HIGH ART IN TROUBLED TIMES

After almost a century and a half of maritime expansion and political and economic splendour, the second half of the sixteenth century in Portugal was a period of deepening crisis at all levels of life. As the Portuguese monopoly of the spice trade dwindled and the impact of the Counter-Reformation severely curtailed the development of humanistic thought in the local intellectual and artistic circles, Portugal gradually experienced a crisis of values and self-identity that affected all areas of its culture. Several disastrous events worsened the situation: the death of the young heir to the throne, D. João, on January 1, 1554, just two weeks before the birth of his only son, D. Sebastião; Sebastião's own death in 1578, at the age of 24, while pursuing the insane dream of establishing a Portuguese empire in Morocco; the succession of his elderly great-uncle, the Cardinal-Inquisitor D. Henrique; and the final annexation of the Portuguese Crown by Philip II of Spain in 1580.

One of the consequences of this change in the cultural life of the country was a growing atmosphere of deep mysticism and disapproval of all kinds of secular entertainment - literary, theatrical or musical - as intrinsically frivolous and morally questionable. As the loss of Portuguese independence led to the disbandment of the royal court at Lisbon, the rich tradition of polyphonic settings of courtly poetry that had developed continuously since the late fifteenth century was beginning to fade. One of its last main sources was the songbook now preserved as the Chansonnier Masson 56 in the Library of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. It contains a total of 130 pieces, of which only 55 are polyphonic. This Paris songbook is indirectly associated with some of the most significant Mannerist poets in Portugal: Luís de Camöes (c.1524-80) wrote a series of stanzas to the refrain of Foyse gastamdo a esperança; Pedro de Andrade Caminha (c.1520-89) likewise set texts to Dipues vienes delhaldea; and both poets developed the opening quatrain of Na fomte esta Lianor. Most of the poems in this manuscript are deeply melancholic, often dealing with such subjects as the loss of all hope and illusions (Foyse gastamdo a esperança), the desperate longing for the day when life's sufferings will be over Quiem viese aquel dia), or the painful awareness of the absence of the loved one (Na famte esta Lianor and Dipues vienes delhaldea). The music - anonymous, as is the case with all sixteenth-century Portuguese songbooks - seeks to stress this feeling of ingrained sadness by a systematic choice of minor thirds and sixths as essential consonances, as well as by a subtle but highly effective use of chromaticism, unexpected modulation and dissonance.

If secular music seems to have fallen gradually out of favour in Portugal, Portuguese sacred polyphony, on the other hand, found its golden age between the mid-sixteenth and the midseventeenth centuries. A network of major ecclesiastical institutions not only established large and richly endowed polyphonic chapels, but often also attached to them permanent music schools of high artistic and pedagogic standards. One of the first Portuguese polyphonists to achieve an international reputation was Vicente Lusitano, who was active in Italy as a music teacher. His moment of glory came when he was acknowledged by a jury of two singers of the Papal Chapel as the winner of a public debate with the avant-garde Italian theorist, Nicola Vicentino, over the use of the Greek genera in modern polyphony. Lusitano later published his views on the matter in a treatise entitled Introdutione facilissima, et novissima, di canto fermo, figurato, contraponto semplice et in concerto (Rome, 1553, with new editions in Venice in 1558 and 1561), and most likely also in an anonymous manuscript treatise in which the motet Heu me Domine is given as an extreme example of the use of the chromatic genus.

The first composer represented on this recording is António Marques Lésbio, who started his studies as a choirboy in the Lisbon Royal Chapel and ultimately rose to master of this institution, as well as Master of Chamber Music and Royal Music Librarian. From the 1660s to the time of his death, Lésbio - who was also a respected poet and member of the prestigious - Academia dos Singulares - composed both the' text and the music of most of the villancicos performed every year at the Royal Chapel to celebrate Immaculate Conception, Christmas and Epiphany. Of these works, however, only little more than a dozen survive: Dexen que llore mi niño is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable of all Portuguese Christmas pieces.

António Pinheiro was appointed master of the private chapel of the Dukes of Bragança in 1576, in Vila Viçosa, and as such headed for almost thirty years one of the most important polyphonic institutions in the country. His psalm settings are clever contrapuntal elaborations of the Gregorian psalm tones, usually with the chant formula presented in a straightforward way in one of the voices.

The prestige acquired by the Portuguese polyphonic schools - particularly by that of the Cathedral of Evora - spread to neighbouring Spain, where several composers from Portugal filled some of the most respected professional positions in the Spanish musical life. Such was the case of Manuel de Tavares, who was, successively, the chapelmaster of the Cathedrals of Baeza (1612-25), Murcia (1625-31), Las Palmas of Gran Canaria (1631-38) and Cuenca (1638). Tavares excelled in polychoral writing, in a style that shows several points of contact with those of the Flemish Masters of the Spanish Royal Chapel (especially Philippe Rogier, Géry de Ghersem and Mathieu Rosmarin), as well as of Catalonian composers such as Cererols or Pujol.

Oddly enough, while the Portuguese composers seem to have given up entirely the traditional secular genres by the end of the century, in Spain this secular tradition continued through the new genre of the tono humano, which was greatly favoured by the Spanish court and cultivated by its best musicians. Among the latter was the Portuguese Manuel Machado, who belonged to the Spanish Royal Chapel in Madrid. He must have enjoyed a considerable reputation as a secular composer, judging from his representation in all the fundamental manuscript collections of tonos assembled in his lifetime. The two works recorded here come from the famous Munich Songbook, an anthology produced by the official copyist of the Royal Chapel, Claudio de la Sablonara. Dos estrellas le siguen is a simple fourpart homophonic setting, in which the main artistic effect lies in the sensitive harmonic shading of the several presentations of the word "morena" (brunette), whereas Qué bien siente Galatea combines more intricate counterpoint with a free approach to dissonance handling.

Nevertheless, although the purely secular genres tended to disappear as such, many of their forms, technical features and compositional conventions survived in a different context. In fact, starting in the mid-sixteenth century, the Catholic Church began to insert in the musical liturgy of some of the more joyful feasts of the year a few optional items sung in the vernacular. They were performed at Mass during the Elevation of the Host, or at Matins, in series of eight or nine pieces alternating with Latin responsories of the Roman Rite. These sacred villancicos soon became the main attraction of the church ceremonies at Christmas, Epiphany, Corpus Christi, the Immaculate Conception and many other feasts throughout the liturgical calendar - much to the regret of purists who complained of what they saw as the transformation of the church into a mere hall of entertainment.

Gaspar Fernandes, a former student of the Evora Cathedral school who became chapel master of the Cathedrals of Guatemala (1599-1606) and Puebla (1606-29), in the New World, left a large collection of villancicos in an autograph codex now kept in the Cathedral of Oaxaca, Mexico. Botay fora, a six-part work for Christmas, contains the alternation of a choral refrain with soloistic coplas and the lively rhythms that were the hallmarks of the genre throughout the seventeenth century.

The texts of the sacred villancicos often included dialogues involving a variable number of characters, who corresponded to popular types of the two Iberian countries and of their overseas empires - shepherds and peasants from all geographical regions and ethnic and linguistic groups in the Peninsula, as well as gypsies, Arabs, American Indians and African slaves. The latter were the particular subject of a specific type of villancico known as the negro, in which are portrayed the peculiarities of the Spanish and the Portuguese languages as spoken by the African communities. Antonya Flaciquia Gasipà (a title that corresponds to the Creole versions of the Spanish names Antónia, Francisca and Gaspar) describes the amusing situation of a group of blacks who had a little too much to drink en route to Bethlehem to adore the newborn Jesus. Its author is Fr. Filipe da Madre de Deus, who served as Master of Chamber Music to King Afonso VI of Portugal between 1660 and 1668, and who ended his life as chapel master of the Mercederian Convent of Seville. The work enjoyed such an  enduring popularity that it was still being performed at Guatemala Cathedral as late as 1740.

NOTES ON THE COMPOSERS

António Marques Lésbio (b. Lisbon 1639; d. Lisbon 1709) was a choirboy in the royal chapel of Lisbon at the age of nine and the choirmaster at that time was Padre Marcos Soares Pereira, the brother of João Lourenço Rebelo. Lésbio received a classical education and became not only a good musician but, above all, a well-known poet and writer. No less a person than Rebelo himself pointed out Lésbio's contrapuntal talent to King João - and this on the basis of a juvenile composition. After Portugal achieved its independence in 1640, the responsibility for reorganizing the musical chapel fell chiefly to Lésbio. As a singer in the royal chapel he became one of the first members of the Academia dos Singulares founded in 1663 in Lisbon. In 1668 he became master of the royal chamber musicians, in 1679 master of the choirboys of the royal chapel and, in 1692, curator of the royal music library. This library developed into one of the most valuable of its kind in Europe, before being destroyed in a catastrophic earthquake in 1755. Lésbio was one of the greatest composers of the Iberian peninsula who, not only in the field of Spanish and Portuguese literature but also in that of music, wrote works of deep sensitivity. His style distinguishes itself by its continually changing moods. In 1688 Matias de Sousa Vila-Lobos wrote in his book Arte de Cantochão that Lésbio "is the Apollo of our time, a worthy master of the royal chapel, eminent and singular in the art of music".

Manuel Machado (b. Lisbon c.1590; d. Madrid 1646) studied in Lisbon at the Colégio da Claustra da Sé under the well-known Duarte Lobo (1565-1646). Having mastered many instruments, he was employed as a musician to the royal chapel at Madrid in 1610, where his father, Lope Machado, played the harp. In 1639 he was still a royal chamber musician at the court of Philip III and, in 1642, Manuel Machado received a special reward "for his long services and for those of his father". His some twenty extant works are secular songs with Spanish texts. Not only are his harmonies rich, surprising and full of variety, but his compositions are especially noteworthy for the great care he took precisely to reflect in the music the metre of the texts he set. Evidence of Machado's popularity can be seen in the appearance of his works in the most important songbooks of the time, for example, in the Cancionero de la Sablonara. He also wrote religious works, among them Lamentations for Good Friday.

António Pinheiro (b. Montemór-o-Novo c.1550; d. Evora 1617) probably studied under Francisco Guerrero (1528-99). In 1576 he was appointed choirmaster at the palace of the Duke of Bragança in Vila Viçosa, and in the last seven years of his life he was choirmaster of Evora Cathedral. Most of his compositions came from his time at Vila Viçosa: his chançonetas, villancicos and works in Latin, among them a Magnificat and Lamentations for Good Friday. Pinheiro's only surviving works are psalm settings: these were found at the Paço Ducal in Vila Viçosa and evince a great mastery of counterpoint.

Gaspar Fernandes (b. c.1570; d. Puebla, Mexico before September 18, 1629) is one of the few Portuguese composers who was able to make a career for himself in Latin America. In 1590 he was both singer and organist at Évora Cathedral, where he probably also studied under Manuel Mendes. The next time his name appears is in 1602 as organist of Guatemala Cathedral (at what is now Antigua) where soon afterwards he was named choinnaster. Here he copied works by Cristobal de Morales and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. In 1606 he was appointed to Puebla Cathedral as choirmaster where he worked as composer and organist and taught the choirboys. Here he stayed for the rest of his life, even though he was frequently involved in disputes with his superiors. Indeed, in 1618, he was dismissed for a short time for failing to obtain permission to direct the music for a funeral. Fernandes was a composer with a will of his own, who, separated from his home country, was able to develop a most personal style in his music. He became famous through his villancicos, of which he wrote more than 250, and which were performed on church holidays alongside his Latin works. As well as Spanish and Portuguese texts, he also set negro dialects and even Tlaxcalan to music. Most of his texts he wrote himself. An autograph manuscript, which is kept in Oaxaca Cathedral, contains the chançonetas and villancicos which he composed between 1609 and 1620. This manuscript constitutes the largest surviving collection of seventeenth-centun polyphonic music in Latin America.

Vicente Lusitano (b. Olivença c.1520; d. Rome after 1560) was, for a short time, a singer at the court of Dom Alfonso de Lencastre, then he taught music in Padua and Viterbo and finally became a member of the Papal choir in Rome, where his first book of motets appeared in 1551. Lusitano is known, above all, for the part he played in a debate in which he and his adversary, Nicola Vicentino, argued the question of chromaticism in music. At the conclusion of the debate, which was conducted in 1551 before the members of the papal choir and recorded in writing by the papal singer and secretary, Ghiselin Danckerts, Lusitano, who had put forward a more traditional point of view, was declared the victor. He was a famous exponent of improvised contrapuntal music, and the motet Heu me Domine on this recording is a musical example from his treatise Introdutione facilissima et novissima de canto fermo (1553).

Manuel de Tavares (b. Portalegre c.1585; d. Cuenca 1638) was a choirboy at the cathedral of Portalegre under António Ferro. He became choirmaster at Baeza in 1612 and occupied the same post at the cathedral of Murcia from around 1625. In 1631 he became choirmaster in Las Palmas and in 1638 he returned to Cuenca - where he died as a result of the abrupt change in climate. Tavares composed motets, parody masses, vesper psalms and villancicos. Although many of his works are now lost, there is little doubt that Tavares had a preference for polyphonic compositions (for up to fourteen voices), compositions in which, in intriguing fashion, he imbued the polyphonic style with surprising homophonic elements.

Filipe da Madre de Deus (b. Lisbon c.1630; d. Seville c.1690) probably received his musical training in Portugal and then moved to Seville. He was a well-known vihuela player and composer there at the court of Philip IV. In a letter written in 1654 to his correspondent in Seville, Fray Bartolomé, the Portuguese king, João IV, expressed his astonishment at the success of his subject, for the king preferred a more stately style of music - rather different from the light, spirited and richly inventive style of the composer. Madre de Deus returned to Lisbon, however, in 1654, where he was finally able to convince the king of his talent - who indeed, two years later, expressed great praise for the composer's contrapuntal daring. João IV's successor, Afonso VI, appointed him master of the royal chamber music, a position which he kept until 1668, when he returned to Seville and became director of music at the Carmelite church of S José until his death. Madre de Deus was well known in his lifetime for his villancicos. In the important collection of the poet Manuel de Melo (1608-66) Obras Metricas Tomo 11 with the subtitle La Avena de Tersicore, octava Musa de Melodino, Tonos y Romances (Lyon 1665) he is named as one of the most important composers to have set these texts to music. His villancicos are pithy compositions and far ahead of the style of their time. His music has even appeared in Latin America: Antonya Flaciquia Gasipà has been written into a choirbook of the Cathedral of Guatemala along with proof of the continued popularity of the work: "Se canto este año de 1740" (Is sung in this year of 1740).