The Choir Project al día [05-VIII-2013]

Cristóbal de Morales [c. 1500-1553]: Magnificat primi toni à 4.
The Brabant Ensemble - Stephen Rice.
Spaniard Magnificat.

  Stephen Rice wrote about Morales' Magnificat:
"Writing in 1555, the Spanish theorist Juan Bermudo thus picked out the three leading musicians of his generation, born at or just before the turn of the sixteenth century. All three were known throughout Europe: the two Flemings, Adrian Willaert and Nicolas Gombert, were active at the basilica of St Mark in Venice and the court of Emperor Charles V respectively; Morales had spent a decade as a tenor singer in the Sistine Chapel choir before returning to his native Spain in 1545. In the remaining eight years of his life he had been chapel master at the primatial cathedral of Toledo, attached to the court of the Duke of Arcos, and finally maestro at the cathedral of Málaga. He was the first Spanish composer to achieve true international fame, and was described by Bermudo as the ‘light of Spain in music’.

  Partly as a result of the celebrity derived during his Roman sojourn, Morales has in modern times been the most widely acknowledged and performed composer of the mid-sixteenth century. His style would appear to have been influential on the youthful Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina; although Palestrina’s tenure as a singer in the Sistine Chapel began only after Morales’s death, the latter’s music was certainly in the repertoire of the Cappella Giulia (the choir of St Peter’s Basilica, which unlike the Sistine Chapel choir was largely staffed by native Italians and of which Palestrina was magister cantorum between 1551 and 1555). The dissemination of Morales’s music was extremely wide by the standards of his generation, his motets appearing in over thirty prints from 1535 to around 1570, as well as many manuscript collections.

  Morales’s output runs to over 220 works, of which all but a handful are sacred. Like most of his contemporaries, the motet is the dominant genre; twenty-three Masses are securely attributed to him, as compared with approximately 150 motets. Although Morales is relatively well represented in recordings, a few pieces have attracted the attention of performers at the expense of the majority of his output. This recording aims to begin filling that gap by presenting works which are so far underexposed, yet which are of high quality.

  The longest piece on the disc is the Magnificat primi toni, one of a set of eight covering the eight tones which Morales published in 1542. The Sistine Chapel choir, for whom they were presumably written, sang all twelve verses (including the Gloria Patri) of the canticle polyphonically, unlike the vast majority of cathedral and court establishments whose practice was to alternate plainsong and polyphonic verses. Indeed, Morales’s set of eight settings was later published in the more common format, with the odd and even verses separated. This, too, is the form in which the pieces are transmitted in the modern complete edition. Whilst it is by no means incorrect to perform these settings in alternatim form, as no doubt they would have been sung at many institutions, the overall musical sense is more coherent when they are heard complete: this is the first such recording of any of the settings. Despite the lack of plainsong verses, the chant melody is never absent from Morales’s Magnificats, being used in various ways in different verses. Most frequently it is heard as a lightly embellished cantus firmus, often in the tenor but elsewhere as well; at other times the melodic material is employed in imitation. The texture is for the most part four-voice, reducing to three upper voices for Et misericordia (‘And his mercy is upon them that fear him’) and three lower for Deposuit potentes (‘He has put down the mighty’). After a vigorous triple-time Gloria Patri the texture is expanded to six voices for the final verse, with one soprano and one alto taking the chant melody in canon at the lower fourth."

  In my opinion this Magnificat is simply superb; an fantastic example in the treatment of this type of work in Hispanic polyphony.
This isn't the best album recorded by this ensemble, anyway this is a good recording, dedicated to this wonderful Spaniard master. Highly recommended.

• Album.
• Score:
  - Odd verses in polyphony.
  - Even verses in polyphony.
• Performer. 

 

The Choir Project al día [11-II-2013]

Pierre Moulu [c.1484-c.1550]: Missa Missvs est Gabriel angelvs a 4.
The Brabant Ensemble - Stephen Rice.
Not everything is Josquin.

   In words by Stephen Rice:
"The surviving documentary evidence of Pierre Moulu’s life amounts to very little: documents in the Vatican identify a Petrus Moulu, a cleric of the diocese of Meaux between the years 1505 (when he stated that he was in his twenty-first year) and 1513, who applied for permission for various privileges in that diocese. Whether this man can be identified with the composer of five Mass settings, approximately twenty motets and ten chansons seeming to date from the second and third decades of the sixteenth century, is not proven, but is the best assumption presently available. Moulu the composer thus joins the long lists of Renaissance musicians whose lives are all but entirely masked in shadow. Fortunately a number of his works found favour with his contemporaries to the extent that they appear in numerous early manuscripts and prints, and they have attracted the attention of music historians since the earliest days of the discipline in the late nineteenth century. Like much of the large repertory of sixteenth-century polyphony, however, his works have rarely been performed in modern times, and this is the first recording devoted to his music.

   Missa Missus est Gabriel angelus perhaps represents Moulu’s finest achievement in terms of purely musical expression. Pierre de Ronsard in the introduction to his Livre de mellanges of 1560 described Moulu as a disciple of Josquin (he was numbered alongside eight others, Ronsard’s selection of names exhibiting a notable bias to musicians active in the region of Paris). If a connection between Moulu and Josquin—for which there is no documentary evidence—did exist, this Mass-setting based on a short motet by the older composer would seem to represent the closest approach between their respective styles. Josquin’s motet is characteristic of his four-voice writing in maintaining a sparse texture with the voices imitating strongly memorable phrases. The characteristic rising leap of a fifth at the beginning of the piece exemplifies this trait of Josquin: frequently the voices work in pairs, as at ‘nuntians ei verbum’. Appropriation of plainsong melodies is common in Josquin’s music, as is true of many Renaissance composers: in Missus est Gabriel this is most clearly seen at the words Ave Maria, where the famous chant is strikingly introduced in the bass, the other voices following at a distance of two breves, all on the same pitch. Finally the closing Alleluia is set to an evocative fauxbourdon texture—a succession of first inversion chords that frequently was associated with sweetness in early sixteenth-century music.

   Moulu’s parody adopts many of the standard techniques for deriving Masses from motets, notably retention of the most arresting moments from the model. For instance, four of the five movements open with the rising fifth motif from the beginning of the motet, the exception being the Credo, which is headed with a homophonic passage—however, the rising fifth is retained in the bass part underpinning the harmony. Similarly, the fauxbourdon texture from the motet returns at the end of the Kyrie and Sanctus movements, where its falling lines create an effectively ruminative close for these supplicatory texts. The section of Josquin’s piece that would have been most immediately recognizable to his and Moulu’s contemporaries is the quotation of the Ave Maria chant: this is retained by Moulu but its surprising introduction by the bassus is not: the most obvious statement of the chant is made by the tenor in the Hosanna section, the bass harmonizing it in long notes while the soprano and alto exchange a newly composed melody above.

   A final characteristic of Josquin that Moulu adopts and extends is strategic repetition. Josquin is known for repeating the same short motif several times in succession (a famous example occurs in the Kyrie of his Pange lingua Mass), and Moulu takes this to almost obsessive levels at times. In the Pleni of Missa Missus est Gabriel, which is for the two upper voices only, the same four-note motif occurs no fewer than five times in succession in the soprano (Track 5, from 1'45"), and at the end of this section (2'25") the alto has four statements of the same melodic fragment. I interpret the musical gesture of the soprano statement as intensifying a drive towards the cadence that is frequently found in early Renaissance music; additionally the Pleni exemplifies the concept of varietas, much prized in theoretical treatises of the time, in that while one voice repeats, the other is continuously fashioning new counterpoints against it, working the melodic material to its utmost. The Mass-setting as a whole exhibits an austere beauty that recalls its distinguished model without slavishly aping it."

   I think the shadow of Josquin is long. Sheltered it was emerging interest in Franco-Flemish polyphony and in other composers at that time considered as minor.
In this way began to perform the music of Nicolas Gombert, Jacob Clemens non Papa, Orlandus Lassus, Or Pierre de Manchicourt, for example.
Over the years, interest in the five generations of Franco-Flemish composers has not stopped growing, so that now almost known more than a hundred authors of this períod, some of which are performed and recorded with some assiduity.

   Pierre Moulu is a perfect example of these composers almost unknown. In fact, this is the first and only album devoted entirely to this composer.

   This album is really wonderful, full of musical and musicological interest.
The Moulu's music is really wonderful, simply amazing.
This mass is absolutely fantastic, full of finesse, elegance, tenderness and great expressiveness.
I like a lot this performance, full of "Bristish sound". The queality of these voices and this intelligence when singing this music are fabulous.
A really wonderful album, indispensable for fanatics of Renaissance polyphony.

• Album.
• Performer. 

 

The Choir Project al día [08-XII-2012]

Dominique Phinot [c.1510-b.1561]: Pater peccavi a 5.
The Brabant Ensemble - Stephen Rice.
The talent of the unknowns.

   Roger Jacob & Stephen Rice think about this composer and his works:
"That this recording is the first to concentrate on the sacred music of Dominique Phinot is a reminder that a significant amount of music composed in the early sixteenth century continues to be terra incognita to present-day audiences. Moreover, our knowledge of the lives and careers of composers at this time is often based upon little more than fragmentary evidence. Information about Phinot’s career, for instance, is confined to a handful of documents from the 1540s and 1550s which indicate that he was a musician in the service of Duke Guidobaldo II of Urbino. A memorandum of 1544 records that he was proposed by the Duke for the post of cantor (singer or choirmaster) at the cathedral in Pesaro.

   Since all of Phinot’s works received their first printings during the period 1538–1555, the composer is likely to have been in his late twenties by the first date, in which case he would have been born around 1510. From Girolamo Cardano’s essay Theonoston, which implies that Phinot was executed for homosexual practices, we learn that his death occurred before 1561.

   Phinot’s output consists of over a hundred motets, two Masses, and settings of Vesper Psalms and the Magnificat, as well as two books of French chansons and two Italian madrigals. The acclaim with which his sacred compositions were received is evident both in the frequency of their publications as well as in the writings of his contemporaries. He was renowned as a master of imitative polyphonic writing, a trait which he shares with Gombert, Clemens non Papa, Willaert, and others of that generation who were the successors of Josquin Desprez. Indeed, the theorist Hermann Finck in 1556 placed Phinot behind only Gombert, Clemens, and Crecquillon (and ahead of Willaert) in a list of composers he described as ‘foremost, most excellent, subtlest and, in my judgement, to be imitated’.

   The publication in Lyons during 1547–8 of two collections of Phinot’s motets secured his reputation for the rest of the century and beyond. Not only do the five-voice motets in the Liber primus mutetarum confirm his outstanding polyphonic skills but the Liber secundus contains five eight-voice works which are of considerable historical importance. The latter are unique in the mid-sixteenth century in their treatment of double-choir dialogue, a technique in which two four-part ensembles normally alternate thematically related phrases of varying lengths. These works, of which four are included in this recording, are the antecedents of the resplendent Venetian polychoral tradition of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

   In his eight-voice sacred works Phinot builds upon those essential features of double-choir technique which first appeared in the liturgical music of northern Italy, mainly in the Veneto, during the early decades of the sixteenth century. Psalms and canticles, which had for long been associated with ritual antiphonal performance, frequently inspire double-choir settings by composers such as Ruffino d’Assisi (fl1510–1532) and Francesco Santacroce (1488–1556), who already exploit varied lengths of choral exchange, contrasts of high and low register between ensembles, and chordal writing, in order to create genuine double-choir dialogue.

   One of the most controversial theories surrounding the performance of Renaissance polyphony is that of the so-called ‘secret chromatic art’. First proposed by the scholar Edward Lowinsky (1908–1985) in relation to motets by Jacob Clemens non Papa, it holds that certain pieces could be performed with the addition of numerous accidental flats, sometimes leading to the entire piece ending a semitone lower than it began through a process of transposition. Lowinsky hypothesized that this related to crypto-Protestant significance in the music: Clemens’s mysterious nickname ‘non Papa’ would in this case indicate anti-Papal leanings—though more recent research suggests that Clemens was so called for much more prosaic reasons to do with his debauched lifestyle. Whatever the background to this phenomenon, it is certainly the case that in several pieces of this period, if the rules of musica ficta are followed as most likely would have happened in performance from separate partbooks, one flat after another appears in the music and leads to a downward spiral. One such example is Phinot’s Pater peccavi, a motet based on the story of the prodigal son.

   The first half of the motet proceeds in a contrapuntally unproblematic way; only when the son begins to describe his miserable circumstances (hic fame pereo) does the modulation begin, achieving the entire shift in an extraordinary passage a little over half a minute long (3'45" to 4'20"). Having so to speak ‘found his feet’ in the new tonality the son resolves to go back to his father to beg forgiveness (Surgam et ibo), but the pain of his humiliation is underlined by the highly expressive downward sequence of suspensions (et dicam ei) before the plea ‘Make me as one of your servants’ (Fac me sicut unum ex mercenariis tuis) returns in a mood of resignation. Such a direct narrative explanation may seem out of place for a motet published as early as 1538; yet the remarkable effect both of the ‘secret chromatic’ spiral and the later suspension passage suggests just such an interpretation despite the early date."

   For me, this a wonderful album and the only monographic recording on the works of Phinot -I think-, an excellent reason to celebrate this.
The performance is really great, specially female voices -the Ashby sisters are absolutely amazing-.
This music will surprise many by its immense quality, I'm sure.

• Album.
• Performer.
  
  

The Choir Project al día [24-XI-2012]

Jacobus Clemens non Papa [c.1510/15-1555/6]: Missa Pro defvnctis a 4.
The Brabant Ensemble - Stephen Rice.
Et lvx perpetva lvceat eis.

    For Stephen Rice:
"Jacobus Clemens non Papa is one of the most remarkably underrated composers of the sixteenth century. From the 1540s onwards he was widely published throughout Europe, in particular by Tilman Susato of Antwerp (himself a composer). Clemens’s surviving output of motets, Mass-settings, Magnificats, Souterliedekens (Dutch metrical Psalms) and secular songs in French and Dutch approaches five hundred items in total, placing him among the most prolific of the age. Sixteenth-century writers on music who discuss the leading contemporary musicians invariably placed him in the first rank. Yet Clemens’s position in modern understanding of Renaissance polyphony can only be described as marginal. The number of recordings devoted to his work is still in single figures, and his music features in concert programmes and the music lists of ecclesiastical choirs only rarely. This is particularly surprising because his style of composition, to a greater degree than that of contemporaries such as Crecquillon and Manchicourt, is based on melody rather than being contrapuntally driven—though his contrapuntal skill is undoubted. Moreover, Clemens frequently created striking aural images, which catch the ear with a sudden change of texture or harmonic shift: in contrast to the intentionally seamless polyphony of the slightly older Gombert, for instance, which creates its effect by gradual intensification and relaxation, Clemens’s music is far more straightforwardly dramatic.

    Little-known though his music may be, Clemens is at least celebrated for his nickname. The significance of the sobriquet ‘non Papa’ has been debated for a number of years, but the recent discovery by Henri Vanhulst of correspondence in 1553 between the Archduke Maximilian of Austria and Philippe du Croÿ, son of a deceased patron of Clemens, offers a possible explanation. Maximilian was seeking to build up the musical establishment of his chapel, and requested that his father’s Kapellmeister, the Netherlander Pieter Maessens, travel to the Low Countries in order to secure the services of Clemens. Du Croÿ replied that although it would be possible to achieve this, he would not recommend Clemens on account of the fact that he was a great drunkard and lived immorally (‘un grant ivrogne et tres mal vivant’—the latter probably referring to Clemens breaching his priestly vow of chastity). The position went to another Netherlander, the young Jacobus Vaet, and Clemens’s puzzling lack of any important employment, considering his fame and popularity as a composer, is explained. This story has a bearing, also, on the nickname (which appears in manuscripts in jocular alternative forms such as ‘nono Papa’ and ‘haud Papa’—‘absolutely not the Pope’). The time during Clemens’s life when there was a Pope Clement—the seventh, alias Giulio de’ Medici—was 1523 to 1534, during Clemens’s adolescence: one may speculate therefore that the composer became known as ‘non Papa’ at that time because of his distinctly un-ecclesiastical behaviour, and that the name persisted long after any distinction between musician and prelate was necessary, if it ever had been.

    What about Clemens’s music caused his great popularity? Two features of his style stand out and set him somewhat apart from his contemporaries: both have to do with the constructive properties of his polyphony. Whereas musicians operating within the standard career paths of the time, such as his direct contemporary Thomas Crecquillon, were educated firstly in contrapuntal technique, and continued throughout their lives to base their compositions on a series of contrapuntal points woven together, Clemens’s textures seem often to function as melody with supporting lines—all written in an imitative style, certainly, but designed to emphasize the melodic gesture rather than to subsume it into a contrapuntal whole. An analogy could be made with the procedure of George Frideric Handel: where Handel writes fugues, their essence is the presentation of melody, and where the melody demands to be treated in a particular way, the counterpoint will accommodate it.

    The second aspect of Clemens’s writing that draws the listener’s attention is the manipulation of harmony. To use the word ‘harmony’ in relation to sixteenth-century polyphony is to invite disapproval from those who believe the term anachronistic; but (partly for the reason elaborated in the last paragraph) I believe that Clemens can usefully be viewed in such terms, to a considerably greater extent than his contemporaries. Although passages in block chords had been present in sacred music for many years before his time, generally at moments of extreme solemnity such as the name of Jesus Christ in the Mass, on numerous occasions in the motets presented here Clemens blends chordal writing into the wider flow of the polyphony, in order to achieve effects that seem more to do with form or even more abstract concepts, than with illustration of the text.

    The Missa pro defunctis is not one of Clemens’s better-known Mass-settings, which is somewhat surprising given its austere beauty. Like most Requiem settings of the Renaissance, it combines movements from the Ordinary of the Mass (Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus Dei—the Gloria and Credo would not have been sung at Masses for the dead) with those Proper to the occasion, namely the Introit, Tract, Offertory, and Communion. For most of the Mass the plainchant melodies are paraphrased in the tenor voice, though occasionally they are found in the soprano (for instance in the Kyrie and Offertory). Given the relatively restricted palette of four voices and chant paraphrase chosen by Clemens, he is able to conjure a remarkably varied range of harmonic colours across the seven movements of the Requiem.

    The Introit is the most conventional movement, with the chant in long notes in the tenor initially; for the Psalm verse et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem (‘and the vow will be repaid to you in Jerusalem’) the texture becomes homophonic with a straight falsobordone harmonization of the Psalm tone in the top voice. After the mandatory repeat of the opening section the Kyrie adopts a similar homophonic style, though Clemens begins to vary his choice of harmonies, notably by introducing an unexpected final chord for the Christe section. The Tract follows the plainsong into a different tonal area, reverting to a more imitative texture. Having created the dialogue between these two styles, Clemens begins in the latter part of the Tract to mingle them, first introducing harmonic twists (perhaps significantly at the word ‘evadere’), then underlining the sentiment of the final text phrase with a general pause and homophonic texture.

    The Offertory is both the central movement and the longest, at 4'30". In the main it is rapid, moving in fast semibreves and homophonically. The final line of the first section, quam olim Abrahae promisisti (‘as long ago you promised Abraham’) is more relaxed in spirit, yielding to chant (taken here by the women) and, following a further energetic verse, returning to round off the movement in a reflective vein.

    Like the Kyrie, the Sanctus and Agnus Dei are both short, but here—especially in the Agnus—Clemens is at his most ingenious in avoiding unnecessary repetition. Each invocation of the Agnus Dei ends on a slightly different chord: the final one is forced by the melodic shape of the top voice to finish in the minor, unusually for any Renaissance piece but especially for a Requiem movement since the chants are largely in the major mode (which at this time lacked any connotation of happiness, being regarded rather more as harsh). Finally the Communion Proper completes the Mass in tender fashion, with a return to the Requiem aeternam text and almost static chords for its response et lux perpetua luceat eis (‘and let perpetual light shine on them’), followed by a lightly ornamented repeat of the line quia pius es (‘since you are merciful’). Clemens’s Requiem Mass may be one of the less demonstrative sixteenth-century settings of these texts, eschewing the compositional virtuosity that characterizes his motets, but it achieves a solemn reflectiveness that is highly appropriate musically for this ritual of mourning."

    For me, this Reqviem is inexplicably very little performed and recorded.
This music has great depth -as it can not be otherwise given the text- but also we find there some really energetic moments, without falling in resignation.

    This album is absolutely fantastic -this piece is just enough-, but it's completes with some wonderful motets.
The performance is really great, with a beatiful sound and very delicated lines. This version is calm, deep and very expressive.

• Album.
• Performer. 

 

The Choir Project [04-VIII-2012]

Cristóbal de Morales (c.1500-1553): Zai. Candidiores -First Lamentation on Holy Saturday- a 5.
The Brabant Ensemble - Stephen Rice.
Jeremiae dixit.

    In words of the conductor and musicologist Stephen Rice:
"Polyphonic settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah enjoyed considerable popularity in the sixteenth century, with a publication by the printer Ottaviano Petrucci (Venice, 1506) gathering together most of the earliest known examples. By the 1530s, Morales was following in a well-established tradition in composing Lamentations: along with his Sistine Chapel colleague Costanzo Festa he produced large numbers of settings, though these were not published until 1564, eleven years after Morales’s death. It is not known whether these settings entered the Sistine Chapel repertory, since an earlier version, composed by Carpentras (Elzéar Genet) appears to have been sung until the 1580s, being eventually replaced by that composed by Palestrina. The significance of the texts lies in their liturgical use as lessons in Matins of the Triduum Sacrum (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday): whereas lessons would normally be intoned on a simple recitation formula, these are supplied with more elaborate plainsong. These ‘lamentation tones’ are often reflected in the polyphonic settings, including those of Morales.
Another unusual feature of Lamentation settings is the retention of the Hebrew initial letters to each verse. The Lamentations formed an acrostic poem, and the practice of Renaissance composers was to introduce each section with an extended, melismatic setting of the Hebrew letter. Together with the refrain 'Jerusalem, Jerusalem, turn to the Lord your God’ which ends each setting, these elements produce a highly meditative musical atmosphere, as the harrowing texts of Jeremiah’s poem are transformed into polyphony that alternates simple homophony with great elaboration. The three sections presented here are the third lesson on Good Friday (Coph. Vocavi), and the first and second on Holy Saturday (Zai. Candidiores and Nun. Vigilavit respectively); these liturgical designations ceased to apply after the promulgation of the Tridentine service books later in the century, however."

    The sensitivity with which the five voices crosses is really fascinating. Music that add you in a state of peace and quiet fascinating.
This performance is so sober and so British.
Anyway, for me this album, although it's good, is not one of the best recordings of this ensemble.
Anyway is a good way to get into the wonderful work of Cristóbal de Morales, "light of Spain in music".

• Composer.
• Album.
• Performer.
• Michael Noone notes.