The Viadana Collective
Maximilien Brisson
75:01
Passacaille PAS 1142
This admirable CD from The Viadana Collective offers us a glimpse of a key figure in the background of music-making in the churches of northern Italy in late 16th and early 17th century Italy. One of the chief instructors and a notable composer in his own right was Viadana, very little of whose music has been recorded. He was in charge of the music at the cathedral in Mantua in the 1590s and this recording made in the Basilica di Santa Barbara there uses its historic Antegnati organ of 1565, which includes a 16’ Fiffaro rank, tuned to beat with the Principale which can be heard in track 17, as well as split keys for the ‘black notes’, so using a remarkably clean pre-Baroque Meantone tuning. What Viadana is chiefly remembered for is the creation of what we know as the figured bass or basso continuo, and his motets for single voices performed here with the fine full-bodied organ that he certainly knew, shows the motet shifting from a solid polyphonic style towards one in which a single line – often ornamented – is accompanied by at least the organ basso continuo, but sometimes with instruments substituting for the vocal lines. The group’s organist, Iason Marmaras, contributes some Intonazione in the style of Andrea Gabrieli to introduce each group of motets, which allows us to hear the organ on its own.
The motets here are largely from the collection Viadana published in a revised form in Frankfurt in 1615 as Centum sacri concentus ab una voce sola ecclesiastici which are harmonically more adventurous and belong more distinctively of the seconda prattica than his earlier collection Centum concerti ecclesiastici of 1602. This argues Maximilien Brisson, the moving spirit behind this welcome production, was a seminal contribution to the emerging solo monody, where consideration for the voice type as well as close attention to the speech rhythms of the text placed this work at the forefront of the new monody in church music.
These are contrasted with ensemble singing which reveals that the singers in the single voice motets, where their vocal agility and stylish word painting is so much in evidence also make an impressive ensemble, so key in performances like this with absolute parity between voices and instruments. The singers are Suzie LeBlanc, Vicki St Pierre, Charles Daniels and Roland Faust and they show in Vinea mea how important it is to have such a clean, violone-like bass as the foundation for such an ensemble.
Bruce Dickey sets the instrumental style with amazing diminutions in O quam suavis. And I was unprepared for the equally remarkable passaggii played by Maximilien Brisson in Rognoni’s divisions on Lassus’s Susanne ung jour. There is also an example of Viadana’s instrumental Sinfonie musicale a otto voci (Venice 1610), virile instrumental canzone in two 4-part cori.
In style, the Viadana Collective has some things in common with groups like Jamie Savan’s Gonzaga Band and Gawain Glenton’s In Echo. Distinctive about this fine CD however is that it concentrates on a single composer and affirms the importance of a substantial organ of the right period as a foundation for a convincing balance where voices and instruments have absolute parity, substituting regularly for one another.
This is not only a welcome addition to our understanding of this hinge moment in western music, but also essential listening and a delight throughout. I thoroughly recommend it.
David Stancliffe