Tag: Renaissance

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Ockeghem: Complete Songs volume 1

Cover of Blue Heron Ockeghem CD

Blue Heron, Scott Metcalfe
76:49
Blue Heron BHCD 1010 (6 45312 49963 2)

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This is the first of two CDs which will include all Ockeghem’s surviving chansons. Following hard on the heels of their fine recording of Rore’s first book of madrigals (see my review in EMR November 10, 2019), and ever mindful of their series of discs containing music from the Peterhouse partbooks,  the final one of which won the prestigious Gramophone early music prize, expectations could not be higher: will Blue Heron’s performances complement the greatness of Ockeghem’s music?

Two of the thirteen songs are not attributed to him. The anonymous rondeau En atendant vostre venue is included because it quotes from his Quant de vous seul which is sensibly placed to precede it on the disc; and Au travail suis is attributed to both Ockeghem and Barbingant in different sources, but because it similarly quotes Ma maitresse it is attributed here to Barbingant and likewise included after the work it quotes. Two other works survive anonymously but in circumstances that point to Ockeghem as their likely composer. All this is explained in scrupulous detail by Sean Gallagher in the excellent accompanying booklet, which also contains a fine essay by Scott Metcalfe about performing the songs, with sections on instruments, interpretation of surviving underlay, and pronunciation.

Those of us listening to or performing Ockeghem’s music have the benefit of perspective. Specifically: his contemporaries could hear his songs simply as the music itself and/or as it had been influenced by the work of his predecessors. They would also have noticed elements that were original, and perhaps some that reflected a personal style. From the 21st century we have the additional benefit of hearing how his music influenced and affected subsequent musical developments, not only among his disciples, but also over the centuries up to the 20th and 21st. While we have expectations of what late mediaeval or early Renaissance composers’ music will sound like, we could not reasonably expect Ockeghem’s songs to sound in some places so remarkably prophetic, even modern. Admittedly the listener has to rely on the editor to have reproduced accurately what Ockeghem intended to be heard 500 years ago but, taking this on trust, many passages in these songs reach effortlessly across the centuries. Even as soon as the first three words of the opening track Ockeghem is shaking hands with later generations and there is another striking passage in Fors seullement contre ce qu’ay promis at “une belle aliance”. (Philip A. Cooke’s recent book about James MacMillan mentions his subject’s assimilation of Ockeghem’s technique.) While such passages might not be unparalleled in music of this period, their placing by Ockeghem is so assured as to seem that he is, so to speak, setting an agenda for musicians of the future. Like all the greatest composers he is able to combine exquisite melodies with the highest technical accomplishment, so that however many verses a song possesses, each one is welcomed anew by the listener, who at the conclusion is left wanting more.

The performances are superb, serving this music with the perfect balance of restraint and commitment. Just occasionally, as in the taxing discantus part of Fors seullement contre ce qu’ay promis, there is just a hint of insecure intonation, but Blue Heron live up to their reputation as among the finest interpreters of early music on the planet. There are recordings of Ockeghem’s music which are as good – one thinks of the masses sung by The Clerks’ Group under Edward Wickham – but this is only to be demanded when performing music of this quality.

Instrumental participation, so often the Achilles heel of this sort of recording, is limited, capable, judicious and discreet. Conductor Scott Metcalfe plays the contratenor parts on the harp on four of the thirteen tracks, the vielle on another (Au travail suis attributed to Barbingant) and duets on the vielle with Laura Jeppesen on the setting of O rosa bella a2 with a discantus attributed to each of Bedyngham and Ockeghem.

A second disc of Ockeghem’s songs, again sung by Blue Heron, is in place. And in the case of Ockeghem, more of the same means more of his wonderful difference.

Richard Turbet

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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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Gesualdo: Madrigali

Exaudi Gesualdo madrigals CD cover

Madrigali a cinque voci, Selections from Libro V and VI
EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble
W&W 910 259-2

This ensemble of six singers, directed by Durham University-based composer James Weeks, normally concentrates on contemporary music but here they bring their wealth of experience to bear on a selection of eighteen Gesualdo madrigals, chosen from across his fifth and sixth books. Probably composed in Ferrara in the mid-1590s, Gesualdo paid meticulous attention to setting the text, with quick changes of texture and harmony which at times last for just seconds before being replaced. This is brought out particularly strongly in this excellent recording which shows striking levels of vocal virtuosity and a wider range of vocal colours than other recordings of this repertory. These singers are not afraid of dissonance, nor of making listeners squirm before releasing them with a harmonic resolution, however temporary. Occasionally the soprano is a bit prominent but overall tuning is just on the right side of extreme and resolutions, when they come, are beautifully executed. The singers show great confidence in maneouvring around Gesualdo’s harmonic shifts and have a highly-informed understanding of the text, nowhere more than in O dolorosa gioia, o soave dolore (O painful joy, O sweet suffering) whose text could sum up the whole programme. Recording quality is excellent with particularly clear separation between the speakers. It is worth listening with music in hand (it is freely available on the CPDL website): like the madrigals themselves these are performances for Gesualdo connoisseurs and are highly recommended.

Noel O’Regan

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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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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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Music by Cipriano Rore

CD cover of Blue Heron da Rore madrigals recording

da Rore: I madrigali a cinque voce
Blue Heron
120:49 (2 CDs in a card folder)
Blue Heron BHCD 1009

de Rore: Missa “Vivat Felix Hercules”
Weser-Renaissance Bremen
69:47
cpo 777 989-2

Blue Heron’s recordings of music from the Peterhouse Partbooks resulted in five compact discs which received acclaim and prizes, including the first and so far only instance of the Gramophone Early Music Award being made to an American vocal ensemble. It was therefore with a great sense of anticipation that their next major project, Cipriano de Rore’s complete book of madrigals in five parts, 1542, has been awaited. Unsurprisingly they deliver in spades, both in performance and in presentation, with a booklet including erudite but readable and informative essays by Jessie Ann Owens and Scott Metcalfe. Rore comes over as a natural composer of madrigals, and Blue Heron have the versatility to do his music ample justice. Perhaps sensitive to prospective purchasers contemplating the prospect of up to twenty madrigals in identical scoring being sung off the reel, Blue Heron preface each madrigal with the original texts, the majority by Petrarch, being read by Alessandro Quarta; suffice to say he declaims them as effectively as Blue Heron subsequently sing them. Rore’s 1542 collection was famously innovative, with its intense engagement between the music and the words unprecedented in secular vocal music, and it set the standard, including the use of five vocal parts, for the more serious type of madrigal till the seventeenth century. Basically his madrigals are a fusion of the Franco-Flemish polyphonic style which, as we hear on Weser-Renaissance’s disc, he himself exploited in his sacred music, with the lighter, airier, Italian style. Whereas some such fusions simply refuse to “fuse” in the wrong hands, Rore’s collection exhibits a high standard throughout. This makes it very hard to single out individual works to recommend. Thanks to the versatility and sensitivity of Blue Heron’s singers, and to Scott Metcalfe – the most stylish conductor that I can remember seeing (in Cambridge, 2016) – every work receives detailed individual attention. A work such as Quel sempre acerbo et honorato giorno could pass superficially as a Franco-Flemish motet, while Perseguendomi Amor al luogo usato comes across as what posterity would come to regard as typically madrigalian.

Weser-Renaissance recording of de Rore's Mass - cover of the booklet

Weser-Renaissance’s disc is a different kettle of fish. Partly this reflects Rore’s own versatility as a composer. Although nothing quite beats the frisson of a live performance, one benefit of recordings is that one can listen to performances more than once and, if desired, do so soon after the first hearing, as many times as one wants. This certainly worked for me regarding Weser-Renaissance’s disc. At a first hearing I thought that the performances were inexpressive and stodgy, and the music, especially the Mass, turgid. Unwilling to sound off after a single unsatisfactory hearing, I listened again and the fog began to lift. Come a third helping I had reached my current state of admiration for both the singing and the music. The catalyst occurred during the second session with the electrifying music set to the words “miserere nobis” in Agnus I and II, and again to “dona nobis pacem” in Agnus III. Now I found myself able to listen in a different way, to hear the light and shade in the motets, and to appreciate further impressive passages of writing in Pater noster and especially Da pacem, Domine. In critical mode, I still feel that in the Gloria and Credo of his Mass, Rore is somewhat of a prisoner to his motto “Vivat felix Hercules secundus, dux Ferrariae quartus” which is treated as a Soggetto cavato during the Mass, in the manner of Josquin’s Missa Hercules dux Ferrariae. But overall it is a fine work, interspersed with several estimable motets, featuring imaginative scoring expressed through expert polyphony with judiciously placed sections of homophony. Weser-Renaissance perform it all sonorously ensuring clarity within Rore’s sumptuous textures.

Richard Turbet

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Polish Lute Music of the Renaissance

CD booklet cover of Polish lute music of the Renaissance

Joachim Held lute
59:00
hänssler classic CD HC19034

For this excellent CD of Polish renaissance lute music Joachim Held plays seven pieces by Albert Dlugoraj (1558-after 1618), eight by Diomedes Cato (1565-1628), nine by Jakub Polak (c.1545-1605), and seven anonymous pieces. The first track for each of the three named composers is a prelude, setting the mood for the dances and fantasias which follow. The dance pieces are quite short, ranging from a mere 31 seconds to 1’41”, but the fantasias are more substantial. Track 12 is a Fantasia by Diomedes from Besard’s Thesaurus Harmonicus (1603). It is a fine piece, and well sustained by Held, albeit skipping a low G (a6) just towards the end. Track 15 is an extraordinary fantasia, five minutes long, with interesting chromatic turns and a couple of bars towards the end which are reminiscent of Dowland’s Semper Dowland Semper Dolens. The piece was the first to be included in Robert Dowland’s anthology, Varietie of Lute Lessons (London, 1610). From the same source Held plays a fantasia by Polak (Track 31). Something seems to have gone wrong with the recording at bar 15, because some notes are missing.
 
All the anonymous pieces are from D-B Danzig 4022. The first, and at 6’08” the longest, is an interesting set of variations on Monycha [=Monica] aka Une Jeune Fillette, which Held takes at an appropriately unhurried speed. I am less happy with his leisurely speed and use of rolled chords for Track 20, the well-known dance from folio 20v of Danzig 4022, which I feel needs a more sprightly, foot-tapping interpretation.
 
Track 24 is a lively Volte by Polak, which has a clear 2-part texture (occasionally filled out to 3-part), with nice interplay between treble and bass. Held’s brisk tempo is ideal, and he has contrasting loud and soft for the first section. Surprisingly he omits the first note of bar 9, but he does include three chords missing from the source (Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s MS), which were inserted as bar 21 in Piotr Pozniak’s edition.
 
Most useful is a list of sources provided in the liner notes, so if you want to follow the score, or play the pieces yourself, you know where to look. I cannot find any information about the sort of lute Held plays for the present CD. There is an uncaptioned photo of an eight-course lute on page eight of the liner notes, but no information about it or its maker.
 
I have always liked Held’s playing. Unlike so many of today’s lutenists, he eschews excessive rubato, and actually plays in time. He must have heeded the advice from the Johannes Nauclerus lute book, which he quotes in his liner notes: “And you must observe the beat, if you will court fair Maidens.” I wish him luck with amorous activity.
 
Stewart McCoy

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