2004-2005 SEASON REVIEW

The Suspicious Cheese Lords celebrated their 2004-2005 season with the recording and release of their second CD, Missa L’homme armé: Sacred Music of Ludwig Senfl. All tracks on this CD were previously unrecorded works. Ludwig Senfl (c.1486-1542/3) was born in Basel, Switzerland, and as a child joined the Hofkapelle of the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I. By 1513, he had become the court composer. After Maximilian’s death in 1519, Senfl struggled to find another permanent position. By 1523, he had secured a post in the Hofkapelle of Duke Wilhelm of Bavaria. Senfl stayed in Munich for the rest of his life. Senfl produced a large amount of music, including Masses, settings of the Mass propers, lieders, and odes. The majority of his pieces are in Latin or German, with a few texts in Italian and French.

The Lords’ October 2004 concerts in La Plata, Md. and Washington featured the first performances in perhaps centuries of Senfl’s Te Deum, as newly reconstructed by noted music scholar Michael Donaldson. Unlike other pieces by Senfl, this work has not been published in modern notation and the original manuscripts only exist in sets of part books (some incomplete) located in Germany and Austria. The program also included Thomas Tallis’ nine psalm tunes known as Archbishop Parker’s Psalter and the American premiere of If Ye Love Me by contemporary English composer Philip Stopford.

The Cheese Lords returned to the beautiful Franciscan Monastery for their annual Christmas Concert. The performance opened with a procession of Conditor alme siderum, another unrecorded (and rarely heard) composition by Renaissance composer Elzear Genet (c. 1470-1548). The piece alternates between chant and polyphony, and the Lords made use of the generous monastery church acoustic to bring Genet’s work to full effect. The Lords were pleased to have as their guest artist, concert organist Dr. Haig Mardirosian, who performed J. S. Bach’s Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, (BMW 661) and other pieces by Josef Rheinberger and Naji Hakim. The concert included Renaissance choral works by Michael Altenburg, Josquin des Pres, Giovanni Matteo Asola, and Palestrina. The ensemble made their second American debut of the season with the performance of O magnum mysterium, by contemporary Dutch composer Coen Vermeeren. The joyous evening was supplemented with the audience joining the Lords and organ in singing seasonal carols.

In mid-December 2004, the Embassy of Switzerland hosted a CD release party for the Suspicious Cheese Lords in celebration of their Senfl recording. The Lords entertained the crowd with sections of Senfl’s Missa L’homme armé before singing tunes appropriate for the season. These included the exuberant 16th century Catalonian E la don don, a lovely low-voice arrangement of the medieval Coventry Carol, and a stirring Shepherds Rejoice from America’s Sacred Harp songbook.

At the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center, the Cheese Lords presented In Heaven and in Rome, a program designed to take the listener on a musical tour of the Renaissance city, from sacred polyphony of the Papal Chapel to secular songs of love, accompanied by composers such as Josquin, Lassus, Palestrina, and Victoria. This late February 2005 concert complemented the Cultural Center's exhibit, "Creating St. Peter's: Architectural Treasures of the Vatican", which showed the history of the art and architecture of St. Peter's Basilica through 140 objects on loan from the Fabbrica di San Pietro in Vaticano. The centerpiece of the exhibit was the 18-foot study model for Michelangelo's design of the dome.

The Suspicious Cheese Lords continued their work as Artists-in-Residence at the Franciscan Monastery singing for a full complement of services during Holy Week. Sung Mass settings included William Byrd’s Mass for Three Voices and Josquin des Pres’ Missa Mater Patris. Every year during Holy Week the solemn service of Tenebrae is of special significance to the Cheese Lords. This year, the contemplative service included Genet’s Lamentatio Jeremiae and a five-voice O vos omnes by Emilio d’Cavalieri.

The venues for the Cheese Lords’ two April concerts were the historic Old Presbyterian Meeting House in Old Town Alexandria and the elegant marble ballroom of the Society of the Cincinnati’s Anderson House in Washington. These performances featured Senfl’s beautiful Quid vitam sine te, a funeral song, or nenia. This Latin text was written by Augustinian Johann Coleram on the occasion of the death of the wife of Christopher Ehem. The piece begins with the lament of the husband. This is followed with the wife’s response, urging her husband not to grieve, as she has gone to a better place. The audience was treated to an example of musical recycling as the ensemble demonstrated how the melody of Jacob Arcadelt’s (c. 1514-1575) chanson, Nous voyons que les hommes was later reharmonized and set to the familiar Ave Maria text. The Lords also presented three colonial-era pieces by American composer William Billings, a moving arrangement by H. T. Burleigh of the spiritual Deep River, and Randall Thompson’s much-loved Alleluia.

As part of the second annual Washington Early Music Festival, the Cheese Lords closed their 2004-2005 season with a wide-ranging program sampling the wealth of music from Spain and the New World. Titled The Whole Enchilada, the performance began with an ancient Mozarabic chant followed by two 13th century cantigas from the reign of King Alfonso el Sabio. Renaissance polyphony was represented by compositions of Tomás Luis de Victoria and his contemporaries, including Alonso Lobo’s Ave Regina Cœlorum and Francisco de Peñalosa’s Ave, vere sanguis Domini. The Lords presented two motets in the Aztec language of Nahuatl demonstrating how the Spanish influence of music evolved in the New World. Showing that New World composers could stand on equal footing with their Old World predecessors, the Cheese Lords performed works by Gaspar Fernández, Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla, Francisco López Capillas, and Manuel de Sumaya, all composers who established their careers in colonial Mexico. Additionally, the ensemble presented three simple, yet beautiful, pieces from the California Missions.