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CHORAL MUSIC REVIEW
September
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The English Have Arrived By Anna Carol Dudley
England has a great tradition of choral singing, and the Choir of Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge, here in the San Francisco Bay Area for a series of concerts this week, is a splendid representative of that tradition. At the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, the choir performed in the Sunday service and also gave a brief free concert Saturday afternoon under the direction of Geoffrey Webber.
Americans tend to expect an English choir to be somewhat bloodless, but these singers, undergraduates all, have a magnificent, full-bodied sound, and include an impressive number of outstanding soloists. The ensemble's repertoire spans over five centuries and its sound — true, expressive, and perfectly tuned — accommodates each time period. The choir performs 16th and 17th century church music, and has performed with San Francisco's Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. It also performs new music, some of it written expressly for them. The group's recordings often feature rediscovered works from the English and other traditions.
Choir of Gonville and Caius College The Saturday program, all English, began with early church music. The choir sang Psalm 47 by Christopher Tye and antiphons by John Sheppard interspersed with plainchant. It performed the chant in Latin, since Cambridge scholars still knew Latin, even though the Anglican Church had abandoned the language after the Reformation. William Byrd's setting of Psalm 150, Laudibus in sanctis, was given a rousing performance. Works in English by Orlando Gibbons and William Turner ended the first half. Nineteenth and 20th century music rounded out the second half of the program, starting with Magnificat and Nunc dimittis by Herbert Howells and Beati quorum via by Charles Stanford. Ralph Vaughan Williams was represented by a motet set to narrative from Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The concert ended with Faire is the heaven, a double-choir setting of poetry by Edmund Spencer. While the acoustics of First Congregational Church enhance musical sound, they are not conducive to making words understandable. Performers there should always be advised to furnish texts to the audience in all languages, including English. Still, the listener could follow a familiar text like the Magnificat. This choir's phrasing is so good, and makes the rhetorical force of both text and music so clear, that there is still much to be enjoyed. The audience at this coming Wednesday night's Old First concert will get more details of text and a longer program.
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