Mirabile mysterium - Jacobus Handl
Have you ever sung or heard the 'Mirabile mysterium' of Jacobus Handl (1550-1591)? Some of you may recall it as part of our 'Song of the Morning Star' concerts, our third annual Early Music Christmas production, which was structured around settings of 'Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern'.
Here's an English translation:
A wondrous mystery is made manifest today,
the things of nature are renewed; God is made man;
that which he was, he remains,
and that which he was not, he takes on,
enduring neither amalgamation nor division.
As you can see, there's a sort of alchemical theme going on: a mystery made manifest, a renewal or rebirth, God morphs into man, yet somehow remains the same.
Boy, did Handl (also called Gallus, the rooster, by the way) ever go to town with this! His music is so strange you gotta think there are a lot of misprints going on. But musicologists have sorted all that out, and it's still utterly bizarre. But cool!
In the late 16th century, there were plenty of stirrings of chromaticism going on, especially in the works of the late-century madrigalists and in such sacred pieces as lamentations (Lassus and Gesualdo, for example). But nothing quite like this piece. Take a look at the attached score, or just listen to this recording, which has a scrolling score. Go through it a few times. You'll see (and hear) that Handl uses linear chromaticism to create a sort of shape-shifting effect, as one chord morphs into the next. It's pretty spectacular, and makes a vivid sort of word-painting which brings to musical life the alchemical threads noted above.
It's really hard to sing, though! Since the lines don't move as usual, and since many chords seem to be non sequiturs vis a vis where we just were, the piece requires us to be super-diligent with each line and with each chord. Any slight error in the former may result in the latter being unpleasantly out of tune, and this can snowball as the piece progresses, resulting in a Musical Bummer.
But hey, life is filled with challenges. If a group can do a piece like this in tune, pretty much any other contemporaneous piece will be a piece o' proverbial cake. The key is to take it slowly, pausing on each chord to make certain that it actually is a chord, rather than a mere concatenation of seemingly unrelated notes. Once things are 'set' in the voice and in the ear, the tempo can be judiciously increased.
Kind of a strange Christmas piece, I'd say. Certainly nothing like Frosty or Rudolph. But I love the way it delves down into the depths--how does a person grow inside another person? What does it mean to say that Jesus is both man and god? How can these things be? What do they sound like?
Hope you like the piece, and that extraordinary Stile Antico recording.
Have you ever sung or heard the 'Mirabile mysterium' of Jacobus Handl (1550-1591)? Some of you may recall it as part of our 'Song of the Morning Star' concerts, our third annual Early Music Christmas production, which was structured around settings of 'Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern'.
Here's an English translation:
A wondrous mystery is made manifest today,
the things of nature are renewed; God is made man;
that which he was, he remains,
and that which he was not, he takes on,
enduring neither amalgamation nor division.
As you can see, there's a sort of alchemical theme going on: a mystery made manifest, a renewal or rebirth, God morphs into man, yet somehow remains the same.
Boy, did Handl (also called Gallus, the rooster, by the way) ever go to town with this! His music is so strange you gotta think there are a lot of misprints going on. But musicologists have sorted all that out, and it's still utterly bizarre. But cool!
In the late 16th century, there were plenty of stirrings of chromaticism going on, especially in the works of the late-century madrigalists and in such sacred pieces as lamentations (Lassus and Gesualdo, for example). But nothing quite like this piece. Take a look at the attached score, or just listen to this recording, which has a scrolling score. Go through it a few times. You'll see (and hear) that Handl uses linear chromaticism to create a sort of shape-shifting effect, as one chord morphs into the next. It's pretty spectacular, and makes a vivid sort of word-painting which brings to musical life the alchemical threads noted above.
It's really hard to sing, though! Since the lines don't move as usual, and since many chords seem to be non sequiturs vis a vis where we just were, the piece requires us to be super-diligent with each line and with each chord. Any slight error in the former may result in the latter being unpleasantly out of tune, and this can snowball as the piece progresses, resulting in a Musical Bummer.
But hey, life is filled with challenges. If a group can do a piece like this in tune, pretty much any other contemporaneous piece will be a piece o' proverbial cake. The key is to take it slowly, pausing on each chord to make certain that it actually is a chord, rather than a mere concatenation of seemingly unrelated notes. Once things are 'set' in the voice and in the ear, the tempo can be judiciously increased.
Kind of a strange Christmas piece, I'd say. Certainly nothing like Frosty or Rudolph. But I love the way it delves down into the depths--how does a person grow inside another person? What does it mean to say that Jesus is both man and god? How can these things be? What do they sound like?
Hope you like the piece, and that extraordinary Stile Antico recording.