I know this isn't supposed to be a blog about well-known classical music, but bear with me.
One of the most famous works of religious choral music from the Italian Renaissance is the penitential psalm Miserere as set to music by Gregorio Allegri. Almost as famous as the music itself is the back story: how it was composed to be sung in the Sistine Chapel, how the papacy treasured it so dearly that no copies were allowed to be made, nor was it allowed to be sung anywhere else, and how Mozart heard it sung in the Sistine Chapel and copied it out from memory afterwards.
It's an undoubted masterpiece, with a small echo quartet alternating with the main body of singers, and with the echo soprano repeatedly singing a refrain that includes a soaring high C. Indeed, you will seldom read a review of a recording which doesn't discuss the soprano's ability to nail that high C over and over again.
So why am I writing about it on my rare music blog? I've just acquired a copy of a truly historic recording which is also a brand-new release. For the first time ever, the Holy See has permitted a recording company to record the Sistine Chapel choir in the chapel itself, and singing a repertoire of music composed for the choir through several centuries. Unsurprisingly, such a recording inevitably includes Allegri's Miserere -- but not the Miserere as we have known it. The recorded performance works from the manuscript in the Vatican library, and the music comes out sounding like a distant cousin of the version we have always heard until now.
I've listened to it several times already, and it's fascinating to hear the differences -- there are many -- and the relatively few moments when something familiar comes to the ear for a few seconds. The basic structure is similar, a verse and response form, with verse separated from response by two brief phrases of Gregorian chant each time. Each reiteration of the verse uses the same basic chord structure with the choir chanting the text on the same chords -- likewise the echo responses. What's startling is the fact that the verse and response do not at all resemble the music we have heard until now. There's a good deal more melodic and harmonic movement than we're accustomed to, and there's no soaring high C anywhere.
This fascinating new "original" version is an equally treasurable musical composition but definitely not the piece we've always heard and sung until now!
We do know that the first version to "escape" from the Vatican, years before Mozart's time, was a conflation of Allegri's work with verses by Tommaso Bai. Other versions also circulated before the ban was finally lifted. But the boy Mozart's achievement was no less remarkable for that, and we know that the Pope rewarded him with a papal knighthood for his musical skill. The first edition published from within the Vatican, in 1841, included notes on the ornamentation practices then current in the Papal Choir, which may actually have been the real secret that was so jealously guarded for so long! At any rate, the Allegri Miserere hitherto known has been effectively the combination of Allegri with Bai. Hence the fascination of being able to hear, for the first time, the original composer's own handiwork.
Aside from the Allegri, the remainder of the music on the recording is truly lovely. It includes several selections of Gregorian chant, as well as choral compositions by Victoria, Lassus, Anerio, and above all, Palestrina. The choir, as one would expect of the "house choir" of the Papacy, is first-rate. It's a larger body than we usually hear in this repertoire nowadays. A picture in the booklet shows a group of some sixty boys and men, although smaller numbers may have been used in some works. Director Massimo Palombella has provided a detailed program note in which he describes the changes which have been made in the performing style to keep this music as a living tradition -- a most laudable objective.
Scarcely less fascinating than the singing is the rich, resonant acoustic of the Sistine Chapel itself. As soon as the choir sang the opening notes of the first piece, I was transported back in time to 1971, the year when this eager young high school history student set foot in that remarkable place for the first time. How clearly I can recall the echoes of the hundreds of visitors' voices all around me! Although I can easily recall the visual impact of the famous frescoes, I had forgotten that auditory detail until this beautiful and remarkable recording so quickly refreshed my memory! The accompanying booklet specifies one particular detail of the Chapel's role in the enterprise: it states that the Miserere attempts to reconstruct the original sound of the work by having the echo group singing through from the adjacent Sala Regia. And indeed, the echo group is sufficiently distant that you have to listen carefully for their clearly enunciated words.
This DGG recording is a landmark that should be on the shopping list of anyone who enjoys the unaccompanied choral masterpieces of the Renaissance.
Thursday 29 October 2015
Saturday 24 October 2015
Behold the Sea Itself
Like Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, which I wrote about some months ago, the work I'm looking at today is extremely well-known on its home turf (again, the United Kingdom) but far less often heard outside that country. It comes from the same period of time, immediately before the first World War, and shares a few common stylistic elements. But the differences are far more notable than the similarities.
By now, anyone who knows the work in question will have recognized the headline of this blog post as being the first words sung in A Sea Symphony (the first symphony by Ralph Vaughan Williams). Like Mahler's famous Eighth Symphony (written around the same time and premiered in the following year) this is a symphony for choir, soloists and orchestra working together in unity. It is not in the least a work for singers accompanied by orchestra.
This wasn't the last time in Vaughan Williams' career that he imposed coherence and large structure on small bits of music composed independently (it happened again most notably in his Sinfonia Antartica). This work began life as a collection of Songs of the Sea for voices and orchestra, in homage to his teacher Stanford. Within a few years, Vaughan Williams realized that he was onto something a lot bigger than an orchestral song cycle and had begun calling the work the Ocean Symphony. The final name was settled before the 1910 premiere in Leeds.
The symphony is divided into four movements, all setting poetry by Walt Whitman. The verses are sometimes pictorial, sometimes mystical, and throughout the work increasingly the texts point to the sea voyage as a metaphor for human life.
With the exception of one rapid passage evoking a sea-chantey, the first movement consists mainly of majestic processional music interspersed with quieter, more meditative passages, all moving in a steady but not overly quick tempo.
It opens with a commanding brass fanfare in B flat minor. The choir enters unaccompanied on the same chord, singing the title line quoted above and at the word "sea" the chord lifts ecstatically to D major with the full orchestra joining the voices. Simple, bold, and tremendous in its exhilarating power. The fanfare idea recurs a couple of times during the opening movement, in altered forms. Soprano and baritone soloists are prominently featured -- the baritone heard first during the sea-chantey, with the soprano entering emphatically at "Flaunt out, O Sea, your separate flags of nations." The movement swells to a final climax and then fades away in a quiet murmurous epilogue with the choir singing "One flag above the rest," while the soprano soars quietly above them with a final reiteration of "Behold, the Sea itself." And it is quiet, a taxing moment for the singer.
The second movement, a nocturne, sets the poem "On the beach, at night, alone." It's a sombre but beautiful reflection on "the clef of the universes" with the baritone leading the way, and the choir responding to his statements. This too ends quietly with the orchestra repeating the opening themes more and more quietly down to a ppp conclusion.
In third place comes "Scherzo: The Waves", a vigorous showpiece of virtuosity for the choir. The energetic cross currents of the music are twice contrasted with a more stately march for the lines beginning with "Where the great vessel sailing". The scherzo ends with three emphatic staccato chords for orchestra, the choir joining on the last one with the word "following" flung into space after the orchestra has ended -- much like the final "Gloria!" in the Beethoven Missa Solemnis.
The last and longest movement, titled The Explorers, is the most episodic in form. Here above all, many listeners feel, is where the composer fell shy of his symphonic ideal. But no matter, for it is also in this movement that some of the finest music of the entire work is heard: the quiet choral chanting on "Down from the gardens of Asia descending," the gentle but heartfelt soprano and baritone duet on "O soul, thou pleasest me, I thee" -- accompanied by some of the composer's signature lyrical musing solos on violin and viola -- and the grand upsurge of choir, orchestra and soloists at "O, thou transcendent, nameless, the fibre and the breath, light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them."
All of this passes in a moderate tempo, similar to the first movement, but now comes a truly rapid passage at the soloists' invocation: "Away, o Soul, hoist instantly the anchor." There's something about the entire passage from here to the last great climax that reaches right down into the deepest recesses of my heart and tugs on the strings with all its might. The poetry has a lot to do with that:
But the work doesn't end there. The conclusion is a slow, gentle quiet epilogue (fading at last down to silence) which sets the final words of Whitman's Passage to India, the poem that has provided the entire text of the finale:
For me, it's the most daring stylistic feature of the entire work, that three of the four movements in A Sea Symphony end slowly and quietly, in an era when loud and vigorous endings were much valued! It also fascinates me to see just how many of the elements in this powerful early work were to recur in one form or other throughout the composer's long and productive life.
Certainly this work is a rarity in live performance outside the British Isles. This week marks only the second time in my life that it has been undertaken by the Toronto Symphony and Mendelssohn Choir. The last occasion was on a weeknight, so I couldn't get to it from my teaching job in Elliot Lake. This is going to be a memorable concert -- and it's going to be reviewed in my companion blog, Large Stage Live .
There have been many fine recordings of this work -- it's been lucky on records! I have three in my collection, each one treasured for its own distinct qualities. Sir Adrian Boult in 1968 had as his soloists Sheila Armstrong and John Carol Case, each one (I feel) quintessential in this music. Andre Previn's London Symphony version is unique in highlighting the contribution of the orchestra as equal to the singers, which is ideal in this piece. Bernard Haitink, more than the others, creates a symphonically structured and unified reading. His spacious tempi pay off above all in that final great climax where you can hear all the thematic interweavings in the orchestra with no trouble at all.
By now, anyone who knows the work in question will have recognized the headline of this blog post as being the first words sung in A Sea Symphony (the first symphony by Ralph Vaughan Williams). Like Mahler's famous Eighth Symphony (written around the same time and premiered in the following year) this is a symphony for choir, soloists and orchestra working together in unity. It is not in the least a work for singers accompanied by orchestra.
This wasn't the last time in Vaughan Williams' career that he imposed coherence and large structure on small bits of music composed independently (it happened again most notably in his Sinfonia Antartica). This work began life as a collection of Songs of the Sea for voices and orchestra, in homage to his teacher Stanford. Within a few years, Vaughan Williams realized that he was onto something a lot bigger than an orchestral song cycle and had begun calling the work the Ocean Symphony. The final name was settled before the 1910 premiere in Leeds.
The symphony is divided into four movements, all setting poetry by Walt Whitman. The verses are sometimes pictorial, sometimes mystical, and throughout the work increasingly the texts point to the sea voyage as a metaphor for human life.
With the exception of one rapid passage evoking a sea-chantey, the first movement consists mainly of majestic processional music interspersed with quieter, more meditative passages, all moving in a steady but not overly quick tempo.
It opens with a commanding brass fanfare in B flat minor. The choir enters unaccompanied on the same chord, singing the title line quoted above and at the word "sea" the chord lifts ecstatically to D major with the full orchestra joining the voices. Simple, bold, and tremendous in its exhilarating power. The fanfare idea recurs a couple of times during the opening movement, in altered forms. Soprano and baritone soloists are prominently featured -- the baritone heard first during the sea-chantey, with the soprano entering emphatically at "Flaunt out, O Sea, your separate flags of nations." The movement swells to a final climax and then fades away in a quiet murmurous epilogue with the choir singing "One flag above the rest," while the soprano soars quietly above them with a final reiteration of "Behold, the Sea itself." And it is quiet, a taxing moment for the singer.
The second movement, a nocturne, sets the poem "On the beach, at night, alone." It's a sombre but beautiful reflection on "the clef of the universes" with the baritone leading the way, and the choir responding to his statements. This too ends quietly with the orchestra repeating the opening themes more and more quietly down to a ppp conclusion.
In third place comes "Scherzo: The Waves", a vigorous showpiece of virtuosity for the choir. The energetic cross currents of the music are twice contrasted with a more stately march for the lines beginning with "Where the great vessel sailing". The scherzo ends with three emphatic staccato chords for orchestra, the choir joining on the last one with the word "following" flung into space after the orchestra has ended -- much like the final "Gloria!" in the Beethoven Missa Solemnis.
The last and longest movement, titled The Explorers, is the most episodic in form. Here above all, many listeners feel, is where the composer fell shy of his symphonic ideal. But no matter, for it is also in this movement that some of the finest music of the entire work is heard: the quiet choral chanting on "Down from the gardens of Asia descending," the gentle but heartfelt soprano and baritone duet on "O soul, thou pleasest me, I thee" -- accompanied by some of the composer's signature lyrical musing solos on violin and viola -- and the grand upsurge of choir, orchestra and soloists at "O, thou transcendent, nameless, the fibre and the breath, light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them."
All of this passes in a moderate tempo, similar to the first movement, but now comes a truly rapid passage at the soloists' invocation: "Away, o Soul, hoist instantly the anchor." There's something about the entire passage from here to the last great climax that reaches right down into the deepest recesses of my heart and tugs on the strings with all its might. The poetry has a lot to do with that:
Sail forth—steer for the deep waters only,And as the music soars to its greatest height, the soprano rings out above the entire forces of choir and orchestra on the final repetition of "Sail forth!". If you're listening to the music, try to focus for a moment on the orchestra at this point -- if you can take your ears away from the glory unfolding in the voices! You'll hear that different sections of the orchestra are underlying this magnificent climax with three different themes heard earlier in the movement -- a symphonic synthesis indeed.
Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.
But the work doesn't end there. The conclusion is a slow, gentle quiet epilogue (fading at last down to silence) which sets the final words of Whitman's Passage to India, the poem that has provided the entire text of the finale:
O my brave soul!To British writer Hugh Ottaway I am indebted for his thorough analysis of the symphonic epilogue as the most characteristic contribution by Vaughan Williams to the symphonic form. Eight of the nine symphonies end with epilogues and seven of the eight are slow and quiet. In some cases it's the entire last movement, in others (such as this one) the concluding passage only.
O farther farther sail!
O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?
O farther, farther, farther sail!
For me, it's the most daring stylistic feature of the entire work, that three of the four movements in A Sea Symphony end slowly and quietly, in an era when loud and vigorous endings were much valued! It also fascinates me to see just how many of the elements in this powerful early work were to recur in one form or other throughout the composer's long and productive life.
Certainly this work is a rarity in live performance outside the British Isles. This week marks only the second time in my life that it has been undertaken by the Toronto Symphony and Mendelssohn Choir. The last occasion was on a weeknight, so I couldn't get to it from my teaching job in Elliot Lake. This is going to be a memorable concert -- and it's going to be reviewed in my companion blog, Large Stage Live .
There have been many fine recordings of this work -- it's been lucky on records! I have three in my collection, each one treasured for its own distinct qualities. Sir Adrian Boult in 1968 had as his soloists Sheila Armstrong and John Carol Case, each one (I feel) quintessential in this music. Andre Previn's London Symphony version is unique in highlighting the contribution of the orchestra as equal to the singers, which is ideal in this piece. Bernard Haitink, more than the others, creates a symphonically structured and unified reading. His spacious tempi pay off above all in that final great climax where you can hear all the thematic interweavings in the orchestra with no trouble at all.
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