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CHORAL MUSIC REVIEW
Sept. 17, 2006
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A Chorus for Any Composer By Anna Carol Dudley
Happy the composer who writes for Chanticleer. Sunday night at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, the Bay Area's extraordinary male chorus brought its superlative gifts of sound, spirit, and musical mastery to bear on six new works, including three world premieres.
Robert Kyr's motet, In Praise of Music, made a splendid opener. After steeping himself in medieval poetry about music, Kyr wrote his text in three parts, each of which begins with "O Music." The first is based on the deep origins of music, the second describes the varied effects of music on listeners, and the third expresses the unifying force of music: "Heart of my heart, soul of my soul: One Music." His music was beautifully vocal, as Chanticleer's 12 remarkable voices blended into a single sound.
Chanticleer Photo © Lisa Kohler
The centerpiece of the concert, Ezequiel Viñao's Wanderer, was more problematic. The text comes from an extremely long Anglo-Saxon poem about the musings of a soldier grappling with the chaos and moral confusion of war. According to the program notes, it follows a form based on predictable word stresses and alliteration. Viñao translated the poem into modern English, thereby removing many of its original musical characteristics. His music is dissonant in counterpoint (leading to a jumble of words), as well as in its homophonic passages. During Wanderer, individual voices — and therefore individual lines — stood out, both in solo spots and in striking fragments within the overall fabric of the piece. This was a welcome antithesis to the usual device of choral blending. It also helped to give shape to the piece. The bardic text lost force because of its length: There are so many words that the listener is in danger of being lost in a sea of words and dissonance. I cannot imagine that any other choir could make as much of this difficult piece as Chanticleer did; even they had to stop frequently to tune. But the singers' uniquely colored voices, formidable musical gifts, and commitment to the piece were impressive indeed. Both Kyr and Viñao were present, and they took bows to enthusiastic applause.
After intermission, Arthur Jarvinen's 25 Lines for 25 Quires (set 1) was clever and entertaining. The title is based on Jarvinen's visual artwork; a "quire" is not only a set of 25 sheets of paper, it is also an archaic spelling of "choir." Six brief, pithy quotations from Buddhist sources, letters exchanged among celebrities, and so forth, were set for this concert. (To hear Satie's quote — "A critic is inimitable, and priceless" — and the hilarity it elicited from the singers, can make a critic suspicious.) Asked to compose a piece about the California Gold Rush, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez chose to set brief poems by Lia Purpura, based on the diaries of poor people who did not profit from the era. Each poem was first spoken by one of the singers. The settings varied effectively in form. One began in the bass section and made its way up via the tenors and altos, finally reaching the sopranos. Another started in the tenor section and spread out to the sopranos and basses. Later, everyone began on "gold" and then dissolved into a fast tongue-twister. One setting ended in a whisper. Steven Stucky's contribution to this concert was Drop, Drop, Slow Tears, a setting of a 17th century poem by Phineas Fletcher. To quote the first verse: Drop, drop, slow tears,Stucky's use of the Chanticleer voices was beautifully shaped. He started with the middle voices and spread out to the impressive high sopranos and low basses. A special pleasure was his return to Orlando Gibbons' setting of the first verse, a gorgeous Renaissance sound into which Stucky repeatedly dropped — in his own tonality, the word "drop." The piece brought centuries together in an engaging use of Chanticleer's particular strengths. The concert ended with four motets by Paul Schoenfield, settings of several sections of Psalm 86, in Hebrew. Schoenfield's writing, in four-part harmony, was relatively tonal, with dissonance used mainly for color, and a counterpoint that was clear and easy to follow. Chanticleer gave the last motet in particular an urgent, committed performance that was expressive in phrasing and dynamics: "Teach me Your way, O Lord; I will walk in Your truth ... I will praise You with all my heart. " (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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