Drawing on the rich heritage of Renaissance laments, and focussing especially on the many settings of King David’s lament for his son Absalon, Brighton Consort contrasts music for mourning with music brimming with life and a spirit of joyful triumph of life over death.

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Concert programme

William Billings - David’s Lament
Thomas Tomkins - When David Heard
Cristobal de Morales - Lamentabatur Jacob

Josquin des Prez - Absalon fili mi
Robert Ramsey - When David Heard
Nicolas Gombert - Lugebat David Absalon

Thomas Weelkes - When David Heard

INTERVAL

William Billings - When the Lord turned again
Tomás Luis de Victoria - Victimae Paschali laudes

William Byrd - Turn our captivity, O Lord
Heinrich Schütz - Die mit Tränen

Orlande de Lassus - Surrexit pastor bonus
Jean L’heritier - Surrexit pastor bonus

John Sheppard - Haec dies
William Byrd - Haec dies

Thomas Tomkins - O sing unto the Lord

Programme note

Tonight’s programme is about contrasts. Contrasts in subject matter, contrasts in musical style, contrasts in context. The two halves of our programme are each defined by a single idea, with the interval serving as a clear boundary. These ideas are linked, but somewhat at odds. Through these contrasts are also woven unifying threads that bind the whole programme together, expressed in different ways.

The themes upon which our programme of music rests are drawn from the Bible. In the first half of our concert, the first of these is David’s lament over the death of his son Absalon. This short but powerful passage of text is taken from the book of Samuel in the Old Testament and while the text itself is undeniably expressive, knowing its narrative context heightens its power. David, the most famous king of ancient Israel, had exiled Absalon as punishment for killing his brother, another of David’s sons. When Absalon was finally allowed back into Jerusalem, rather than repenting and joining his father, Absalon raised a rebellion against David and civil war broke out. Absalon was eventually killed in battle by soldiers loyal to David, but acting against David’s strict orders to be gentle with him. David’s famous lament, ‘Oh, my son, Absalon, would that I had died instead of you!’ is more than just the cry of a parent at the loss of a child, therefore, and yet its immediacy, simplicity, and universal relevance transcends the complicated and harrowing story.

The power of this text was doubtless felt keenly in the Renaissance, just as now. A trio of famous settings by English composers provide the building blocks for our first half, with settings by three Jacobean composers Thomas Tomkins, Robert Ramsey, and Thomas Weelkes surrounded by contrasting works on the same theme. Works by the two Flemish masters Josquin des Prez and Nicolas Gombert treat precisely the same subject, while a very similar one is approached in Lamentabatur Jacob, another lament of a father over the loss of his sons taken from the Old Testament, but this being Jacob mourning the loss of Joseph (of techni-colour dreamcoat fame) and Benjamin, set here with devastating effect by Spanish composer Cristobal de Morales.

The first half begins, however, with a very stark musical contrast, one which we return to at the beginning of the second half. We are exploring in this concert the fascinating musical world of William Billings, known as ‘America’s first choral composer’. If the text of ‘When David heard’ is direct and to the point, Billings’ music, though written in the late 18th century, hundreds of years and a continent away from the Renaissance composers who feature in this half, is the natural complement. Born in Boston in 1746, when it was still the capital of the English colony known as the Province of Massachusetts Bay, Billings was a largely self-taught but successful musician, composer, and music teacher and spent his entire life in the city of his birth. His style is extremely simple and almost abrupt, designed to be sung by British colonists at a time and in a place when the sophistication of European courts and cathedrals was an impossible - and perhaps also completely unknown - luxury. Yet here similarities exist too. Was Billings aware of the multitude of settings of this text? Did he choose it for its musical significance or just its textual power? It seems unlikely that his contribution to the tradition of settings of David’s lament was completely by chance, but his approach is certainly novel and almost brutal when compared with the sophistication of the Jacobean masters.

The second half of tonight’s programme contrasts joy and redemption with the sadness and loss of the first half. Music for Easter, the church’s celebration of the triumph of love and life over sadness and death, is paired with settings of Psalm 126 from which the title of tonight’s programme comes. Psalm 126 is a psalm of rejoicing, the emphasis here definitely not being on the tears but instead on the joy!

What better way to begin than with another piece by Billings in which he makes his inimitable contribution to an existing tradition of European high choral art? When the Lord turned again is a setting of sections of Psalm 126 in exactly the same way William Byrd’s Turn our captivity, O Lord, and Heinrich Schutz’ Die mit Traenen are, but what a different approach!

Lest this comparison become overused and suffer as a result, rather than pairing Billings’ music with yet more sophisticated and subtle music in the second half, we instead show that Renaissance composers known for their complexity and passion can also write clean, clear, simple, and effective music. Tomas Luis de Victoria, the undisputed leader of Spanish High Renaissance composers, set the Easter Sequence Victime paschali laudes (a piece of plainsong specifically meant to be sung on Easter Day) in a remarkable way. Short phrases, a very terse double choir texture with predictable echos, and a repeating refrain, make for a transparent and, frankly, simple setting from the pen of a Renaissance master known for flowing counterpoint and emotional complexity. Billings and Victoria here find common ground whereas Billings and Tomkins, in the first half, did not.

Our next contrast is not one of context, but of execution. While not direct contemporaries, Jean L’Heritier and Orlande de Lassus were both Franco-Flemish Renaissance composers with similar influences and from similar traditions. In his setting of the Easter Monday responsory Surrexit pastor bonus, Lassus concentrates on the joyful Alleluias, elongating and emphasising them almost at the expense of the rest of the text, whereas L’Heritier constructs a mysterious and almost-haunting work that conjures the world-bending, cosmic power of the resurrection. Both are pieces for Easter, setting precisely the same text, but expressing very different aspects of the Christianity’s central story.

As our programme progresses, and the joy of these texts becomes more irresistible, our contrasts begin to lessen too. William Byrd and John Sheppard, both Tudor polyphonists of immense skill and royal patronage, who, while again not direct contemporaries (though Sheppard, the older of the two men, may have known Byrd when he a boy chorister), sang in the same choirs in the same cities and even in the same buildings, both wrote a setting of the Gradual at Mass for Easter Day, Haec dies. The text contained in this piece ‘Let us rejoice and be glad in it’ characterises both settings. Sheppard gives us a blast of a piece - constant texture, ambitious in range, and brimming with energy. Byrd’s piece is more elegant and contrapuntal, with complex rhythms and interesting textures. Both pieces, however, are about as far as it is possible to get from the laments of the first half.

But it is possible to get even farther! To finish our concert, and to truly reap the joy we sowed with the tears of the first half, we turn again to Thomas Tomkins, the man who wrote our first ‘When David heart’ setting. Tomkins’ O sing unto the Lord a new song is neither a setting of Psalm 126 nor a setting of an Easter text, but we hope you’ll forgive us as it is a piece that truly defines joy in music. Its conclusion, of course setting the word ‘Alleluia’, is truly extraordinary as both soprano lines reach new heights and both bass parts rumble up full-octave scales. In this piece, all of the sorrow of the laments of the first half is completely wiped away. The contrasts of this programme have helped to highlight features of the music and have taken us on a journey, but in the end joy has triumphed, unequivocally.

Programme note by Greg Skidmore
June 2025

Texts & Translations