Tag: Baroque

Orlando Gibbons – Complete Consort Anthems
Fretwork, His Majesty’s Sagbutts and Cornetts, Magdalena Consort
Signum Classics, SIGCD 511

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his splendid recording of all Orlando Gibbons’ Consort Anthems, the brain-child of the knowledgeable and experienced Bill Hunt and the Orlando Gibbons project, is the first in what promises to be a definitive series of this highly English art form that flourished in the increasingly troubled years of the first half of the 17th century, when private chapels hosted much of the quality ecclesiastical music-making.

The collaboration between Fretwork and His Majesty’s Sagbutts and Cornetts ensures playing of both wind and viol consort of world class standard, but what is exciting in this first CD is the quality of the singers assembled by Peter Harvey, and their attention to the sound-world of the contrasting groups of instrumentalists, used together only in Lord, grant grace. At the forefront of their concerns is the proper rhetorical declamation of the words, so we have a serious demonstration of what would have been called in contemporary Italy the seconda prattica. Here this word-based music is inspired by the verbal finesse of the texts, set with due regard for the 1559 Elizabethan injunction “that the same may be as plainly understanded as if it were read without singing”.

The erudite – and sometimes over-fancifully-expressed – notes by David Pinto, whose 2003 editions for Fretwork are used here, chart the context of these compositions. They centre on the Chapel Royal, and Pinto makes a good case for using both wind and viol consorts. Gibbons worked in the Chapel with Launcelot Andrewes, possibly the Church of England’s greatest wordsmith after Cranmer, and we see Gibbons apply a sensitivity to setting the texts that set new standards for declamatory composition that was taken up by his contemporaries like Thomas Tomkins. The combination of A=466 and the conviction that the basic vocal group should respect the clef and pitch of the composer’s intentions give us that essential singing group of Soprano or Mean, Contra or High Tenors, Low Tenor/Baritone and Bass. This vocal consort matches the rich instrumental textures admirably and is provided by Peter Harvey’s splendidly balanced Magdalena Consort. Singing groups who overload their top lines in the tradition of cathedral choirs, or who raise the pitch to make room for 18th-century-style falsettists, take note!

The elegant restraint showed by every singer in matching not only their tone but their volume to that of the halo of instruments in the single voice or duet passages only very occasionally, when singers and players are going at full tilt, gives way to the temptation to oversing. Just occasionally – as, for example, in the Gloria of Blessed are all they that fear the Lord  – this runs the risk of defeating the careful balance between voices and instruments. The desire to sing out – to make sure that your line is clearly audible – is so often just what singers feel is natural to do, and what indeed so many directors encourage them to do. The sense that your singers can notch up a gear without running the risk of vulgar, quasi-operatic distortion is almost too great to resist. But this is just the moment to urge restraint. None is necessary when the limpid Charles Daniels – peerless in this clean and intricate figuration, as in This is the record of John  – or the two upper voices of Eleanor Minney and Sam Boden in Lord, grant grace  are singing so perfectly together, but very occasionally I longed to say ‘Hold it: if you all sing out like that, the texture is getting too thick, and I can hear less, not more, of the exquisite lines.’ I experienced a touch of that over-ripeness from the upper voices of Catherine King and Eleanor Minney in the full sections of O all true and faithful hearts. Perhaps when they felt competition from the cornetti?

This elegant restraint is what comes naturally to consort players, who spend their time listening to each other, pulling back from the long, held notes, and waiting for the moment when they lead off in some short note-value thread of imitative writing where the figuration leads to an expressive syllable or word when the line is vocalised.

This – in a fine quotation from Morley’s Plaine and Easie Introduction  – is just what Hunt puts on the title page, and is worth quoting here in full:

“ …to return to the expressing of the ditty, the matter is now come to that state that though a song be never so well made and never so aptly applied to the words yet shall you hardly find singers to express it as it ought to be, for most of our churchmen, so that they can cry louder in their choir than their fellows, care for no more, whereas by the contrary they ought to study how to vowel and sing clean, expressing their words with devotion and passion whereby to draw the hearer, as it were, in chains of gold by the ears to the consideration of holy things.”

This is the finest recording of this quintessentially English music that we are likely to have, and I urge everyone to start collecting these volumes as they appear over the coming years. This is a real treat, and an impressive master-class in how these texts should be declaimed.

David Stancliffe

Ingeborg Dalheim, Anna Kellnhofer, Franz Vitzthum, Jan Van Elsacker, Florian Götz SScTTB, United Continuo Ensemble
59:06
Pan Classics PC 10362

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]est known perhaps for his striking 16-part setting of the “Crucifixus”, this CD illustrates the opposite end of Antonio Caldara’s range as a composer, small-scale miniatures for two and three solo voices with continuo. Several of the works demonstrate his penchant for the tortured suspensions which characterize the “Crucifixus”, but on the whole this is much more light-hearted repertoire. The five soloists, appearing in batches of two or three, have a pleasant uncomplicated way with the music, ornamenting gently and naturally where appropriate, and interacting very effectively, while the continuo group supports them very sensitively and effectively. After training in Venice, Caldara moved first to Mantua and then Rome and it is possible to hear elements of all three musical traditions in his pleasing music. In among the motets, organist Johannes Hämmerle plays contemporary music by Sweelinck, Weckmann and Franz Tunder on the historic organ of Schloss Gottorf in Schleswig, which dates from around 1560 and which has a wonderfully authentic sound for this repertoire. 5555

D. James Ross

Capella Sanctæ Crucis, Tiago Simas Freire
57:31
harmonia mundi HMN 916107

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his third CD from harmonia mundi’s Nova series is devoted to music associated with the liturgy performed in the mid-17th century at the Portuguese Monastery of Coimbra. Most of the music is anonymous and is taken from the Monastery’s manuscript collections, which contain a curious mixture of sacred and secular repertoire. Tiago Simas Freire argues that this suggests that these madrigals and villancicos de Negro  served a liturgical purpose, and they are included here in the general flow of the liturgy. I have my doubts about this – surely it is much more likely that the monks recorded this secular music simply for their own private enjoyment. As none of the texts are supplied, it is impossible to judge the contents of these villancicos, but they sound rather saucy for liturgical use. The wide range of instruments are beautifully played and blend very well with the eight voices, while Freire’s innovative approach to music which he clearly knows very well is refreshing and thought-provoking. The jazzy rhythms and the insistent percussion recalls the recordings made by various groups a few years back of south American sacred repertoire, and this CD is no less catchy. The HM Nova series has the rather off-putting house style of presenting the young performers staring intensely from the covers of the package, but it does seem to be offering a fresh look at old repertoire and to be providing a platform for these young and very capable musicians. And I’m afraid that even after reading the programme notes, I am still none the wiser as to what Zuguambé is…

D. James Ross