Year: 2001

Saturday, 15 December 2001, 8pm
Sunday, 16 December 2001, 2.30pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 4

Our annual carol-free Christmas concert is a Renaissance feast spanning Europe and the sixteenth century. Cipriano de Rore’s powerful seven-voice Mass on Josquin’s great motet Praeter rerum seriem, featured in our 1997 Christmas to Candlemas, is returning in response to a number of requests, as are some of the favourite Christmas, Epiphany and Candlemas motets of the past few years.

PROGRAM

Andreas de Silva Puer natus est nobis
Nicolas Gombert Hodie nobis caelorum Rex
Clemens non Papa O magnum mysterium
John Sheppard Regis Tharsis et insulae
Orlande de LassusVidentes stallam magi
Jacob Handl Omnes de Saba venient
William Byrd Hodie beata virgo
Tomás Luis de Victoria Senex puerum portabat
Thomas TallisVidete miraculum
Josquin Desprez Praeter rerum seriem
Cipriano de Rore Missa Praeter rerum seriem (à 7)

SOPRANO	ALTO	TENOR	BASS
Deborah Summerbell	Jenny George	Peter Campbell	John Weretka
Carol Veldhoven	Margaret Arnold	Tim Van Nooten	Sam Furphy
Margaret Pearce	Jennifer Mathers	Vaughan McAlley	Andrew Fysh
Claerwen Jones	Barbara Tattam	Stuart Tennant
Maria Pisani		Frank Prain
Helen Gagliano

–
REVIEW

Tuesday, 18 December 2001, The Age [Melbourne], page 4, Today.
Sumptuos banquet
Joel Crotty

MELBOURNE’S premiere early music choir, Ensemble Gombert, returned to the performance arena after a
seven-month hiatus. As one has come to expect from a Gombert concert, Saturday’s program thoughtfully
expressed the nature of Christmas, the Epiphany and Candlemas. And the 18 choristers produced a
sumptuous banquet of honed intonation.
The first half of the concert consisted of short pieces from a who’s who of Renaissance composition – Silva,
Gombert, Clemens non Papa, Sheppard, Lassus, Handl, Byrd, Victoria and Tallis. And with this collection we
journeyed through English, Flemish, and Italian music influences.
At no stage during the first half did any section of the choir sound uncomfortable to the point of fragility. In
Tallis’ Videte miraculum, the first sopranos soared magnificently and lingered in the stratosphere to make the
work one of the stand-out items of the night.
Other pieces that sat above the others included Clemens non Papa’s beautiful O magnum mysterium and
Lassus’ Videntes stellam.
The real test for the singers came after the interval when they performed Josquin’s Praeter rerum seriem and
Rore’s Missa Praeter rerum seriem. Rore’s mass is quite intense musically and its seven-part division certainly
creates its fair share of ensemble problems. Yet, Ensemble Gombert was able to keep their presentation afloat
and rarely did the challenges overwhelm them. And when difficulties were encountered, the group quickly
regained composure. […]
Joel Crotty/Courtesy of The Age

Saturday, 19 May 2001, 8pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 3

Binchois would not have had an inkling that his chanson Comme femme desconfortée was destined for greatness. But once one Renaissance composer decided to borrow a certain melodic line as the basis of a new work others tended to follow, and this is what happened to the tenor line of Binchois’ beautiful but otherwise not particularly significant chanson. This program features four Marian motets and a Mass based on this melody. The peroration of the major work (viz. the final Agnus Dei of the Isaac Mass) features some of the most extreme false relations of the High Renaissance.

PROGRAM

Gilles de Bins dit Binchois Comme femme desconfortée
Josquin Desprez Stabat mater
Johannes Ghiselin Inviolata, integra et casta
Johannes Ghiselin Regina caeli laetare
Ludwig Senfl Ave rosa sine spinis
Heinrich Isaac  Missa Comme femme desconfortée

SOPRANO	ALTO	TENOR	BASS
Deborah Summerbell	Jennifer George	Peter Campbell	John Weretka
Margaret Pearce	Susie Furphy	Tim Van Nooten	Sam Furphy
Claerwen Jones	Margaret Arnold	Vaughan McAlley	Andrew Fysh
Maria Pisani	Barbara Tattam	Stuart Tennant
Helen Gagliano

–
REVIEW

Tuesday, 22 May 2001, The Age [Melbourne], page 5, Today.
The gamut of musical talent
Clive O’Connell

[…]
MELBOURNE’S premier choir, Ensemble Gombert, gave the second in its annual series of recitals on
Saturday – an under-advertised affair given to a smaller audience than usual. However, the program was short
enough to be given in one 75-minute sweep: four Marian motets and an Isaac Mass, all based on a Binchois rondeau, Comme femme desconfortee.
There has been some reshuffling among the singers – 16 for this recital. In the secure and gently contoured
reading of Desprez’s Stabat mater, one of the tenors moved in with the altos; Jerzy Kozlowski was absent
from the basses, Carol Veldhoven from the sopranos. But the ensemble’s combination and its balance shifts in
five-part works is one of the great delights of this city’s musical life.
The night’s highpoint, the Isaac work, shows the composer’s constructional powers at their least challenging,
particularly as the Binchois melody is enunciated in long penetrating notes by the tenors at various stages.
The Gomberts emphasised the work’s sprightliness, its lightness relative to many of the composer’s other
works in the form. Isaac’s final Agnus Dei, where the sopranos repeat the same pattern and words above a
gently uncoiling set of lower lines, punctuated by harmonic clashes, brought this short night to a particularly
bracing end.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age

Saturday, 7 April 2001, 8pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 2

The compositional output of the prolific Lassus includes many cycles: for example, the Prophetiae Sibyllarum, the Sacrae lectiones novem ex propheta Iob, the Psalmi Davidis poenitentiales, and two sets of Hieremiae prophetae lamentationes. Just days before his death Lassus completed a setting of the twenty-one ottava stanzas of Tansillo’s Lagrime di San Pietro (Tears of Saint Peter), a work described by scholar James Haar as ‘one of the most remarkable artistic testaments in the history of music’. In our program this work is complemented by five of Byrd’s so-called ‘Babylonian exile’ motets; works apparently written for the comfort of Catholics in Protestant England.

PROGRAM

Orlande de Lassus Lagrime di San Pietro
William Byrd Ne irascaris, Domine
William Byrd Deus, venerunt gentes
William Byrd Quomodo cantabimus

Note: Additional Byrd motets ‘Tribulationes civitatus’ and ‘Vide, Domine, afflictionen nostram’ advertised in subscription brochure but not sung.

SOPRANO	ALTO	TENOR	BASS
Deborah Summerbell	Jenny George	Peter Campbell	John Weretka
Carol Veldhoven	Niki Ebacioni	Tim Van Nooten	Thomas Drent
Margaret Pearce	Margaret Arnold	Vaughan McAlley	Sam Furphy
Claerwen Jones	Barbara Tattam	Stuart Tennant	Andrew Fysh
Maria Pisani
Helen Gagliano

–
REVIEW

Wednesday, 11 April 2001, The Age [Melbourne], page 6, Today.
Moveable feast
Clive O’Connell

TAKING major position on Ensemble Gombert’s latest recital, the Tears of StPeter by Orlando di Lasso, is an
hour-long series of 21 spiritual madrigals that outline the throes of repentance suffered by the first Pope after
his renunciation of any connection with Christ before the later stages of the Way of the Cross and the Crucifixion.
The sequence makes a heavy demand on any choir, and one can think of few in this country that would have
borne up under the strain, apart from John O’Donnell’s group.
Their work in this substantial exercise remained rhythmically precise, the division of lines evenly
accomplished, and the realisation of the composers’ penitential intentions given prime importance.
These Lagrime, written in the last months of Lassus’ life, act as a sort of summa, a treasury of the composer’s
expressive powers and style. While there are few moments of brazen originality, the whole comprises a kind
of emotional continuum that begins by setting the scene of Peter’s betrayal and concludes with Christ’s
bemoaning the ingratitude of man, albeit in muted, restrained language.
In a briefer second half, the ensemble sang three motets by Byrd: Ne irascaris, Deus venerunt gentes and a
masterpiece of invention, “Quomodo cantabimus?” The melodically felicitous paragraphs of Lassus had
progressed with undiminished grace through the night’s first part, but in these three laments by the English
composer for the falling of Jerusalem, the Gombert group moved into a realm of musical spirituality of high
order.
One might have questioned the neatness of several entries, including a few from the usually flawless
sopranos, but the total weave of this Elizabethan fabric – albeit of a cloth woven by a recusant – was intensely
moving; a further indication of the group’s integrity of performance, despite some changes in personnel.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age

Saturday, 24 February 2001, 8pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 1

Renaissance composers frequently re-fashioned the musical material of motets or chansons into settings of Mass or Magnificat. A composer might make such a parody of his own music, as is the case with Gombert’s eight-voice Credo, modelled on his motet Lugebat David Absalon, or that of another composer, as is the case with the works of Lassus and Monteverdi presented in this program, each based on a piece by Gombert. That these two later composers, each considered the outstanding master of his generation, should pay homage to Gombert in this way is an indication of the esteem in which our omposer was regarded during the fifty years after his death.

PROGRAM

Nicolas Gombert Regina caeli laetare (à 12)
Nicolas Gombert Lugebat David Absalon
Nicolas Gombert Credo
Nicolas Gombert Mort et fortune
Orlande de Lassus Magnificat tertii toni quinque vocum Mort et fortune
Nicolas Gombert In illo tempore
Claudio Monteverdi Missa da Capella a sei voci, fatta sopra il motetto In illo tempore del Gomberti

SOPRANO	ALTO	TENOR	BASS
Deborah Summerbell	Jenny George	Peter Campbell	John Weretka
Carol Veldhoven	Jennifer Mathers	Vaughan McAlley	Andrew Fysh
Margaret Pearce	Margaret Arnold	Stuart Tennant	Sam Furphy
Claerwen Jones	Barbara Tattam		Jerzy Kozlowski
Maria Pisani
Helen Gagliano

–
REVIEWS

Tuesday, 27 February 2001, The Age [Melbourne], page 5, Today.
The dreamy and the delightful
Clive O’Connell

ON SATURDAY, the Ensemble Gombert began its annual subscription series in the freshly painted Xavier
Chapel. The concert came upon us rather suddenly, which might explain the unusually light audience
numbers.
Director John O’Donnell, in another program notable for inner references, began with four works by the group’s namesake, starting with the ever-fresh, powerful Regina caeli in 12 parts and ending with the chanson
Mort et fortune, which provided the basis for the first half’s major offering, a Magnificat by Lassus.
Similarly, in the second part of the night, the ensemble opened with Gombert’s motet In illo tempore,
followed by Monteverdi’s Missa di Capella for six voices, based on that piece’s material.
The whole made for an extraordinary study in how two Renaissance masters used Gombert’s melodic patterns
as springboards for their own works, the references more easily apparent in the Lassus work, probably
because of the chanson’s easily assimilable melodic lines and harmonic movement.
Apart from the ingenuity of the night’s music, Saturday found the Gomberts in fine fettle. Some of the voices
– Deborah Summerbell, Carol Veldhoven, Margaret Arnold, Andrew Fysh and Jerzy Kozlowski – have been
with the ensemble since its beginnings. O’Donnell recruits wisely and the resulting textural clarity and polish
of delivery comprise one of this city’s musical delights.
You experience an extraordinary power and resonance in the work of these 17 singers, on Saturday best
illustrated in the Magnificat – a model of the composer’s mellifluous and intentionally rich combination of
timbres – the Mass coming a close second with its dramatic partitioning of voices and the energy of its inspiration.
The Ensemble Gombert is back with a vengeance, its music-making talents a high delight to such a degree
that the conclusion to this splendid recital left all of us wanting more.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age

Monday, 26 February 2001, Herald-Sun [Melbourne], page 87.
Group strikes with clarity
Johanna Selleck

ENSEMBLE Gombert opened its subscription series with a homage to its namesake.
The program consisted of works by Lassus and Monteverdi which were based upon Gombert, as well as the
genuine article.
For sheer beauty of sound this group is unmatched.
The first rippling “r” of Gombert’s Regina caeli laetare was like a thunderbolt, a testimony to the ability of
these individuals to work as one mind, attacking each entry with calculated accuracy and clarity.
The offerings from Gombert also included the motet Lugebat David Absalon and the eight-voice Credo — a
powerfully impressive work.
Gombert uses closely-knit points of imitation which impart a depth and uniformity to the texture, with
individual lines weaving like silky ribbons.
He deliberately avoids devices that interrupt the flow.
On Saturday the effect was of a living, breathing tapestry of sound.
The works by Lassus and Monteverdi were preceded by the relevant pieces by Gombert on which they were
based.
Lassus’ Magnificat terti toni Mort et fortune sets alternating verses in plainchant as was his usual practice.
This gave the tenors the chance to shine with a firm and unflustered delivery, contained beneath a veil of
serenity.
Monterverdi’s Missa In illo tempore pays tribute to his predecessor by reworking the main motives on which
Gombert constructed points of imitation.
It was pure joy to let these extraordinary emanations surround and wash over you, then drift heavenwards
where every sound seems to hang suspended before melting, imperceptibly, into the ether.