CD Reviews: Erkki Melartin / New York Polyphony

Charles T. Downey, CD reviews: Neglected Finn merits a closer listen
Washington Post, September 9

E. Melartin, Traumgesicht (inter alia), S. Isokoski, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, H. Lintu (released on June 10, 2016) Ondine ode1283-2 | 56'50"

A composer as good as Erkki Melartin should be better known. I, at least, have not heard any Washington ensemble perform this Finnish composer’s music in the past decade, although it has occasionally cropped up at places such as Bard College, where Leon Botstein champions less-performed composers. This recent release from the Ondine label, which recorded Melartin’s six symphonies two decades ago, features excellent world-premiere recordings of three more of his works. Let jaded listeners who thought they had nothing new and beautiful to discover rejoice.

Melartin (1875-1937) composed his tone poem “Traumgesicht” (“Dream Face”) in 1910, adapting his own incidental music for a Symbolist play from five years earlier. Hints of the harmonic style of Debussy abound, evoking the murky world of Gabriele d’Annunzio’s “Un sogno d’una mattina primavera” with ethereal combinations of instruments. At the same time, there are soaring, chromatic moments of full-bodied sound — a reminder that Melartin’s teacher in Vienna, Robert Fuchs, also taught Mahler, Sibelius and Korngold.

The second piece, “Marjatta,” brings in elements of Finnish nationalism. The redoubtable Finnish soprano Soile Isokoski deploys a shimmering high range, veritably purring on the high, soft B-flats in the opening description of silvery birds singing — and it gets even better from there. This orchestral version, premiered in 1915, features more iridescent orchestration as backdrop to an odd story of Marjatta, drawn from the end of the “Kalevala,” the Finnish national epic, about a girl who miraculously conceives a son by eating a lingon­berry.

The latest of the three works is “Sininen helmi” (“The Blue Pearl,” Op. 160). The first full-length ballet written in Finland, it premiered in 1931. A prince, shipwrecked on an island in the South Seas, fights a giant octopus to win the magical blue pearl in its crown, as well as a princess the monster is holding captive. Hannu Lintu, who conducts the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in these fine performances, has made an arrangement of pieces from the ballet’s first two acts.

Highlights include a gossamer-delicate “Danse des Nénuphares” (“Dance of the Water Lilies”) and the delightful number for the “Poissons à voiles” (“Long-Finned Goldfish”), which combines languid strings, harp-like piano and tinkling percussion. The only regret is that the disc doesn’t feature the entire score.

Roma Æterna (Guerrero, Palestrina, Victoria), New York Polyphony (released on August 12, 2016) BIS-2203 | 72'07"

In 2006, New York Polyphony formed as an all-male vocal quartet specializing in Renaissance polyphony, in the style of the Hilliard Ensemble and other groups. After all, most of this repertory was intended for all-male ensembles, with either boys or countertenors on the top part.

In the group’s first few years, its sound was good but not yet thrilling. In its latest release, however, with new singers on the middle parts and the excellent sound engineering of the Swedish label BIS, the puzzle’s pieces finally fit together.

Two masterful, often-recorded settings of the Latin Ordinary, by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Tomás Luis de Victoria, provide the frame for a handful of motets and Gregorian chants, giving the partial impression of two complete Renaissance liturgies.

Pitch frequency was not standardized in the Renaissance. Therefore, transposing this music to a range most comfortable for the singers of a given group is perfectly authentic, as well as just making sense.

Palestrina notated his “Missa Papae Marcelli” in a high key, suitable for the boys singing the highest part. To make that top part work for its countertenor, New York Polyphony transposes the pitch down by a perfect fifth, which shifts this music completely into the darker, heavier male range, with the four lowest parts sung by baritones and basses. The tenor Andrew Fuchs and bass-baritone Jonathan Woody join the quartet for this six-part Mass, and the countertenor Tim Keeler takes the second soprano part that’s woven into the glorious triple canon of the “Dona nobis pacem.” The same singers do an equally beautiful job with Palestrina’s six-part “Tu es Petrus,” on the crucial papal text inscribed in giant letters around the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

Even transposed down a step, however, Victoria’s “Missa O quam gloriosum,” for four voices, does not sit quite right for counter­tenor Geoffrey Williams. It is complemented by Victoria’s and Palestrina’s disparate settings of the antiphon “Gaudent in coelis,” written for the feasts of multiple martyrs; the ensemble gives long-breathed drive to the ecstatic, overlapping repetitions of the words “exultant sine fine,” as the martyrs rejoice ceaselessly in heaven.

The disc ends with a Palestrina classic, the motet “Sicut cervus.” The balanced, rarefied sound of this recording, captured in St. Cecilia Cathedral in Omaha, is another reminder of the rewards that can come from meeting older music on its own terms.

SEE ALSO:
Gabriele d'Annunzio, Un sogno d'una mattina primavera

Chantry's Palestrina Christmas

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Palestrina, Missa Benedicta es, Tallis Scholars (1996)

Ah, it is December again, and the sounds of Christmas are all around us: the rhymed Latin poetry, the theological explications of the mystery of the Virgin Birth, the Propers of the Dies natalis Christi, the complex six-voice polyphony. At least these were the sounds of the season at the Palestrina Christmas concert presented by Chantry on Saturday night, at the church of St. Mary Mother of God in Chinatown. It was my kind of Christmas concert and an easy recommendation for my December concert picks.

The centerpiece of the program was the Missa Benedicta es, a relatively early Mass setting by Palestrina, completed at some point before 1562 (see this essay on the subject by Peter Philips), when the composer was in his 30s and working as choirmaster at either the basilica of St. John Lateran or Santa Maria Maggiore. Palestrina based this Mass, using the Renaissance imitation technique, on the six-voice motet Benedicta es, caelorum regina by Josquin Des Prez, who had been a member of the papal choir in Rome in the 1490s. Josquin's motet is based in turn on the sequence melody setting that text, proper to feasts of the Virgin Mary. It is a sublime example of the medieval and Renaissance concept of creativity, building on the achievements of older generations, by which Gregorian chant was elaborated into early polyphony and later polyphony elaborated from early polyphony. It is also a historically minded gesture by Palestrina, since the plainchant incorporated into Josquin's motet -- heard in the distinctive long notes of the opening measures, transferred distinctively into the opening of Palestrina's Mass movements -- was one of the sequences removed from the Catholic liturgy by the Council of Trent around this time. The ghostly presence of deleted music is a pleasing touch.

Chantry's performance of the Josquin motet and the Palestrina Mass, reconfigured by transposition for a group of twelve singers, a mixture of men and women, was full-throated in style. In that respect it is more or less similar in conception to the more gorgeous recording by the Tallis Scholars, made with about the same number of voices (in that recording, Peter Phillips moved the key of Josquin's motet up a major third from its original notation). Transposition moves the alto parts into a range more comfortable for women, but it also makes the tenor and soprano parts very high. Music director David Taylor's choices of tempo, often fast, and dynamic shaping, making for some thrilling crescendos, just occasionally put too much stress on the high voices, which stuck out of the texture uncomfortably. Aside from one slip in the bass in the Gloria ("tu solus dominus") and some unpleasantly exposed tenor lines, it was a pleasing performance, beautifully in tune, with clean ensemble and nicely sculpted dynamic shapes (if perhaps just a bit too much of the loud side of the spectrum).

As with so many polyphonic settings of the Ordinary, the Sanctus movement is the most beautiful, with its reduction of textures (matching a similar gesture by Josquin in the secunda pars of the motet) -- unfortunately a movement that is often not sung, even when such Masses are performed in the modern liturgy. The Mass was broken up by some seasonally appropriate motets, including the stellar six-voice motet O magnum mysterium, with its mysterious opening measures (all major chords and interesting modal shifts) and angelic explosion of joy ("collaudantes dominum"). The two double-choir motets O admirabile commercium and Hodie Christus natus est were less effective, perhaps because the two choirs were physically divided, creating more problems of intonation and blend. The latter motet, however, with its infectious interpolation of shouts of "Noe" (Noel), is irresistible, one of those rare moments where even the papal choir could get away with singing words that were decidedly not liturgically proper.

This concert will repeat this weekend (December 15, 8 pm), at St. Bernadette's in Silver Spring.

St. Olaf Choir Centennial Tour

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Monday evening the St. Olaf College Choir (Northfield, Minn.), conducted by Anton Armstrong, graced the stage of the Music Center at Strathmore, performing for a capacity audience. Swaying and singing from memory for their two-and-a-half-hour program, holding hands and dressed in purple velvet robes hemmed a strict distance from the ground, the St. Olaf Choir’s religious program (all but two pieces) delivered. The effortless breath support and impeccable, shimmering tuning of this ensemble of seventy-five young singers were remarkable. The combination of refined diction, uniform vowels, relaxed vocal production, and exceptional direction produced profound musical results, starting with the warm, glistening sound and long lines of Palestrina’s Sicut Cervus.

A small instrumental ensemble joined the choir for Bach’s motet for double choir Singet dem Herrn, which actually might have had more excitement without the instrumentalists. Whatever German and important musical lines obscured due to a rather brisk tempo in the first movement were made up for by a delicate second movement and a balanced and clear third movement. Unfortunately, the quick notes of the fugue prior to the Halleluja created somewhat obnoxiously predictable pointillist impressions instead of creative linear shapes.

The program comprised a number of works that at times seemed chosen, or were even written with the primary aim, to showcase the St. Olaf Choir’s wonderful sound, leaving musical goals second. The choir was most challenged and musically impressive in the premiere of the mystical Ave Rosa, by René Clausen (St. Olaf, '74), well sustained by the low basses who often kept a full sound after the rest of the choir would taper a phrase, and Kenneth Leighton’s A Hymn of the Nativity, which bustles in exciting complexity at the lines “Thee, meek Majesty, soft King of simple graces and sweet loves.”

The choir seemed less challenged by works that might not suit universal taste, particularly those by the three previous St. Olaf Choir conductors, F. Melius Christiansen (1912-43), Olaf Christiansen (1941-68), and Kenneth Jennings (1968-90). Additionally, the Minnesotans humorously fumbled the pronunciation of Moses Hogan’s roof-raiser My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord by clumsily singing over and over: “Mah souls been ancherrrd...” At least they got the “mah” part right. The work dramatically built in tempo, volume, and excitement with their biggest sound always adding resonance with a trace of neither harshness nor letting one’s hair down.

After introducing the St. Olaf College president and the Norwegian Ambassador (the college was founded by Norwegian pastors and farmers in 1874), Armstrong gave uplifting remarks about music and its role in the world. Cleverly, he mentioned that he “wished [he] could get the members of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government in a choir, so they could work in harmony.”

The St. Olaf Choir’s Centennial Tour continues in Grand Rapids (Mich.), Urbana (Ill.), Chicago, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis, and then back home to Northfield on February 13.

Stile Antico in Washington Debut

Read my review published today in the Style section of the Washington Post:

Charles T. Downey, British vocal ensemble Stile Antico makes stunning Washington debut
Washington Post, April 4, 2011

Song of Songs, Stile Antico [REVIEW]

In this age of recording, when an increasing number of people’s main experience of music is through earbuds, it is important to be reminded of the imperfections — thrilling if occasionally vexing — of live performance. This was true of the stunning concert by the young English choir Stile Antico on Saturday night, hosted in their Washington debut by the Folger Consort at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation on Capitol Hill.

The dry acoustic of this venue, with not enough stone to create a space for sound to hang in the air, was not ideal for a program of unaccompanied Renaissance polyphony. It exposed some deficiencies that can be remedied through multiple takes in the recording process, such as occasional non-unified attacks, minor tuning discrepancies or one early entrance. These did nothing to detract from the enjoyment of the group’s crystalline sound, balanced and rarefied in many different configurations down to one-on-a-part arrangements, if slightly treble-heavy when all 12 singers were at full volume. [Continue reading]

Chant and Polyphony from Song of Songs
Stile Antico
Presented by the Folger Consort
Lutheran Church of the Reformation

Nordic Lamentations

Lamentations (Victoria, Gesualdo, Palestrina, White), Nordic Voices (released on September 29, 2009) Chandos CHAN 0763 | 68'30" Hear some excerpts

The outstanding vocal ensemble Nordic Voices was another discovery for me this year, at a concert reviewed for the Washington Post last month. Although that program focused on music by contemporary Norwegian composers, the group's recent CD, a compilation of 16th-century settings of the Lamentations (and other texts for Holy Week), has introduced me to the sextet's fine interpretations of Renaissance polyphony. The devastating text of the Lamentations is a recurring topic in these pages: in the Roman Catholic Divine Office, Jeremiah's anguished mourning for the destruction of Jerusalem was sung during the Triduum as an expression of the Church's loss at the death of Jesus. (In a semi-blasphemous way, Dante used the same imagery to describe his loss at the death of Beatrice.)

Rather than focusing on a complete setting of these many texts by a single composer (we have written about such sets by Tallis, Palestrina, Victoria, and others), this disc brings together polyphony of varying levels of intensity by four rather different composers -- Victoria, Palestrina, Robert White, and Gesualdo. Rather than focusing on the liturgical background, Nordic Voices approaches the texts in terms of modern warfare and its tragic losses: the photo featured on the cover, showing a singed shoe amid blasted rubble, was taken by a member of the U.S. Air Force near a Green Zone checkpoint in Baghdad. In the liner notes, Frank Havrøy draws comparisons between the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and modern horrors like the Holocaust, acts of terrorism, and wars. (The group has announced that a portion of their profits from the recording have been donated to UNICEF, an appropriate reaction to the verses about becoming orphans or fatherless.)

The singing is top-notch, with six voices balanced and harmonious. The settings by Victoria and Palestrina are everything one would expect of those composers, the musical equivalent in many ways of the symmetry and purity of Renaissance neoclassical architecture. It is the other selections that surprise, especially a six-part selection by Robert White (c. 1538-1574) -- not this five-part setting, but a reconstruction of the incomplete six-part setting -- in the, by this point, archaic and dense style of earlier composers like Taverner. Not surprisingly, two pieces by Gesualdo have the most exotic sounds, both examples of the composer's experimentation with distant chromatic relations. In Tristis est anima mea, there are lots of chromatic mediant progressions (E major to C major, for example), with a voice suspended through the chord changes, never quite resolving to a consonance, creating a series of dissonant chords. This expressive style is a perfect match for the texts of Holy Week.

Christmas Addendum: Palestrina Masses

Palestrina, Masses and Motets, Choir of King's College, Cambridge, P. Ledger, D. Willcocks EMI Classics 50999 2 17655 2 0 ☆☆

EMI missed quite an opportunity by not packaging this re-release as a Christmas disc. Among these classic recordings, made at King's College in Cambridge in the 1970s and brought together here in digitally remastered versions, are the motet Hodie Christus natus est and the Christmas Day Mass for double choir based on that piece, as well as the motets Canite tuba (Fourth Sunday of Advent), Ave Maria (and the late-period Missa Ave Maria), and O magnum mysterium and Tui sunt caeli (Christmas). Add to those works, conducted by Philip Ledger, two legendary recordings by Ledger's predecessor at King's, David Willcocks, of the Missa Papae Marcelli and the ever-popular Missa brevis.

Digital remastering cannot hide the more drab and moldy aspects of these performances, the over-dominant, occasionally shrill boy treble sound, miked so closely, and the sometimes embarrassing warble of overexcited adult male voices. The predominant musical quality is one of almost mannered calm, the result of an overly "Cecilian" reverence for the purity of the Palestrina choral aesthetic. Tempi tend toward the gently arching, with the exception of some soupy rallentandi at conclusions. The chant incipits are among the dullest performances of chant ever to reach my ears, sung like ill-understood archeological specimens rather than as living music of any interest. One could nitpick more, but when all is said and done, it gave me considerable pleasure to hear these performances again, as a relic of their time.

Incredibly, the Ave Maria and Hodie Christus Masses have not been widely recorded at all, but that is true of almost all of the over 100 (!) settings of the Ordinary that Palestrina composed. For musical quality alone, you are much better off with the more recent and superior recordings from the illustrious program of Westminster Cathedral -- Missa Ave Maria under James O'Donnell and Missa Hodie Christus natus est under Martin Baker -- both available as rather expensive imports from Hyperion. (The latter is a collection of works for Advent and Christmas and, although pricey, would make an excellent Christmas gift for the musically savvy friend on your list.) Still, at $13 for over two hours of Palestrina goodness, this 2-CD set recommends itself.

150'36"

Canticum Canticorum

Cambridge, King's College, MS 19, f. 12v (from St. Alban's, 12th century), verse 1 of the Song of Songs, image scanned by Prof. E. Ann Matter

The Song of Songs is one of the most beautiful and most problematic books of the Bible. There are countless commentaries on it, from the patristic age to our own time. I studied many of them while researching some chant settings of the Song of Songs, for a paper I read at the Kalamazoo medieval studies meeting -- "Let Him Kiss Me with the Kiss of His Mouth: Late Votive Antiphons in Honor of the Virgin Mary," 31st International Congress on Medieval Studies (Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan), 9 May 1996. The oldest known liturgical use of these amorous texts, interpreted allegorically by Christian theologians as the love between the soul and God or between the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit, goes back to the Roman schola cantorum. A few verses, found in the oldest surviving manuscripts of Gregorian chant, were used for liturgies dedicated to Mary or found in the Common of Virgins. The pieces that I studied were part of the flowering of Marian devotion in the 12th and 13th centuries, florid new antiphons found in later medieval manuscripts, sometimes without specific liturgical assignment.

In this historical context, I see no reason to suspect that Giovanni da Palestrina's polyphonic motet cycle drawn from the Song of Songs is somehow secretly a secular work. In this new recording's liner notes, Vincenzo Soravia (translation by Susan Marie Praeder) only suggests this by mentioning that Palestrina had married his second wife in 1581, after surviving a tragic period in his life in the previous decade. For his fourth book of published motets (Motettorum liber quartus ex Canticis canticorum, 1583-84), Palestrina selected just under half of the book's verses, arranged into 29 motets, set to music of almost uniform length (on this recording, all of the tracks last around two minutes). Indeed, in his dedication of the publication, addressed to Pope Gregory XIII, Palestrina publicly regretted that he had in his youth devoted a small part of his creative energy to the composition of secular madrigals.

Available at Amazon: Giovanni da Palestrina, Canticum Canticorum, Capella Dvcale Venetia, Livio Picotti (released on June 20, 2006)

This is hardly the first recording of Palestrina's cycle: complete versions are available from, among others, Pro Cantione Antiqua (Hyperion), the Ensemble William Byrd (Jade), the Cambridge Singers (Collegium), and best of all, the Hilliard Ensemble (EMI, paired with the sacred madrigal cycle Priego alla Beata Vergine). The singing on this new recording from Cpo is lovely, if not quite up to the quality of the Hilliard Ensemble. There are minor intonation problems in the treble voices (track 13, in particular), and soprano Ulrike Wurdak's sound is occasionally slightly discolored. The sound quality is quite good, capturing something of the reverent resonance of its locale, the abbey church of Sant'Antimo in Montalcino, near Siena. At various points, we can hear a player's chair creaking. This is music intended for the choir, so we hear it as if we are among them.

What distinguishes this new recording is the performance practice. Director Livio Picotti had the six singers of his Capella Dvcale Venetia -- five men and one woman, who are in various arrangements, since all of these motets are for five voices -- sing one on a part, accompanied by an improvised basso continuo, realized by two players, on a lute (or theorbo) and an organ. This invented part is derived from Palestrina's bass line: when the composer reduces the texture to only upper voices, it disappears. The instrumental part is discreetly rendered, never obtrusive, a gentle support for the voices. We know that Victoria actually composed some continuo parts for his polyphonic works, but mostly in the last ten or fifteen years of his life, after Palestrina was dead. I am not aware that Palestrina himself ever actually used the continuo directly (which does not mean there may not be evidence of it), but it makes a lovely sound in this unusual performance. Picotti's intention may have been to make Palestrina's sacred music sound more like the vocal chamber music of the stile moderno. It is an experiment well worth hearing.

cpo 777 142-2

Hanging Up Their Instruments

After twenty years, conductor Michael Harrison is disbanding his Palestrina Choir, a group devoted to bringing Palestrina and other early music to Washington. I am no Caecilian, but I am generally disgusted that the Catholic Church, in particular in the United States, has abandoned its musical heritage. Hearing this group sing its favorite pieces by their namesake, in the sanctuary of St. Matthew's Cathedral last night, only reinforced this feeling. Here was 70 minutes of music, High Renaissance polyphony in four and sometimes five parts, by which the world's dirtiness could be cleansed.

Giovanni da Palestrina (c.1526-1594) was the master of the polyphonic Mass, credited -- apocryphally -- with saving polyphonic music from the brutal reforms of the Council of Trent through the composition of his Mass setting named for Pope Marcellus II (Missa Papae Marcelli). In all, he composed over 100 polyphonic settings of the Latin Ordinary, of all styles, modes, and lengths, based on his own motets and those of others, secular songs, plainchant, and newly composed material. If the Palestrina Choir had performed one new Palestrina Mass setting at each concert, at the rate of four concerts per season, it still would have taken them longer than 20 years to get through them all. As it was, the group claims to have performed 23 of the Palestrina Masses, about a fifth of the corpus, and for their final program, they chose their favorite one, the widely known Missa Brevis (from the third book of Masses, 1570) to conclude the concert, preceded by seven of the early Palestrina motets (from the first Motecta publication in 1563) and two of the masterful middle ones (from the second motet collection in 1581).

Palestrina Choir on Ionarts: Jens F. Laurson, Palestrina Choir (October 22, 2004) Charles T. Downey, Early Music Festival: Palestrina Choir (June 14, 2005)

The opening motet, Dies sanctificatus, was a lovely start, especially the joyous triple-meter section on the words "Haec dies quam fecit Dominus." This motet is based on a responsory text, usually found in its original chant form in the Matins service on Circumcision (January 1) or Epiphany (January 6). That triple-meter section corresponds to the responsory verse, the non-Gregorian form of the verse found almost exclusively in southern Italy. (Palestrina, of course, knew the Roman form of the chant from his boy chorister training in Santa Maria Maggiore.) Strictly speaking, it requires the repetendum section of the respond ("Quia hodie descendit lux magna in terris") to be repeated after the verse. (Palestrina later made an imitation Mass based on this, his own motet.) The choir performed the second motet, Exaudi domine preces servi tui (Daniel 9:18, used several times liturgically as an Introit and Communion psalm), in a hushed, Lenten tone. A responsory from the Matins service for St. Andrew's Day (November 30) -- Doctor bonus et amicus Dei, without its verse -- was next, performed with its climactic point at the first words uttered by St. Andrew as he saw the cross where he would be martyred in Christ's service, "Salve, Crux" (Hail, O Cross).

The choir's sound, although strong and lovely, did not have quite the same purity I so enjoyed last summer. The soprano and alto sections were as fine as one could hope (even though the altos were the only section to have three singers instead of four). The male singing was less felicitous, although there were nice moments, with the basses outperforming the tenors. The latter were occasionally weak in exposed moments and slightly tremulous. Salvator mundi was the least pleasing work on the first half, with an uncertain opening in the tenor part and some unexpected intonation problems. The loveliest motet was the calm, gentle Tu es pastor ovium (again a responsory, without its verse, for St. Peter and Paul's Day, June 29). It opened with the purest opening in soprano and alto parts and never rose above a sweet murmur. The first half closed with one of Palestrina's four settings of the Corpus Christi sequence Lauda Sion salvatorem. Palestrina created polyphonic settings of the first and final pairs of verses, in which motifs of the chant melody can be heard. Presumably, you are intended to sing the intervening verses in the chant original.

Ego sum panis vivus (a late medieval responsory from the office for Corpus Christi) is a familiar motet that I have sung many times, but never with the interesting musica ficta choices made here by the Palestrina Choir. The choir sounded at their absolute best in the intense Super flumina Babilonis (an offertory text used in Lent), in spite of the intruding sounds of a cell phone ringing and a watch alarm beeping. (One of these days, I will throw my shoe at a person who is responsible for this sort of faux pas.) As I mentioned previously, in the context of Verdi's Nabucco of all things, the psalm from which this text is drawn, a reference to the suffering of the Jews enslaved in Babylon, has a lot of significance for musicians. For the Palestrina Choir, the final section of this motet -- "Suspendimus organa nostra" (we hung up our instruments), punningly rife with suspensions -- becomes an expression of the end of the choir itself, ready literally to hang up their instruments ("organa" could even be translated as "polyphonic compositions," as in organum).

Missa Brevis is an uncharacteristically short Mass for Palestrina (the only one of this title among his works). Its compression comes especially in the Gloria and Credo sections, where the long texts are set simply, almost perfunctorily. The only expansive moment Palestrina allows himself in the Credo is the final Amen. Conductor Michael Harrison exaggerated this sense of Gebrauchtmusik, music that stands out more for its functionality than its beauty, by taking both long movements in an animated tempo. This was balanced in this beautiful performance by more reflective movements, like the gorgeous soprano roulades in the Sanctus and, of course, the 5-part final Agnus Dei, where the other parts were audibly subservient to the lovely twin soprano parts. For an encore, we had the motet that many missed on the program, the exquisite Sicut cervus desiderat ad fontes aquarum, whose text comes from the Tract for the Mass of Holy Saturday. In particular, it was associated with the blessing of the font, to be used that night during the Easter Vigil for baptizing the catechumens. The image of the deer panting for a running stream in this context is the desire of the converted for baptism.

You will be able to hear this program and the Palestrina Choir only two more times: this evening (May 20, 8:15 pm) at St. Rita’s Catholic Church (3815 Russell Road) in Alexandria and, as part of the Washington Early Music Festival, on June 11 at 8 pm, at St. Columba's Episcopal Church (4201 Albemarle Street NW).

Folger Consort, Palestrina and Monteverdi

Also on Ionarts: Baroque Christmas with the Folger Consort (December 23, 2005) Opera Lafayette at La Maison Française (December 19, 2005) Folger Consort, Isaac and Josquin (October 8, 2005)

Washington National Cathedral is a beautiful place to hear a concert, especially when early music is involved, so it was no surprise that the Folger Consort's latest program drew a nearly full audience to this vast space. From my perch by one of the crossing piers, the sound was very good but never particularly powerful, which may have made things hard to hear from the general seating area. The Folger Consort hosted a dream team of six singers, five of whom sang together for many of the evening's selections, because the pairing of composers this time combined two giants of vocal music, Palestrina and Monteverdi. This combination is innately unfair to the former, who although supremely influential on the traditions of contrapuntal composition, produced mostly sacred music in a fairly uniform style. Monteverdi, having composed sacred music on par with Palestrina's as well as genre-transforming examples of madrigals and operas, clearly has the upper hand, although Palestrina is the undisputed master of the Mass. What the program shows is the distinction between the highest achievement of the Renaissance, the prima prattica, and the new sound of the Baroque period, the secunda prattica. The two composers' lives actually overlap chronologically, but their respective, mature musical styles are radically different.

The program began with a tribute to recorder player Scott Reiss, whose death last month shocked the Washington music scene. It was an instrumental performance of a 14th-century Benedicamus Domino setting that Reiss "loved and performed with us many times," according to the Folger Consort's program. Next were three 5-voice motets from Palestrina's Motettorum liber quartus ex Canticis canticorum -- Surge amica mea, Quam pulchra es, and Descendi in hortum meum -- published in Rome in 1583 or 1584. The Song of Songs is a love poem interpreted by Christian theologians in allegorical ways. I imagine that the group chose these pieces because they are different, in their almost secular nature, from the rest of Palestrina's work. I was a little disappointed that the group did not seize this opportunity to perform some of Palestrina's secular madrigals -- little known and few in number -- as a conservative comparison to the daring madrigals of Monteverdi. The group performed the Palestrina pieces without instruments and one on a part. A collection of solo singers does not necessarily make an ensemble, but this group had a rather good balance. Soprano Rosa Lamoreaux's restraint on the highest part was a model. This set was rounded out with two instrumental pieces in two parts by Orlando di Lasso.

The best Palestrina selections were the Mass excerpts at the end of the first half, beginning with the Sanctus movement from the earlier of Palestrina's two Ordinary settings based on the medieval tune L'Homme armé, from the fourth book of Masses (à 5, 1570), of an astounding thirteen books. There is a great moment at the end of the Hosanna part of this movement, where the end of the cantus firmus ("On a fait partout crier, / Que chascun se viengne armer / D'un haubregon de fer"), the highest and most identifiable part of the tune, is set quite audibly to the words "Hosanna in excelsis." The Kyrie movement of the 6-voice Missa Papae Marcelli -- perhaps Palestrina's most famous composition because of its alleged and probably legendary role in saving polyphony as an approved form of composition at the Council of Trent -- was exquisitely performed, with tenor Philip Cave who finally joined the group. The Gloria got off to a rough start, due to a disagreement about the tempo, but Rosa Lamoreaux's directional nods righted the performance.

Probably to make a good match with the Palestrina first half, the group focused largely on Monteverdi's sacred music in the second half. The Pianto della Madonna is from the late collection Selva morale e spirituale, from 1641, and is a contrafactum -- in the voice of Mary addressed to Jesus -- of the famous lament of Arianna, the only part of his early opera Arianna to survive. Countertenor Drew Minter negotiated the dramatic monodic style fairly well, although his handling of the Latin was at times either unclear or mistaken. As far as the quality of the voice, it is cool and accurate, but I would have preferred a feminine, more maternal sound for this piece. The text reminded me somewhat of another Marian monologue, Antonia Bembo's solo cantata spirituale, Per il Natale: In braccio di Maria, performed by the Folger Consort at their last concert.

The highlights of the Monteverdi selections included, first and foremost, the solo motet Laudate dominum omnes gentes (not the Laudate dominum in sanctis ejus text listed incorrectly in the program) in an excellent performance by bass-baritone François Loup. After largely controlling his sound while singing with the ensemble, here Loup -- accompanied only by Webb Wiggins on the organ (who had a less satisfying solo himself, on a Claudio Merulo toccata that lacked fluidity) -- was able to sing in his full, velvety voice, extending down to a very low note (perhaps D?) for the conclusion. The duet of Rosa Lamoreaux and Barbara Hollinshead, Cantate Domino canticum novum (à 2, with text continuing "cantate et benedicite nomini ejus: quia mirabilia fecit," again not what was printed in the program), was also well performed. This piece ends with an extended section on the words "mirabilia fecit" (wondrous things he has done), featuring long, rapturous vocal lines. The concluding piece, the 6-voice Beatus vir qui timet Dominum was a delight, with great contributions from all six singers and all players.

Other Reviews: Cecelia Porter, Folger, Deft and Dulcet (Washington Post, January 9)

The guest artists were all in good form, although tenor Robert Petillo sometimes disappeared behind the other voices or instruments when he sang alone. Violinist David Douglass played well, including on his own set of divisions to the tune of Susanne ung jour (presented alongside those of Bassano and Dalla Casa). However, he did not impress with the same accuracy as Tim Haig at the Consort's last concert or the same flair as Ryan Brown with Opera Lafayette. The best instrumental pieces were Salamone Rossi's Sonata sopra la Bergamasca, a chaconne-type piece, and the two sonatas by Giovanni Battista Fontana. I enjoyed the two recercadas by Diego Ortiz more when I heard them played by the Baltimore Consort last summer. Christopher Kendall's contributions on lute and theorbo seemed more solid than the playing of Robert Eisenstein, which was occasionally a little rocky, most notably when he played second violin. This is one of the risks of playing several instruments, I suppose, rather than specializing in one.

The Folger Consort will return to the National Cathedral to repeat this program this evening, January 7, at 8 pm. Tickets are $27 to $40. It will be worth your time.