an occasion, wine from the monastery’s own vineyards would have been served, and sometimes pious endowments even came with allowances for wine and beer at meals. The cliché of the inebriated monk stretches from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, and a contrafact (Wer wollt den Wein nit lieben?) of Giacomo Gastoldi’s dance song Questa dolce sirena in praise of wine captures the jolly mood of the carnival season in the cloister. Such adaptations of up-to-date secular songs are not rare in music books from monasteries and demonstrate both the monks’ interest in contemporary repertoire, and their attempts to adapt it to their own sphere of life.

As part of the religious reforms, monks were increasingly expected to study theology and to be ordained to the priesthood (unless they opted for the more subservient role of the lay brother) so that they could fulfil pastoral duties, for example as confessors to nuns, and celebrate Masses in the parish churches belonging to a monastery. The celebration of the first Mass was therefore a decisive step. Blasius Amon’s motet Sacrificate sacrificium iustitiaecaptures this moment in the life of a young man. Amon himself had worked for the abbots of the Cistercian monasteries Zwettl and Heiligenkreuz in Austria, before entering the Franciscan order in 1587. Particularly noteworthy are the chromatic chords at ‘Immola Deo’, which capture the solemnity of the sacrifice, and the ritualistic threefold repetition of ‘Calicem salutaris accipiam’ in triple metre, before the crisp rhythms of the opening return.

The celebration of the Mass was not only the liturgical but also (besides Vespers) the musical highlight of the day. Polyphonic music was usually reserved for the most solemn feasts of the year, such as Christmas, Easter, Corpus Christi, the many Marian feasts, and of course the patron saints of a monastery or religious order. The text Os iusti was assigned to the celebrations of a Confessor and was thus eminently suitable for the feasts of St Benedict, St Bernard of Clairvaux, St Dominic or a local saint. The setting by Jacob Regnart, a Flemish composer who worked successively for several Habsburg rulers, is uniquely preserved in a choirbook from Irsee, alongside introits and a requiem setting by Italian composers. It quotes the entire chant melody in long notes in the second tenor, thus preserving liturgical decorum, while Regnart weaves four flowing lines around the cantus firmus.

For a more elaborate celebration of the Mass, the entire Mass Ordinary could have been performed by the choir. Orlande de Lassus’s Missa super Veni in hortum meum was written for the Munich court chapel, but it quickly found its way into monasteries. Possibly the earliest surviving source is a beautiful presentation manuscript, which the monk Ambrosius Mayrhofer from St Emmeram in Regensburg dedicated to that city’s town council in 1567. Other early sources come from Neresheim and from the Benedictine monastery St Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg, which not only extensively practised sacred music (documented in two dozen choirbooks written by Frater Johannes Dreher) but also acted as a catalyst for distributing music to other monastic houses. Lassus’s Mass is based on his own motet Veni in hortum meum, which sets a verse from the Song of Songs. Such parody Masses are often understood as celebrating the Virgin Mary, but this Mass suggests a different reading. The motet text exhorts the friends to eat, drink and be inebriated—not in the sense of a drunken revelry, but, as contemporary theologians pointed out, with the celestial nourishment provided by Christ, whether through the Eucharist or the heavenly bread and living water that the faithful enjoy in paradise. As is usual in Lassus’s Masses from this period, the Kyrie sticks closely to the source material, the Gloria and Credo move quickly through the liturgical text, except for the customary slowing-down at ‘Et incarnatus est’, while the Sanctus typically is more solemn and expansive. The lively rhythms of the motet’s line ‘et inebriamini carissimi’ (‘and be inebriated, dearest friends’) close the Gloria, Credo and Agnus Dei, giving the Mass a celebratory aspect.

As monasteries were self-governing institutions, a range of roles and functions were open to senior monks who had a knack for finance, supplies, teaching or discipline. The most important office was that of the abbot, who was elected by his brothers, and who represented the monastery to the outside world, usually leaving the day-to-day management to the prior and cellarer. As Augustinian, Benedictine and Cistercian abbots held their office for life, their election was a turning point for their community, and therefore the assistance of the Holy Spirit was invoked to make a good choice. Veni Creator Spiritus is a hymn sung at ordinations of abbots, or to open a synod or conclave; however, Jacob Reiner set only the first two stanzas, making it unlikely that this motet had a strictly liturgical function. The prolific composer was not a monk himself, but spent his life as music teacher and director at the imperial monastery of Weingarten near Lake Constance. He dedicated several of his music prints to the abbots of other Swabian monasteries, styling himself proudly as a pupil of the great Lassus on the title page. Johannes Nucius’s motet Vana salus hominis originated in a different geographical orbit: Nucius entered the Cistercian monastery at Rauden (Rudach) in Silesia, before becoming abbot of Himmelwitz (Jemielnica) in 1591. He published two books of motets and, in 1613, a music theory treatise which was widely received. This is all the more remarkable as the Cistercian order only grudgingly admitted polyphonic music until the early seventeenth century. The moralizing text of the motet is written in classical elegiac distichs, demonstrating the erudition of the poet (most likely Nucius himself). Like the entire motet print, it is dedicated to Nucius’s mentor and abbot, Michael Walther of Rauden, whose personal motto ‘Dominus mihi adiutor’ provides the cantus firmus.

Klingenstein’s motet De vita religiosa had expressed the conviction that a man of faith dies more confidently, and in the second half of the sixteenth century, music increasingly provided the backdrop to funerary rites. Polyphonic requiem compositions were imported from Italy or composed locally; the monastery St Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg even had a special choirbook dedicated to Masses for the dead, which would have been sung at the requiem services for monks or benefactors of the community. But some monks opted for a more personal musical tribute. Abbot Gerwig Blarer of Weingarten died in August 1567, and his successor Johann Christoph Raittner noted in his diary: ‘When Abbot Gerwig was buried on Sunday afternoon, everything was done in the traditional way, but at the grave In te Domine speravi was sung, as he had wished, with a mixed and mournful voice; I think the author was Clemens non Papa.’ This motet by the Franco-Flemish composer was published in Nuremberg in 1553, in a print dedicated to Abbot Clemens of Bronnbach, a small Cistercian monastery on the point of dying out, as the abbot had turned Protestant in 1552.

But those who kept their vows were, according to De vita religiosa, rewarded more copiously. The motet Aeterno laudanda choro by the Benedictine Sebastian Ertel certainly expresses, as did Sponsa Dei, the firm conviction that the faithful will join the celestial choir. Like the anonymous author of Quis rutilat Triadis?, the text of Aeterno laudanda choro uses classical imagery—heaven as Olympus, the rivers of the underworld—to add gravitas to the praise of monastic virtues. Ertel was born in Mariazell in Styria and joined the Benedictine order in Garsten near Steyr; his Symphoniae sacrae were dedicated collectively to the prelates of Upper Austria. The preface of that collection runs the whole gamut in praise of music as a means of turning human hearts towards the divine, backed up with quotations from the monastic fathers St Augustine, St Francis and St Benedict. The title page shows, once more, the Virgin Mary, crowned by stars, and a quotation from Psalm 103 (104) that could stand for A monk’s life in its entirety: ‘I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live: I will praise my God while I have my being.’

Barbara Eichner © 2024