Photo by Marco Borggreve
In its upcoming concert titled “Sacred or Profane?” Early Music Now has put together a fascinating program that places very secular songs side by side with their Christianized versions. To accomplish this, they’re hosting the 12-member, London-based vocal group Stile Antico, who boast best-selling recordings on the Harmonia Mundi label and live performances at The BBC Proms, Amsterdam Concertgebouw and Buckingham Palace on their considerable résumé.
An example of what this concert is all about is the anonymous, early 16th-century English song “Westron Wynde” (“Western Wind”). “Westron wynde, when will thou blow? / The small rain down can rain. / Christ, if my love were in my arms, / and I in my bed again,” as it goes. This little ditty proved quite popular in its day; thus we find the composer John Taverner (1490-1545) tweaking the melody but also changing the song’s message entirely. The original’s sentiment of longing to be in bed with a paramour, in Taverner’s hands, became: “Laudamus te. Benedicimus te. Adoramus te. Glorificamus te.”
As Early Music Now’s Matthew O’Donovan explains, “Aquilino Coppini’s [a collector of madrigal parodies] conviction that any good music, given appropriately spiritual words, could be rendered ‘commendable to God and to His saints in churches and private houses,’ was certainly the justification for his ‘making spiritual’ some of Claudio Monteverdi’s most profane madrigals which, he believed, held the power to ‘move the human passions’—a power which he wanted to capture for more godly, devotional purposes than Monteverdi’s original texts permitted.” Thus, Monteverdi’s lustful lyrics “O mouth! O kisses! O tongue!” Coppini “made spiritual” to read “O Jesus, my light, my hope, my heart.” Even such unlikely candidates as a scandalous paean to 15-year-old girls by Jacob Clemens non Papa was transformed into a cathedral-ready “Gloria” from his Missa Entre vous filles by Orlando Lassus.
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This concert by Early Music Now featuring Stile Antico takes place at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, 812 N. Jackson St. at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 16. For tickets, call 414-225-3113 or 877-546-8742, or visit earlymusicnow.org.
