Simple Baroque Grandeur

I'll get the rant out of the way first:  in my ever-so-humble opinion, there is no sin in the world of the performing arts greater than the sin of giving a dull, boring performance.  If the work you are performing is itself dull, that's one thing, but when you take a piece that should make the audience's hair stand on end and perform it in a boring manner, that is both ridiculous and indeed unforgivable.

There!  Rant over!

It's relevant because I have two recordings of this particular work, Heinrich Schütz's setting of Psalm 150.  It's one of a sizable number of Psalm settings that he wrote which were published in 1619.  In fact, I'd hazard a guess that Schütz came closer than any other composer of his day to setting the entire Book of Psalms to music. 

Psalm 150 is the last song of praise in the Book of Psalms, and absolutely cries out for musical treatment.  It invokes the use of various musical instruments (by name) to celebrate God, and ends with the stirring and all-inclusive command, "Let every thing that has breath praise the Lord."  Schütz set the Psalm in the German text of the Lutheran Bible, for two choirs, two instrumental groups, and continuo.

The first recording was an early "authentic performance" traversal of Schütz's complete collection of Psalmen Davids.  It was done at Regensburg Cathedral in Germany by DGG's Archiv label with the famous boys choir of the Cathedral, the so-called "Regensburg Sparrows".  And it's boring.  The wind instruments used are rather weak in tone, the boys choir and instrumentalists alike have serious tuning issues, the tempo is simply too rapid, there's no sense of power at all.  Indeed, the Psalm sounds positively playful and jolly at this speed!  Authentic it may have been (as far as the research went in 1972), but it comes across to me like a quickie run-through by a lot of people who want to get to their lunch break. 

But now turn to an almost exactly-contemporary 1973 recording by the King's College Choir of Cambridge under Sir David Willcocks.  This record uses modern instruments -- the Wilbraham Brass Soloists and the chapel's organ.  No suspicious intonation here at all, nor would I expect it with Willcocks in charge.  The modern brass instruments give a brilliance and grandeur entirely in keeping with the music and text alike.  The singers and players are clearly divided into two discrete groups, with stereo accentuating the division, which gives maximum impact in the antiphonal passages as choir answers choir, or in the passages where their entries overlap frequently.

Willcocks uses a slower tempo.  This is in part forced on him by the very resonant acoustic of King's College Chapel, but the result is all gain.  To the brilliance and grandeur of the modern brasses you can now add a weight and majesty that are totally apt for such a grandiose hymn of praise.

The music is divided into a series of short sections in varying styles.  The opening is a grand "Alleluia" for the full forces, and from there on the quieter verses accompanied by organ and maybe one instrument alternate with bigger verses for full choir and more instruments.  The final verse and a reprise of the "Alleluia" sound so resonant that I strongly suspect there was an extra brass group held in reserve to be added on for this grand finale, and placed at a distance from the other performers (perhaps in the chapel's central organ loft?). 

This comes as one item in an EMI collection of similar polychoral music, mainly by Giovanni Gabrieli (Schütz's teacher), all of it as expertly played and sung.  There is the sombre unaccompanied motet O Magnum Mysterium for contrast, as well as the brass group alone in the Canzon septimi toni a 8.  The whole recital is a splendid listening experience.  In the reissue I have it comes coupled with Philip Ledger's King's College recording from 1975 of Monteverdi's monumental Vespro della beata Vergine of 1610, another perennial favourite of mine.