Briefly Noted: In a Strange Land

In a Strange Land: Elizabethan Composers in Exile, Stile Antico (released on January 11, 2019) Harmonia Mundi HMM902266 | 71'10"

We have been following the British choir Stile Antico for over a decade at Ionarts. They are the inheritors of the work of the Tallis Scholars among the younger generation of early music singers, and each CD they release, especially of music from the English Renaissance, has been exquisite. Their latest disc is no exception, in pieces by William Byrd, Peter Phillips, and Robert White. The theme of this program is especially poignant: it brings together composers who found themselves alienated, either in foreign lands (John Dowland, Peter Phillips, Richard Dering) or as Catholics in Protestant England (William Byrd, Robert White).

The choir goes somewhat outside its comfort zone with the affecting part-song arrangements of lute songs by Dowland, Flow, My Tears and In this trembling shadow cast. The results are impeccably balanced homophony, with crunchy cross-relations underscoring emotional peaks. The same is true of a modern piece, The Phoenix and the Turtle by Huw Watkins, premiered by Stile Antico in 2014 and set to an eccentric text possibly revealing the Catholic sympathies of one William Shakespeare. In that context we must place the impassioned dissonances of Bird's ultra-personal motet Tristitia et anxietas or of Quomodo cantabimus, the same composer's musical response to Philippe de Monte's motet Super flumina Babylonis, both about people marooned among non-believers oppressing them.

Twelve Days of Christmas: Stile Antico's Wondrous Mystery

A Wondrous Mystery: Renaissance Music for Christmas (Praetorius, Clemens non Papa, Jacob Handl), Stile Antico (released on October 9, 2015) HMU807575 | 72'57"

The British choir Stile Antico has earned a spot in my Best of 2015 round-up, not the first time one of their concerts has been singled out in that way. Their new disc is devoted to Christmas music, perfect for your listening through January 6, by Renaissance composers from the Netherlands and farther east. The program is anchored on the motet Pastores quidnam vidistis, by Clemens non Papa, and the setting of the Ordinary of the Mass he derived from it. The group sounds the best in these selections, in five parts of intricately woven counterpoint, while in the more homespun pieces, like some of the Praetorius carol arrangements, individual voices are revealed in less pleasant ways.

Hieronymous Praetorius's delightful setting of the Magnificat is performed here as the prelude to the publication instructs, interpolating the accompanying Christmas carol arrangements (all in same double-choir format) between the verses. This is a practice not uncommon in German-speaking countries, a reminder of the popular nature of the feast of Christmas. The key they sing in for this piece puts the sopranos extremely high; although the intonation is fine, the tone sounds perilous.

In the opening Michael Praetorius piece, Ein Kind geborn in Bethlehem, the effect of the endless verses is mitigated by a pleasing cumulative effect of voices being added, so that it really rollicks by the end, quite dance-like. The two best motet discoveries are by Slovene composer Jacob Handl, beginning with Canite tuba, for five lower voices, which is full of trumpet-like fanfare motifs and features the group's male singers beautifully. The same composer's Mirabile mysterium, which gives its title (translated into English) to this disc, is filled with strange chromatic shifts one associates more with the style of Gesualdo, the piling up of triads from distantly related keys that musicologist Edward Lowinsky identified as "triadic atonality" in the Prophetiae Sibyllarum of Lassus, for example.

Stile Antico @ Ascension and St. Agnes

From the Imperial Court: Music for the House of Hapsburg, Stile Antico (Harmonia Mundi, 2014) [Review]

Charles T. Downey, Sounds from olden Europe return to Washington
Washington Post, March 2

Stile Antico, the 12-voice English choir specializing in Renaissance polyphony, will celebrate its 10th anniversary this summer. This relatively young group has given three concerts in Washington since 2011, all met with acclaim from this reviewer. The latest, on Wednesday night at the Church of the Ascension and St. Agnes, was in an acoustic closer to the vaulted stone churches for which this austere music was intended.

The group has recorded most of the music in this concert on its most recent disc, devoted to pieces made for the Hapsburg imperial court... [Continue reading]

Stile Antico
Church of the Ascension and St. Agnes

PREVIOUSLY:
2013 | 2011

Briefly Noted: Latest from Stile Antico

The Phoenix Rising, Stile Antico (released on August 13, 2013) HMU 807582 | 74'18" From the Imperial Court: Music for the House of Hapsburg, Stile Antico (released on September 9, 2014) HMU 807595 | 71'07"

British choir Stile Antico, founded in 2001, has become the young vanguard for Renaissance polyphony in my ears, alongside the more established Tallis Scholars. Their recordings and their live performances -- in Washington, in 2011 and 2013 -- have both justified this admiration. Both of their most recent discs show perhaps a minor few cracks in the foundation (some tremulous sounds in the sopranos, some wobbles here and there, some intonation infelicities) but are on the whole rewarding listening.

Last year's The Phoenix Rising was offered in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Carnegie UK Trust, which funded the publication of the Denkmäler, that is, monumental edition, Tudor Church Music. For many composers featured on the disc -- Byrd, Gibbons, Morley, Tallis, Taverner, all so beautifully recorded by Stile Antico over the years -- TCM was the first edition in modern notation available to choral singers, sparking the Renaissance of English Renaissance church music. Byrd's Mass for Five Voices, with its smoldering Agnus Dei, provides the foundation for a selection of motets, including gorgeous renditions of Byrd's evergreen Ave verum corpus and Robert White's extraordinary alternatim Compline hymn Christe qui lux es et dies.

From the Imperial Court, set to be released next month, brings together the music of composers in the employ of Maximilian I and other Hapsburg emperors, including Josquin Desprez, Heinrich Isaac, Pierre de la Rue, Ludwig Senfl, Thomas Crecquillon, and others. The works chosen reveal some intriguing historical moments in the Hapsburg family (these are largely pieces that cannot be sung in a liturgical context), like Isaac's Virgo prudentissima (composed for the Reichstag in 1507, proclaiming Maximilian I as Holy Roman Emperor, with text and music making a nifty parallel between the new words and the cantus firmus at the words "electa ut sol") and Crecquillon's Andreas Christi famulus (probably for a meeting of the Order of the Golden Fleece, whose patron was St. Andrew). There are delightful discoveries to be made, too, including Gombert's six-voice augmentation of Josquin's Mille regretz (alongside the original) and Clemens non Papa's Carole magnus eras.

Stile Antico @ LoC

Charles T. Downey, Stile Antico brings out beauty of early music
Washington Post, April 19, 2013

Passion and Resurrection, Stile Antico (Harmonia Mundi, 2012) [Other recordings]

Sometimes the best way to champion early music is to perform it as beautifully as possible and forget about how it might have been performed when it was composed. This was exactly what the English chamber choir Stile Antico did, once again, in its exquisite concert Wednesday night at the Library of Congress, a venue with more suitable acoustics for unaccompanied Renaissance polyphony than the choir had for its Washington debut two years ago.
[Continue reading]

Stile Antico
Treasures of the Renaissance
Library of Congress

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

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

Stile Antico: What Sweeter Music Can We Bring?

Puer Natus Est: Tudor Music for Advent and Christmas, Stile Antico (released on October 12, 2010) HMU 807517 | 78'09" Other Christmas Recommendations: The Cherry Tree, Anonymous 4

Around this time of the year we make some recommendations of the best CDs we have heard and reviewed in the previous year, which might make good gifts to the musically discriminating people in your life. For discs of Christmas music, we are unlikely to recommend anything too obvious or full of chestnuts, but compilations of unusual Christmas music, performed beautifully, do sometimes make the cut. Having already enjoyed the recordings of this relatively new English choir, Stile Antico -- offerings of John Sheppard, Song of Songs settings, Tallis and Bird, and other Tudor polyphony -- we were dismayed that the group was in Washington last month, to perform for a radio program at NPR, without having a public concert arranged anywhere.

The group's latest offering certainly satisfies our requirements for a Christmas CD easy to recommend: gorgeous motets (mostly) for Advent and Christmas by Tallis, Byrd, Taverner, Sheppard, and White, all grouped around the three surviving movements of Thomas Tallis's seven-voice Mass on the Christmas introit Puer natus est (in a reconstruction by Sally Dunkley). The Agnus Dei of this rather striking Mass setting is the centerpiece of this recording, especially the circling invocations for peace in the Dona nobis pacem, as the music seems caught up in an ecstatic cycle (Harry Christophers also recorded this movement with The Sixteen a few years ago). Perhaps my ear is becoming more critical of the group's sound with each new recording, but some of the tracks on this disc are the least polished heard from them yet -- still very good but with more infelicities of intonation and individual tone (quivering or unstable support, nasality or other unpleasantness) that stick out here and there, most notably in Taverner's Audivi vocem de caelo -- a text actually intended for All Saints Day (November 1). A few quibbles aside, the sound in general is still very beautiful (hear some excerpts at the group's Web site).

The sopranos, so refined and so consistent, are pushed to the limits in Robert White's otherwise glorious alternatim setting of the Magnificat (not especially meant for Christmas, of course). Some of the problems crop up most in the relatively simple pieces from William Byrd's Gradualia I (1605): Rorate caeli desuper, Tollite portas, and Ave Maria, as if having only four parts causes the group to lose some of its balance, although Ecce virgo concipiet is spotless. With the extensive setting of Verbum caro, Stile Antico shows again its mastery over the dense polyphony of John Sheppard. Even the chant pieces, including a complete performance of the introit that is the cantus firmus of the Tallis Mass, have a more fluid and convincing style of performance than heard on their previous releases. The first piece on the disc just barely makes it into the Christmas season -- Tallis's extraordinary Videte miraculum, for Purification (February 2) -- but it is well worth the detour.

Stile Antico Sings More Sheppard

Sheppard, Media Vita (inter alia), Stile Antico (released on February 9, 2010) Harmonia Mundi HMU 807509 70'16" Online scores: Selected works by John Sheppard

When the young British choral group Stile Antico made their recording debut with Harmonia Mundi, it was with a disc of motets by the two acknowledged masters of English Renaissance polyphony, Tallis and Bird, plus a few selections by Sheppard. They went back for more Byrd and Tallis in their 2008 disc, Heavenly Harmonies, and although I have yet to hear their 2009 release, a collection of motets on texts from Song of Songs by Palestrina, Guerrero, Gombert, Victoria and Lassus, it received lots of awards and critical accolades. The group's latest release returns to the third composer on the debut CD, a composer less known but no less worth knowing. John Sheppard (c. 1515-1558) was a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal at roughly the same time as Tallis, but Sheppard's choral music was never published, circulating in a very limited way in manuscript form. As a result, eventually choirs no longer performed Sheppard's music as Anglican music evolved in style. Even attempts to revive his music in the 20th century ran up against incomplete and confusing sources that made scholarly reconstruction difficult.

Although two competing collected works editions were published, Stile Antico has instead prepared its own performing editions. The overall sound is in keeping with the group's recordings so far, impeccable intonation (startling in the many cross-relations) and blend (the tendency of a bass or two to growl at the bottom of large textures less noticeable here) and especially a clarity of the soprano lines, which are often suspended far above the more densely packed lower lines. The plainchant, remaining more commonly in alternatim arrangement with polyphonic sections in the Sarum use, is performed with somewhat greater vitality in this disc (better in Gaude gaude gaude Maria than in the somewhat overly solemn Te Deum). For Lenten listening one could hardly do better than Sheppard's monumental but austere setting of the Lenten antiphon Media vita (also found in the Office for the Dead, not least in the English translation of the Book of Common Prayer), an immense, complex polyphonic wrapping for the simple chanting of the Nunc dimittis (the three verses, unusual for an antiphon, found here in the version associated only with Sarum books).

Stile Antico's Desire of Heavenly Harmonies

Heavenly Harmonies (music by Tallis and Byrd), Stile Antico (released on March 11, 2008) Harmonia Mundi HMU 807463

The maiden release of the recently formed British choral group Stile Antico, called Music for Compline, was one of my favorite discs of last year. Harmonia Mundi is about to release their second disc, Heavenly Harmonies, 78 minutes of gorgeously sung and recorded Tudor polyphony. It is already highly praised, receiving warm reviews, as well as, soon, the April 2008 Diapason d'Or. The concept combines the two poles of the Tudor period, Protestant and Catholic, with Tallis's simple pieces for Archbishop Parker's rhymed psalter and Byrd's impassioned polyphony for the Latin Mass (motets from Cantiones sacrae and some of the propers for the Mass of Pentecost from Gradualia). Musically, Byrd wins the compositional contest hands down, but his teacher's homophonic settings of the English rhymed psalms can be devastatingly effective (Why fum'th in fight? and Expend, O Lord, my plaint of word are two good examples).

The disc presents the pieces in alternation, which provides the opportunity to compare the two styles directly. (It would be interesting to compare Latin motets that set the same psalm text as corresponding rhymed psalm settings, but this may not even be possible.) Tallis has the more modal vocabulary, with horizontally conceived lines often clashing vertically in cross-relations, sometimes to bizarre harmonic effect (as in God grant with grace). Byrd's polyphonic style is so much less reserved than Palestrina, for example, with a more dramatic use of angular writing. Stile Antico treats some of the motets in an almost madrigalistic way, choosing fast tempi (Vigilate, nescitis enim and Exsurge, Domine, for example) that make the vocal lines pop off the page in a more virtuosic way than you might associate with this music.

In the insightful liner notes, Matthew O'Donovan (one of the group's basses) points out that many of the Latin texts Byrd chose for his motets reflect the propagandistic spirit of Catholics in hiding. In line with that observation, the secunda pars of Ne irascaris, Domine is sung here with the whispered intensity of the faithful seeing the holy city laid waste. The contextualization of the music, connecting each piece with its Biblical source and/or liturgical function, is historically important. The only text that is not identified in the booklet is one of the most interesting, Tribulationes civitatum. It is a responsory from the book of Judith, based not on the Vulgate but on an earlier Vetus Latina translation (studied by my beloved dissertation director, Prof. Ruth Steiner, in an article about the Gregorian responsories based on texts from the Book of Judith -- the Latin texts of the liturgy often bear vestigial traces of ante-Vulgate Latin translations).

Similar reservations about Stile Antico's first recording, minor intonation issues, should also be expressed here. Unusually, there is a growl present in the bass sound in louder passages that prevents some final chords from locking firmly into place. If you already own the Tallis Scholars' excellent recording of all of the Tallis English anthems, there is some overlap here, but the quality of the performances is high enough to justify doubling, and some of the Byrd motets are rare enough in other recordings. Stile Antico is now known outside of Great Britain and will be performing some concerts on the European continent, but not yet in the United States. Their new concert program, a selection of polyphonic settings of the Song of Songs, promises to be worth the wait if it eventually makes it to disc.

Welcome, Stile Antico

Available at Amazon: Music for Compline (Tallis, Byrd, Sheppard), Stile Antico (released January 16, 2007)

This is the first recording from Harmonia Mundi by an up-and-coming British choir called Stile Antico. Following a trend among chamber orchestras, the group performs without a conductor: in the words of their Web profile, they "rehearse and perform as chamber musicians, each contributing artistically to the musical result." The selection of Tudor polyphony and some plainchant is unified by the fact that it was (almost, with a few qualifications) all intended to be sung during Compline, in my opinion, the most symbolically and textually beautiful service of the Divine Office. The close of the day, the Psalms reserved only for the night (4, 90, 133), the Nunc dimittis (Simeon's canticle from Luke, You now send away your servant in peace), the Marian antiphon, and then the stillness of the Great Silence. For a recently formed group composed of such young musicians, this disc is extraordinarily good (you can listen to a few excerpts at their Web site), and it has already won the Diapason d’Or and the Choc du Monde de la Musique.

The CD opens with a piece that is a favorite of many singers who sing a lot of polyphony, John Sheppard's two settings of the Trinity antiphon Libera nos. The composer's style is thick, a dense thicket of contrapuntal layers, with few of the breaks into homophony or less than full textures used to great effect by Palestrina and others. Stile Antico includes five other Sheppard pieces, none of which I had ever heard before. The group tunes the crushing cross-relations (intended dissonant intervals that arise out of contrapuntal interaction) in the Tallis selections with skill. The greatest composer of those featured here, William Byrd, has only three motets, although they are great ones, including the only setting of the Nunc dimittis. Two other minor composers get single selections, including one hymn setting by Robert White and the longest piece on the disc, by far, Hugh Aston's Marian motet Gaude virgo mater Christi. The only slight disappointment is the singing of the plainchant, which is performed by solo voices or smaller groups, sapped of all its vitality by comparison with the linear-minded, full-voiced polyphonic selections.

One could point out a few tuning issues here and there, but this small group has a beautiful and balanced sound. There are 13 singers credited on this recording, and three of the women have the last name Ashby. Sopranos Helen Ashby and Kate Ashby, who happen to be twins, helped found the group while they were students at Cambridge. Their sister Emma Ashby sings in the alto section, and according to the group's Web site, younger sister Laura Ashby is now the third member of the soprano section. With a group this size, one hardly misses the presence of a conductor, and the intimate nature of the music is certainly suited to a close-knit group able to explore the piano side of the dynamic spectrum. This is warmly recommended listening.

Harmonia Mundi HMU 907419

Stile Antico will perform a concert of music by William Byrd at the York Early Music Festival, on July 11. Their next CD, to be called The Desire of Heavenly Harmonies, will combine English hymns by Tallis and Catholic motets by Byrd. It will be released in early 2008.