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THE WITCH TRIALS
A Mirror to our callous hearts.
PROGRAMME
Plainchant – Requiem aeternam
Hildegard von Bingen – Quia ergo femina
‘Their names were…’
Gregorio Allegri – Miserere mei, Deus
‘Witch Demdike’
Carlo Gesualdo – O vos omnes
‘Demdike: Killing by Witchcraft’
Anna Disley-Simpson – Double, Double Toil and Trouble (New Commission)
‘Witch Chattox’
Barbara Strozzi arr. Ellie Slorach – Che si può fare?
‘Chattox confesses’
William Byrd – Ave verum corpus
Plainchant – Ave Maria
Rory Wainwright Johnston – Ave Maria
‘The Verdict’
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina – Sicut cervus
Camden Reeves – Spells, Remedies & Potions
Carol Ann Duffy ‘The Lancaster Witches’
Plainchant – In paradisum
Amen
-
Conductor Ellie Slorach
Content Warning: This performance includes verbal references to hangings, child harm, and abortion in the context of the witch trials. There are no visual depictions of violence.
Programme Notes
The infamous stories of the trials, torture and execution of witches are surely just abominable tales of a bygone era? Yet, with each and every unspeakable act we witness in the modern world, perhaps the Witch Trials tell us just as much about human nature today.
Tonight, music and spoken word sit alongside one another, offering an immersive reflection on the Lancashire Witch Trials of 1612. The programme gives us all a chance to grieve the senseless loss of life and confront some heavy truths while hearing some of the actual texts from the trials of 1612.
Featuring Camden Reeves’s haunting ‘Spells, Remedies & Potions’ - “think Black Sabbath and Metallica but for sopranos” - alongside music by Allegri, Byrd, Palestrina, Wainwright Johnston, and an arrangement of a 17th-Century Barbara Strozzi song by Ellie Slorach, this performance takes you on a captivating journey to a dark past and back again.
Requiem aeternam
Plainchant
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Give them eternal rest, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine on them.
Quia ergo femina
Hildegard von Bingen (c.1098-1179)
Quia ergo femina mortem instruxit,
clara virgo illam interemit,
et ideo est summa benedictio
in feminea forma
pre omni creatura,
quia Deus factus est homo
in dulcissima et beata virgine.
For since a woman drew up death,
a virgin gleaming dashed it down,
and therefore is the highest blessing found
in woman’s form
before all other creatures.
For God was made a human
in the blessed Virgin sweet.
Hildegard von Bingen, also known as Saint Hildegard, was a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, visionary, and polymath. At a young age, Hildegard was sent to an isolated hilltop monastery in the Rhineland where she spent most of her life shut away. She is now considered to be one of the first identifiable composers in the history of Western music. Among writing theological books and nearly 400 letters, Hildegard wrote a vast collection of music and poetry titled ‘Symphonia Armonie Celestium Revelationum’ (Symphony of the Harmony of Heavenly Revelations). Quia ergo femina sits within this collection and describes the Virgin’s position within salvation. Hildegard seemingly uses exaltation and praise of the Virgin to highlight, more generally, womankind’s nature and beauty.
‘Their names were…’
Miserere mei, Deus
Gregorio Allegri (c.1582-1652)
Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam;
et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum, dele iniquitatem meam.
Amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea: et a peccato meo munda me.
Quoniam iniquitatem meam ego cognosco, et peccatum meum contra me est semper.
Quoniam si voluisses sacrificium, dedissem utique; holocaustis non delectaberis.
Sacrificium Deo spiritus contribulatus; cor contritum et humiliatum, Deus, non despicies.
Benigne fac, Domine, in bona voluntate tua Sion, ut aedificentur muri Jerusalem.
Tunc acceptabis sacrificium justitiae, oblationes et holocausta; tunc imponent super altare tuum vitulos.
Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness:
according to the multitude of thy mercies do away mine offences.
Wash me throughly from my wickedness: and cleanse me from my sin.
For I acknowledge my faults: and my sin is ever before me.
For thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it thee: but thou delightest not in burnt-offerings.
The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God, shalt thou not despise.
O be favourable and gracious unto Sion: build thou the walls of Jerusalem.
Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifice of righteousness, with the burnt-offerings and oblations:
then shall they offer young bullocks upon thine altar.
Italian composer, Allegri, is most famous for his setting of Psalm 51, Miserere mei, Deus. It was composed during the reign of Pope Urban VIII, probably during the 1630s, for the exclusive use of the Sistine Chapel during the Tenebrae services of Holy Week. It is written for two choirs; tonight we have the full choir on stage and the solo quartet behind the audience. Alternating between the two choirs and interspersed lines of chant, all voices join together for the final verse. (This is a shortened version of the full piece.)
‘Witch Demdike’
O vos omnes
Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613)
O vos omnes qui transitis per viam, attendite et videte:
Si est dolor similis sicut dolor meus.
Attendite, universi populi, et videte dolorem meum.
Si est dolor similis sicut dolor meus.
O all ye that pass by the way, attend and see:
If there be any sorrow like to my sorrow.
Attend, all ye people, and see my sorrow:
If there be any sorrow like to my sorrow.
Gesualdo was an Italian composer known for his use of avant-garde chromaticism in choral music. He is also known for killing his first wife and her lover upon finding them together mid-passion. He himself had affairs throughout his second marriage, and eventually his wife ordered two of these women to be tried...for Witchcraft. The two were tortured to obtain confessions and were imprisoned. At the time, it was still commonplace to believe in the power of women to curse using Witchcraft. O vos omnes displays Gesualdo’s unbelievable use of chromatic language for his time and his musical lamentation style (he had a physical self-flagellation ritual too). Published in 1611, even the first two chords are surprising: B minor followed abruptly by B major.
‘Demdike: Killing by Witchcraft’
Double, Double Toil and Trouble
Anna Disley-Simpson
‘In this setting of Shakespeare’s witches’ spell from Macbeth, I wanted to capture both the playfulness and the darkness of the text - its bubbling imagery of “eye of newt” and “toe of frog”, and the delicious rhythm and rhyme that make it such fun for a composer to set.
My starting point was to imagine how the spell might sound if it were truly sung aloud: a twisted and urgent nursery rhyme that might be sung in a round, something with the simplicity of "London’s Burning", but darker and more feverish. The number three weaves through the piece in tribute to the three witches - it is three minutes long, shifting around keys a minor third apart, and features three-part echoes and canons between different voice parts.
The result is an incantation that steadily simmers and chants its way through the Witches' wicked words.’
Anna Disley-Simpson
‘Witch Chattox’
Che si può fare?
Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677)
arr. Ellie Slorach (1994- )
Sì, sì, penar deggio,
Sì, che darei sospiri,
Deggio trarne i respiri.
Che si può fare?
Le stelle rubelle
Non hanno pietà.
Che s'el cielo non dà
Un influsso di pace al mio penare,
Che si può fare?
Che si può dire?
Da gl'astri disastri
Mi piovano ogn'hor;
In aspri guai per eternarmi
Il ciel niega mia sorte
Al periodo vital
Punto di morte.
Yes, yes, I have to suffer,
yes, I must sigh,
I must breathe with difficulty.
What can you do?
The stars, intractable,
have no pity.
Since the gods don't give
a measure of peace in my suffering,
what can I do?
What can you say?
From the heavens disasters
keep raining down on me;
In order to eternalize my trials
heaven witholds from me
the final period of death
to my lifespan.
‘A few years ago, I conducted the strings of the BBC Philharmonic as they accompanied Héloïse Werner singing a new arrangement of Barbara Strozzi’s song ‘Che si può fare?’, originally written in 1664. Strozzi was a pioneering female composer in the Baroque period, publishing eight volumes of her own music without any consistent support from the church or nobility. This song struck me; stunning and the melody completely encapsulates the meaning of the words. The words resonate with the theme of our Witch Trials programme and so I set the song in a new choral arrangement. The melody remains intact in the soprano line but I’ve added some contemporary vocal techniques, such as a repeated fast exhale and inhale to induce a sense of panic, some contemporary harmony, humming, and some of the text is spoken during the intro and outro. Nothing beats Strozzi’s original, but this is different, and I hope, poignantly so.’
Ellie Slorach
‘Chattox confesses’
Ave verum corpus
William Byrd (c.1540-1623)
Ave, verum corpus natum
de Maria Virgine:
vere passum, immolatum
in cruce pro homine:
cuius latus perforatum
fluxit aqua et sanguine:
esto nobis praegustatum,
in mortis examine.
O Jesu dulcis, O Jesu pie,
O Jesu Fili Mariae.
Miserere mei. Amen.
Hail the true body, born
of the Virgin Mary:
You who truly suffered and were sacrificed
on the cross for the sake of man.
From whose pierced side
flowed water and blood:
Be a foretaste for us
in the trial of death.
O sweet, O merciful,
O Jesus, Son of Mary.
Have mercy on me. Amen.
William Byrd remained a devout Catholic during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, composing Catholic music for use in secretly held services throughout his life. Under the new Church of England rules, first brought in by Henry VIII, music was only to be written in English; Latin was prohibited. Byrd refused to conform and seems to have managed this, without being punished, because he was so musically skilled and by dedicating many of his publications to the Queen. Ave verum corpus, a Eucharistic Hymn, was published in Byrd’s set of motets, Gradualia, in 1605. It was almost certainly sung in these secret underground masses, attended by a small number of people covertly, and not used in public ceremonies.
Ave Maria
Plainchant
Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum;
benedicta tu in mulieribus,
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,
ora pro nobis peccatoribus,
nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee;
blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Ave Maria
Rory Wainwright Johnston (1993- )
'Ave Maria was commissioned by Kantos in October 2018 for the first Pendle Witches concert tour. The piece’s main aim is to create an atemporal reverie in which the audience can lose themselves. The opening and closing sections set the Ave Maria plainchant in starkly separated chords laid upon a gently hummed pedal note. This sparse reflection on the plainchant was heavily inspired by the Swiss composer Jürg Frey and his manipulation of silence in its many forms. The sound of the pedal note becomes part of the background, as to become silent, and the slow chords so disparate that the gaps in-between feel, at once, both infinite and self-encapsulating. The middle section focuses on the text ‘Sancta Maria, Mater Dei’, a phrase which I felt to be one of the most important in the text as a whole, as it describes in four words why Mary is such an important figure to the church. For this phrase, I emphasised a sense of exultant praise, light, and sanctity, and so the Tenors and Basses individually chant the text – reminiscent of priests in the sanctuary – while the Sopranos and Altos take the plainchant melody and transfigure it into something more diverse and somewhat breaking of the bounds of the musical ‘realm’.
Throughout the piece, the choir surrounds the audience, enveloping them within the sound, while mixing the voice parts, in order to obfuscate the location of any one part of the disparate chords or humming. The piece ends with a stopping of the pedal hum, emphasising the reality of true silence, before being concluded with a separated, and questioning, ‘A-‘ ‘-men’.’
Rory Wainwright Johnston
‘The Verdict’
Sicut cervus
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c.1525-1594)
Sicut cervus desiderat ad fontes aquarum, ita desiderat anima mea ad te, Deus.
Like as the deer pants for the water brooks: so longs my soul for thee, God.
Sicut Cervus is a motet for four voices which sets the beginning of Psalm 42. It was published in 1604 in Motecta festorum, Liber 2 and is regarded as a model of Renaissance polyphony. The music creates an overall sense of yearning and thirsting, with special detail reserved for certain moments of word painting; for example, for the text: ita desiderat anima mea ad te, Deus, the imitative entries become more dense and the dissonance is more intense, creating a sense of desperate longing.
Spells, Remedies & Potions
Camden Reeves (1974- )
I – ‘Spells’
II – ‘Remedies’
III – ‘Potions’
‘These three motets for sopranos were completed in 2017. They set my own texts, which I have freely adapted from the Malleus Maleficarum of 1487 by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger (in the English translation by the Reverend Montague Summers of 1928). Literally ‘The Hammer of the Witches’, this bizarre theological and legal treatise outlines methods for the identification, trial, interrogation and execution of witches.
The Malleus Maleficarum may very well strike modern readers as bizarre. I cannot help but be reminded of that scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail… ‘If she weighs the same as a duck, she’s made of wood, and therefore…a witch’. So I confess, this motet is partly tongue-in cheek. But only partly. It is otherwise quite serious, and the humour, such that there is, serves little more than a sedative in confronting some bleak truths about human beings.
We might very well want to believe that humanity no longer behaves this way. Burning witches – how ridiculous and awful that was! Such extreme irrationality is behind us, surely? In my eyes nothing much has changed. There were several events in 2016 and 2017 that made the ever-present danger of Witch Hunts quite real for me. On top of numerous unspeakable acts of religious extremism, there came a number of worrying political developments across the world. But such mob mentality is, and has been, all around us all the time. The Malleus Maleificarum serves as a sobering lesson from history: a mirror to our own actions in the present that reflects our cruelty back at us in all its ugliness.
These motets collectively present an image of a Witches’ Coven. But it is not really about what happens on stage; it is about us, about what happens in our heads and what we think we see and hear. Are these really witches? Or is this a projection of our own irrational fears and prejudices? Are we at their mercy or they at ours? There is always a lone voice – sometimes quiet, sometimes desperate – pleading with us to see things differently. It is up to us whether we choose to listen. Many will not want to confront the truth about themselves.
Each of these motets is based on its own hexachord (i.e. 6+6+6). ‘Spells’ and ‘Remedies’ are both two-part canons at the unison. ‘Potions’ is a more complex contrapuntal motet for 4-part sopranos. A soprano solo enters with a medieval Kyrie eleison plainchant halfway through the final motet, and it concludes with a Hexenchorale.’
Camden Reeves
The Lancaster Witches
Carol Ann Duffy (1955- )
This poem by Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, was commissioned to mark the 400th anniversary of the 1612 Pendle Witch Trials, which saw 10 people hanged at Gallows Hill in Lancaster. Duffy wrote 10 tercets which have each been put on posts along the 51 mile Witches Walk from Pendle to Lancaster. Duffy said the echoes of those persecuted were ‘audible still’.
In paradisum
Plainchant
In paradisum deducant te angeli
æternam habeas requiem.
May the angels lead you into paradise
may you have eternal rest.
Amen
THE CHOIR
SOPRANO
Saskia Bibb
Emily Brown Gibson
Eleonore Cockerham
Felicity Hayward
Sarah Keirle-Dos Santos
ALTO
Louise Ashdown
Jessica Conway
Lorna Day
Rachel Singer
TENOR
Will Anderson
Jonny Maxwell-Hyde
Timothy Peters
BASS
Sam Gilliatt
Jonny Hill
Joshua McCullough
David Valsamidis
THE TEAM
Company Director Claire Shercliff
Creative Director Ellie Slorach
Communications & Audience Officer Ailsa Burns
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