Tag: Renaissance

Superb song tribute for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, from the resourceful Nota Bene

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

“The Cloud Capp’d Towers”: Shakespeare in the Land of the Long White Cloud

Nota Bene, directed by Peter Walls, with Nigel Collins (the Bard), Fiona McCabe (piano) and Joel Baldwin (guitar); vocal soloists from the choir

Salvation Army Citadel

Saturday, 9 April 2016, 7.30pm

Despite the title of the concert, the song referenced appeared in the printed programme as ‘The Cloud-clapped Towers’. Some of those in Christchurch certainly were, although the tall buildings on the cover of the programme represented Auckland and Wellington.

Joking aside, the programme presented was a marvellous conception by Peter Walls and Jacqueline Coats. Peter Walls has taken over as Nota Bene’s new musical director; he’s a busy man, having just at Easter directed the Tudor Consort in their Good Friday presentation, and travelling frequently to Hamilton to conduct the Opus Orchestra.

As a commemoration of 2016 being the 400th year since Shakespeare’s death, this was a superb tribute; the fanciful idea of Shakespeare dreaming of ‘Terra Australis incognita’ (including New Zealand) was perhaps a little too contrived, and unnecessary. New Zealand composers included in the programme needed no special pleading for their presence.

The many wonderful settings of Shakespeare’s inspiring words, plus dramatic speeches from some of the plays, made a satisfying and rewarding evening of words and music, in the acoustically alive Salvation Army Citadel. The disadvantage of this feature was that it picked up every sound and error.

Vaughan Williams’s marvellous Three Shakespeare Songs were interspersed through the programme: one at the beginning, one later on, and one at the end. The first, ‘Full fathom five’ from The Tempest, was sung from the gallery. There the men sounded rather sepulchral; the tone needed to be produced further forward and they needed the spontaneity of the women’s. The sound changed when the choir came downstairs to sing on the platform, where the men had their backs to the wall. The first speech was from the same play. Nigel Collins was costumed, and sat at first at a desk, complete with quill pen and inkwell; later he stood in various parts of the auditorium to deliver his lines, which he did with expression and understanding, revealing his skill in the actor’s art.

We moved to Othello, and the famous Elizabethan setting of ‘The Willow Song’, sung by Juliet Kennedy with Joel Baldwin accompanying on guitar. It was a pity not to have the originally-advertised Stephen Pickett playing ‘Renaissance lute, theorbo and guitar’, for greater verisimilitude. Juliet Kennedy sang the song attractively, but it was a little strange to have printed ‘Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee’ when the original is ‘his’, and that is what was sung. More words were printed than were actually sung.

Three Shakespeare Choruses by American composer Amy Beach (1867-1944) set words familiar from other composers’ settings. They were for women only and were inventive and very pleasing, involving complex interweaving parts. The third, ‘Through the house give glimmering light’ (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) featured lovely lilting rhythms. This time, more words were sung than were printed. It was good to have almost all the words printed in the programme, but Nota Bene could note well the recent Tudor Consort concert, for which the printed programme had been arranged so that it was unnecessary to turn the pages during the items, thus avoiding noisy rattling.

A speech from A Midsummer Night’s Dream was followed by the choir descending to sing from the platform; firstly three choruses from Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, a semi-opera derived from the afore-mentioned play, the first with soprano soloist Inese Berzina, and all accompanied by Fiona McCabe, stepping out from the choir to play the piano. Unfortunately, the piano was too loud for the soloist, though the choir’s singing was good. The second featured bass soloist John Chote.   His tone was sometimes on the raw side, and he was unable to produce effective tone from the low notes. The choral parts were very fine, and Purcell’s music bloomed beautifully.

The next, unaccompanied, section began with the second of Vaughan Williams’s songs: ‘Over hill, over dale’. It suffered from a poor start, the singers not being together, and appearing unconfident. After a bit, all was well. Following another stirring excerpt, this time from Henry IV, part II, music not setting Shakespeare’s words, but written by musicians who were the bard’s contemporaries, were performed: ‘Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth’, by Byrd and ‘What is our life’ by Gibbons. The former was an intricate piece, sung well, though the bass part was at times too dominant. In the latter, a small group was made up of good voices, but they did not always blend well. When they did, a fine sound was produced.

The men then disappeared, and after a splendid Caliban from Nigel Collins, the women sang Five Shakespeare Songs by David Farquhar. These characterful songs illustrated the bard’s words well, with music that evoked the moods. They were not easy, and very different in nature from the remainder of the concert. The final one, ‘Clown’s Song’ (“When that I was and a little tiny boy”) struck me as difficult to bring off unaccompanied, but it worked.

Following the interval, David Hamilton’s A Shakespeare Garland, set seven of Shakespeare’s texts on “botanical and/or seasonal” themes, six of them well-known. The composer’s 1999 composition set the words ‘in a variety of parody styles ranging from jazz to car-chase music.’ They differed markedly from their more familiar settings, especially ‘Hark, hark, the lark’ (Cymbeline) if compared with Schubert’s setting of the German translation. These songs were accompanied by guitar and piano, but I seldom heard the former due to the latter, despite sitting on the guitar’s side of the audience, and observing that the guitarist had a microphone and thus was being amplified.

‘It was a lover and his lass’ was sprightly, good fun. ‘Come buy of me’ (The Winter’s Tale) demonstrated Hamilton’s mastery of choral writing; a gorgeous song. The choir produced lovely resonance on the ‘m’ consonants. After a high-speed ‘Hark, hark, the lark’ came the much-loved Sonnet 18: ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’, sung by women only, with guitar; this was a delight. ‘I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows’ (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) was another delight, redolent with images from the bard’s wonderful words, most of which here and elsewhere could be heard clearly. This and the remaining two songs were accompanied.

‘When daisies pied’ (Love’s Labours Lost) was particularly jazzy, lively and fun – nothing like the well-known setting, which seems like a stroll in the park in comparison. The last song in the cycle, ‘Under the greenwood tree’ (As You Like It) was not the expected gentle pastoral setting. Again, I could not hear the guitar. Perhaps the men were tiring from so much standing; their tone was rather raw when singing loudly. They had their reprieve; after another oration from Nigel Collins (Lorenzo, The Merchant of Venice), the choir got to sit while two soloists gave us Shakespearean songs of quite different characters: Stephanie Gartrell (alto) sang with piano ‘Falling in love with love’ (Rogers and Hart’s 1938 The Boys from Syracuse) that again had only some of the words printed, but it was most effective, sung with clear diction.

Jeltsje Keizer sang with guitar ‘Take, O take those lips away’ (when will programme compilers realise the difference between the ‘O’ of invocation and the ‘oh’ of mild exclamation? I admit I have not consulted the First Folio! [I have, however, as proud owner of a facsimile edition; the learned Heminge – or Heming, Hemminge, or Hemmings – and Condell, the compilers and publishers of the First Folio, knew their ‘O’s from their ‘Oh’s, and it appears there as ‘Oh’ L.T.]). The programme gives it as ‘Anon.’, but both my Alfred Deller recording and Grove cite the composer John Wilson for this song from Measure for Measure. After a very moving speech by Lear on the death of Cordelia (King Lear), the choir sang ‘When David heard that Absalon was slain’ by Thomas Tomkins, continuing the theme of loss of a child. Some awkward harmonic clashes were negotiated with ease; this was complex contrapuntal writing, but sung exquisitely.

One of Prospero’s stirring speeches from Act V of The Tempest followed, and then a Latin motet by Byrd ‘O magnum misterium’ (usually spelt ‘mysterium’) made a glorious sound, though the basses again were a little too dominant at times. Nevertheless, it was a very fine performance. Douglas Lilburn’s setting of ‘The Willow Song’ followed, sung by Juliet Kennedy, accompanied on the piano. This song has received sundry arrangements; I have heard it on radio not infrequently, played on guitar. It was good to hear it with the words.

After a final oration from Prospero, we came to the wonderful song that named the concert. Although the choir was not quite together at the opening, the blend improved. This is surely one of the most gorgeous choral songs in the English language. The words are integral to the sound; obviously Vaughan Williams was much inspired by Shakespeare. It made an uplifting end to an evening’s entertainment of excellent quality.

 

A richly-informed austerity – music by Heinrich Schütz, from the Tudor Consort

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Heinrich Schütz: Musikalische Exequien (Funeral Music), SWV 279-281
Matthäus-Passion (St. Matthew Passion), SWV 479

The Tudor Consort, conducted by Peter Walls
Soloists: John Beaglehole (tenor), Simon Christie (bass-baritone), with Corinna Connor (cello), Jonathan Berkahn (harpsichord), Michael Stewart (organ)

Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul

Saturday, 25 March 2016, 7.30pm

Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) is perhaps largely known as a precursor of J.S. Bach, in the development of baroque music. Peter Walls, in his pre-concert talk, referred quite extensively to Johann Sebastian. Thus it came as quite a shock to discover how different Schütz’s music was from that of Bach. Schütz was born a hundred years before the great master, and like him, was involved in music for the Lutheran Church, despite his training with Giovanni Gabrieli in Venice, and later with Monteverdi. He spent much of his life employed as a musician at the court in Dresden, and it was for a nobleman at that court that he wrote the Musikalishce Exequien – commissioned during that person’s lifetime and completed with his approval of the settings.

The work is in three parts. The first, a concerto in the form of a German burial Mass consisted of Kyrie and Gloria in paraphrases in the German language, but with other texts incorporated in the Kyrie. The Gloria used chorales in addition to the Biblical texts. The second part was a Motet, ‘Lord, if I have but thee’, and the third, the Song of Simeon: Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace’, both sung in German.

The choir sang on this occasion from a position directly in front of the altar. This made it impossible for those of the audience seated in the nave to see them. No-one had told me, as some of those in the audience that I spoke to had been told, that the extra seating in the choir stalls section of the church was not only for the talk, but also for the performance. It would have been a much more involving experience to have been sitting nearer the choir. Since the church was very well filled, this would have affected others more than it did me.

The English translations of the words of the works performed were shown on a screen placed in the choir stalls. I could read the words (just) but those on the right side of the church, or further back than perhaps the eight or ninth rows would not have been able to (I sat in the fourth row). One problem was that the screen needed to be hoisted a good deal higher for those in the nave to be able to read the lower lines, though admittedly that would have been somewhat neck-craning for those closer.

The Funeral Music was accompanied by cello, harpsichord and organ (Peter Walls said that Schütz would have had a larger orchestra). I could usually hear the cello, seldom the harpsichord but usually the organ. This was a ‘house’ organ, borrowed from Mark Whitfield, Bishop of the Lutheran Church of New Zealand. It had an attractive sound, but in the main, that sound was rather muffled, probably due to the number of bodies between it and the nave.

A solo voice sang the introit, then all joined in, but that voice continued to be rather prominent for a time. When the women’s voices joined in the sound became much more resonant. The position chosen meant the acoustics of the cathedral were not delivered to their full effect. The result was greater clarity; both choir and solo voices were very fine, with splendid tone. There were a few notes off the mark soon after the beginning, but these were few indeed amongst such a plethora of near-virtuoso singing; I heard no more intonation wobbles.

The louder passages from the choir, and indeed from the soloists, were very striking. The motet was more of a solid choral piece, with echo passages and plenty of counterpoint (though less chromatic than Bach’s motets). The third part involved three soloists in addition to the choir; they sang from the Cathedral’s organ loft, under Schütz’s instruction that they should be elsewhere than near the choir. (How did they read their scores in the darkened church, away from the lighting?)

After the interval came the Passion. This was sung in German, unaccompanied, and only the opening and closing choruses, short compared with Bach’s in his Passions, deviated from the Biblical text. Apart from those two choruses, the work consisted of tenor recitatives expounding the texts, solos from Jesus (Simon Christie), and solo voices from the choir interjecting with the words of Peter, Pilate, Caiaphas, Judas, false witnesses, scribes elders, and the servants of the Chief Priest, plus the choir singing as the mob. These added vocal variety; no chorales or arias were included.

Having the English words on the screen assisted greatly in following the story. Some of the recitative sections were quite lengthy, for example the section covering the Last Supper and the arrest of Jesus, plus his interrogation before the Chief Priest. Since the singers could not be seen, this was at times an endurance test, given the hard seats.

However, all the soloists and the choir introduced variety and drama. Schütz hasn’t the drama of Bach, which is not to say that his St. Matthew Passion is devoid of drama, but Bach’s word-setting is without peer in this genre. Bach Collegium of Japan’s St. John Passion from the 2014 New Zealand Festival was on the radio earlier in the day, making it difficult to switch to the more restrained, plain style adopted by Schütz in his later years (as Wikipedia says, his style became simple and almost austere, but against this, he had sensitivity to the accents and meaning of the text). In particular I enjoyed (as did another listener, who asked for a repeat of this chorus) Bach’s setting of the words describing the Roman soldiers betting for Jesus’s garment; the cross-rhythms surely reflecting gambling’s unpredictable uncertainty.

Schütz’s work had more drama than the music heard in the first half, but on the other hand this was less underlined, being unaccompanied. This was a Passion in the original sense of the word, but not passionate in the modern sense. Schütz used word-painting, emotion and drama also, but of a more subtle and restrained kind, on the whole. The opening chorus featured lovely suspensions, between sumptuous chords.

The choir was effective and disciplined, their passages beautifully phrased. John Beaglehole (his performance a tour de force) and Simon Christie were characterful and accomplished; their voices, also those of the choir, carried well. Both intensity and grief were there in Christie’s tone in uttering the words from the cross. The words ‘Truly this was the Son of God’ were set with beauty and subtlety (as in Bach’s Passion). The final chorus was plaintively anguished, before a long drawn-out cry; the work ended with the Latin Kyrie, sung in an unaffected manner. It had an interesting and unexpected harmonic twist in the final chords.

It was distracting to see a young man in front of me making a video recording of much of the performance in video form, on his cellphone.

Monteverdi gets keen, sharp-edged and exciting treatment

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Claudio MONTEVERDI – Vespers of the Blessed Virgin of 1610
New Zealand Festival 2016

Concerto Italiano
Rinaldo Alessandrini (director)

Michael Fowler Centre,
Wellington

Saturday, 27th February 2016

There was certainly a festive spirit around and about the Michael Fowler Centre leading up to the performance on Saturday evening of Claudio Monteverdi’s resplendent Vespers of 1610, to be given by the highly-acclaimed visiting baroque ensemble Concerto Italiano with their director Rinaldo Alessandrini.

The performance fulfilled all expectations, managing even to transcend the venue’s drab, determinedly secular vistas and ambiences. My last encounter with this music “live” having been in the atmospheric precincts of St.Mary of the Angels Church here in Wellington, it took a while for me to supersede my resonant expectations and recontextualise the sounds made by Concerto Italiano – here, a far tighter, more focused sound-picture, emphasizing clarity and transparency ahead of any layered ecclesiastical context of listening.

Of course the focus and brilliance of the singing and playing drew me into the group’s very different sound-world before too long – and even though I would still have preferred a church setting in which to experience this work, I was ultimately carried away by the beauty, wonderment, excitement and depth of feeling of it all – things which go to make up the full force of the festival experience!

Having said all of this, it’s ironic that this work by Monteverdi, regarded as one of the cornerstones of the baroque vocal-and-instrumental repertoire, and on a par with similar iconic masterpieces such as Bach’s B Minor Mass and Handel’s Messiah, was written by its composer more as a kind of showcase of his composing talents than a public expression of personal faith. In fact, it appears to have been performed only once in the composer’s lifetime, and then, not for over three hundred years afterwards.

At the age of forty-three, Monteverdi wanted a change from being in the service of the Duke of Mantua, and so arranged for the publication of his Vespers in 1610 to advertise his wares as a composer. It didn’t land him the job he REALLY wanted (Master of Music at the Papal Chapel in Rome), but it helped get him something nearly as good – Master of Music at the prestigious St. Mark’s Church in Venice. The rest, as they say in the classics, is history.

So the 1610 Vespers represent Monteverdi as a composer of a number of different styles of sacred music which he had produced during his time in Mantua, and here put in the form of a single liturgical service. The scholarly arguments over what ought to go into the Vespers from Monteverdi’s publication for whatever  structural or liturgical reasons have raged about this music for years, ever since the work was taken up once again in the 1930s.  The upshot of all this is that there seems to be no one “correct” version of the work, and that every performance is therefore, as expressed by the writer of an article in the festival program about the music’s history, “a unique experience”.

Though comparisons with the previous performance I had heard in Wellington six years ago (referred to above) are largely academic for all of the above reasons, each one on its own terms proclaimed the music a masterpiece with stunning and often breath-taking conviction. From the earlier performance I continue to cherish things such as the performances of the two soprano soloists, who remain hors concurs in my experience – good though the female singers of Concerto Italiano were, neither put across the music’s beauty, colour, sensuality and even erotic impulse, to the same extent as did Pepe Becker and Jayne Tankersley in St.Mary of the Angels, especially in the vocal concerto Pulchra es, as well as in the Psalmus 147 Lauda Jerusalem, with interactions and dovetailing highlighting what the remainder of the singers were doing most delightfully.

My other enduring memory of the earlier performance relates to its physical setting, allowing a wonderful and engaging immediacy in overall effect for we in the audience/congregation – for me, greater than was to be had in the MFC – and a more atmospheric sound-picture in St.Mary’s giving both vocal and instrumental tones splendid resonance, as well as allowing for especially stunning antiphonal effects (though Concerto Italiano’s off-stage efforts were exquisite and magical in their own way).

So now, having satisfied my urge to relive some of the more memorable aspects of the work’s previous Wellington performance, I can now at last turn to the real point of this review and consider Concerto Italiano’s stimulating and satisfying rendition of the music. As I’ve said, it took me some time to get on the performance’s wavelength, but as each section took its turn to unfold, I found myself more and more drawn into the music’s world and that of the group’s strongly-focused realizations. Throughout the particularly arresting section featuring the motet Nigra sum, words taken from the biblical Song of Solomon and pertaining to the Virgin Mary, I was spellbound – here sung by a tenor and accompanied by a pair of theorbos (instruments similar to lutes but with lengthy fretboards and strings), the music achieved an intimate, heartfelt quality, ranging from passionate declamation to raptly-voiced wonderment on the part of the singer.

Though not quite matching the élan and physicality of the earlier performance I’d heard of Pulchra es, the singers gave their exuberant flourishes sufficient energy to make a stirring impression, before throwing themselves into the complexities of the coloratura of Psalm 121, Laetatus sum, the music’s rollicking pyrotechnics concluding with a Gloria. The men’s voices then purposefully tackled another motet, Duo Seraphim, the singers relishing the piece’s fantastically rapid note-repetition, before combining with the rest of the ensemble to deliver the Psalm 126 with grandeur at first, and then energy, as the music switched engagingly to three-four time – a great first-half closer!

We enjoyed the onstage/offstage echoes of the tenors’ exchanges during the motet Audi coelum, the music having a luscious, exotic “feel” about it, a mood which the entry of additional voices and a quicker tempo set upon its head in the tumult which followed, the harmonies of the music taking on a lovely ongoing, “rolling” quality. And I so enjoyed the deftness of the music’s interweaving during the following Lauda, Jerusalem, Dominum, the syncopated figurations generating tremendous “schwung” – well, its Venetian equivalent, anyhow – finishing with a hymn-like grandeur of utterance, again, with a rolling, surging “Amen” that was a thrill to experience.

What gorgeously rich harmonies were floated, hymn-like, for our pleasure at the beginning of Ave maris stella! And how tenderly both strings and brass by turns contributed gently-voiced, dance-like reprises to the verses! This was, however, but a prelude to the splendors of the Magnificat which concluded the work, beginning with grand declamations and passages of florid vocal decoration intensifying the radiance of the opening words, and concluding with a Gloria which built upwards from an amazing “statement-and echo” sequence between two tenors into a mighty peroration from both singers and instrumentalists, effectively giving the lie to my opening impression of a certain smallness of scale from the brass. The trombones, especially, contributed a truly awe-inspiring sonority to the panoply of sounds ringing through the auditorium.

At the work’s end Alessandrini and his singers and players were treated to a standing ovation, as well they might have been – a truly festive occasion!

The Tudor Consort 30th anniversary with founder Simon Ravens

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Thirtieth Anniversary concert
The Tudor Consort directed by Simon Ravens; Douglas Mews (organ)

John Taverner: Missa Gloria tibi trinitas
John Sheppard: Adesto Sancta I and II and Libera Nos I and II
Robert Johnson: In Nomine (organ)
Simon Ravens: Outwitted I and II

Cathedral of Saint Paul, Wellington

Saturday 13 February, 7:30pm

Simon Ravens was an English choral musician who, while an undergraduate, had become the conductor of an early music choir at the University of Wales; he came to Wellington in 1985 where he sang with the choir of Saint Paul’s Cathedral. He was soon taken with the idea of forming his own choir that would specialise in Renaissance music. It was named The Tudor Consort, modelled to some extent on famous ensembles such as The Tallis Scholars, and almost immediately, through Ravens’ knowledge and enthusiasm, won itself a rather special place in the New Zealand choral scene. In fact, it probably played a rather important role in the remarkable flourishing of choral music, and particularly Medieval and Renaissance music, that occurred in Wellington in the following 20 years or so.

Concerts by The Tudor Consort commonly filled the Anglican Cathedral, and other spaces, coming to specialize in performances that attempted a liturgical reconstruction of sacred music, to recreate the atmosphere and character of the music’s original context. They included memorable performances in the beautiful Erskine chapel in Island Bay, and an enactment of the French medieval Play of Daniel.

After Ravens returned to England in 1990, the choir determined to continue and with a succession of local choral specialists has managed to do just that over the following 25 years. In 2006, the choir staged a three concert festival to celebrate its 25th birthday in St Mary of the Angels and in the great hall of the former National Museum, one of them conducted again by Simon Ravens.

Ravens returns to celebrate 30 years’ survival, in fact triumph, if we are to accept Ravens’ flattering comment in his pre-concert talk, that the choir is even better than he left it 25 years before. This time, no liturgical reconstruction, no particular attention to atmospheric lighting (though it was convenient to be able to read the texts in the programme, even though the Latin was pretty-much muddied in the acoustic).

The concert was underpinned by Taverner’s masterpiece, Missa Gloria tibi trinitas. Taverner is perhaps the earliest of the Tudor composers whose names are reasonably familiar. Born about 1490, his adult life fell within the reign of Henry VIII. The mass has four parts – Gloria, Credo, Sanctus (and Benedictus) and Agnus Dei – there is no Kyrie, as it was not regarded as part of the ordinary of the Mass before the Reformation. The performance was punctuated with the original plainsong Gloria tibi Trinitas, and two settings of the motet Adesto Sancta Trinitas by John Sheppard who was some 20 years Taverner’s junior, as well as Sheppard’s Libera nos; and very interestingly, Ravens’s own settings of an epigram by American poet Edwin Markham, Outwitted.

The other interesting contribution was the organ interludes – two settings of In Nomine – played by Douglas Mews.

At this point I might comment that while the programme gave texts in both Latin and English, it offered little background about the pieces apart from the oblique remarks in Ravens’ overview of the music which dwelt mainly on the problem of performing and hearing music written in a very different era from our own. So there is much to be gained from pulling out reference books and exploring websites to gain better appreciation of what one had heard.

Outwitted opened the concert. It embodied a pithy, humane lesson: “He drew a circle that shut me out / Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. / But love and I had the wit to win / We drew a circle and took him in.” Advice perhaps for dealing with forms of fanaticism and cruelty today… Though its message is probably clear and pungent enough, the quasi-polyphonic setting, with voices used in striking combinations, demonstrated the rich possibilities of a centuries-old form to enhance a message for today.

The plainchant antiphon followed, nicely preparing us for the far more complex sounds of the Taverner mass. It is interesting that this wonderful mass by Taverner, so complex and musically elaborate, was written before the great works of Tallis and Byrd and all the better known English composers of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period. Written for six voices – treble, alto (called ‘mean’ in the literature), two countertenors, tenor and bass – it is a work that offers challenges of all kinds to a conductor and singers; the mastery of balances between the parts and the sheer virtuosity demanded. Though the six voices (the choir consisted of 20 singers) weaved around the chant with wonderful skill, creating transcendent harmonies, each remained splendidly distinct.

One of the recurring delights, if not sources of wonderment, was the sustained high register demanded from the counter-tenors, with two voices in particular emerging as striking soloists – Richard Taylor and Phillip Collins – as well as from the trebles who are also required to maintain long, brilliant and very high passages. Soloists from the trebles and altos were also vividly conspicuous, though never detracting from a seemly liturgical spirit – Jane McKinlay, Anna Sedcole and Andrea Cochrane. There seemed to be something very modern in Taverner’s ability to create music that was not just technically impressive but also generated through long spans of polyphonic inspiration, an emotionally exciting response in the audience (if I may suggest that others responded as I did).

After the Gloria, Mews played Taverner’s In nomine and in the second half, after the Sanctus of the Mass, a second In Nomine by Robert Johnson. Though arguably not an instrument well adapted to music conceived for a Renaissance organ, he chose stops that were clear and sharply varied, and avoided generating anything resembling the tumult of a great Romantic organ.

The In nomine is curious. I read in Peter Phillips’s notes accompanying the Tallis Scholars’ recording of Taverner’s music, the following: “Originally in a spirit of wanting to flatter Taverner by copying him, composers of every generation up to that of Purcell, and including Purcell himself, tested their contrapuntal techniques by basing music on the ‘In nomine’ section of the Benedictus of Taverner’s Missa Gloria Tibi Trinitas (‘Benedictus qui venit IN NOMINE Domini’)”.

John Sheppard’s two settings of Adesto Sancta were sung between parts of the Mass, comprising verses alternately in plain chant by men’s voices and polyphony: not as elaborate as Taverner though the polyphonic verses were delivered with great brilliance. His two settings for six voices of the Libera Nos, in which Ravens’ beat marked the slow minims of the music reflecting the plaintive nature of the words, concluded each half of the concert.

Though the Tudor Consort has enlightened and entertained Wellington audiences with revelations of early music (as well as music of other periods) for thirty years, for this special anniversary concert Simon Ravens chose works, most notably the great Taverner mass, which are important and mark a return to the heartland of the choir’s origins: perfectly appropriate for such an occasion. These memorable and moving performances fulfilled the hopes and intentions of the choir and its inspiring founding director and will undoubtedly rate as one of 2016’s musical highlights.

 

Audience rapture with splendid performance from Tudor Consort

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

The Tudor Consort conducted by Michael Stewart

Tomás Luis de Victoria: Officium Defunctorum
Alonso Lobo: Motet: Versa est in luctum

Sacred Heart Cathedral

Saturday, 31 October 2015, 7.30pm

The Tudor Consort is noted not only for wonderful singing; it is also noteworthy for its innovative programming.

This time, an almost full Sacred Heart Cathedral heard music of Victoria. It is not infrequently that we hear short choral works by this composer, but a Requiem Mass extended by liturgical items such as the Collect, the Epistle, the Gospel and others, was new. These liturgical movements were either plainsong settings (Gregorian chant), or were chanted on one, or a series of notes. The programme was utterly appropriate for Hallowe’en, i.e. the day before All Saints’ Day, and two days before All Souls’ Day.

The choir of 17 members sang first from the crossing, i.e. the aisle across the church directly in from the door, between the front two-thirds and the rear third of the church. The choir was arranged as two choirs, facing each other. This arrangement made it easy for those in the rear part of the church to hear clearly.

In a radio interview during the week, Michael Stewart had told Eva Radich that the music was easy to sing, but the hard part was demonstrating the drama and intensity where required. The entire concert was sung in Latin, unaccompanied, and texts and translations were provided in the printed programme. Although advertised as a candlelight performance, there was sufficient other light to enable the programme notes and translations to be read easily.

The choir was immediately impressive, with great attack, pungent voices, words clear, and each part having equal weight, in this version of words from the Biblical book of Job. For the second movement, the hymn ‘Placare Christus servulis’, the voices formed as one choir; the attack was not quite so secure here, as the singers processed forward, the males intoning the hymn in unison.

Now at the sanctuary steps, the treble voices began the ‘Requiem aeternam’ Introit in unison, followed by all the voices in rich and diverse harmony. There was some fine tenor sound, but the blend was excellent. The music was ethereal at times, with very high writing for the sopranos, yet substantial too. I found the concert full of such dualities.

The Kyrie followed, featuring wonderfully sustained long-drawn-out syllables. The unanimity of tone and dynamics was remarkable. Then the chanted Collect, where the solo voice was not totally secure, but the voice chanting the Epistle was better.

After this came the Gradual, with the opening words of the Requiem. This musical setting had quite a different character from the earlier sung movements. The women’s chanted parts were very clear. The Tract which followed had the men chanting in perfectly timed unison, the extraordinary melisma (decoration of the syllables) being an absolute delight.

The Sequence consisted of the long thirteenth-century hymn ‘Dies Irae’, by Thomas of Celano (c.1200–c.1265), who was an Italian friar of the Franciscan Order, a poet, and the author of three hagiographies about Saint Francis of Assisi. It began with robust chanting from the men, then the trebles joined in, still in unison. Maintaining such extended unison is not easy, but these singers make it seem so. There was plenty of expression, releasing the drama inherent in the words of the poem.

After the interval, the Gospel was chanted, then in the Offertory, the women intoned before all joined, all six parts singing in rich polyphony. There were splendid contrasts from fortissimo to pianissimo, and careful and uniform articulation of syllables. Beautiful chords brought the movement to a conclusion.

After the chanted Preface, the Sanctus revealed gorgeous harmonies. The singing here was in blocks of sound rather than polyphony. The Antiphon was chanted, to be followed by a multi-part Benedictus. This was again very different from earlier music, and most impressive. The precentor for the Pater Noster used many different tones in the chant, rather than chanting on one note, or just a few.

Agnus Dei utilised simple intervals to start with, then became increasingly complex. The Communion that followed was notable for magical interweaving of parts. It was solemn yet joyful. The purity of the treble voices was amazing.

The Post-Communion had a more plaintive tone, but assured also. The music was resonant, but in this building does not become too resonant. For the Absolution, the choir moved to stand behind the altar, in the sanctuary. It was followed by ‘Libera Me’ characterised by rich textures, sonorous cadences and complex polyphonic lines. The second and third verses employed fewer voices. Then in the fourth, the spread of voices from top to bottom of the stave was remarkable. The first verse was repeated, with its broad, grand setting. The Kyrie at the end was beautiful, with delicious chords from all the moving parts together.

The final ‘In Paradisum’ chant was simple and effective, and it was followed by Lobo’s polyphonic Motet. It was contemplative, with fully sustained tone that was pure, yet had character and warmth, the singing reverential yet rich and robust. There were wonderful suspensions and cadences.

In all, this was a splendid performance, and apart from very occasional stridency in the tenors, most accomplished. The music was uplifting and inspiring; the audience was rapt (here, this word is not hyperbole) and showed enthusiastic appreciation.

 

Audience delights in evocative, danceable music from the age of Shakespeare from Robert Oliver’s consort of viols

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Palliser Viols (Lisa Beech, Sophia Acheson, Jane Brown, Andrea Oliver, Robert Oliver)

Antony Holborne: Patiencia (Pavan), The Honie-suckle (Almain), The Fairie Rounde (Coranto)
John Ward: Fantasy à 5
Orlando Gibbons: In Nomine à 4
William Byrd: Fantasy à 4
Tobias Hume: Captain Humes Pavan, Souldiers Galiard
John Jenkins: Fantasy à 5 no.1
William Brade: Paduana, Canzon, Galliard

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 2 September 2015, 12.15pm

The name Palliser Viols had not meant anything to me, but it turned out to be a group led by that master of early music, Robert Oliver.

The brief but excellent programme notes confirmed that all the composers were English, and that the reason why William Brade’s music was published in Hamburg was because he spent his career in Denmark and Germany.  Nevertheless, a certain sameness in the music doubtless derives from the composers all being English, flourishing in the days of Queen Elizabeth I, some into the next decades.

This group of players is highly competent, and there was none of the out-of-tune playing one sometimes hears from groups playing these instruments.  One way of overcoming this fault is, of course, to tune the strings frequently, since being made of gut, they go out of tune much more readily than do modern steel strings, and this was done.

To modern ears the music seems very genteel, with neither very loud or very quiet sounds.  However, this certainly does not mean that there is no light and shade – there is plenty, but it is more subtle than modern instruments tend to be. There were charming sounds, immediately evocative of Elizbethan times, people, costumes, and especially dance.  This music should be danced to, or heard over a meal and conversation.

In this concert we heard two treble viols, two tenor and a bass, all six-stringed.  There was a mixture of dances, beginning with a slow Pavan, then to a more lively, danceable Almain followed by an even jollier Coranto, all by Antony Holborne (c.1545-1602).

The next three pieces were instrumental, rather than dances.  John Ward (1590-1638) wrote a rather wistful, even sad Fantasy, that was played very expressively.  The varied harmony and the movement in the bass line gave it character.  The Gibbons piece featured counterpoint and was a plaintive piece with much use of the minor mode, whereas Byrd’s was rather more straightforward, though very pleasing to the ear.

The two Hume pieces were for solo bass viol.  The first, though a Pavan, incorporated fast passages for the player, which decorated the basically slow dance melody.  The second was a much faster dance, putting considerable demands on the player, who had to negotiate the six strings at speed.  This involves pushing the instrument forward when the lowest string is to be played; otherwise the knee might be bowed rather than the string.  There were delightful variations on the melody, and plenty of chords demanding multiple-stopping of the strings, in addition to fast finger-work.

The entire ensemble played the remaining bracket.  (Why do audiences insist on applauding almost every piece, however short, instead of waiting until the end of each of the brackets clearly shown in the printed programme?)  The Jenkins Fantasy involved much interplay of instruments, whereas the first Brade piece was much more smooth and chordal, though with decoration later.

The final Canzon and Galliard were both happy pieces, quite quick.  The Galliard in particular was asking to be danced to.

All the performers were thoroughly able, and created a programme much appreciated by the audience.

 

Moving performances of three Tudor composers by The Tudor Consort

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Tudor Consort conducted by Michael Stewart
Music by three Tudor composers

Robert Wylkynson: Salve Regina and Jesus autem transiens – Creed (Credo in Deum à 13)
John Sheppard: The Lord’s Prayer; I give you a new commandment; Libera nos’, salva nos (I) and (II); In manus tuas; Media vita in morte sumus
Thomas Tallis: If ye love me, keep my commandments; In manus tuas

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart

Saturday 6 June, 7:30 pm

The Tudor Consort returned to its origins with this concert at the Catholic Basilica (as we used to call it). Its focus was on 500 years ago, and two anniversaries. Robert Wylkynson died that year and John Sheppard was born – both approximatrions. Putting it in historic perspective, as Michael Stewart made short introductory remarks that set the scene, Henry VIII had just come to the throne, after his father, the first Tudor king Henry VII died, in 1509.

Wylkynson was a contemporary of early Renaissance composers like Ockeghem and Josquin des Prez and ?lesser English composers like Robert Fayrfax and William Cornish. His career fell largely during the reign of Henry VII (who won the throne with the Battle of Bosworth in 1485), when Catholicism was still the established religion. Though Protestant movements had been challenging many of the doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church for a couple of centuries – for example with translation of the Bible into vernacular languages. Thus his music is suffused with elaborate polyphony, prolonged melismata, in Latin of course.

Though both Tallis and Sheppard were and remained Catholics, both accommodated themselves to the fairly mild musical demands of Henry VIII’s reign, but had to make much more radical changes during the six years of Edward VI’s reign from 1547. He imposed the far more rigorous (and violent) laws of a more thoroughgoing Protestantism, in both doctrine and liturgy, where Latin was decidedly out. Sheppard died at about the last year of Mary I’s reign (1553 – 1558), when determined Catholicism sought to regain lost ground.

Three of the Sheppard anthems and one of Tallis’s were in Latin, so probably pre-1547, while the English settings of the two composers, The Lord’s Prayer, If you love me and I give you a new commandment were written after Edward’s accession.

So it was Wylkynson’s fine Salve Regina that opened; the first words an arresting exclamation, which quickly calmed with a brief solo soprano that led on to the gentle prayer-like, sentimental if you like, body of the poem. They took care with the expressive dynamics available between the subdued men’s parts and the rest, delighting in their command of a lot of high-lying music for the sopranos. There were many details, involving individual voices, and smaller groups within the choir that I’m sure held the audience’s delighted attention.

It was interesting to compare the expansive and rich sounds of this choir, so beautifully adapted to this acoustic with the less comfortable sounds of the Wellington Youth Orchestra a week before, in a space not designed for them.

The second of Wylkynson’s only four surviving works was the Creed, or Credo, the words looking the same as the Credo of the Mass. This one a canon setting for thirteen male voices: Christ moving among the twelve apostles who were ranged around a bare white cloth-covered table; Michael Stewart himself sang Christ. A 1300 reproduction of the apostles illustrated the piece in the programme, with balloons around the relevant words of each. This too was a much more than plain, hymn-like setting, plenty of rhetoric and dramatic detail, clearly conceived to keep the congregation turned on.

That ended Wylkynson’s contribution. Then came English motets, or anthems I suppose, two by Sheppard and one by Tallis. As well as the diktat demanding the liturgy in English, came the edict against fancy musical setting, burdened with decoration and elaborate polyphony. The change was almost shocking: one note to a syllable which meant you get through the text much faster, and the loss of the magic wrought by an only partly understood language. (No doubt a heretical remark, but I suspect shared by many atheists as well as believers).

So we had, not Pater Noster, but ‘Our Father’, and I give you a new commandment by Sheppard, both sung by a reduced choir of around ten, of men and women, again including Stewart as leader and singer. And they were more straight-forward with less variety of dynamics and colour but beautifully balanced and expressive.

In between came Tallis’s beautiful If you love me, keep my commandments, evidently widely known and performed, witness Wikipedia. Though spare in its numbers of voices, detail and clarity made up for volume and density.

Latin returned for the rest of the concert: two settings by Sheppard of Libera nos, salva nos, probably from before 1547. This was the full choir, the harmonies were still rich and dark, the polyphony elaborate, over the bass that pronounced the original cantus firmus, revelling in the Catholic permissiveness; the other setting was shorter, stylistically similar.

Then two settings, one each by Tallis and Sheppard, of In manus tuas, described for those erudite in Catholic liturgy, as ‘a responsory for the late evening service of Compline’ (Compline is the last office of the day in monastic ritual). Here the choir was again stripped back to about 10, and though in Latin, was a more economical and simply moving. The Sheppard version was a little more lyrical, emitting more warmth, more variety in the use of various parts of the choir, men and women separately at times, much of it calm. The men alone brought it to a hushed conclusion.

The biggest work on the programme was Sheppard’s Media vita in morte sumus. It is a Latin antiphon which the composer has embedded in the separate Nunc dimittis, a traditional ‘Gospel Canticle’ of Night Prayer (Compline).

Stewart’s programme note quoted the surmise that its length and emotional intensity suggested something more than mere liturgical purpose; perhaps for a memorial service. So it moves majestically, in meandering harmonies, where certain words, the Responses themselves, were sung with compelling force: ‘Sancte Deus’ …’Sancte fortis’ … ‘Sancte et misericors Salvator’ …  The Nunc Dimittis stood in sharp contrast, sung in plain chant, before the return to the second part of the antiphon which resumed the sustained sense of religious ecstasy of the earlier part. There was a certain sameness after a few minutes, but then a realisation of the unique strength of the composition and its likely impact on listeners in the 16th century.

At the end of this moving performance the choir sang a tribute to Jack Body who had died a fortnight earlier: the fifth of his Five Lullabies, written in 1989.

 

 

Memorable and illuminating exploration of the Miserere, its rivals earlier and later, by The Tudor Consort and Michael Stewart

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Tudor Consort conducted by Michael Stewart

Miserere:  Music for Holy Week

Cathedral of Saint Paul, Wellington

Friday 3 April, 7:30 pm

I have been rather neglectful in recent years of pre-concert talks. This time, even in the disagreeable face of train replacement by buses and possible crowds heading for the Stadium, I decided to expose myself to the possibility that I might learn something by listening to Michael Stewart. I had already heard him talking with Eva Radich on Upbeat and wanted to get a bit more clarity on the subject of the vicissitudes of Allegri’s Miserere. A very good crowd had also come early to hear the talk, which Michael illustrated with projections of various parts of various versions of the work, as well as by singing key phrases with such acute brilliance.

The Miserere is the first word of Psalm 51 (50 in the Latin, Vulgate Bible) and has long been a part of the Catholic liturgy for Holy Week, sung at the end of the Tenebrae office, ritually sung in increasing darkness as 15 candles are extinguished in the course of the singing. At its end there follows the Strepitus, or loud noise that represents the earthquake believed to have followed Christ’s death, done by ‘slamming a book shut, banging a Hymnal or Breviary against the pew, or stomping on the floor’ (Wikipedia).

Michael Stewart’s commentary
Stewart spoke of the various versions of the Miserere, both before and after Allegri’s; the secrecy imposed on the Allegri setting by the Vatican, its notation by the 14-year-old Mozart (thus in 1770), and the Papal response later, as Clement XIV praised Mozart personally for the genius of his accuracy in transcription. In the meantime Mozart had given English music historian Charles Burney a copy and it was published in 1771 (so soon?).  Later aural recordings were made by Mendelssohn and Liszt.

The young Mozart’s action was recorded in a letter home from Wolfgang’s father immediately after.

It was also recorded in 1792, the year after Mozart’s death, by his sister: “…they travelled on the 15th March 1770 to Parma, Bologna, Florence, [on] to Rome, here they arrived during Holy Week. On Wednesday afternoon they accordingly went at once to the Sistine Chapel, to hear the famous Miserere. And as according to tradition it was forbidden under ban of excommunication to make a copy of it from the papal music, the son undertook to hear it and then copy it out. And so it came about that when he came home, he wrote it out, the next day he went back again, holding his copy in his hat, to see whether he had got it right or not. But a different Miserere was sung. However, on Good Friday the first was repeated again. After he had returned home he made a correction here and there, then it was ready. It soon became known in Rome, [and] he had to sing it at the clavier at a concert.”

But one has to note that the co-author of the version performed by The Sixteen under Harry Christophers, Ben Byram-Wigfield, writes: “And several myths have grown up around the piece, such as the idea that the Pope forbade copying of the work, punishable by excommunication; and the young Mozart supposedly copying the work after hearing it performed. Neither is true.”  (http://ancientgroove.co.uk/essays/allegri.html)

The question of embellishment was also interesting. It is said that the actual ornaments used in the Sistine Chapel were, as much as anything, the most closely guarded, and the version that Burney published did not include them. They were not in the public domain until Roman priest Pietro Alfieri published an edition in 1840, which preserved the performance practice, including ornamentation, of the Sistine choir.

Stewart also dealt with the modifications to the scoring accounting for the non-authentic ‘high Cs’ in the version we know, thought to be the result of transposition. Again, Ben Byram-Wigfield notes: “the ‘Top C’ version, which was never performed in Rome, … merely a serendipitous scribal error”.

Thus, what a great idea to perform both the original version and that current today!

Two Allegri versions
The conventional version with the High Cs was sung in the first half. To enhance the impact of the high female voices, all singers of the quartet (sopranos Pepe Backer, Melanie Newfield, alto Andrea Cochrane and bass David Houston) went to the gallery above the south (Molesworth Street) door and their voices created the most thrilling effect at each return to inauthentic (if you must) bursts of spiritually ecstatic exclamation. The contrast with the other fourteen singers was marked, their voices more suffused in the huge main space of the cathedral. There was a breathless conviction about the whole performance.

Alfieri’s account of the original, with the best realisations we will ever have of the original embellishments, was sung after the interval. Here, all the singers except Paul Stapley who sang the plainsong part from the pulpit, remained at the front of the Choir. While the female voices had similar effects to handle, it was naturally less thrilling that with voices emanating from high above the nave, though awareness of the modern version teased us with an expectation that treble phrases would rise higher. Stapley’s contributions were very fine, projected with ease, even delivery allowing discreet dynamic changes, but with arresting pauses in the middle of his stanzas.

The other Miserere settings
But there was much more of great interest in this concert whose intention was to let us hear other treatments of the Miserere. First was a short setting by William Byrd, the performance of which revealed the composer’s ability to convey the feelings of lamentation and self-flagellation so beloved of religion.

And the even earlier setting (around 1503) by Josquin des Prez, evidently the best known setting before Allegri. It was thought to have been inspired as a testament to Savonarola who called for ‘Christian renewal’ and the church’s reform. He denounced clerical corruption, despotic rule and the exploitation of the poor, and was a painful thorn in the Papacy’s side. He was tortured and executed by Pope Alexander VI in 1498. Josquin’s composition is not given to expressing much sense of exultation, and expression of praise of the Almighty, which is a significant purpose of the Psalm, but emphasised our sins and the need to be purged and cleansed. Among otherwise pretty flawless singing of the other works in the programme I felt there was a touch of insecurity in ensemble and balance here.

Giovanni Croce’s Miserere of 1599, 40 years before Allegri, came from Venice (Josquin’s was from Ferrara, not far away), with the sounds of the Gabrielis in the background, and here was the precursor of the sort of high soprano ecstasy, with richer harmonies cultivated by Allegri. It was also curious, not that it seemed to affect the mood or richness of the musical setting, that the Psalm text was paraphrased as a sonnet by Francesco Bembo, whose name only calls up painters.

The Gesualdo setting
Then came what for me was the third most interesting piece on the programme (after the Allegri and the James MacMillan), the imaginative and original setting by Carlo Gesualdo, more famous for a certain violent episode in his life. There’s no better account than by music critic Alex Ross (have you read his The Rest in Noise?) in The New Yorker – (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/12/19/prince-of-darkness).

His music is generally said to be ‘ahead of its time’ by anything up to three or four centuries (and four would bring it up to the present decade). The words employed as evidence are ‘chromaticism’ and ‘dissonance’; neither is to be remarked upon today; the dissonance amounts to momentary departures from an expected harmonic cadence which are rather delicious. It was splendidly sung, all these little touches exposed with clarity and wit; with the excellent Paul Stapley, as in the Allegri, singing the plainsong verses, falsobordone (French: fauxbourdon) = false bass, I believe they are called. Nevertheless, the music follows a repeated pattern which allows the senses to relax each time the surprise comes round in the shape of a sort of rise in the tonality of the treble voices.

MacMillan – the today setting
Finally, the strong and arresting Miserere of James MacMillan who, I suppose, has a special authority today, as a confirmed Catholic. Men and women take the lines of the Psalm in turn, with women seeming to have more of the running, though the men are given an emphatic “Ecce…” – behold, in line 5. The energetic rhythm seems to flow naturally from the intrinsic rhythm of the Latin, a language which, spoken with resonance and fluency, has that unparalleled power, supported by a wonderful literature, that made the language survive remarkably, till my generation – the last, I fear, to have been in a state secondary school where perhaps a third of the boys in the third, fourth and fifth forms learned Latin.

Again at the ‘Libera me de sanguinibus…’, the great shout of anguish had dramatic power, that was quickly softened by the overlapping of men’s and women’s parts; as the end approached  the dynamics rose and fell with moments of ecstasy and spiritual entreaty.

When Simon Ravens founded The Tudor Consort back in 1986, the choir attracted overflowing, rock-concert style houses, such was the impact of his engrossing pre-concert talks with imaginative programming, often through liturgical reconstructions in a dramatically striking manner. No subsequent director has quite matched Ravens’ flair and charisma, but Michael Stewart, in his own way, is recapturing something of the excitement of that time which had the effect of raising audience numbers for most choirs, and inspiring the formation of new ones. This splendid concert and the size of the audience perhaps presages a real choral renaissance and more adventures to come.

 

Brief and benign “Spanish Disquisition” on St.Andrews’ Chamber Organ

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

St.Andrews Lunchtime Concert Series:
Spanish organ music from the Renaissance to the Baroque
Ephraim Wilson (organ)

Cabezón: ‘Dic Nobis Maria
Victoria: ‘Sancta Maria succurre miseris’
De Aguilera de Heredia: Tiento Lleno based on ‘Salve Regina’
Bruna: Tiento del segundo tono … Sobre la Letania de la Virgen
Cabanilles: Tiento Lleno

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

 Wednesday, 18 March 2015, 12.15pm

Although relatively short, and not well attended, the organ recital was interesting, in that it introduced an organist new to most of us, was played entirely on the small baroque organ, and consisted almost entirely of Spanish organ music, which I am sure was new to everyone in the audience.

Pedals were not part of the design of Spanish organs (or indeed many others) at the period covered by the programme: Renaissance to Baroque. So we had a total of one pedal note in the entire programme; that in the last piece, by Cabanilles.

After explanatory remarks about the programme, Wilson played the short ‘Dic nobis Maria’ by Antonio de Cabezón (1510-1566). His articulation of ornamentation was very fine, but at the beginning the tempo was rather uneven.

Tomás Luis de Victoria (c.1548-1611) was the most famous of the composers featured. As Wilson’s programme note stated, his complex style of writing created emotional intensity, not a common feature (to modern ears, anyway) of earlier music. Here a little more separation of repeated notes would have been desirable, especially in the melody lines.

The remaining pieces were in the form of ‘Tiento Lleno’, which Wilson described as a Spanish musical form analogous to the fantasia in other traditions, but also having elements of the toccata. The first one, based on the Salve Regina, was more complex than the previous pieces, and was played with a fuller registration. It was by Sebastián de Aguilera de Heredia (1561-1627); the music was very well articulated.

Pablo Bruna (1611-1679) was another new name. The full title of the piece by him is ‘Tiento del seguno tono por Ge Sol Re Ut Sobre la Letani de la Virgen’. Having swotted this up a little, I hazard that ‘Ge’ is the low bass G, which in the system of hexachords (the basis of the sol-fa system of John Curwen in the early nineteenth century) was the lowest note recognised in writing music down – thus the word ‘gamut’, the ut being the bottom note in any scale (now called doh in English-speaking countries).

My Spanish dictionary gives ‘sobre’ as ‘in addition to’ and ‘por’ as ‘from’, so I hazard a guess that the piece’s title might be Tiento on the second tone from A [the second note from G], to E, to B, to A, in addition to the Litany of the Virgin’.

Bruna’s melody at the beginning of the piece, and which recurred throughout was, however, rather akin to Arne’s ‘God Save the King’ (Arne was born nearly one hundred years after Bruna’s birth). The changes in registration, and thus dynamics, employed between the various sections increased the interest of this piece.

Despite the programme note for the final Spanish work stating that the Tiento Lleno “Like the previous tiento (this piece) is intended to be played on full register throughout…”, I think this must have applied to the previous work, Aguilera de Heredia’s Tiento Lleno, since there were many changes of registration in the Bruna piece.

Cabanilles’s was a true baroque composition, and contained drama and excitement. It featured quite a lot of staccato, but again, there was not enough separation of repeated notes.Wilson added a short Bach chorale prelude, but it was not one with which I was familiar. It, too, was played without pedals.

The little organ has quite an incisive, even loud tone, especially on full organ. However, though it was interesting to hear the Spanish works, and on the whole they were well performed; perhaps a little more variety of programming might have made for greater appeal.

Baroque Voices – resplendent 20th birthday offerings

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BAROQUE VOICES – 20th Birthday Concert
Music from 20 years of performance

Baroque Voices
Pepe Becker (director)
Douglas Mews (harpsichord, organ, piano)
Robert Oliver (bass viol)
Daniel Becker (guitar, percussion)

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St., Wellington

Saturday, 28th June 2014

Wellington’s Baroque Voices celebrated twenty years of music-making with a concert on the last Saturday of June given in the same inaugural venue, the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, in Hill St., Wellington – a splendid place for music-making by vocal ensembles.

It was a truly epic and resplendent affair – perhaps a trifle overlong for listeners and performers alike, though the presentation certainly succeeded in bringing to the fore a sense of the variety and depth of repertoire the ensemble has tackled since its inception. Music Director Pepe Becker, in the programme accompanying Saturday’s concert, outlined something of BV’s history, in the process setting down something of the extent of the ensemble’s range and sympathies regarding performance.

In those twenty years the group’s personnel has markedly changed, the only original BV members remaining being Peter Dyne and Pepe herself. But though singers have come and gone, the performance standards have been maintained, judging by the invariably enthusiastic reviews the group has received. I’ve been going to their concerts for at least ten of those years, and have always been delighted with both the repertoire and its presentation.

On this occasion I actually thought that the ensemble warmed increasingly to its task as the evening progressed, becoming more relaxed and better-focused, though I did get the feeling that the group had worked harder on some of the pieces than on others. Given the range of repertoire covered in the concert this wasn’t really surprising – in fact it was amazing that the group maintained the levels of accuracy and energy that they did, especially towards the end. We would, I think, have been more than satisfied with about four-fifths of the items – especially given that a few of the choices seemed to me a tad insubstantial compared with some others.

But any more comment along these lines would sound curmudgeonly – faced with such generosity of performing spirit one feels far more inclined to celebrate what was done with the group’s usual skill, refinement and panache – which was, in fact, most of the programme (all of the bits I would have wanted to keep!). These alone were in themselves worlds of delight and wonderment, and their performances worthy exemplars of the ensemble’s quality.

The concert’s very beginning in a sense paid homage to the venue, which repaid the gesture with appropriate resonance and ambient warmth – the singers came in from the church’s congregational entrance behind the audience, Pepe Becker leading the way and singing, purely and rapturously, Hildegarde of Bingen’s haunting plainchant O Euchari, with the other singers humming in the style of an accompanying hurdy-gurdy. It all made for a William Blake-like “augury of innocence”, of wonderment such as one might experience as a child at a rare and mystical ritual – a moment of magic!

Baroque Voices followed this with another special moment – a performance of the very first item sang by the ensemble at that inaugural 1994 concert. This was Monteverdi’s madrigal Ch’ami la vita mia (That you are the love of my life), from the First Book of Madrigals, for five voices – a sonorous, flexible performance with moments of pure quicksilver. Of course Monteverdi’s music subsequently became a major focus for the group, presently exploring the entire series of Madrigals, and having already performed, most brilliantly, the resplendent 1610 Vespers in 2010 (can it really be four years ago?). Two other Monteverdi madrigals were presented in the concert’s second half, contrasting the composer’s later (Second Practice) style, accompanied by continuo instruments, with his earlier practice, using voices only.

Another particularly fruitful undertaking for the group has been the commissioning and premiering of no less than thirty-five new works (to date!) by local composers. A number of these drew their initial inspiration from existing works, or from texts set by composers already in BV’s repertoire. We were “treated” to four instances of this during the evening, all of which the group had previously performed, two from Jack Body, one from Mark Smythe, and one from Ross Harris, as well as more “stand-alone” works by Carol Shortis and Pepe Becker herself.

Jack Body’s Nowell in the Lithuanian manner followed a lovely, properly austere three-part performance of the anonymous 15th Century English carol Nowell, sing we – Body’s work, from 1995, was a setting for four voices, with the interval of a second dominating the music, making for a resonant and repetitive antiphonal exchange of excitable impulses tossed back and forth in a kind of minimalist-folksy way, sounding fun to perform, as it certainly was to hear.

More resplendent and declamatory was the same composer’s Jibrail (the Islamic word for Gabriel), here performed immediately after its Latin equivalent “Veni Creator Spiritus” – we heard the Latin chant sung antiphonally by two groups, most of whose members then re-formed in a semi-circle as a gong ritualistically sounded (played by Daniel Becker), the singers chanting the word Jibrail, and capping the growing vocal intensities by picking up and activating hand-held gongs, as if the tintinabulations were spreading through the world like wildfire.

This wasn’t exactly conventional vocal or choral music, but was a demonstration of how a creative imagination can at times defy convention and produce something that really works by its own unique lights – rather like Beethoven introducing voices to symphonic structures, which no-one had ever dared do before him. It’s also a matter of having the versatility to employ non-conventional means for expressive or creative purposes, which composers like Jack Body have demonstrated on many occasions.

A different kind of creative inspiration produced a work by composer Mark Smythe (Pepe Becker’s brother, incidentally), from music originally written for rock band.This was a setting of an anonymous Latin text A solis ortus cardine (From the far point of the rising sun) which Voices first sang as per Nikolaus Apel’s fifteenth-century Kodex (collection), in which version the lines had a gorgeous “floating” quality, the effect being of several plainchant strands beautifully interwoven.

Mark Smythe’s setting followed, employing an electric guitar as a kind of ground bass (the premiere of this work in 2005 used voices only, the guitar being a more recent addition, played here by Daniel Becker), and assigning to the vocal parts the “rock” song’s main melody supported by harmonies from the guitar parts. The result was rhythmically catchy, and harmonically attractive, having what I think of as a kind of oldish, modal flavour in places, with ear-catching modulations. I also enjoyed the purity and sense of freedom and space evoked by those stratospheric vocal lines drawn by Pepe Becker and Jane McKinlay.

A composer whose music has always intrigued and delighted me is Carol Shortis, who’s written a number of commissioned works for BV. Each of her works has seemed to me to inhabit its own world, with nothing generalized or taken for granted; as with the work presented in this concert, five settings of Japanese “death-poems” called Jisei, which Baroque Voices premiered in 2010. Typically succinct and intensely focused “final thoughts”, the poetry required similarly precise, sharp-edged sound-impulses which would “inhabit” the words, and vice-versa – and Carol Shortis’s music seemed to speak, sigh, sing and breathe with the verses to a remarkable extent.

Except that I thought the second Jisei, Senseki’s “At last I am leaving” could have been sparer of tone, more distilled in its realization (evoking more sparingly the “rainless skies” and the “cool moon”), I thought the performances evocative and finely-drawn. I enjoyed especially the third setting, Gesshu Soko’s “Inhale, exhale”, with its wonderful oscillations, and soaring lines describing the flight of arrows through the void. And the wordless realizations of the concluding Jisei, the letter “O”, were appropriately remote and self-contained, a final exhalation of breath closing the symbol’s circle.

Ross Harris contributed a work via a Baroque Voices’ commission in 2009, a setting of the anonymously-composed hymn Ave Maris Stella  (Hail, Star of the Sea). The ensemble again “prepared” the audience by performing a mixture of the plainchant verses with parts of another setting by Guillaume Dufay, a wonderfully tingling, ambience-stroking activation. Ross Harris’s work was itself described by Pepe Becker as “sumptuous”, doubtless as a result of her having previously performed the work – its premiere, in 2009.

I enjoyed the music’s oceanic evocations, sounds patterned like recurring waves, the voices interlocked, and the lines clustered – but then I thrilled to the growing intensities of sounds at the words “Qui pro nobis natus tulit esse tuus” (Who, born for us, endured to be thine), and a corresponding rapt, haunting withdrawal of tones and colour at “Ut videntes Jesum semper collaetemur” (That, seeing Jesus, we may forever rejoice together). And both the joyous affirmation of “Summo Christo decus Spiritui Sancto” (Honour to Christ the Highest, and to the Holy Spirit) and the deep, sonorous closing pages were intensely moving.

I ought to mention Pepe Becker’s own work, the Kyrie from her Mass of the False Relation, a title which had me intrigued until I read about the particular compositional device employed by the composer – the substitution of a sharpened or flattened note, a “false relation” of the original, sometimes in juxtaposition with the actual original, the harmonic tensions and clashes making for highly expressive results – colourful and piquant in places, tense and edgy in others, the listener waiting the whole time for lines and harmonies to resolve. I liked the “hollow cluster” effect of the “masquerading relatives” towards the piece’s end, during the final “Kyrie”.

I’ve unashamedly concentrated on the New Zealand composers and their works written for Baroque Voices, in this review – the concert contained a number of other delights which time and patience preclude a mention. But I mustn’t forget to pay tribute to the continuo musicians, Douglas Mews, who moved adroitly between harpsichord, piano and organ, as the items required, and Robert Oliver, whose bass viol playing was, as always, a delight. These two players have especially supported Baroque Voices down the years, almost to the point where any concert by the group wouldn’t seem quite the same without them.

To my mind, this concert reaffirmed both Baroque Voices’ and director Pepe Becker’s status as national treasures. These are musicians whose efforts help us find and nurture expression for whomever and whatever we are, occasionally, as here, holding our efforts up against the rest of the world’s by way of reaffirming both our identity and our individuality. May Baroque Voices continue to do the same on our behalf with distinction for at least the next twenty years!

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