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CHORAL REVIEW
June 11, 2004
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By Joseph Sargent
Forging ahead despite the withdrawal of its major underwriter, Berkeley's 2004 Early Music on the Fringe festival has retained the support of several fine Bay Area early music ensembles. Among the key attractions was Chanticleer that visited the festival for a program of sacred music from three great masters of the Renaissance Franco-Flemish polyphonic style—Ockeghem, Dufay and Josquin. Normally, Chanticleer can be counted on to bring a pristine beauty of sound to the stage, but Friday's performance at Berkeley's St. Mark's Church was not one of the group's finest. The customary elegance was marred by needling little problems — the occasional imprecise entrance, the odd missed pitch. More significantly, for much of the evening, the ensemble came across as cautious, its vocal purity often sounding tentative rather than transcendent.
A new edition of Ockeghem's Missa Ecce ancilla Domini (Behold the handmaid
of the Lord) by Edward Houghton, professor at the University of
California, Santa Cruz, headlined the program. This mass, the only one by
Ockeghem to incorporate a chant melody as its foundation, borrows a chant
from the antiphon Missus est angelus Gabriel ("The angel Gabriel was sent")
for the Feast of the Annunciation. Lengthy upper-voice duets precede the
chant statement in each movement, and the work is chock-full of Ockeghem's
typical free-form polyphony, spinning out seemingly endless melodic
strains with little repeated material.
Chanticleer's consistently brisk tempos tended to diminish the effect of Ockeghem's languorous lines, giving the music a somewhat choppy feel. Especially in the longer movements, it sometimes seemed as though the group had somewhere else to be and was trying to get through the mass as quickly as possible. The consistent usage of single soloists on passages of reduced texture underscored Chanticleer's delicate, reserved approach to this music. Also striking was the preponderance of low-register bass singing, especially in the Credo. This infused the piece with a distinctly harmonic sound, situating the upper voices as distinct from the bass line and somewhat subverting the Renaissance idea of all four vocal lines being equal.
Nonetheless, several moments of beauty emerged, most emphatically in the Sanctus, which offered a microcosm of the group's expressive possibilities. Conventions of Renaissance mass settings tend to inscribe specific contrasts into this movement, from the reverent opening line “Sanctus” (Holy) to the quieter sensibility of the Benedictus (Blessed), yielding to a more boisterous Hosanna. Here Chanticleer displayed a range of dramatic expression often absent in the rest of the mass: the sumptuous Benedictus, sung with graceful ease by two soloists, framed by the vigorous Hosanna, bold and luscious without being overdone. Chanticleer's careful approach to the Josquin motet Domine, non secundum peccata nostra (Lord, not according to our sins) was a fitting interpretation of the work's spirit. The motet's initial lines, a reflective meditation on human sin, harmonized well with Chanticleer's pure, soft sound. Shifting textures between upper and lower voices, a hallmark of Josquin's style, gave way to a sudden cry on “Adjuva nos, Deus” (Help us, God), plangently uttered by the (male) sopranos. Somewhat less drama characterized another Josquin motet, Missus est Gabriel, whose text tells of Gabriel descending to Mary and proclaiming her blessedness among women. The lyrical yet sober performance (excepting the languorous, cascading flow of sound gracing the closing word “Alleluia”) belied the sentiments of this text and suffered from uncharacteristic issues of blend. The group's gentle singing was a bit too careful for Dufay's grand motet Nuper rosarum flores (Garlands of roses). Composed for the dedication of the Florence Cathedral dome in 1436, this motet is one of Dufay's crowning achievements in isorhythm, a compositional device in which repeating rhythmic and melodic units provide an underlying foundational structure. Soaring duets in the upper voices launch each of the work's four sections, but in the hands of two soloists the effect was gossamer rather than magisterial. The motet's full-voiced textures gave the performance some additional heft, but overall the performance failed to capture the work's august character. (It also glossed over the changing tempos that mark each of the work's four sections, a key feature of Dufay's isorhythmic plan.)
The closing motet, Dufay's Ave regina caelorum (Hail queen of heaven), found Chanticleer more at home stylistically. Dufay composed this work at the end of his lifetime to be sung upon his deathbed, and a sense of morbidity is clearly discerned in the motet's shifting textures, jarring harmonies, and plaintive call for mercy in the text “Miserere tui labentis Dufay” (Have mercy on your erring Dufay). The ensemble matched this mood with characteristic elegance and a subdued demeanor, respectful without being feeble or weak.
(Joseph Sargent, a doctoral candidate in musicology at Stanford University, is a professional writer and editor as well as a performer, conductor and scholar of early music.)
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Chanticleer