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CHORAL REVIEW
June 4, 2006
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War and Peace By Anna Carol Dudley
This year's Berkeley Festival of early music began in San Francisco Sunday night at Mission Dolores, with the Bay Area's beloved chorus, Chanticleer, returning to its Renaissance roots. The program was titled "La Guerre: Triumph and Tragedy of War." First came a rousing performance of a rousing song by Clément Janequin, "La Guerre," celebrating the French victory over the Swiss in the battle of Marignan. The 12 men of Chanticleer, from soprano to bass, under the generalship of Joseph Jennings, reveled in the sounds of drums, sackbuts, oboes, trumpets, bombs, cannons — the general cacophony of war.
Snatches of "La Guerre," enormously popular in the 16th century, were quoted in numerous works. One is reminded of Dufay's mass on the popular tune, "L'homme armé" (the soldier). It's a bit of a stretch to suggest that a mass is about war, but certainly the quoted tune was. Perhaps people who listened to these masses heard them differently from today's audiences. How would we respond to a mass based on bits of The Star-Spangled Banner — "the bombs bursting in air," and so on. Church music ain't what it used to be.
Two masses based on material from "La Guerre" formed the core of Chanticleer's program. The first, by Francisco Guerrero, was called Missa de la Batalla Escoutez ("Escoutez!" — Listen! — being the first word of the Janequin song). It is written for five parts — first and second soprano, alto, tenor, and bass — and Chanticleer used solo voices for a trio and a four-part Crucifixus. The whole group sang the second Agnus Dei in striking unison, all in their baritone range. Although Janequin's song was in French, the rest of the program was devoted to Spanish composers and sung in Spanish-accented Latin. The concert was sung a cappella, beautifully in tune, precise in ensemble and distinguished by voices that achieve a fine blend with no loss of their individual color.
Rather than having the mass sung straight through, Jennings interleaved it before and after Guerrero's Credo with selections from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, by Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla, a Spanish composer who spent the second half of his life in the city and cathedral of Puebla de los Ángeles in Mexico. Padilla, influenced by the liturgy and music of Seville and Toledo, and supported by a bishop's devotion to art and music, was a gifted and prolific composer.
The second half of the concert featured a mass for double choir by Tomás Luis de Victoria, Missa pro Victoria — a play both on the composer's name and on the Janequin song from which it quotes. Dividing the 12 voices of Chanticleer into two choruses produced interesting changes of texture. Again, motets by Padilla were sung before and after the Credo. These motets were the high point of the program, striking in their change of key, their unusual distribution of voices — soprano, soprano, alto, and bass — and their intensely personal feeling. The text of Tristis est anima mea (My soul is sorrowful) is Jesus' agonized prayer in Gethsemane. Versa est in luctum cithara mea (My harp is turned to mourning) is on a text associated with ceremonial mourning. Transfige, dulcissima Domine (Pierce, sweet Lord, my very soul) is a setting of a heartfelt devotional poem by St. Bonaventura. These motets, the work of an extraordinary composer, were given their full due in the expressive singing of Chanticleer. The chorus went on to finish Victoria's mass, returning to the full double-choir texture. Again the voices converged marvelously into unison in the second Agnus Dei, and the evening of military and private conflict and turmoil ended with Dona nobis pacem (Give us peace). After two exits to thunderous applause by the large audience, they returned with the encore I had been hoping they would give — a reprise of the latter part of Janequin's boisterous song.
(Anna Carol Dudley is a singer, teacher, member of the faculty of UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University lecturer emerita, and director emerita of the San Francisco Early Music Society's Baroque Music Workshop.)
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Chanticleer