Copenhagen Boys Choir - Ad Te Levavi.wmv

Ad te Levavi, Mogens Pederson(1580-1628) Christian IVs vicekapelmester or Deputy Master of the Royal Chapel, Mogens Pedersøn is the first composer in the history of Danish music from whom we have a large, collected body of work, and about whom we have, if not a complete biography, at least a number of items of biographical information. In addition and crucially he emerges as a composer of international format, perhaps the most significant Danish composer before the breakthrough of bourgeois musical culture in Denmark in 1800 with names like Kunzen, Schultz, Weyse and others. Finally, he is the earliest Danish composer whose music has been the object of detailed musical analysis. Although, as we shall see, he did not hold the very highest musical post at the court of Christian IV, he was the most important Danish composer at the court and a composer whose light does not dim in comparison with the many big names who had been brought in from abroad. The first time we hear of Mogens Pedersøn is in 1599 when, as a young apprentice in the Kings cantori, he was sent on a one-year study trip to Venice accompanied by the fifteen-year-older Melchior Borchgrevinck, who had already by that time achieved a certain status among the Kings musicians, and who was later to rise rapidly in the hierarchy until, in 1618, he reached the top as the Kings kapelmester incidentally the same year as his presumed former pupil Mogens Pedersøn became vicekapelmester. Around 1600 Venice had lost some of its onetime political and commercial importance, but in musical terms the city by the lagoon was still a musical powerhouse, not least as a result of the prestige associated with the offices of organist and maestro di cappella at St. Marks. The great master of this period, who was visited by innumerable composers from different parts of Europe, was Giovanni Gabrieli, known for his vocal and instrumental works which uniquely exploited the special architecture of the basilica with the many galleries around the building. The study period of the Danes with Gabrieli in Venice was the start of a succession of such visits to the Venetian master, making him almost the permanent tutor for talented Danish composers at the court of Christian IV. Just five years after coming home in 1605, Mogens Pedersøn again went to Venice, this time to stay there for four years. There is much to indicate that Gabrielis pedagogical method was to have his pupils put music to set texts, either sacred texts in the form of motets or secular ones in the form of madrigals. Once the pupil was fully trained, he ensured that, to set the seal on his achievement, he printed a collection of his madrigals. And so in 1608 Mogens Pedersøn too could proudly read the printed title page of his debut work with 21 madrigals: Madrigali a cinque voci. Libro Primo ... di Magno Petreo Dano, Musico ... . Already here he appears, with the optimism of youth, to have assumed that there would later be a Libro Secundo that