Every year I'm forced to agree more and more with cranky middle-aged people that Spring is, without question, the most overrated season. As a lifelong Northwesterner I've been subjected to more than 25 dismal, bland Springs and have concluded that Europe's poets and artists hung on to Spring just because it beat dying of hypothermia. Now that we live in more electrically civilized times where people comfortably live year round in frostpiles like Iceland artfarts like myself can better appreciate seasons with real poetic vitality, like Autumn*. While the least-depicted season in classical music might still be Winter Autumn's aural evocations still remain elusive in the concert hall, though certainly not for a lack of trying by inspired composers. Last year I used October to highlight some horror-themed pieces, so this year I'm trying something different and using November, a month more rarely considered than one thinks when Thanksgiving is removed from the equation, to highlight some autumn-inspired works of note by an international cadre of great composers. There's plenty to find in the leafpile, so much so that my first article is a two-parter, starting with the smaller part and going all the way back to the Elizabethan age.
I've been neglecting the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book for far too long as a source of leaves, mostly because it never occurs to me to listen to Renaissance music until it's too late. One of the major sources of British keyboard music from the late Renaissance, the Book compiles over 300 works by such luminaries as William Byrd, John Bull, Giles Farnaby, Orlando Gibbons and Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck among other names and many anonymous works to boot. One of the more minor names, one of which I was completely unaware until just recently, is Martin Peerson, who was esteemed in his day and held powerful musical posts at St. Paul's Cathedral and possibly Westminster Abbey, most likely because very little of his music remains extant. His entire surviving keyboard output is preserved in the Book, and one of his pieces gave inspiration to the next work to be featured in these blogs - The Fall of the Leafe.
The Fall of the Leafe takes the form of an alman, the Elizabethan word for an allemande, a German dance popular in the Renaissance that showed up in the works of Bach and others. The mood is stately and sad, cast in two similar parts, each with a dirge-like A section and a B section marked reprise featuring a flowing descant line in the right hand on top of the same harmonic material in the left, as well as bars half the length of the A section, giving the feeling of double time. The wedding of melody and harmonic motion her is superb, Peerson weaving some of the most yearning moments I've seen in Elizabethan music since Alfanso Ferrabosco's Dovehouse Pavane. Of particular interest is the use of repetition in the third part of each section, such as in the piece's third bar where the melody finds itself in a downward rut. There's a sense of arrested development in these moments, as if the player wants to continue but is rooted, or rather confined by space and time, a great reflection of humanity's increasing melancholy in the face of seasons turning for the darker. My favorite moment is the third bar of the piece's second half where the left hand descends to the bottom of the virginal's range via some highly sophisticated part-writing for the time, allowing the natural, private resonance of the era's keyboard instruments quake the performer's hands in a way only they can truly appreciate. It's a wonderful example of the expressive powers of Elizabethan music and I'm glad my research called my attention to it and its author. It also touched the heart of a much better-known British composer hundreds of years later, resulting in a piece we'll look at next time in a different blog...
~PNK
*Autumn is a much more beautiful word than Fall, so much so that I can't think of a single autumnal work that calls the season "Fall" in its title.
