Tag: Choral music

The Brabant Ensemble, Stephen Rice
78:38
hyperion CDA68321

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The Brabant Ensemble specialises in bringing us music by neglected composers from the incredibly talented Franco-Flemish school which flourished between Josquin and Palestrina. We have it to thank for discs of revelatory music by the likes of Dominique Phinot, Thomas Crecquillon, Pierre de Manchicourt, Jean Maillard, Jacquet of Mantua and Jacob Clement. Its version of the latter’s sublime setting of Tristitia et anxietas alone justifies the choir’s existence, besides the numerous treasures on every other disc. They have also released a CD of neglected music by Palestrina, yet I found this strangely underwhelming, both as music and performance. Here they offer us music by the earlier bookend of this vibrant phenomenon.

The music on offer here consists of eight motets and two free-standing “mass movements”. The latter are easier to discuss and can be mentioned first: the Gloria de beata virgine and Sanctus de Passione. The Gloria is the more substantial of the two, a seemingly early, mediaeval-sounding work. The Sanctus is almost disconcertingly brief: even including an Elevation motet “Honor et benedictus” between the Sanctus itself and the Benedictus (scholarly opinion is that either the Elevation motet or the Benedictus would have been performed liturgically but not both, but the Ensemble rightly includes both for completeness and for the edification of listeners) the entire movement takes only 3’46. One can only agree with the eminent musicologist who described it as “unpretentious”.

The reasons behind the selection of material for this disc are not clear. Presumably, the record is released to celebrate Josquin’s quincentenary, though this is only stated explicitly in some of the advertising material. While all the items have the imprimatur of inclusion in the New Josquin Edition, Stephen Rice’s enthralling notes observe that doubts linger over the authenticity of most of them. Also, three of the items – Huc me sydereo, Stabat mater and O bone et dulcissime Jesu – possess or are suspected of possessing one or two extra parts which may or may not originally have been composed by Josquin. There are certainly other mass sections securely attributed to Josquin, and even I know of one other motet which has an extra voice supplied by another composer, so I wonder whether there exists a substantial repertory of Josquin’s sacred pieces which have subsequently had one or two extra parts added by other hands. My concern is that the selection here seems to lack some focus. Perhaps that focus is the function of these three sumptuous works for six voices, but if so, what is the rationale behind partnering them with these other more spartan works? There is certainly no individual number – like for instance Media vita in a programme of motets by Sheppard – which functions as that focus or that is simply a showstopper. For all their inclusion in NJE it appears that the three motets that follow – Domine ne in furore, Usquequo Domine and Homo quidam fecit – have all had doubts expressed about their authenticity. This leaves the two remaining motets which start the disc – Mittit ad virginem and Alma redemptoris/Ave regina – and even the former, the very first in the programme, survives with a plausible alternative attribution, leaving only the latter with a clean bill of musicological health. Although individual items have many features to relish – dissonances in Stabat mater, gorgeous textures in Huc me sydereo plus rich harmonies, sensuous sequences and more dissonances to relish in O bone et dulcissime Jesu to pick a few at random – there remains the fact that, to the layman at least, some of these effects might have been generated by the inclusion of notes not originally put in place by Josquin himself. These works rub shoulders with the three works for smaller vocal resources, mentioned above, about which doubts have been cast against Josquin’s authorship. The programme is topped by the two works, only one of which is incontrovertibly authentic, in his favoured four parts and tailed by two undistinguished but authentic mass sections, also in four. Perhaps this is the point: to provide successive contrasting tasters of the basic Josquin, the luxuriously expanded but only partly authentic Josquin, the questionable Josquin, and back to the authentic basic Josquin. These stops along the line are individually rewarding but the journey itself lacks coherence – all a bit halting, or, if one is shuffling the sequence, a bit arbitrary.

Performances that seemed meandering and undifferentiated at a first hearing blossomed in most (not entirely all) cases during subsequent hearings to come over as sensitive to individual texts and sonorities, though passages in the works of four parts sound almost exaggeratedly sparse beside those in six – reflecting Josquin’s technique in composing for the smaller number of voices – and I defy any choir to make the Sanctus sound more than “unpretentious”. Meanwhile, there is uncertainty as to how much real Josquin we are hearing. Does it matter? This disc does not provide an answer, but it does provide much pleasure.

Richard Turbet

Hercules Dux Ferrarie, D’ung altre amer, Faysant regretz
The Tallis Scholars, Peter Phillips
71:40
Gimell CDGIM 051

October 2020!
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This is the final disc in The Tallis Scholars’ complete recording of Josquin des Pres’s masses. Perhaps it is just as well, because this reviewer is running out of superlatives for the music itself and for this choir’s performances of it. Peter Phillips makes substantial claims for these works in his accompanying notes, and it could indeed be said that, so varied is Josquin’s treatment of the Mass text throughout the entire series, many of the eighteen works could almost seem to have been composed by different composers. (Indeed, the Josquin canon has come under intense musicological scrutiny in recent decades, and Missa Da pacem, included in the series, is more likely to have been composed by Bauldeweyn, notwithstanding conflicting attributions to Josquin. This is clearly stated in the recording’s booklet.) This final disc provides some of the knottiest music in the series, and some of the most challenging for the listener. Much of it is music of obsession, with Josquin’s repeated use of one particular motif of four notes in Missa Faysant regretz set beside the egomania of Ercole I d’Este of Ferrera, dedicatee of Missa Hercules Dux Ferrarie. To illustrate this one can do no better than to quote Peter Phillips’s note in the accompanying booklet: “To understand how this Mass is constructed it is necessary only to remember that Duke Ercole liked to hear his name sung obviously and often. To this end Josquin took his name and title, HERCULES DUX FERRARIE, and turned their vowels into music by way of the solmisation syllables of the Guidonian hexachord, giving a very neat little melody: … re ut re ut re fa mi re … He then writes these eight notes to be sung 47 times …” The remaining piece Missa D’ung aultre amer is the antithesis of such constructions, being an essay in brevity and simplicity based upon one of Ockeghem’s finest chansons, no doubt as an act of homage by Josquin to the man who might have been his teacher.

A digression. Having seen the British gentleman I am about to mention with his wife at a concert of music by Byrd in the Wigmore Hall, London, a few years ago, I will of course no longer hear a word said against him, but I cannot resist mentioning the resemblance of Ercole, whose portrait is reproduced on the front of the accompanying booklet, to the prominent politician Lord Heseltine. I draw no conclusion other than that they share an ability to appreciate great Renaissance composers.

And as Byrd said of his own music in 1611, “a song that is well and artificially made cannot be well perceived nor understood at the first hearing, but the oftner you shall heare it, the better cause of liking you will discover.” Repeated hearings of the music on this disc keep revealing its felicitous qualities. The obsessive aspects of the music become part of a bigger, broader musical picture as Josquin manipulates them to support the overall construction and rhetoric of his masses. As Peter Phillips notes in his booklet, approaching the point from a slightly different direction, this is strikingly illustrated in the third Agnus of Missa Faysant regretz where, for the only time in the work, Josquin has the sopranos sing the complete superius line from the rondeau by Walter Frye (one source has Binchois) on which the mass is based, over the intricate counterpoint in the three lower parts. Missa D’ung aultre amer is eccentric. A remarkably brief Gloria clocks in at below two minutes, with a motet Tu solus qui facis mirabilia replacing the Benedictus, the final section of which, “Audi nostra suspiria”, begins with a striking passage in the style of mediaeval faburden, comparable with a similar briefer moment at “qui locutus est” in the Credo of the Missa Hercules Dux Ferrarie, and the entire mass concludes with an exquisite cadence.

For all Ercole’s entitled narcissism, it is mountainously to the credit of Josquin that his mass can be appreciated on its own terms as a piece of music without an awareness – or at least without taking any notice – of the repetitions of the autarchic Ercole’s name, no more than one needs to focus upon the plainsong while listening to an In nomine. In the accompanying booklet, Peter Phillips notes favourite passages in this and the other masses. These are the insights of someone who has conducted and indeed lived these eighteen works, experiencing them profoundly from the inside. From the humble outside, I would particularly mention the many wonderful passages in two parts in this mass, particularly “pleni sunt caeli” from the Sanctus, and all the duets in the first Agnus. Overall it is one of the major masses in this remarkable series.

The series began with what was even then almost frighteningly fine performances of the Missae Pange lingua and La sol fa mi re. The former gained all the attention, but for this listener it was the latter which left me even more astonished at both the music and the performance: I expected Pange lingua to be great, but was taken aback at the quality of a work more from the margins of Josquin’s output, its qualities laid bare by the forensically beautiful singing of The Tallis Scholars under Peter Phillips. And here they still are, 34 years later, doing a major work full justice and laying bare the glories of two more of those marginal masses.

Richard Turbet

Alamire, David Skinner
16:30
Inventa INV1003

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“Beyond glorious … monumental”. These words are used by David Skinner, director of Alamire, in his notes accompanying this recording, to describe – without one atom of exaggeration – the music of John Sheppard in general and his antiphon Media vita in morte sumus in particular. Another word, sublime, has been worked near to death (sic) in recent decades, but in its essential meaning it too applies to this work. Indeed, no praise can be too high for this musical creation. It is one of those few works that one feels could almost represent Creation itself. It has been recorded a number of times over recent decades by a variety of distinguished ensembles, and here, another of the finest choirs in the realm performs this incomparable masterpiece, but in a new version never before recorded. At just over sixteen measured but purposeful minutes it is about half the length of the longest rendition of the hitherto accepted format, a riveting tour de force by the Choir of Westminster Cathedral (Hyperion CDA68187). And this is the point: between themselves, as David explains in his excellent notes, he and two other distinguished musicologists, Jason Smart and John Harper, have arrived at the conclusion that Sheppard’s musical volcano should consist of fewer repetitions than the version hitherto accepted and recorded, not shedding any of the actual music and retaining much of the chant, simply ordered differently. The recording itself dates from 2012, when Alamire was involved in a project for BBC television which featured an eminent historian who, in the current cultural climate, cannot be named (clue: he is No Relation of The Beatles’ drummer) but a commercial recording was not released at the time. It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and reworking of the audio files, from what was the previously accepted version, “happened during the Covid-19 lockdown” resulting in this premiere of what could well be the version of his masterwork that Sheppard might have expected to hear. Notwithstanding the evidence imparted by David, it is perhaps not impossible that there will be those who maintain the integrity of the previously accepted format. Pace David’s surprising defensiveness about “maintaining balance and interest [reviewer’s italics] in modern performance” – surely this is music of the spheres, that should be continuous and without end – this new dispensation deprives the listener of some repetitions of Sheppard’s heavenly polyphony, but then again one can always repeat the new version! Indeed, the revised format might make the work more accessible to choirs cautious about programming a single work from the 16thcentury that usually lasts 20-30 minutes. Alamire’s performance is excellent; for a choir which, as its director observes, “tend[s] to lean towards those darker sonorities” there could have been more pneumatic drill from the basses, but given the dimensions of the choir and the acoustic in which they were recorded, the pacing and blend are fine. In terms of the value of the music and the quality of the performance, not to mention the considerable amount of research behind it, this recording is a snip. It is recommended without hesitation. Don’t even wait just a minute – buy it now.

Richard Turbet