Thomas Vautor
Imagine for a moment that you are a choir director trying to find repertoire for a series of projects on madrigals (and related genres). Imagine further that this project had been going on for a long time, and that you had already explored many of your go-to composers and pieces and are looking for something fresh and different. And 'one more coruscation, my dear Watson--yet another brain-wave!', to wit:Imagine still further that there existed a piece, a marvelous, quasi-mystical madrigal which you've always admired, by a composer about whom you otherwise know nothing, zip, just a sad, echoing lacuna where knowledge might have been.
'What to do, what to do, what to do? The outlook was decidedly blue.'
And then along comes Mary! Oops, I meant to say: And then along comes the internet! You're in your bathrobe drinking coffee, yet you're able to do all of the following:
1) Look up this composer--Thomas Vautor--on Wikipedia, discovering a few basics about his life and work.
2) Look up Vautor on Grove Music Online (accessible as one of the few perks of being an emeritus professor at a certain institution--see the article attached to this message) and discover a fair amount more about his life and works, including the fact that his known compositions are all contained in a single publication, 'The First Set, beeing Songs of Divers Ayres and Natures, of Five and Sixe Parts, Apt for Vyols and Voyces' (London, 1619/20).
3) Look up Vautor on the Petrucci Music Library and find only the quasi-mystical madrigal noted above ('Sweet Suffolk Owl'), for which you already have a score.
4) Look him up on the Choral Public Domain Library and discover only the q-m madrigal and a little ditty called 'Mother I will have a husband'.
5) Look him up on AbeBooks and discover at an antiquarian bookshop in New York a single copy of Vautor's single publication (noted above), edited by E.H. Fellowes and published in 1921. Order said copy with rush delivery.
6) Look him up on YouTube and discover a surfeit of recordings of 'Sweet Suffolk Owl' and 'Mother I will have a husband' and not much else. One of the recordings is by the Gesualdo Consort and the Rose Consort of Viols.
7) Look up Gesualdo Consort and Rose Consort of Viols on Amazon and discover a great album containing 20 of Vautor's 22 extant works. Purchase said album and immediately download it. Listening pleasure ensues.
8) Three days later, you receive the score you ordered from AbeBooks and now have all the requisite materials to explore the works of Thomas Vautor.
Truth be told, in many similar cases the three-day-wait-in-your-bathrobe would not be necessary, since high-quality scores for the works of many early music composers are freely available online.
-----
Pretty cool, eh? Doesn't exactly make up for all the trolling and the disinformation and the cyber-crime and the doom-scrolling; but it's something positive anyway. 'With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.'
So, with the foregoing as a sort of prelude, I present to you Thomas Vautor and two of his madrigals: 'Cruel Madam' and 'Sweet Suffolk Owl'.
-----
Cruel madam, my heart you have bereft me.
And to myself no whole part have you left me,
For yours all wholly Love hath fast infeoffed me.
Wherefore thus plain I must forever.
My woeful heart both night and day bewaileth; My death draws on, and my poor life it faileth; I sue for mercy where no tears availeth. Wherefore thus plain I must forever. Yet if your eyes did see how you torment me, Alas, poor man, it would the more content thee, But now in absence, ah, do I lament me. Wherefore thus plain I must forever. Here's a link to a very good recording of the piece; a score (scanned from that 1921 edition) is attached. I love this piece, not least because it introduced me to a word I not only did not know, but was convinced was an egregious misprint: 'infeoffed'. Sometimes spelled 'enfeoffed', it means to give land or freehold property (in this case love or some pitiful semblance of same) in exchange for pledged service. Vautor shows himself a master in the setting of a dolorous text. Stacking up dissonances, suspensions, urgent motives, similar and contrary motion, reducing parts only to expand to a powerful tutti--he constructs a dynamic and moving setting of this formally unusual text. And we get the same final evocative line three times, musically invented afresh at each appearance. -----
Sweet Suffolk owl, so trimly dight,
With feathers like a lady bright,
Thou sing'st alone, sitting by night:
Te whit, te whoo, te whit, te whit.
Thy note, that forth so freely rolls.
With shrill command the mouse controls,
And sings a dirge for dying souls:
Te whit, te whoo, te whit, te whit.
Here's a link to my favorite recording among the many available, by the Hilliard Ensemble. Again, the score is attached. This poem seems to move into darkness as it goes along. At first we hear of the trim, tidy owl, but, of course, he sings (and hunts) at night. The dirge seems to be sung for both the mouse and (imaginatively) for all those passing away in the night. Vautor plays with the texture to create the impression of several spates of calling, alternating with the moody words. His repeated use of a single-note call is quite striking, and the call-and-response effects evoke the sounds of actual owls in the night. I love the effects of the choral 'Te-whits', kind of objective and kind of chilling at the same time. The triple-time on 'For dying souls' is brilliant. -----
There are many other great songs in Vautor's single publication. I look forward to integrating some of them into future projects!
Imagine for a moment that you are a choir director trying to find repertoire for a series of projects on madrigals (and related genres). Imagine further that this project had been going on for a long time, and that you had already explored many of your go-to composers and pieces and are looking for something fresh and different. And 'one more coruscation, my dear Watson--yet another brain-wave!', to wit:Imagine still further that there existed a piece, a marvelous, quasi-mystical madrigal which you've always admired, by a composer about whom you otherwise know nothing, zip, just a sad, echoing lacuna where knowledge might have been.
'What to do, what to do, what to do? The outlook was decidedly blue.'
And then along comes Mary! Oops, I meant to say: And then along comes the internet! You're in your bathrobe drinking coffee, yet you're able to do all of the following:
1) Look up this composer--Thomas Vautor--on Wikipedia, discovering a few basics about his life and work.
2) Look up Vautor on Grove Music Online (accessible as one of the few perks of being an emeritus professor at a certain institution--see the article attached to this message) and discover a fair amount more about his life and works, including the fact that his known compositions are all contained in a single publication, 'The First Set, beeing Songs of Divers Ayres and Natures, of Five and Sixe Parts, Apt for Vyols and Voyces' (London, 1619/20).
3) Look up Vautor on the Petrucci Music Library and find only the quasi-mystical madrigal noted above ('Sweet Suffolk Owl'), for which you already have a score.
4) Look him up on the Choral Public Domain Library and discover only the q-m madrigal and a little ditty called 'Mother I will have a husband'.
5) Look him up on AbeBooks and discover at an antiquarian bookshop in New York a single copy of Vautor's single publication (noted above), edited by E.H. Fellowes and published in 1921. Order said copy with rush delivery.
6) Look him up on YouTube and discover a surfeit of recordings of 'Sweet Suffolk Owl' and 'Mother I will have a husband' and not much else. One of the recordings is by the Gesualdo Consort and the Rose Consort of Viols.
7) Look up Gesualdo Consort and Rose Consort of Viols on Amazon and discover a great album containing 20 of Vautor's 22 extant works. Purchase said album and immediately download it. Listening pleasure ensues.
8) Three days later, you receive the score you ordered from AbeBooks and now have all the requisite materials to explore the works of Thomas Vautor.
Truth be told, in many similar cases the three-day-wait-in-your-bathrobe would not be necessary, since high-quality scores for the works of many early music composers are freely available online.
-----
Pretty cool, eh? Doesn't exactly make up for all the trolling and the disinformation and the cyber-crime and the doom-scrolling; but it's something positive anyway. 'With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.'
So, with the foregoing as a sort of prelude, I present to you Thomas Vautor and two of his madrigals: 'Cruel Madam' and 'Sweet Suffolk Owl'.
-----
Cruel madam, my heart you have bereft me.
And to myself no whole part have you left me,
For yours all wholly Love hath fast infeoffed me.
Wherefore thus plain I must forever.
My woeful heart both night and day bewaileth; My death draws on, and my poor life it faileth; I sue for mercy where no tears availeth. Wherefore thus plain I must forever. Yet if your eyes did see how you torment me, Alas, poor man, it would the more content thee, But now in absence, ah, do I lament me. Wherefore thus plain I must forever. Here's a link to a very good recording of the piece; a score (scanned from that 1921 edition) is attached. I love this piece, not least because it introduced me to a word I not only did not know, but was convinced was an egregious misprint: 'infeoffed'. Sometimes spelled 'enfeoffed', it means to give land or freehold property (in this case love or some pitiful semblance of same) in exchange for pledged service. Vautor shows himself a master in the setting of a dolorous text. Stacking up dissonances, suspensions, urgent motives, similar and contrary motion, reducing parts only to expand to a powerful tutti--he constructs a dynamic and moving setting of this formally unusual text. And we get the same final evocative line three times, musically invented afresh at each appearance. -----
Sweet Suffolk owl, so trimly dight,
With feathers like a lady bright,
Thou sing'st alone, sitting by night:
Te whit, te whoo, te whit, te whit.
Thy note, that forth so freely rolls.
With shrill command the mouse controls,
And sings a dirge for dying souls:
Te whit, te whoo, te whit, te whit.
Here's a link to my favorite recording among the many available, by the Hilliard Ensemble. Again, the score is attached. This poem seems to move into darkness as it goes along. At first we hear of the trim, tidy owl, but, of course, he sings (and hunts) at night. The dirge seems to be sung for both the mouse and (imaginatively) for all those passing away in the night. Vautor plays with the texture to create the impression of several spates of calling, alternating with the moody words. His repeated use of a single-note call is quite striking, and the call-and-response effects evoke the sounds of actual owls in the night. I love the effects of the choral 'Te-whits', kind of objective and kind of chilling at the same time. The triple-time on 'For dying souls' is brilliant. -----
There are many other great songs in Vautor's single publication. I look forward to integrating some of them into future projects!