Festive Music by Guerrero

Program: #09-02   Air Date: Jan 05, 2009

We continue our long and fruitful association with our partners at Radio Netherlands in presenting a series of concerts from the 2008 Holland Festival of Early Music at Utrecht.

We will also direct listeners to their web site, which will provide more in-depth information about the music and performers we hear as well as more information about the festival (www.rnmusic.nl). The primary theme for 2008 was the Golden Age in Spain.

NOTE: All of the music on this program is from a concert featuring the ensemble Doulce Mémoire, Denis Raisin Dadre, conductor. For more information on this group:

www.doulcememoire.com/article/en

Festive music by Guerrero from the Cathedral of Sevilla

Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599) is the second of the unsurpassed trio of Spanish composers, together with Victoria and Morales. But, unlike his colleagues, he spent nearly all of his life in Sevilla, of which some 50 years as maestro de capilla. The eight singers and eight wind players of the French group Doulce Mémoire put together a programme of motets and mass movements that could have been performed at the high feasts of the liturgical calendar. It is still not crystal clear what part the instrumentalists played during those celebrations, but that their parts would have been embellished with glosas, Spain’s way of playing variations, has been confirmed by all 16th-century theoreticians.

Anonymous
1 Spagna (instrumental)
(from: Codex Lerma, 1607)

Francisco Guerrero 1528-1599
2 Tota pulchra es Maria ("Thou art all fair, O Mary")

Anonymous
3 Pange lingua (instrumental)
(from: Codex Lerma)

Francisco Guerrero
4 Ave Maria

Anonymous
5 Adieu mes amours (instrumental)
(from: Codex Lerma)

Francisco Guerrero
6 Ave virgo sanctissima ("Hail, Holy Virgin, most blessed Mother of God")

Anonymous
7 Mon seul (instrumental)
(from: Codex Lerma)

Francisco Guerrero
8 Heu mihi ("Woe is me, Lord, for I have sinned greatly")

9 Agnus dei from Missa La bataille
(from: Missarum liber secundus, Rome, 1582)

10 Beata dei genitrix ("O Blessed Mary, Mother of God")

Anonymous
11 Laudate dominum (instrumental)
appl. 0’56

13 Psalmodie (instrumental)
(from: Codex Lerma)

Francisco Guerrero
14 O Domine Jesu Christe ("O Lord Jesus Christ, I worship Thee wounded on the Cross")

Anonymous
15 Psalmodie (instrumental)
(from: Codex Lerma)

Francisco Guerrero
16 Trahe me post ("Draw me after you, we will run to the odor of your anointing oils")

Anonymous
17 Spagna (instrumental)
(from: Codex Lerma)

Francisco Guerrero
18 O Altitudo divitarium ("O the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God")

19 Laudate dominum ("Let us praise the Lord")

20 Regina caeli ("Queen of heaven")

Composer Info

Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599)