Anchorites: To Know Ourselves (Ensemble Debut)

Anchorites’ debut concert, presented by Music atEmmanuel as part of its 2025–2026 Tuesdays at Six series.

Program

Set One — opened by Tim Holt’s “Anchorites: Julian of Norwich”

• Tim Holt, Anchorites: Julian of Norwich
• Imogen Holst, A Hymne to Christ
• Orlando di Lasso, Tota pulchra es
• Jeff Junkinsmith, Come Down, O Love Divine

Set Two — opened by Tim Holt’s “Anchorites: Tao Lin”

• Tim Holt, Anchorites: Tao Lin
• John Wilbye, Lady, When I Behold
• Thomas Tomkins, Oyez! Has Any Found a Lad?
• Pierre Certon, C’est trop parlé de Bacchus
• Orlando di Lasso, O Vin en Vigne
• Clément Janequin, Au Joli Jeu
• Orlando di Lasso, Bonjour Mon Cœur
• Benjamin Britten, The Evening Primrose
• Thomas Ravenscroft, Ale and Tobacco
• Thomas Ravenscroft, Of Beere
• Thomas Ravenscroft, Of Ale

Set Three — opened by Tim Holt’s “Anchorites: John Berryman”

• Tim Holt, Anchorites: John Berryman
• Philippe Verdelot, Ognor per Voi Sospiro
• Philippe Verdelot, Trist’Amarilli Mia
• Jacques Arcadelt, Il Bianco e Dolce Cigno
• attr. Josquin des Prez, Mille Regretz
• David Lang, make peace
• Arvo Pärt, Da Pacem Domine
• Johann Christoph Bach, Es ist nun aus mit meinem Leben
• C.H.H. Parry, I Know My Soul Hath Power

(Tim Holt’s “Anchorites” is a single three-movement work, one movement of which opens each of the three sets above — see the Anchorites repertoire entry for the full piece.)

Concert Note

By T.J. Callahan

“Pain, it is something, as to my sight, for a time; for it purgeth, and maketh us to know ourselves.” — Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love

Human nature is inherently messy and complex. In a single lifetime, we endure tragedies, conflict, and loss in spades. At the same time, it is intrinsic to our being to persevere in finding the meaning and beauty in life’s chaotic milieu. Tonight’s program is an examination of how this struggle shapes the human experience. While loosely divided on thematic lines, it is intentionally eclectic, bringing together styles of music from across centuries, subject matter, and compositional idioms. It considers different ways in which people endeavor to avoid or transcend the suffering inherent in life on earth. Music about joy and revelry is presented directly alongside minimalistic works and pious, devotional hymns. In this way, we reflect on the multifaceted nature of humanity and our relationship to pain and joy.

Tim Holt’s triptych Anchorites explores the concept of isolation as a tool for protecting oneself against life’s ills through the words of three literary figures. Julian of Norwich, a fourteenth-century Catholic author and anchorite, entered a self-imposed isolation in search of spiritual enlightenment. She is the author of Revelations of Divine Love, an 87-chapter chronicling of the visions she experienced throughout her life in confinement.

Similarly, author Tao Lin withdrew from what he viewed as an increasingly materialistic world in 2020 to live in solitude. His novel Leave Society, written in 2021, is a fictionalization of his life. The third piece in the collection uses text from John Berryman’s surrealist Dream Songs. Berryman uses expressionistic poetry to describe the mindscape of his troubled protagonist, Henry. In this triptych, Holt sets Lin and Julian in a sort of asynchronous dialogue with Henry. The composer writes: “Anchored as they are each to their own time, Tao Lin and Julian of Norwich console Henry, as he struggles to come to terms with his own pain.” Holt uses a spare, unintrusive counterpoint that conveys these texts with varying levels of clarity: in Julian of Norwich, a single, chant-like solo line; in John Berryman, lines of poetry passed between voice parts on a single (but occasionally overlapping, glitched, belabored) thread; in Tao Lin, a frequently chaotic quodlibet that defies scrutiny.

The first set on this program, introduced by Holt’s Julian of Norwich, presents faith as a tool to escape from mortal suffering, and in particular a personal, interior experience of spirituality. John Donne’s Hymne to Christ, set here by Imogen Holst, focuses on just such a relationship with the divine. Holst approaches this text in a speechlike and intuitive manner, changing the meter freely to align with the rhythm of the poetry. This mostly homophonic texture gives the nimble harmonic language plenty of room to breathe. Jeff Junkinsmith’s Come Down, O Love Divine echoes this strategy to emphasize its devotional text, taken originally from Methodist liturgy. Junkinsmith has chosen a text also set to the tune Down Ampney, one of the most beloved hymns in circulation, and his sincere setting pays appropriate homage. Both Junkinsmith and Holst make frequent use of open harmonies and whole-tone motion, giving these pieces a bright, translucent feel.

Particularly popular among composers of the sixteenth century were the texts of the Song of Songs, a biblical poem from the last section of the Tanakh. Unique among biblical texts, the poems are permeated with thinly veiled eroticism, blurring the line between love poetry and devotional text. These highly illustrative verses proved fertile ground for composers, especially Tota Pulchra Es, heard on this concert in Lasso’s setting for four voices. The polyphony Lasso employs here is richly varied, reflecting the metaphor of the text: he uses smooth, uninterrupted lines to describe milk and honey, while agile ornamentation describes “flowers appearing.”

In the end, it is life’s simplest pleasures that might be humanity’s most constant tool for staving off the tribulations of mortal life: a good party, food and drink, the company of friends, the flame of romance. Our intrinsic desire to chase earthly satisfaction is near-universal, and has been a popular topic in the arts since antiquity. A nearly endless supply of music in this genre survives from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, generally written for informal merrymaking at private gatherings, and the majority of the pieces in this set are drawn from that repertoire. These madrigals, drinking songs, and chansons are inviting and carousing and more than a little flirtatious, as highlighted by John Wilbye’s Lady, When I Behold. Wilbye, the leading madrigalist of his generation, mostly set his own texts, and must have favored this one, as it also exists in a six-voice setting. His craft in this setting is particularly masterful, making intentional use of repetition to build tension and creating playful textural contrast with frequent duets a third apart. Thomas Tomkins provides a quick and delightful snippet of counterpoint narrating a hunt for Cupid, the Greek god of attraction, while Pierre Certon’s C’est trop parlé de Bacchus mocks the Elizabethan penchant for fanciful invocations of mythology and invites us to share a drink without pretense. Playful and coy chansons by Lasso and Clément Janequin segue into Benjamin Britten’s The Evening Primrose, a voluptuous and intimate allegory on the flower as a shy lover. This set of revelry is capped with three boisterous pieces by Thomas Ravenscroft that extol the virtues of various vices.

Throughout the Renaissance and into the Baroque, the madrigal was the dominant form of secular vocal composition. Its earliest master was indisputably Philippe Verdelot, a French composer who spent most of his life in his adopted home of Florence. Like most works in the genre, his madrigals highlight romantic longing and dramatic languor; Verdelot’s smooth interplay of imitative counterpoint with sections of homophonic declamation is especially provocative and impactful. Trist’Amarilli Mia features richly metaphorical text that paints an elaborate picture of the narrator’s angst, to which Verdelot responds efficiently: text is rarely repeated, and the four vocal parts are often synchronized, allowing the storyline to shine through. By contrast, Ognor per Voi Sospiro is a more personal, emotional text that in turn evokes less direct treatment of the text and more contrapuntal material. Mille Regretz and Il Bianco e Dolce Cigno, two of the most enduringly popular works from the period, showcase how the deceptively simple polyphony of the early sixteenth century can nonetheless be extremely affecting. This set of works highlights those core human emotions that fuel so much of our literature: pining, desire, and unrequited love.

The final set of this evening’s program examines religion as a tool for humanity to reckon with life’s existential questions. This subject matter is powerfully explored by two prominent living minimalist composers, David Lang and Arvo Pärt. In make peace, Lang has adapted text from the Kaddish, a Jewish memorial prayer. Lang’s music, treating notes and silence with equal weight, begins on a single-voice chant before building harmonic interest, allowing the voices to sporadically overlap into beautiful sonorities that are gone in an instant. At the end, the texture breaks into a woven polyphonic discourse between voices, repeatedly posing a hypothetical, both musically and rhetorically. Pärt’s setting of the votive antiphon Da Pacem Domine, written in memory of the victims of the Madrid train bombings, employs a similar pattern of overlapping repetitions, but set more closely together, creating a texture of constantly evolving chords.

Johann Christoph Bach echoes this powerful simplicity centuries earlier with his immaculate motet Es ist nun aus mit meinem Leben. The text echoes the Lutheran sentiment that life on earth is a series of struggles and that death brings release and joy in reunion with God. Christoph, the older cousin of Sebastian, cultivates an air of profound gentleness and comfort in his setting, making ample use of dramatic silence in the concluding phrases of each verse. Finally, C.H.H. Parry’s dramatic setting of John Davies’s I Know My Soul Hath Power is a poignant consideration of humanity’s place in the universe. Parry’s Songs of Farewell, written around the composer’s death, remain some of his most beloved works. His setting is entirely homophonic save for one section, where the ensemble falters on repeated statements of “and yet…” just before the piece concludes on a meek and defeated final statement.

— T. J. Callahan