Saturday, October 27, 8.30 pm
Church of Nossa Senhora da Piedade (Matriz)

Renaciendo – Music for organetto
Catalina Vicens, portative organ

In the manuscript associated with King Alfonso X ‘el Sabio’ of Castille and León, there is one of the earliest references to the portative organ in the Iberian Peninsula. This large collection of Cantigas de Santa Maria, many of them composed by Alfonso himself, contains depictions of instruments of Arab and Christian origins. During King Alfonso’s reign, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam coexisted and influenced each other in different realms. In music, it was through the Arabs and their preservation of sources of Antiquity, that the organ, once a water-pumped ceremonial instrument, was reintroduced in Europe after centuries of extinction. This intellectual open-mindedness can also be seen in Alfonso X’s grandson, the Portuguese King Dom Dinis, who was also a poet and composer. His Cantigas de Amor, compared to the Cantigas de Santa Maria, had another type of devotion: the devotion to the unreachable lady, the Leitmotiv of the troubadour repertory. The same tradition was developed by Martin Codax, a Galician jongleur who in his Cantigas de Amigo reverses the addressee: in them, it is the lady who longs for her absent lover. These songs, too, were often accompanied by instruments, which either doubled the main melody, improvised or just kept held notes, or ‘bourdons’ (often depicted in the early organetti) as a basis.

Continuing with this love poetry, two 14th century poet-composers are presented in this programme: Guillaume de Machaut, known as the last poet-composer from France, and one of the greatest masters of the Trecento, the blind poet and organist Francesco Landini. The Florentine who defined the new style of two voice polyphony in Italy was depicted both in manuscript and in his own tombstone with a portative organ, instrument that he was known to use during his unforgettable performances. His secular songs often remain ambiguous, in that the love for the woman could be both for the earthly court lady or the Virgin Mary. Here the portative organ plays the role of connection between both worlds. Whereas the organ gained prominence during the 14th century as a symbol of the Catholic Church, the portative organ was also one of the preferred instrument for the secular repertoire. Many of the works by Landini up to those of 15th c. composers such as Dufay where used also as ‘contrafacta’, where a devotional text was sung over the melody of a popular secular piece and vice-versa, and popular secular and sacred repertoires were often combined in the same sources, such as the Buxheimer Orgelbuch and the Cancionero de la Colombina, once owned by Christopher Columbus’s son. Popular tunes of the late middleages were often sung in processions and accompanied by instruments such as the organetto: a link between the church and the pagan world.

About 600 years later, the portative organ has been revived and today it is brought to life through new compositions for the instrument. In this programme, Carson Cooman, organist and composer in residence at Harvard University, has used the cantiga tradition as model for his Novas Cantigas, playing with the medieval use of modality and rhythm. The Finnish composer Olli Virtaperko, has reworked a Lamento originally written for viola da gamba for the organetto. The work develops simple melodies around a bourdon note, while he gives freedom to the performer to ornament his composition, in this case, using the characteristic style of Guillaume de Machaut.

Catalina Vicens,

Annonym (Codex Las Huelgas, c. 1300)

¬ Quis dabit capiti meo aquam

¬ Audi pontus, audi tellus

Alfonso el Sabio (1221-1282)

¬ Cantiga «Miragres muitos pelos reis faz»

Dom Dinis Rei Poeta (1261-1325)

¬ Cantiga «Que mui gran prazer que eu ei, senhor»

Carson Cooman (1982)

¬ Novas cantigas (2014) para Catalina Vicens

Martim Codax (fl. 12th c.)

¬ Cantiga «Ai Deus, se sab’ ora meu amigo»

Francesco Landini (c. 1325-1397)

¬ Angelica biltà

¬ Ecco la primavera

Annonym
(Codex Rossi, 14th c.)

¬ Lucente stella

Annonym (14th c.)

¬ Chominciamento di gioia

Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377)

¬ Dame vostre doulz viaire

Olli Virtaperko (1974)

¬ Lamento of Ananias (2015/2018) para Catalina Vicens

Annonym (14th c.)

¬ Saltarello

Wolfgang Chranekker (fl.1442)

¬ Sancta Katerina

[Guillaume Dufay] (1397-1474)

¬ Or me vault bien / Portugaler
(Buxheimer Orgelbuch)

Juan Cornago (c. 1400-c.1474)

¬ Pués que Dios te fizo tal graciosa
(Cancionero de la Colombina)

Annonym
(Codex Las Huelgas, c. 1300)

¬ Benedicamus Domino

Participants