Thursday, October 25, 9.30 pm
Church and Hospice of Bom Jesus
The origins of organ music
Catalina Vicens, organ and portative organ
In the manuscript associated with King Alfonso X ‘el Sabio’ of Castile 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 grandchild, 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. 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.
This love poetry tradition was continued by 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.
During the 14th century, the church organ as a liturgical instrument also gains in popularity, and through the wealth of iconographical and literary sources it possible to see a radical increase of organs built throughout Europe. During this period, new ways of notating music were also developed, and whereas large corpora of vocal music from this period survive, little instrumental music has been handed down to us. We can attribute this to the strong reliance on vocality, but also for its improvisatory nature. Compared to most instruments of the period, the church organ was able to play polyphony, and thus, the complex art of organ playing gave way to the first attempts to notate instrumental music: organ tablatures and intabulations.
One of the most important corpora of keyboard music of the late middle ages is the Codex Faenza. In this Italian collection written at the turn of the 15th century, we find organ music of a florid Gothic style, with two-voice liturgical compositions based on a cantus firmus. Later during the century, a precious document of organ music and the art of improvising was produced in Germany, the Buxheimer Orgelbuch. This book with pedagogical instructions by the blind organist Conrad Paumann, also contains German, Italian and French secular song arrangements, including a song by Guillaume Dufay transmitted here under the name of ‘Portugaler’. Similar in nature are the pieces in the Germanic tablature books by Adam Ileborgh, Amerbach and Hans Kotter. They combine free improvisatory pieces with arrangements of popular tunes and sacred pieces. Another example of the combination of popular secular and sacred repertoires can be found in a late 15th c. Spanish source: The Cancionero de la Colombina, once owned by Christopher Columbus’ son, here in an organ intabulation by the performer.
Catalina Vicens
PORTATIVE ORGAN
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’
Annonym
(Codex Rossi, 14th c.)
¬ Lucente stella
Francesco Landini (c. 1325-1397)
¬ Angelica biltà
Annonym (14th c.)
¬ Chominciamento di gioia
Dom Dinis, Rei poeta (1261-1325)
¬ Cantiga «Que mui gran prazer
que eu ei, senhor»
Wolfgang Chranekker (fl.1442)
¬ Sancta Katerina
Annonym
(Codex Las Huelgas)
¬ Benedicamus Domino
ORGAN
Annonym
(Codex Faenza, 14th/15th c.)
¬ Ave maris stella
Conrad Paumann (c. 1410-1473)
¬ Redeuntes in re
¬ Mit ganczem Willen
(Lochamer Liederbuch
/ Buxheimer Orgelbuch, 15th c.)
Annonym
(Ms. Breslau I. Qu 438, 15th c.)
¬ Gloria
Annonym
(Adam Ileborgh Tablatur, 1448)
¬ Preambulum bonum pedale
seu manuale in d
¬ Frowe al myn hoffen an dyr lyed
Annonym
(Buxheimer Orgelbuch)
¬ Praeambulum in a
Annonym
(Amerbach Tablatur 15th/16th c.)
¬ Si dormiero
Hans Kotter (c.1485-1541)
¬ Harmonia in sol
Annonym
(Buxheimer Orgelbuch)
¬ O rosa bella
Heinrich Isaac (c. 1450-1517)
¬ Tristitia vestra
(Amerbach Tablatur)
Annonym
(Codex Faenza)
¬ Biance flour
Annonym (Buxheimer Orgelbuch)
¬ Adieu mes tres belles
Hans Kotter
¬ Prooemium in re
[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 Faenza)
¬ Benedicamus Domino
Participants
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Praised for her lyricism, virtuosity and brilliant style of playing, Chilean-born early keyboard player Catalina Vicens, has performed at the main concert halls and early music festivals of Europe and the Americas. Having specialized in performing on antique keyboard instruments, she has been invited to play on the oldest playable harpsichord in the world, the fifteenth-century gothic organ of St Andreas in Ostönnen (one of the oldest and best preserved organs in the world,) as well as several collections in the UK, Europe and USA. She is also recognized for her work with medieval portative and positive organs, clavisimbalum and clavicytherium. Catalina Vicens studied historical keyboards at the Curtis Institute of Music with Lionel Party, at the Musikhochschule Freiburg with Robert Hill and at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with Andrea Marcon and Jesper Christensen. She also received a Master’s Degree in Medieval Keyboards with Corina Marti at the same institution. Catalina is currently Ph.D. candidate at Leiden University / Orpheus Institute Ghent, under the supervision of Dinko Fabris and Ton Koopman. Vicens performs and records regularly as member of ensembles of mediaeval, renaissance, baroque and new music in Europe, the USA and South America. She is artistic director of Servir Antico, with whom she aims to recover the less-known repertoire and intellectual heritage of the humanistic period. |
Catalina VicensNotes about the organ
Hospice of Bom Jesus, Funchal
This small positive organ was built in 1781 by Leandro José da Cunha (b. 1743, d. after 1805), who was from Lisbon and was one of the three members identified as belonging to this family of organ builders. Leandro was the son of the builder João da Cunha (b. 1712, d.1762), also from Lisbon, who built the organ of the Church of Nossa Senhora da Luz, at Ponta do Sol.
It is an example of a type of instrument typical of Portuguese organs in the first half of the 18th century. The fact that the instrument did not originally possess a basic 8’ (12-palm) stop – like many other positives of the period – but only 4’ (6-palm), seems to indicate a musical practice that relied on reinforcement in the lower register through the use of another instrument.
Manual (C, D, E, F, G, A-d’’’)
Flautado de 6 tapado (4’)
Quinzena (2’)
Dezanovena (1 1/3’)
22ª e 26ª
Sesquialtera II (c#´-d´´´)