Tag: Choral music

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Hellinck: Missa Surrexit pastor bonus | Lupi: motets

Cover of CD booklet for Hellinck and Lupi

The Brabant Ensemble
70:39
hyperion CDA68304

Recording and releasing a programme of music by two composers whose names are unknown (and almost comically similar) could be seen as a risk. Needless to say, Stephen Rice can be trusted to spot talent even when it has lain dormant for five centuries. Lupus Hellinck (1493/4-1541), seemingly a Dutch speaker, spent his career in the Low Countries at Bruges, now the capital of West-Vlaanderen, or West Flanders, in modern Belgium. His mass, based upon a motet by Andreas De Silva (c. 1475/80-c. 1530), begins with a pleasant and competent Kyrie, whereafter, while following the musical narrative, the ear picks up judiciously placed musical gems in each movement, including a delicious dissonance closing the first section of the Gloria, a beautiful cadence closing the first section of the Credo, then best of all a glowing Hosanna to the Sanctus. This is sung more animatedly when repeated after the Benedictus, rising to sheer incandescence. The Benedictus itself is an austere duet for tenor and bass (not present in the print of 1547 used for the recording, but preserved in a manuscript source) making the impact of the concluding Hosanna all the more thrilling. A fine Agnus leading to a quite sublime “Dona nobis pacem” brings this rich and rewarding work to a close.

Johannes Lupi (c. 1506-1539) spent most of his career at Cambrai, then also in the Low Countries but subsequently annexed by France. The three motets and Te Deum here emanate from a voice quite different from Hellinck. Salve celeberrima virgo is a thrilling piece in eight parts, evocative but not derivative of Gombert, laced with piquant dissonances and some sweeping themes. Quam pulchra es sets some particularly arousing verses from The Song of Solomon. The ostensibly incongruous but extravagantly florid Amen after the concluding text “Ibi dabo tibi ubera mea” – There will I give you my breasts – could be heard as a response to those words, albeit they are also laced with some more piquant dissonances by Lupi. It all leads one to raise an eyebrow at the idea of this particular Biblical Book being other than a masterpiece of very secular erotic poetry. Benedictus Dominus Deus Israel, notwithstanding the presence of a setting of the Te Deum as the following and concluding track, is, as Stephen Rice observes in his scholarly booklet, “a free-standing motet” and not a canticle. The Te Deum itself is through-composed but although Lupi sets it sectionally, Stephen Rice bustles it along without losing any of the appetizing details, such as (yet more) dissonances towards the end of tracks 25 “Tibi omnes angeli” and 28 “Te per orbem”, and the interesting cadences closing tracks 27, 30 and 34, “Te gloriosus apostolorum chorus”, “Tu ad liberandum” and “Salvum fac” . He also strategically relaxes the tempo during track 28. Lupi himself provides variety with some homophony throughout most of track 32 “Te ergo quaesumus” amongst the prevailing polyphony; and with some reduced scoring occasionally down to two voices in passages dotted throughout the canticle. Stephen Rice notes that in track 36 the section “et laudamus nomen tuum” is in fauxbourdon. It provides a crashing change of gear from the rest of the work, as if a mediaeval voice has risen to intervene in this mellifluous Renaissance composition. Yet, perhaps because fauxbourdon is part of the creative continuum from which Franco-Flemish polyphony evolved, Lupi integrates it superbly, adding it to the ingredients which go towards making this piece a worthy conclusion to a disc which brings these two composers back into the limelight where, on the evidence of this recording, they both so deservedly belong.

Richard Turbet

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Music for Milan Cathedral

CD cover booklet for Music for Milan Cathedral

Siglo de Oro, Patrick Allies
66:28
Delphian DCD34224
Music by Gaffurius, Josquin, Phinot, Weerbeke & Weerecore

How many more gifted Franco-Flemish composers from the generation between Josquin and Palestrina are going to be rescued from undeserved neglect? Notwithstanding negativity about the CD business from Dismal Jimmies, or indeed Harries, recording companies continue to exist, they make recordings with the finest artistes, and they keep coming up with impressive unknowns. The sacred music of Hermann Matthias Werrecore, a name previously unfamiliar to this reviewer, is featured on over half of the tracks of this fine recording and it is a revelation. Werrecore was maestro di cappella at Milan Cathedral for over thirty years, from 1522 to 1557 or 1558. His surname suggests Flemish origins in Vercore, Hainaut, but seemingly records at Milan Cathedral state that he was the son of a father resident in Milan. Of the eleven motets on this disc, six are by Werrecore, including two – Popule meus and Ave maris stella – that run the longest, at over ten minutes apiece. In his day he was hailed as the successor to Josquin, two of whose motets are included. It is true that he quotes or homages Josquin, but stylistically it is clear not only that he is of the generation after Josquin, but also that he is entirely his own man, and these references to his predecessor are entirely on his own terms. While it is insulting and destructive to pigeonhole any composer, it is useful and important to try to indicate what listeners approaching this music anew might expect to hear. For all that he is a close contemporary of Gombert, Werrecore’s “sound” is less intense and not so much founded upon continuous counterpoint sung by a full ensemble, a style represented on this recording by the excellent motet Homo quidam fecit by Dominique Phinot (hear more of his superb music on Hyperion CDA67696 sung by the Brabant Ensemble) who was hailed as the precursor of Palestrina in the same way that Werrecore was hailed as Josquin’s successor! Werrecore is masterful at varying tempo and scoring, so he can excel equally in a short funeral motet such as Proh dolor as in the two lengthy motets already mentioned. Indeed, there are moments of ecstasy in his motets, not least in Inviolata, integra et casta es Maria which begins this recording, and which is a match for the better-known setting by Josquin with which it closes. It also includes a fine motet each by Gaffurius, more famous as a theorist, and the earlier composer Gaspar van Weerbeke, who might have been born a few years before Josquin. The performances by Siglo de Oro under Patrick Allies are radiant: ideally balanced and paced to perfection, they shed Mediterranean light upon this already outstanding repertory.

Richard Turbet

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Monteverdi: Vespro della Beata Vergine

Bestion Monteverdi Vespro CD cover

La Tempête, Simon-Pierre Bestion
142:07 (2 CDs in a card folder)
Alpha Classics ALPHA 552

This original take on the Monteverdi 1610 Vespers will not be everybody’s cup of tea, if only because the standard parts of the Vespers that people expect to hear are not performed to a standard that we expect in HIP recordings today – the vocal singing in the psalms for example has sopranos singing with a particularly ‘French-style’ vibrato, and his somewhat wayward scorings – adding and subtracting instrumental colour to illuminate a word here and there is more reminiscent of orchestration as practised by Berlioz or Elgar. Indeed, I have not heard such re-imagined scoring – albeit with period instruments – since I heard Walter Göhr conduct his edition in Westminster Abbey in 1959. 

The main interest in this recording – and I have over a dozen recordings from the last two decades alone – must be in the juxtaposition of the supplementary material alongside Monteverdi’s. The opening Versicle and Response, set by Monteverdi to a re-worked version of the toccata that acts as a curtain-raiser to the Orfeo, is treated – as in that kind of modern cookery that presents a deconstructed rhubarb crumble for a pudding – as a series of elements. We have a rough falso-bordone version sung in a style that is a cross between how you might sing the naïve chant setings of Père Gouzes and the Dorset West Gallery tradition. Then follows the Toccata directly from the Orfeo, and finally the 1610 version with voices, strings and exotic wind, but no cornetti.  The faux-bourdon settings he takes from an anonymous xvii century manuscript preserved in the Bibliothèque Inguimbertine at Carpentras in Provence. When asked whether the Vespers could have been sung in this way in the period when they were composed, Bestion replies in the dialogue interview that is his apologia, ‘No, not at all! This is a complete re-imagining, adding in instrumental parts, and also singing the same sections of text twice’. This recording is a newly imagined event, turning the Monteverdi Vespers into the framework for a liturgical happening underscored by childhood memories of summer holidays with the family, staying in a monastery and being overwhelmed by eves-dropping on the great monastic chain of prayer.

So after a plainsong antiphon, sung by a single voice in a way that has echoes of Near-Eastern monody, and a faux-bourdon setting from the Carpentras library, Dixit Dominus by Monteverdi begins with strings, the voices coming in as if they were vocal entries in a Gibbons or Hooper verse anthem. ‘I set about rewriting the instrumental parts’, he says, ‘. . . to reflect all the diverse colours of the orchestra.’ These arrangements are fine in a way: a string ensemble decorates the bare bars of the bass’s Gloria at the end of Dixit like an Purcell viol fantasia on a single note; and sometimes he repeats a section that he likes, as in the triple section in the Gloria of Laudate pueri, which he runs instrumentally first before adding the voices – but the vocal style chosen for the Monteverdi elements in this production seems to owe little either to the rougher faux-bourdon style – sometimes pitched unbelievably low as in the setting of Laudate pueri – or to the ‘supple, slightly androgynous voice’ of Eugènie de Mey. Instead they seem firmly anchored in a slightly dated style of singing that uses quite a lot of modern techniques, like a good deal of vibrato in the upper voices.

Modern in conception too is the treatment of the foundation instruments. Harpsichord, lutes, harps and organ are added and subtracted for effect, providing a degree of distracting restlessness that steals attention from the setting of the text. Tempi are varied for no apparent reason – in Laetatus sum the running bass motif, repeated a number of time before the Gregorian intonation is heard (instrumentally at first), is taken at a faster pace than the much slower even-numbered verses: where has the concept of tactus gone?

I found the ritornello, trilli and all, for a pair of trombones that opens Duo Seraphim before the tenors take over equally odd, even if it no longer surprised me. Nisi goes at a cracking pace, helped by the rhythm section of ‘a thousand twangling instruments’ – though I think Christine Pluhar’s L’Arpeggiata does that kind of excitement better.

The second CD opens with a ricercar by Fresobaldi on Sancta Maria ora pro nobis to introduce Audi cælum, which has some of the best singing so far till cornetti roulades introduce ‘omnes’, and we are galloping off in a breakneck tripla. Benedicta es begins with single voices, till the other singers, and then the complete chorus angelorum catch the theme and pick up their cornets and sackbuts.

Lauda has just brass for the two SAB choirs with the tenors’ intonation at the start, and I found the proportions in the Sonata convincing musically, if unjustifiable theoretically. Ave maris stella has a free version of the plainsong for verses 2 and 3, and a home-embroidered counterpoint for the ‘solo’ verses. Never was there such a self-indulgent flattened 7th in the Amen.

By contrast, the Magnificat was almost straight, except for a mesmerising triple echo in the Gloria. At last I began to see what Bestion was aiming for, though as readers who have persevered thus far will have gathered, it’s not the Monteverdi Vespro of 1610.

If you are anything like me, you will be intrigued and repelled in equal measure. So try and listen to a few tracks before you buy: it’s not exactly what it says on the tin!

David Stancliffe

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di Lasso: Psalmus

Lassus Psalmus CD cover

die Singphoniker
137:49 (2 CDs in a single jewel case)
cpo 555 264-2
Bußpslamen I-VII, Laudes Domini

Founded by a group of students in Munich in 1980, Die Singphoniker might be thought of as the German equivalent of the Kings Singers, with a particular mission to explore German music. For this recording the six permanent male singers are joined by two guests, one of whom is a female soprano. Lasso’s Penitential Psalms are the archetypal musica reservata, commissioned by Duke Albrecht V in the late 1550s and copied into two choirbooks which were sumptuously decorated by Hans Mielich. They were accompanied by two volumes of commentary by court intellectual Samuel Quiccheberg, the whole forming what he called a ‘foundation of the theatre of knowledge’. They were eventually published in Munich in 1584, after Albrecht’s death, allowing them to reach a wider audience. All this and much more is clearly laid out in the excellent booklet notes by Lassus scholar, Bernhold Schmid. The seven penitential psalms were associated particularly with Lent and Holy Week and include the Miserere and De profundis. Lassus added an extended Laudes Domini, drawing on verses from the final four laudatory psalms (Pss. 147-150). The whole set is carefully designed, using each of the eight church modes in turn. Psalm verses are individually treated, with a variety of textures, and present a model of countrapuntal clarity, combined with a flexible rhythmic treatment of the text. Inevitably there is a sameness to the settings – some of which extend to twenty-five minutes in length – and listeners will not necessarily wish to listen to them all at once. The singing is exemplary, with excellent tuning maintained throughout, and the group lets the settings speak for themselves rather than adding any exaggerated interpretations. Recording quality is top class and the whole project is well worth listening to.

Noel O’Regan

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From Darkness Into Light

Brumel Lamentations CD cover

Brumel: The complete Lamentations of Jeremiah for Good Friday
Musica Secreta, directed by Deborah Roberts & Laurie Stras
73:05
Obsidian CD719
+Compère, Josquin, Moro & anon

Performance and musicology come together on this disc with results that are exciting, rewarding, stimulating and reassuring. Previously only two sections of Brumel’s Lamentations, Heth and Caph plus the refrain “Jerusalem, convertere”, were known – or at least thought – to exist. Laurie Stras’s booklet notes describe how the rest of this substantial work had all the time been visible in plain sight but unrecognised, until it dawned on her recently that it had been staring us in the face “for centuries”. She also explains how she came to deduce that this newly rediscovered source for the complete work had been compiled for a nunnery, hence the performance on this disc by the female vocal ensemble Musica Secreta, supported authentically by a continuo of organ and viol “to sustain lower parts.”

This is an extraordinary work. Brumel varies his treatment of the initial Hebrew letters, sometimes setting them in short and concise phrases, sometimes stretching out to quasi-instrumental preludes or even short fantasias, often exploiting different scorings. This in microcosm is true of the entire work. Given Brumel’s dates, c. 1460-1515, there seem to be so many pre-echoes of later music. For instance, just to focus briefly on English music of subsequent generations, in Nun, the fourth section, there is a strikingly Tudor-sounding dissonance at “fulsa et stulta”, while on the final word “sempiternos” before the refrain “Jerusalem convertere”, there is a cadence which crops up again at the word “perditionem” in Tallis’s In jejunio et fletu. Add to this the glaring “English” cadence in Gimel, section 5, at the word “confregit”. And he exhibits an almost Byrdian variety and intensity in his responses to the recurrences of the refrain “Jerusalem convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum”, most profoundly at the end of the second section, Joth. Other aspects of this remarkable work similarly can be heard to echo down through the music of his Franco-Flemish successors.

Musica Secreta perform this music radiantly. Brumel’s vision is projected sensitively, whether ruminative or ecstatic. Every part is clearly audible, and the balance between them is ideal. The continuo is discreet but effective. The rest of the programme consists of eight works, five of them anonymous, from a manuscript that was compiled by the same scribe as the Brumel source, and which was intended for use in a particular nunnery, giving Laurie Stras the clue that this source for the complete Lamentations by Brumel might also be for the use of nuns. One of the pieces Sancta Maria succurre miseris is by the scribe Antonio Moro himself. Another is Josquin’s Recordare virgo Mater while the other named composer is Compere, represented by his slight Paranymphus salutat virginem. Perhaps the best of these works is a luminous anonymous altermatim setting of the Salve regina with which the disc appropriately concludes. The quality of the performance and of the music bring this revelatory disc to a satisfying close.

Richard Turbet

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Handel: Samson

Box cover of Dunedin Consort's recording of Handel's Samson

[Joshua Ellicott Samson, Jess Dandy Micah, Matthew Brook Manoa, Vitali Rozynko Harapha, Sophie Bevan Delila, Hugo Hymas An Israelite, A Philistine, Messenger, Mary Bevan A virgin, An Israelite woman, A Philistine woman, Fflur Wyn A virgin, A Philistine woman, Tiffin Boys’ Choir, directed by James Day], Dunedin Consort, John Butt
204:14 (3 CDs in a cardboard box)
Linn CKD 599

In some ways the most remarkable thing about this recording is that it exists at all. Not many projects requiring a week’s recording time make it to disc these days so congratulations and thanks to those who have provided the funding and/or taken the financial risk, for it really is a major undertaking that requires eight soloists; additional singers for the chorus including trebles for the top line; and an orchestra in which horns, trumpets, oboes and bassoon join a relatively large body of strings and the keyboard continuo. And the choruses were all recorded twice! The discs include Handel’s standard scoring of adults with the boys adding richness to the top line, but also available for download is a performing option which Handel seems to have used from time to time – ‘just’ the soloists singing together with an extra ripieno alto to balance the sections.

The booklet, too, is pretty lavish though in English only. We are offered two excellent essays – on the work itself and on performing issues, the full text (and there’s a lot of it) and the usual performers’ credits. I do wish that these (for the singers, at least) weren’t quite so formulaic: only two get beyond the standard lists of prizes, roles and conductors.

Few of us will know Samson as well as we should – a shame, for it gives us Handel on fine form not only in the content of individual movements but in the way in which he subverts our musical expectations to engage and re-engage our attention. The ‘plot’ is a sequence of tableaux and philosophising rather than pure narrative drama and the music makes considerable demands on the performers, not least of stamina. Joshua Ellicott as Samson draws us in to his world, rather than shouting about it, and really does sing most beautifully. He and all his colleagues exhibit some fine diction, especially in recitative – and it’s not often I find that I want to say that. I do think that all the singers have moments when their vibrato gets away from them but this is less of an issue than on many CDs I have recently reviewed for EMR. The orchestra is also a classy act and John Butt has a sure hand in matters of musical pacing.

So if you don’t know Samson, you should make this your way in. This release is unlikely to be surpassed – or even competed with – for some time.

David Hansell

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Palestrina: Missa Tu es Petrus

Palestrina Missa Tu es Petrus CD cover

The Choir of St Luke in the Fields, David Shuler
63:43
MSR Classics MS1698

After their recent successful recording of music by Pierre de Manchicourt, this New York group has turned its attention to more familiar fare by Palestrina; this also means entering a much more competitive field. These are solid performances with some undoubted highlights, though the quality of the vocal sound is not always consistent. There are fourteen singers in the group, roughly two per part in the six-voice music which dominates this disc. I particularly like the strong sense of the tactus (pulse) which goes through everything they sing. Praiseworthy, too, is the good blend and a resonant recording environment which still allows voice-leading and contrapuntal writing to come through clearly. As well as the motet Tu es Petrus and the Mass based on it, they perform five other pieces. I particularly enjoyed two five-voice motets, Caro mea and the Offertory Improperium expectavit: both achieve a rounded balance sometimes lacking in the other pieces. In other cases openings are a bit tentative or rough, vowels are not always well blended, and tuning and support is not consistently maintained. That said, this recording presents a good cross-section of Palestrina’s more forward-looking music, much of it relying on antiphonal exchange between two voice groupings, and culminates in the double-choir Surrexit pastor bonus. This piece represents late Palestrina and shows us where the Roman polychoral idiom would head in the next generation. Sleeve notes are informative and contain all texts and translations. A stimulating disc with some gems.

Noel O’Regan

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de Peñalosa: Lamentationes

Peñalosa Lamentations CD cover

New York Polyphony
56:41
BIS-2407 SACD

This exceptionally fine recording provides a convincing taster for the works of Francisco de Peñalosa, a leading Spanish composer of the early sixteenth century. The four male singers produce a beautifully blended and characterful sound, being particularly careful to unify vowel sounds and producing some really quiet singing in places. Their countertenor, Geoffrey Williams, blends well, his voice neither dominating nor inhabiting a different vocal world, as can sometimes happen. All four show exceptional control in long-breathed phrases while their singing brings the texts to life, with great clarity in enunciating the words; recording quality is also excellent. They sing two of Peñalosa’s three surviving lamentations and three movements from his Missa L’homme armé, as well as two short motets, one an attractive three-voice Song of Songs setting, Unica est columba mea. While it would have been good to have had the third lamentation and the other Mass movements, the group compensates by giving us a beautifully sombre Stabat mater by Juan Escobar (only the first two verses are set) and two pieces by Guerrero, his four-voice Quae est ista and the lively villancico Antes que coma’is a Dios. These show us how Peñalosa’s music links with that of his contemporary Escobar and the much later Guerrero, with all three echoing aspects of the style of Josquin des Prez. There are some excellent liner notes by Ivan Moody.  Highly recommended.

Noel O’Regan

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Palestrina: Lamentations – Book 2

Cover of Cinquecento recording of Palestrina Lamentations vol. 2

Cinquecento Renaissance Vokal
72:11
hyperion CDA68284

Over recent years several of Cinquecento’s recordings have gone through my hands. Outstanding singers as they are, performing sometimes revelatory repertory, their interpretations can sound monochromatic and be rhythmically rigid. In the wrong hands, or indeed voices, Palestrina’s Lamentations could be conveyed in a way that does them no favours texturally and as regards tempo could simply plod. Thankfully Cinquecento are at their most insightful and alert, giving this book of Palestrina’s Lamentations as fine a recording as the Choir of Westminster Cathedral give the Third Book on the same label (CDA67610). The fact that there are seventy tracks, and that only the final track lasts for over two minutes, plays to Cinquecento’s strengths. They respond sensitively to Palestrina’s varied scoring within each of the nine Lectiones, from three to eight voices, so although they adhere to steady tempi, these reveal the subtleties of his homophony and polyphony and, thanks to this approach, gorgeous harmonies are allowed to glow as the singers respond flexibly to the ebb and flow dictated by the texts. Any interpretations of this repertory will be of their time, and attitudes will inevitably change, but I cannot imagine a better presentation of this music, though it should be emphasized that the very differently constituted Choir of Westminster Cathedral provide an equally fine interpretation in their own terms on the recording mentioned above. Meanwhile Cinquecento’s well engineered disc is recommended with no reservations. Palestrina’s sheer genius is better expressed in this intense music, audibly influenced by his Franco-Flemish predecessors back to Josquin, than in his more public mainstream music in the – sometimes blander – High Renaissance style. For all that there are seventy brief tracks, interest never palls. As a commercial recording, this is perfection.

Richard Turbet

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Sheet music

Francesco Gasparini: Mass for Five Treble Voices

Gasparini Mass for five treble voices

Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era, 208
Edited by Christine R. Howlett
x, four plates, 80pp.
A-R Editions, Inc. ISBN 978-1-9872-0281-6 $150

I have known about this work for many, many years so it is a real pleasure to welcome a fine edition of it. Unusual not only for its scoring (SSSAA & Basso contiuo) but also the fact that it is a full mass (with Credo AND Agnus Dei), it is – as Christine Howlett says in her fine introduction to the work – a showstopper for the female singers of the Pietà in Venice, where Gasparini was maestro di coro from 1710. There are solos and duets but much of the work actually does use a five-part texture, though the composer is careful to deploy the voices in a variety of combinations to maximise aural variety, including having two or more voices sing passages in unison. All in all, this is an excellent edition of a very exciting work and I sincerely hope that it can be made available at bulk discount price to female choirs who will simply love it!

Brian Clark

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