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EARLY MUSIC REVIEW
French Baroque November 29, 2001
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By Kip Cranna
A deft performance of Baroque Christmas music is something to be grateful for at this time of year, I suppose, especially in capable hands of a group like William Christie's crack French ensemble Les Arts Florissants. Yet their offering of Marc-Antoine Charpentier's familiar Messe de minuit pour No”l (Midnight Mass for Christmas) at Zellerbach Hall on Thursday couldn't assuage disappointed expectations. This relatively standard fare, a staple work for church and school choirs, had been recently announced without explanation as a substitute for the originally scheduled semi-staged performance of Charpentier's pastoral opera Actéon. After Christie's intriguing presentation of two Baroque opera rarities at UC Berkeley in 1999 — Lully's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and Purcell's King Arthur — the prospect of an even rarer 17th-century dramatic work seemed truly tantalizing. Instead we got a preview of the group's latest all-Charpentier Christmas CD — welcome enough, but not what was hoped for.
Although a Parisian by birth, Charpentier became a disciple of the great Roman composer Carissimi, and it shows. His music fuses suave Italianate vocality with the formalism of his rival Lully. Charpentier's Midnight Mass (ca. 1690) is an unusual liturgical hybrid, combining standard sacred choral and orchestral writing of the mid-Baroque with an appealing mélange of eleven tuneful French Christmas carols — melodies that would have struck a familiar note with his congregation though mostly new to a modern Anglophone audience. The tunes are distinctive in their engaging directness and simplicity, with naïve charm and abrupt, short-breathed phrases.
Between sections of the mass, where the composer had instructed his organist to improvise on the carols, Christie interpolated crisply precise performances of three of Charpentier's instrumental carol arrangements, called "no”ls."
The mixed chorus of 14 men and 7 women, trained by Francois Bazola, stood in single file in front of the orchestra, arrayed like a huge group of oratorio soloists, and in fact took turns at the numerous vocal solos. Especially impressive were the “haute-contre” voices: high tenors that are a special feature of the French Baroque. Less effective were the basses, who tended toward a woolly sound. Still, the singing was concise and expressive and their flawless execution of a carefully-honed choral trill, a ubiquitous device on the downbeat of cadences, was remarkable. Christie often avoided the obvious dance-like quality of the catchy carol tunes and, especially in the Kyrie, opted instead for an extreme legato that smoothed over any traces of bounciness. In the Gloria, on the words "Et in terra pax" (And on earth peace), Christie had all the singers cover their mouths as if stifling a yawn — a first in this listener's experience. The highly syllabic Credo, the only movement of the mass not based on carols, was nicely shaped and nuanced, and the interpolated no”ls were models of orchestral precision. To begin the program Christie offered a pair of lesser-known Charpentier works. The first was a setting of the "O Antiphons" for Advent, seven ancient prayers for Christmas Vespers, each beginning with the invocation "O" (as in "O Wisdom," "O King," etc.) Each has the same structure: a long-note treatment on the invocation, followed by zippy triple meter for the petition — a formula that becomes a bit predictable over the course of the seven antiphons. Yet Christie coaxed his performers with delicate finesse, gently wafting them through the subtle "hemiola" patterns (metric shifts from 2 times 3 beats to 3 times 2 beats).
Here too, the choral works were interspersed with instrumental no”ls that displayed a standard format of woodwind statements answered by strings. The American-born Christie has cultivated an expert group of French players who seem to think and breathe in unison — and stand while they play so that their close communication is all the more apparent. Especially captivating was the subtle duo of transverse flutes, although some of their intimate effects were lost in Zellerbach's expanses. Special delights in the "O Antiphons" were the lovely light tenor solo by Cyril Auxity in "O Rex gentium" (O King of Nations) and the expressive violin solo by the leader, Myriam Gevers, in the No”l "Or nous dites Marie" (Now tell us, Mary). Charpentier's Christmas Oratorio (In navitatem Domine canticum), a short setting of Luke's nativity story, began with an arresting Prelude full of mournful descending chromatics. As the angel appearing to the shepherds, a graceful tenor solo brought echoes of Monteverdi. The Shepherds' March featured muted, almost strangulated oboes in a truly magical effect. But shaky ensemble marred the final chorus "Exultemus, jubilemus." Though pleasing to the senses, these lightweight liturgical works would do better in a church setting. For their next visit, let's hope Les Arts Florissants will have meatier fare on the menu. (Clifford (Kip) Cranna is Musical Administrator of the San Francisco Opera, Program Advisor for the Carmel Bach Festival, and a frequent lecturer on music appreciation.) ©2001 Kip Cranna, all rights reserved |
