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CHORAL MUSIC REVIEW
March 14,2003
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By Kerry McCarthy
Warren Stewart and the California Bach Society treated Bay Area audiences last weekend to a performance of a first-rate but seldom-heard piece by Orlando di Lasso. The Missa Osculetur me is not the subdued, meditative Renaissance Mass we all learned to love (or hate) in music appreciation class. Lasso could be called the edgy Dionysian counterpart to the cool Apollonian discipline of Palestrina, with a strong taste for the unusual and for plain old excess. He wrote a good fifty settings of the Mass, and each has its distinctive flavor, none more than this one.
The raw material for this Mass is an exquisite double-choir motet by Lasso himself, on the opening verses of the Song of Solomon. It takes its title Osculetur me from the first line: “Let him kiss me with the kiss of his lips.” The renowned biblical poem is in the form of a dialogue between lover and beloved, and Lasso set it accordingly for two separate choirs, which swap contrasting phrases and join periodically to make a sumptuous eight-part texture. The music of this intense but rather short motet was then transformed into a large-scale Mass setting. Recycling his own work in this way was doubtless a clever bit of self-promotion on Lasso's part, but it is rich enough to sustain interest from the beginning of the Kyrie through the end of the Agnus Dei.
The California Bach Society used thirty singers in this concert. To a generation of early-music fans raised on lean, mean chamber choirs such as the Tallis Scholars, such an ensemble might at first seem a bit large. That said, it certainly reflects what we know of Lasso's own choir from contemporary records (and from the famous picture of him conducting his musicians in sixteenth-century Munich, which was helpfully reprinted in the program below the roster of CBS singers.) For a piece of such richness and gravity, the size of the group turned out to be perfect.
Each of the eight parts has a chance to shine in this complex music. Especially noteworthy here were the second basses, who descended again and again to low E with an effortless, warm tone. In a typical gesture of mannerist brinksmanship, Lasso began the motet and most of the Mass movements with a single, high, very exposed pitch in the first soprano. After a slight fluff the first time around, the singers nailed it beautifully for the rest of the evening. There were occasional lapses of tuning and blend in the second tenor, and a few voices seemed unnecessarily timid, but the choral sound was otherwise lovely. The concert was designed to recreate the liturgy for the March 25 feast of the Annunciation. Hugh Davies, the group's designated “celebrant,” recited prayers and readings in a rich baritone. The polyphony was also broken up by a number of Gregorian chants proper to the occasion. These were performed conductorless by the entire group, while a beaming Stewart watched from the front row. The first chant was sung as an opening processional while the choir walked two by two through the church. Staying in unison under such circumstances is a fiendish task, and one the singers did very well, though the solemnity of the procession was marred a little by the handful of choir members clutching the inevitable water bottles. Other extra treats during the evening included several motets by Lasso, and one by the older composer Heinrich Isaac, whose music was still performed in Munich during Lasso's tenure there. This sweet, haunting, quite archaic-sounding piece, sung by a quartet of soloists, was a reminder of just how much could change between generations in the musical Renaissance. A highlight of the concert was the final motet, Lasso's setting of the entire Gospel story (thirteen verses!) of the Annunciation. In the hands of a lesser composer, dealing with such a long text might have become a tedious exercise. Lasso never failed to surprise and delight, and that delight certainly showed on the faces of the singers as they performed his music.
(Kerry McCarthy, a recent graduate of Stanford University, is a performer, conductor, and scholar of early music.)
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Warren Stewart