Tag: Vocal music

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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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Sheet music

Manuel de Sumaya: Villancicos from Mexico City

Cover of Recent Researchs 206 Sumaya Villancicos

Edited by Drew Edward Davies
Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era, 206
xliii, [6 plates] + 231pp.
A-R Editions, Inc. ISBN 978-1-9872-0202-1 $275 (Violin parts available $14)

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Manuel de Sumaya (c. 1678-1755) was chapel master at the cathedral in Mexico City from 1715-39 and the 32 complete works in this impressive volume (plus transcriptions of two further fragments) date from this period.

The villancico form has a verse and refrain basis. Sumaya’s Mexico city pieces include 14 for one “choir” (of between two and four voices, two with added violins), 14 more for two “choirs” (four to eight voices, again two with strings), and four for three “choirs” (11-12 voices). It is difficult to look at music for choirs where the bottom line of each is called bass and the rhythm mostly matches the voices above (and thus diverges from the basso seguente at the bottom of the texture) and not assume that these lines must have been sung too; but that is superimposing European expectations – played by the instruments Davies suggests in his detailed introduction, the lack of a texted bass part might be irrelevant.

Some of his translations of the texts are a little less literal than they could be, but a great help for performers is the fact that all of the verses are underlaid so there is no need for the mental gymnastics required with other editions on how to elide the various words ending and beginning with vowels so that the text is properly stressed! One of the strangest pieces is no. 20, for the feast of the Assumption, Hoy sube arrebatada. As well as a tenor voice, it features two violins with bass, as well as untexted treble and bass parts that make up “choir one”. As elsewhere, the string writing is more elaborate than that for voices; Davies’s suggestion that the untexted treble be played on a wind instrument (and the bass, too, presumably) might make sense of something that just looks quite odd!

In all honesty, I cannot see choirs queueing up to pay so much for what is a very worthwhile volume of interesting music, so I sincerely hope that A-R Editions can be persuaded to authorise off-prints for inclusion in concerts.

Brian Clark

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John Eccles: Europe’s Revels for the Peace of Ryswick

Cover of A-R Editions John Eccles Peace of Ryswick

Edited by Michael Burden
Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era, 209
xxvii, [6 plates] + 97pp.
A-R Editions, Inc. ISBN 978-1-9872-0306-6 $180

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For those whose historical knowledge of the late 17th century is a little sketchy, the Treaty of Ryswick was signed at the conclusion of the Nine Years War, fought between France under Louis XIV and a Grand (and somewhat unusual) Alliance between Protestant England and Holland on the one hand and Catholic Spain and the Holy Roman Empire on the other.

Kathryn Lowerre (one of the General Editors of this “complete works of Eccles” sub series from A-R Editions) has written extensively about the piece and both its background and contents. Michael Burden’s fine edition supplements that with illustrations, a fully annotated (and, when necessary, translated) libretto (with those sections of Motteux that were omitted from performance in one of three appendices) and a thorough but remarkably short Critical Report.

As usual, my only reservation about the edition is the sometimes impractical layout; numbers 8 and 9, for example, cover two pages but they both have page turns – in the case of number 9, that means turning to play five bars and then turning back. Someone should think about the possibility that these volumes may not be destined to languish on scholars’ shelves and that musicians might be inspired by Anthony Rooley’s foreword to the edition and actually stage a performance; then all the hard work would finally be shown to have been worthwhile.

Brian Clark

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Sheet music

Purcell?: Oh that my grief

Cover of D109 Purcell Oh that my grief

Edited by Rebecca Herissone
viii + 16pp.
Stainer & Bell D109, £8.50

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In her extensive introduction to this 106-bar devotional song for three male voices, Rebecca Herissone makes a convincing case for re-assessing Philip Hayes’ role as a collector and copyist of Purcell’s music in general and for re-instating this to the catalogue of the composer’s canon in particular.

Given the amount of detail she gives, it is surprising that she decided to omit the figured bass symbols on the grounds that it was impossible to distinguish between Hayes’s 18th-century additions (as witnessed in his other transcriptions of Purcell sources that still exist) and what might have been in the original; I should have thought making that statement would have been enough explanation had she left them in rather than (rather shadily) using them “to inform choices in the editorial continuo part”.

She casts the piece as a “homosocial” duet for high and normal tenor voices with a bass joining in for a refrain (in which it really does very little that add text and rhythm to the continuo line). The angular melodies and piquant harmonies are typical of the composer’s style. It is a pity that the three-part section (which neatly fits on to two pages) could not have been laid out on a spread rather than have a page turn in the middle of it both times.

Brian Clark

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Recording

Charpentier: Histoires sacrées

CD cover of Charpentier Histoires sacrées Daucé

Ensemble Correspondances, Sébastien Daucé
160:51 (2 CDs + Bonus DVD)
harmonia mundi HMM 902280.81

There is a cornucopia of riches packed into this slim-line presentation, so much so that its full worth will surely only became apparent after it has been lived with rather longer than the demands of reviewing time allow. At its heart lie three of the Latin oratorios, or histoires sacrées (neither incidentally terms used by Charpentier himself), biblical or historical religious dramas that follow the format of a narration – which might be sung solo, by a small vocal ensemble or even a chorus – into which characters are given their own voice. It’s a model Charpentier adopted from the three years he spent in Rome (1662 to 1665) and particularly from what he learned from his close contact there with Giacomo Carissimi. The three works are Judith, sive Bethulia liberata, H 391 (1674-76), Cæcilia, virgo et martyr, H 397 (1677-78) and Mors Saülis et Jonathae, H 403 (1681-82). The two former, along with works appertaining to Mary Magdalene, form the contents of the DVD. This presents staged versions recorded in a concert held in the sumptuous surroundings of the Chapelle Royale at Versailles, providing a theme of three greatly admired women whose moral strength was held up as exemplary by the Counter-Reformation, a strong influence via the Jesuits on the works of both Charpentier and Carissimi.

There is no evidence that the Latin oratorios were staged, but strongly dramatic writing and, at times, content makes them a tempting proposition for a producer. The Versailles performance employs a single set with large Roman arches left and right of the back of the stage and two (rather too easily) movable rocks on which some rather ungainly clambering takes place. The same costumes, a mix of vaguely middle-Eastern influence and modern dress are used for both works. There is no attempt at period production, perhaps fortunately given that much of what action takes place is not convincingly projected. Not infrequently what we see conflicts with the text, most obviously at the critical moment of Holofernes’ decapitation, where the Biblical text tells us the Assyrian King ‘lay on his bed fast asleep, being exceedingly drunk’, but we see Judith pawing a half-naked figure who is very much awake. Conversely there are moments, often helped by excellent lighting, that are highly effective, the union of the martyred Cecilia with the crucified Christ creating a Bernini-like image totally in accord with the Counter-Reformation spirit of the piece. The performances of both oratorios feature outstanding solo and ensemble singing, Charpentier’s at times piquant or tortuously dissonant harmonies emerging in the latter with unusually telling force. The eponymous protagonists of the two oratorios, Caroline Weynants (Judith) and Judith Fa (Cecilia) are especially good, the former finding real sensitivity in the prayer before the extraordinary night scene in which she visits the camp of Holofernes. The highest praise also goes to the richly-toned alto Lucile Richardot, a deeply affecting Mary Magdalene in the tender elevation motet O sarcramentum pietatis, H 274 and Magdalena lumens, one of three motets composed by Charpentier for Mary’s feast day. To complete the programme’s dramatisation all three women are brought together in the three-part a cappella motet ‘Sub tuum praesidium’, in actuality an antiphon to the Virgin

Although the audio recording also includes the two oratorios, the motets are only on the DVD. The major addition to the CDs is Mors Saulis, a masterpiece on the subject of the death of Saul and his son Jonathan, the latter deeply mourned by David. It’s a topic to which Charpentier would return in his 5-act tragédie lyrique David et Jonathas, H 490 (1688). Despite not having a dramatic context the oratorio carries extraordinary theatrical power, most spectacularly in the scene between Saul and the Witch of Endor, superbly carried off here by bass Étienne Bazola and, again, Lucile Richardot. The mourning of David, ‘Doleo super te’ is in the tradition of the great 17th-century laments and done with great sensitivity by tenor Davy Cornillot.

Among the smaller works on the CDs are the impressive 8-part funeral motet ‘Plaintes des âmes du purgatories’, and three works belonging to the dialogus type, smaller dramatic works generally cast for two or three characters and continuo, the most impressive here being between Christ and Mary Magdalene (H 423), an exquisite little masterpiece than makes great use of Jesus’ famous words ‘noli mi tangere’ (touch me not).

As I said at the outset, such are the riches here that they demand much greater acquaintance; Charpentier is one of those rare composers to maintain an astonishingly high quality over the course of a large output. These marvellous performances – and I realise I’ve said nothing about instrumental playing (employing 17th-string technique) of the highest quality and completely idiomatic direction – will unquestionably repay deeper investigation and could well take their place at the core of a Charpentier collection.

Brian Robins

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Secret Fires of Love

Cover of Secret Fires of Love album

Daniel Thomson, Terry McKenna, Thomas Leininger, Studio Rhetorica, directed by Robert Toft
65:11
Talbot Productions TP1701

This recital offers a rather lovely programme of English and Italian music from the early 17th century (Dowland, Monteverdi, etc.) and the later decades when ‘the Baroque period’ was in full swing (Purcell, Albinoni, etc.). I rather liked (especially through headphones) the deliberately intimate recorded sound and the restrained performing forces. I doubt the stylistic credentials of some of the continuo playing, on both lute and harpsichord, but it is the vocal style that will excite or appal (or even both) most listeners. I offer a quotation from the blurb:

 ‘[The singer] uses techniques of rhetorical delivery to re-create the natural style of performance listeners from the era would have heard… This requires him to alter the written scores substantially and his dramatic singing combines rhetoric and music in ways that have not been heard since the Renaissance and Baroque eras.’

Passing swiftly over these rather extravagant claims which I think many might question, I suppose the singing might be summed up as focussing very much on the word and micro-phrase rather than any sense of a ‘line’ and not all listeners will warm to this and other details – the portamenti, for instance. (I was reminded several times of the Sting/Dowland experiment, which wasn’t actually all bad, and some aspects of Alfred Deller’s performances.) It’s a very intense listen and I’m not absolutely sure that I enjoyed it, but it certainly commanded my attention and I do expect to return to at least small groups of items for pleasure rather than duty.

David Hansell

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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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J. S. Bach: Soprano Arias & Swedish folk chorales

Cover of Bach and Dala chorales CD

Maria Keohane, Camerata Kilkenny
58:10
Maya Recordings MCD1901

In the booklet, Kate Hearne writes that ‘the idea of pairing Bach’s music with Dala Chorales is an idea that has been with me for a long time’. 

Dala chorales come from a region in central Sweden where the first official psalm book in the Lutheran tradition was published in 1695, influenced as much by folk song as by the memories of what had been sung in the pre-Reformation masses. A number of these free chorale-like tunes are sung here by Maria Keohane, paired with seven Bach arias for soprano with obligato violin played by Maya Homburger, appearing here with Sarah McMahon and Malcolm Proud as Camerata Kilkenny.

The recording was made in the Propsteikirche Sankt Gerold in Austria, a small former Benedictine monastery. Details of the project, and how the performance was prepared are sketchy, but the booklet manages to convey the slightly folksy, Nordic, tree-spirit world that the Dalakorals conjure up.

The playing and singing is of a high standard as you would expect from the starry Swedish Maria Keohane and the Swiss violinist Maya Homburger. All the arias are just for soprano voice, violin and bc, and have all the elegance of chamber music, with perfectly matched and balanced partners listening to one another. This is how arias should be sung – not as if they were solos with an accompaniment in the background. Whether the pairing of the arias with the Dalakorals works for you I cannot predict, but you would not be sorry to have heard the Bach.

David Stancliffe

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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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