For complete texts for tonight's concert, click here.

​

​

​

PROGRAM NOTES  

​

Josquin Desprez (1450?-1521) was widely recognized as the greatest European composer of his  time. He composed the Pange Lingua Mass late in his life, and the work shows his mature mastery  of counterpoint and expression. The Pange Lingua Mass is based upon the unison melody “Pange  Lingua Gloriosi” composed by Thomas Aquinas nearly 300 years earlier. Using this tune as a point of  departure, Josquin weaves it through each movement of the Mass, its basic structure changing  slightly with each appearance. In this way, the Pange Lingua Mass is like a set of variations on a  theme. 

​

This program is designed to give the audience a chance to hear the same tune in several guises, so  that by the time we hear the Josquin Mass, the Pange Lingua melody is somewhat familiar, as it  might have been for his audience. The Student Singers open the program singing the original tune,  first with the original lyrics and then with newly composed lyrics. The second piece, the newly  composed RIVER | MELODY, is based on the Pange Lingua melody too, but draped in a  contemporary style. Paul Gibson’s reverent setting of the Pange Lingua melody follows. A  kaleidoscopic meditation on the original tune, Gibson’s Pange Lingua Gloriosi explores the  implications of the melody, making a three-dimensional sound sculpture from a single line. 

​

Josquin’s Missa Pange Lingua uses the Pange Lingua melody as a point of departure. Each  movement begins with melody in slightly altered form, often in the tenor voice, and each movement  uses the melody’s intervals and contour as basic materials. The Pange Lingua Mass shows hallmarks  of Josquin’s mature style, including the frequent use of imitation, of duet textures and of increasing  density and activity at the ends of major sections. 

In the Ave Maria, we hear the work of a younger Josquin. Still present are duet textures and rhythmic  complexity, but set in a clearer, more spacious and more open texture. The Ave Maria was the first  piece of music published with moveable type (in 1501), and the piece is one of the most famous and  popular of the sixteenth century.  

​

—Jeffrey Bernstein