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The idea for this recording began years ago when my horn and I came to Yale as freshmen. There we fell under the spell of the great German musician Paul Hindemith who was then professor of the theory of music and composition. Hindemith spent an enormous amount of time transcribing early European music which dated from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries for his students in a class called "The History of the Theory of Music." He even insisted that we play it on original instruments, when available - strange relics dredged up from Yale's collection of ancient instruments - sackbuts, krumhorns and shawms.

But it was the Venetian school, a sixteenth century school of first Flemish and later Italian composers at the Basilica of Saint Mark's that spoke most clearly to me. Inaugurated by Adrian Willaert, a Netherlander (c. 1485-1586), the Venetian school included, among others, Andrea Gabrieli (c. 1510-1604), Cypriano do Rore (1516-1565), Claudio Merulo (1533-1604) and Giovanni Gabrieli (1557-1612).

Back in the 1950's, under Hindemith's direction, it was the music Giovanni Gabrieli whose polychoral treatment, echo effects and the extensive use of instruments together with voices, that most arrested my ears. Above all, I was intrigued by the majesty and complexity of his rhythms. I wondered then how such complex textures and rhythms could be organized and performed five hundred years ago in that stone church without the sound decaying into noisy confusion.

Since St. Mark's musicians were so daring for their time, I suspected that its builders might have known something about acoustics which was not widely known in Europe. Certainly the builders could not have had Gabrieli in mind when they laid out the plan for the Basilica hundreds of years earlier. The music used for church services at that time was monophonic (a single sung melody) having no harmony and not even the accompaniment of an organ until much later. Hymns and plain chant were the standard fare for congregational singing.

Recorded here are Gregorian chant, plain chant, and spirituals.

Willie Ruff
Yale University School of Music

 

For the full story of the saga of Willie Ruff's St. Mark's adventure, read A Call to Assemby.