Acclaimed vocal ensemble Blue Heron performs a celebration of Christmas in 16th century Spain, from mystical motets to vivacious villancicos. The group’s artistic director, Scott Metcalfe, shares insights about each piece. This concert and conversation were recorded at WBUR’s event venue, CitySpace.
Guests
Blue Heron, professional vocal ensemble based in the Boston area and directed by Scott Metcalfe.
Transcript
Part I
(SINGING)
MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: The vocal ensemble Blue Heron is regarded as one of the finest groups of its kind. They specialize in medieval and Renaissance polyphony, specifically 15th and 16th century vocal music from England, France, Germany, and Spain. Musical director Scott Metcalfe says the group meticulously studies original source material — some of which has been literally buried inside of ancient church walls for centuries — in order to bring to life what the group lovingly calls “Music before Mozart”.
Recently, Blue Heron performed live at WBUR’s CitySpace Events Venue, taking listeners back to Christmas in 16th Century Spain. Both liturgical and joyful, the music contains unmistakable motifs that are still alive in Spanish music today, more than half a millennium later.
Today, we’re delighted to take you on a journey to a Spanish Christmas long past, with Blue Heron. We’ll start with “Cantite Tuba in Sion”, by Francisco Guerrero, one of the most important Spanish composers of the 16th century.
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(APPLAUSE)
CHAKRABARTI: “Cantite Tuba in Sion”, sung by Blue Heron. Musical director Scott Metcalfe gave us further explanation of the music between each piece.
SCOTT METCALFE: And that’s a prophetic sort of piece by Francisco Guerrero, a composer we will hear more from him during the course of the evening. Really one of the greatest composers of all time and a superstar of the 16th century whose music was popular both in Spain and in the new world, imported there by the Spanish.
And we’re going to now sing another piece by Guerrero. This is a setting of a very familiar Advent tune, which you will probably recognize, “Conditor alme siderum.”
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(APPLAUSE)
CHAKRABARTI: “Conditor alme siderum” composed by Francisco Guerrero.
We let the singers take a break while musical director Scott Metcalfe and I sat down to talk about exactly what Blue Heron does.
What is it that distinguishes Renaissance, even medieval music, from post Mozart music?
METCALFE: Mostly it’s that it’s polyphonic music for equal parts. So it’s not like in a Mozart quartet, for example, where the viola player will be playing a lot of subsidiary roles. So it’s the most cooperative, democratic, non-hierarchical music ever written.
(LAUGHTER)
CHAKRABARTI: And was that typical of these eras that we’re talking about?
METCALFE: That’s how music of the 15th and 16th century works.
CHAKRABARTI: It seems so counterintuitive to me, Scott, that in an era of, first of all, monarchical rule, and secondly, the church being perhaps the single most hierarchical institution worldwide, that this form of, as you said, democratic music or sharing of spiritual space would emerge. It seems subversive, actually.
(LAUGHTER)
METCALFE: Perhaps musicians and artists, we are all pretty subversive. I mean, what we’re dealing in is non-verbal, non-material beauty, and that is resistant to absolutism and hierarchy and rules.
(SINGING)
Part II
CHAKRABARTI: This next piece was composed by Mateo Flecha. He lived from 1481 to 1553. “La Bomba” is a Christmas story in Spanish about a shipwreck. Blue Heron started the piece with an English translation.
METCALFE: PUMP! It’s a shipwreck, I said. Bail the water! Throw the cargo aboard! We’re going to sink!
(MUSIC) (SINGING)
METCALFE: Help! All hands on deck! You, to the mast! You, to the tiller! can’t you see we’re doomed?!
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METCALFE: It’s no use! The boat is splitting in two! What will we do? Swim? The sea is so rough. Grab the timbers and barrels! But, oh no, I can’t swim. I’m gonna die.
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METCALFE: Virgin Mother, I promise, if you get me out of this, I’ll become a hermit.
(LAUGHTER)
I’ll walk barefoot to Santiago and then run to Jerusalem. Holy Virgin of Loreto, Saint Elmo! Did you know Elmo was a Saint?
(LAUGHTER)
Blessed Saints, help me! I’m drowning! Oh, Virgin of Guadalupe, forgive me all my sins. Our Lady of Montserrate, hear me.
(SINGING) (MUSIC)
METCALFE: A boat! A boat! Over here! We’re drowning! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry! I’m in. I’m saved!
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METCALFE: The padre gives thanks.
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METCALFE: We all give thanks. Now, let’s sing a song. You start! Your guitar, wow. It’s outta tune. It’s really outta tune. It’s been in the water.
(LAUGHTER)
METCALFE: They try to tune it. It takes a while. Okay, let’s sing a song. It’s Christmas. We sing about Jesus. We’ve all been saved.
(SINGING)
METCALFE: But wait, the storm’s over. There’s a fresh breeze. We’re sailors. Let’s sail away. Oh what a miracle! You were really afraid! Utterly hopeless. Oh, he of little faith. But everything’s okay! We’re saved. Party. Let’s have a party!
(SINGING)
METCALFE: Well, back there in the storm, we made a lot of promises. And eventually we’ll burn tons of candles. But for now, off we go. Adios! Back to the sea. May I introduce our sailors?
(APPLAUSE)
METCALFE: “La Bomba.”
(SINGING)
(MUSIC)
Part III
CHAKRABARTI: Before the group performed their last couple of pieces, I asked musical director Scott Metcalfe how closely Blue Heron adhered to the performance rules that were in place in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Here we have not exclusively a male ensemble, but of the time, would it have been all men?
METCALFE: It would have been all men in church.
CHAKRABARTI: In church, yeah. Okay.
METCALFE: You could not have had a mixed ensemble in a church, so either there were all male ensembles singing polyphony or all female ensembles singing chant and polyphony in both cases.
CHAKRABARTI: Oh, I see. But women did sing just not in the house of God.
METCALFE: Absolutely. Women sang. And there’s absolutely no reason to think that male musicians did not want to have female musicians singing with them in church. But they were not allowed. So that at least we have improved here.
CHAKRABARTI: Ah and it only took 500 years! (LAUGHS)
(LAUGHTER)
I actually wanna talk about the fact that what we’re hearing today is Christmas in the 16th century music from Spain. Because I have seen Blue Heron concerts where it was like Renaissance or medieval English music. You’ve done German as well, correct? So what distinguishes the Spanish music from other celebratory music of Christmas? What distinguishes the Spanish version of that?
METCALFE: I think the Spaniards have the best rhythm. So they have the most dancey music and they’re able to incorporate all this complicated cross-rhythm and dance stuff — into the villancicos anyway, it doesn’t show up so much in the liturgical music — where they have this very complicated cross-rhythmic sort of exuberance, which is particularly Spanish.
CHAKRABARTI: Ah, okay. So obviously some of this music was sang in church, but outside of that, who would’ve the music been for?
METCALFE: This is such a hard question to answer. I think mostly we don’t know exactly. I think in the case of these villancicos, which are clearly public music, this is music to attract people who do not belong to the church as clergy to participate in the celebration and to teach them the stories of the gospel and of the rest of the Bible. So they’re definitely public facing music.
CHAKRABARTI: How do you find this music, Scott?
METCALFE: Libraries. And now of course on the internet. So much of what we do now is available in high-resolution digital scans from the libraries that own them. So it’s a life of someone who’s looking for early music and wants to look at the original sources has gotten much easier in the last 10 to 20 years. I mean, it’s a little sad, I don’t have to go to Madrid to look at the manuscript.
(LAUGHTER)
CHAKRABARTI: Every time I get overly cynical about technology, something like this happens where someone like Scott comes and says, “Well, I can bring to life to you half a millennia year-old music because I was able to access it, the original, on the internet.” It’s amazing.
METCALFE: Yeah. And of course there’s been lots and lots and of public editions and work done in the past to sort, so you can find sometimes scores of this stuff, but then we always prepare our own scores of everything from the original sources.
CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So tell me about that. Because I was going to ask how much of what we’re hearing tonight is actually a faithful reproduction of the original source, or do you have to make changes? Is the music complete? You know, what is the process that you go through?
METCALFE: The process is to look at the original sources and make a faithful transcription of it, and then correct any errors. And there are sometimes errors in published in prints or manuscripts. But then we have the building block. Well, the piece is there, but the realization of it is requires a lot of application of knowledge and imagination, of course, to try to bring it to life, to realize all the potential that is in the music on the page.
CHAKRABARTI: Tell me more about that. I mean, what do you mean about that? It seems important.
METCALFE: I think that is really, really important. So every single word and note that’s written by a composer like Guerrero has meaning and shape and possibility of direction and color. And so we spend a lot of time trying to figure out what that is.
What are the possibilities? What’s implied by this harmony? What’s implied by this melodic shape? What, how can we express the words as interestingly, as movingly as possible? And trying not to ever think that you’re finished with a piece.
CHAKRABARTI: Ah, yeah. So I was under the impression and perhaps the misapprehension that most, if not all of this music of the medieval and Renaissance era would’ve been exclusively voice. That seems wrong because tonight you are performing with various instruments, actually.
METCALFE: Yeah. The liturgical music of the church is primarily vocal. But there are always possibilities of instruments participating in one way or another. So the classic way is to have an organ, always an important instrument in church for centuries.
And then, oh, we find that, well, there’s a bassist sick this Sunday. I know. Let’s ask the wind player from the local band who plays bajon, which is what Ben is playing, that thing that’s like a bassoon, very common in Spanish vocal music either doubling or replacing a vocal bass.
We need some chords. We might add a guitar, especially in a villancico, for rhythm, percussion of some kind. And I think especially in the non liturgical music, then there’s lots of opportunity to add instruments. And for —
CHAKRABARTI: I’m sorry to interrupt, but there’s another instrument over there that looks neither like a violin nor a guitar…?
METCALFE: That is a sort of combination of a somewhat instrumental drone plus drum.
CHAKRABARTI: What is it that you love about music before Mozart?
METCALFE: It’s the same thing that I love about music after Mozart, that it can express things that cannot be expressed in any other way. And I love working with my colleagues. And if you are in a Renaissance or medieval group, there’s no hierarchy of voices, right? We’re all, it’s dependent on every single person in the group.
And vocal music is especially good for this because the voice is the best instrument there is. And every voice is just that person. So what we want to hear is all those individual human people breathing and listening to each other and singing their own song.
CHAKRABARTI: And making something beautiful in the sum of those voices.
METCALFE: That’s the goal.
CHAKRABARTI: So Scott Metcalfe, such a pleasure. Thank you.
METCALFE: Thanks, Meghna.
CHAKRABARTI: I will recede gracefully from this stage so that you can talk us through the next set of performances.
METCALFE: Well, what we’re gonna do next is tune for a second. And then we’re going to move to some more happy music. This first one is Verbum caro factum est, the word was made flesh so that all of you would be saved.
And then we’re going to follow that up with a gaita, which is a dance tune sort of aimed at the bagpipe, which we’re gonna play in together.
(MUSIC)
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(APPLAUSE)
(MUSIC)
(APPLAUSE)
METCALFE: Now, we’re gonna step to the other side of the Atlantic and do a piece by Gaspar Fernandes, who was actually born in Portugal and then moved to the New World and ended up as the maestro de capilla in Puebla, Mexico and wrote a whole bunch of villancicos, these sort of party pieces, non-liturgical pieces to celebrate Christmas. They were done after services, between services, I think at lots of different times. And he wrote quite a great number of them.
This one features an angelic trio up in the clouds and they signal down to the people below and say, “Ah — de abajo — you people down there! Listen up!” And the people down there say, “You up there — arriba — what do you want?” And they say, “Let everybody be happy because I have good news for you. Someone is coming to save you.” And then there’s they exchange questions. “For whom?” “For you!” “For me?” “Yes, for all of us.”
(MUSIC)
(SINGING)
(APPLAUSE)
CHAKRABARTI: The medieval and renaissance vocal ensemble Blue Heron. They performed “Christmas in 16th-century Spain” at CitySpace, WBUR’s live events venue.
Happy holidays, everyone.
The first draft of this transcript was created by Descript, an AI transcription tool. An On Point producer then thoroughly reviewed, corrected, and reformatted the transcript before publication. The use of this AI tool creates the capacity to provide these transcripts.