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CONTEMPORARY REVIEW
New Music, But An Antique Sound
March 3, 2001
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By Marvin Tartak
The marvelous group of singers known as Anonymous 4 gave a concert at St. Ignatius Church Saturday, accompanied by the equally admirable Chilingirian String Quartet. Would that I could say the entire evening was an unqualified triumph. Unfortunately, their noblest efforts were defeated by the cavernous ambiance of the building.
The interior of St. Ignatius is quite beautiful, and perhaps the religious associations were meant to enhance the spirituality of the music. But the dreadful acoustics drowned much of the clarity of sound. What survived best was the music intended for the church, not the artful explorations of 20th century composers trying to emulate the spirit of Catholicism. What's more, these latter-day religious pieces were long-winded works that dissolved into murky mysticism, swallowed by the hall's abyss of echoes. Only the Mass fragments that opened the program and Britten's Missa Brevis rose to the occasion.
The success of these spiritual works is due to Anonymous 4 (amusingly named after a historically renowned manuscript of medieval French church music). The recordings on the Harmonia Mundi label of this justifiably famous quartet are remarkable. The women emulate the sound of monks of the Middle Ages. Besides researching the repertory of sacred music, they've manufactured the pure sound of monastic chant. They've toured to wild acclaim. They are very good!
As demonstration of a recent recording, Anonymous 4 opened the program with a few excerpts, bits of the Mass from the feast of the Ascension as it might have been sung in 1000 AD. The singers stood in the center of a magnificent altar space and their vocal projection was perfect. Pure white tone without vibrato, clean and simple, surely everything an 11th century experience in the monastery would have been. This music was both monophonic chant and explorations into organum, the tentative beginnings of polyphony in sacred music. Though most of the music comes from original sources, what they could not find they invented and decorated (as was the custom of the time). In their arrangements they hewed to the principle that it wasn't the music that was primary, but the prayers it ornamented. The year 1000 was considered the year of the millennium and the advent of the Apocalypse (their hit record is entitled 1000: A Mass for the End of Time). Readings from the book of Revelations, "There shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, Neither shall there be any more pain," are filled with powerful images, and the simplicity of singing on one note, the reciting tone, kept an austere flavor that paradoxically enhanced the drama. Most of the rest of the program didn't rise to this level. "Fratres," by Arvo Pärt, aspired to some sense of spiritual truth, but the music dragged. The slow rhythm, the short-breathed diatonic melodies, the chords of triadic harmonies plugged with pedal tones: these devices of simple profundity were disappointing. Tavener's "The Bridegroom" is cut from the same ecstatic cloth. Both works are inspired by the prayers of the Orthodox Church.
But both works were slow and repetitive, slogging along in deliberate walking pace. This version of "Fratres" was for string quartet, an ensemble unfavored by the room's acoustics. Tavener's piece, an octet for string quartet and the Anonymous 4, was recently composed but clearly influenced by the dark "Fratres." Are they both sublime religious experiences, or marches for zombies? The singers in "The Bridegroom" were asked to produce long, sustained notes. The text, from the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, sounded like an exercise in vowels. The string quartet had amorphous music, repeating in a vague way similar, simple phrases and smothering it all with a drone bass. I assume a religious tone was intended, but the piece had a distressing, monotonous effect, the worst result of minimalism. The Chilingirian String Quartet also played Haydn's Op. 76, No. 6 — magnificently, with elegant phrasing, careful nuances of dynamics, and a delightful sense of wit in the Minuet. Unfortunately, this was seen but hardly heard — the acoustics defeated them. The Britten Missa Brevis, excellently arranged by Lisa Bielewa as an octet for strings and voices, sounded better. Whatever blurring and smearing of line the acoustics caused, the piece did not suffer for it. This modest, attractive work (9 minutes in all) did not arouse expectations of exaltation. Perhaps because it was written for the boys choir and organ of gigantic Westminster Cathedral, it was more appropriate for this large church. Does religious music as art benefit from being performed in a religious place? If the hall of prayer is acoustically sound, I would say yes, no matter the dismal seats, the discomfort of a room that dwarfs whatever is happening in it by its beauty, its icons, its associations with the spiritual life. But if the church makes no pretense at being a venue for chamber music, has no shell to focus sound, is too large to allow clear articulation, then please put religious music in the secular world, where it sounds so brilliant. St. Ignatius is an impressive, magnificent edifice but a flop as a concert hall. (Marvin Tartak, a pianist noted for contemporary music, teaches a course in Opera at City College of San Francisco. He has written program notes for the San Francisco Symphony and Opera, has also has edited two volumes of Rossini for the Fondazione Rossini, and is soon to embark on a third.) ©2001 Marvin Tartak, all rights reserved |
