Cipriano de Rore, another madrigal composer, is noted for the profound change which took place in his style between his early and late compositions and the striking innovation of his harmonic language. He composed over one hundred madrigals with O sonno dating from 1557. Toshio Hosokawa was born in Hiroshima in 1955. He studied in Tokyo, Berlin and Freiburg where his tutors included Klaus Huber and Brian Ferneyhough. His Three Japanese Folksongs were written for The Hilliard Ensemble and receive their first performance at the Sydney Festival.
And one of the Pharisees ... (1990) is a simple but extremely dramatic setting for vocal trio of words from the seventh chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel. It alternates plain homophonic writing for three voices, in the role of narrator, with solos for countertenor (as the Pharisee) and baritone, who sings the words of Jesus. In an echo of the final words of the Evangelist in Pärt’s Passio, Jesus’s final words “Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace” are sung, not by the solo baritone but in bare octaves by all three voices.
The name of Pérotin is inextricably associated with the music of the school of Notre Dame de Paris. The first written record we have of composers of the 12th century, including Léonin and Pérotin, comes from a monk known to us only as Anonymous IV. He lived a century later, possibly in Bury St. Edmunds, in England.
Pärt’s Most Holy Mother of God has the feel of a litany in which spare, solo vocal lines are interspersed with hypnotic, repeating chordal passages for all four voices, all to the same brief text. Perhaps surprisingly, this is the only work which Pärt has written for just the four Hilliards a cappella. All his other pieces for them involve other singers or instruments.
Perhaps his most important contribution was to set in motion the idea that settings of plainsong did not have to be in just two parts. Pérotin’s greatest fame rests on two works from the last decade of the 12th century: settings of the graduals for the third mass on Christmas Day and the mass on the feast of St Stephen, Viderunt Omnes and Sederunt principes both written in four vocal parts.
In November 2004, The Hilliard Ensemble were invited to Armenia to record and perform some of the traditional sacred songs (Sharakans) of the Armenian church, arranged by the monk, musicologist and composer Komitas Vardapet (1869–1935).
One of the greatest composers of the Renaissance, Josquin des Prez, stands on a par with Dufay, Palestrina and William Byrd (c. 1547–1623). He has left an enormous legacy of sacred and secular pieces in both Latin and French. Since their first meeting, at a BBC recording in the autumn of 1985, The Hilliard Ensemble and Arvo Pärt have had a close and fruitful relationship. They have recorded and given hundreds of performances of many of Pärt’s works including the large-scale choral and orchestral pieces Miserere and Litany, both of which he wrote for them.
His life was full of upset and spanned the Armenian genocide in Turkey, during which he was forcibly exiled. His final years were spent in a psychiatric clinic in Paris. The works in this program are some of his arrangements of traditional church melodies.