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Now is the month of Maying when merry lads are playing.
Fa la la la la la la la la!
e spring, clad all in gladness, doth laugh at winter’s sadness
Fa la la la la la la la la!
Each with his bonny lass upon the greeny grass
Fa la la la la la la la la!
And to the bagpipes’ sound the nymphs tread on the ground.
Fa la la la la la la la la!
Fie, then, why sit we musing, youth’s sweet delight refusing?
Fa la la la la la la la la!
Say, dainty nymphs, and speak. Shall we play barley break?
Fa la la la la la la la la!
MASON BATES (b. 1977)
“Stelle, vostra mercè l’eccelse sfere” from
Sirens
Virginia native Mason Bates enjoys
an internationally acclaimed career
that thrives on ingenuity, surprise,
and variety. Moving easily between
the worlds of “standard” classical
music—works for chorus, orchestra,
chamber ensembles—and electroni-
ca, Bates is busy with commissions
from the John F. Kennedy Center for
the Performing Arts, Carnegie Hall,
Lincoln Center, and the Chicago
Symphony, where he was appointed
the Mead Composer-in-Residence
in
. Two years later, he was the
recipient of the Heinz Award for
Arts and Humanities. From classical concert halls to the clubs and lounges
where he DJs electronica, his music has been described by the
San Francisco
Chronicle
as “lovely to hear and ingeniously constructed.” Recent compo-
sitions for Chanticleer include the choral song cycle
Sirens
,
Observer from
the Magellanic Cloud
, a free arrangement of Peter Gabriel’s “Washing of the
Water,” and most recently
Drum-Taps
, a joint commission from Chanti-
cleer and the Kennedy Center.
His choral song cycle
Sirens
, commissioned by Chanticleer in
, ex-
plores the beautiful, seductive, and ominous nature of these mythical
creatures on the ancient island of Circe. In regards to
Sirens
, Bates says,
“Perhaps one thinks of lyrical, melodic music coming from the sirens, but
this song cycle casts a wide net in exploring seduction music. Sirens do not
always involve danger, and in fact sometimes they are personi ed as pure,
heavenly beings emanating harmonious music. Pietro Aretino’s th centu-
ry [Italian] sonnet, a poem to one’s beloved in one breath, pays homage to
the stars (‘Stelle vostra mercè l’eccelse sfere’), each of which is blessed with
a lovely siren atop it.”
Stelle, vostra mercè l’eccelse sfere
Dette del Ciel Sirene hanno concesso
A lei non solo in belle note altere,
Come titol gradito, il nome istesso,
Ma de le lor perfette armonie vere
Con suprema dolcezza il suono impresso
Ne le sue chiare e nette voci: ond’ella
Quasi in lingua de gli Angioli favella.
Stars, thanks to you the lo y spheres,
known as the heavenly Sirens,
not only granted their name itself
as a lovely title, they even imprinted
the sound of their perfect harmonies
with sublime sweetness
on her clear voice, so that she speaks
almost in the language of angels.
JACQUES ARCADELT (ca. 1507–68)
Il bianco e dolce cigno
While little is known about Jacques Arcadelt’s early life, he was one of the
oltremontani
, the group of Franco-Flemish composers imported “over the
Alps” to glorify the wealthy courts and chapels of Italy. Most likely from
present-day Belgium, he moved to Italy as a young man, and was in Flor-
ence by the late
s, a ording him at least the opportunity to meet, if not
to work with, Philippe Verdelot, one of the earliest madrigalists. (Arcadelt
would certainly model his mature compositional style a er Verdelot.) In
the late
s he moved to Rome, where he obtained an appointment with
the Papal Choir at St. Peter’s Basilica and eventually became a member of
the Sistine Chapel, where he was appointed
magister puerorum
(director
of the boys choir), remaining there until
. e same year saw the pub-
lication of no fewer than four books of his madrigals.
e rst of these
collections went through editions, becoming the most widely reprinted
collection of madrigals of the time. He le Italy in
to return to France,
where he spent the remainder of his life.
Arcadelt’s legacy rests largely on his more than
Italian madrigals, com-
posed early on in his career. With his contemporaries Verdelot and Cos-
tanzo Festa, Arcadelt set the style for a generation of madrigal composers.
Stylistically his madrigals are melodious and simple in structure, singable,
and built on a clear harmonic basis, usually completely diatonic. e music
is o en syllabic, and while it sometimes uses repeated phrases, it is almost
always through-composed (as opposed to the contemporary French chan-
son, which was o en strophic). His madrigals best represent the “classic”
phase of development of the form with their clear outline, four-part writ-
ing, re nement, and balance. e simple clarity of his style would in uence
later composers like Palestrina and Cipriano de Rore.
Undoubtedly Arcadelt’s “greatest hit,”
Il bianco e dolce cigno
is a jewel of
musical simplicity contrasted with poetic eroticism, declaimed in direct
homophony until the poem’s nal lines about “death,” which are rendered
in rhapsodic waves of counterpoint.
(Giovanni Giudiccioni)
Il bianco e dolce cigno
cantando more, ed io piangendo
giung’ al n del viver mio.
Stran’ e diversa sorte,
ch’ei more sconsolato
ed io moro beato.
Morte che nel morire
m’empie di gioia tutto e di desire.
Se nel morir, altro dolor non sento,
di mille mort’ il di sarei contento.
e white and sweet swan
dies singing, and I, weeping,
reach the end of my life.
Strange and di erent fate,
that he should die disconsolate
while I die blessed.
[I die] a death which in dying
lls me full of joy and desire.
If in dying, were I to feel no other pain,
I would be content to die a thousand
deaths a day.
WILLIAM HAWLEY (b. 1950)
Io son la Primavera
from Six Madrigals
William Hawley is a versatile and
proli c composer whose works have
been commissioned by such widely
varied groups as the Seattle Choral
Company, the Dale Warland Sing-
ers, the Aspen Music Festival, and
the New London Singers.
e New
York native studied at Ithaca Col-
lege and the California Institute of
Arts. Although initially a composer
of avant-garde instrumental music,
Hawley parlayed a love of poetry
into his eventual place as one of his
generation’s leading vocal compos-
ers. His
Io son la Primavera
, from
the Six Madrigals originally composed for Chanticleer in
, blends the
madrigalian style of Monteverdi with
th-century compositional tech-
niques. e madrigal begins with cascading descending lines in the upper
voices, lush with warm cluster chords, accompanied by interjections from
the basses. An equally lyric middle section becomes more impassioned,
Mason Bates
William Hawley
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