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CHORAL REVIEW
October 22, 2006
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Seasoned Debutants By Anna Carol Dudley
The debut of the new vocal ensemble Clerestory, on Sunday afternoon at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Berkeley, presented eight men who were far from debutants as individuals. In fact, these singers are gifted soloists and veterans of many of the Bay Area's most prestigious choruses. Six of them have been members of Chanticleer. Their migration from Chanticleer to Clerestory may have been prompted by a desire to return to their roots in Medieval and Renaissance music, or by disenchantment with the nomadic life of a touring group, or, in the words of one of their members, a striving to "strike a balance between dedication to art and the enjoyment of it." All of them are indeed dedicated and clearly enjoying every minute of their new configuration.
The Clerestory singers Photo by Justin Montigne The concert began with a Gregorian chant — Alma Redemptoris Mater ("Dear Mother of our Redeemer") — sung in a unison so perfect that the harmonic a fifth above was clearly audible in the live acoustic of St. Mark's. Two more Marian chants, one sung by three high voices over a low, hummed drone, and the other intoned by the lower voices led to three 15th century motets, by Leonel Power, Guillaume Dufay, and Jean Mouton.
More chants, sung partly solo and partly in unison, introduced William Byrd's 16th century Mass for Four Voices. The Clerestory singers are versatile — tenors who range from baritone to alto, sopranos who can reach down into baritone register, interchangeable basses and baritones. Some sections of the Credo were thinned down to one on a part, leading to an electrifying Resurrexit, when all the voices came back together. The Agnus Dei was particularly lovely, the eight distinctive voices blending in a gorgeous sound. Two more chants, the last in unison at the octave, brought the first half of the concert to a close. Again, high harmonics testified to a perfect unison. Two more pieces in Latin came after the intermission, the first from the 16th century and the second from the 17th. Palestrina's Stabat Mater traced the grief of Mary at the death of her son. Palestrina used a double chorus for this piece, creating variety in texture by interweaving the quartets in alternation and in combination, and by writing a section for high voices only, then bringing back the low basses. The singers gave expressive emphasis to such words as tormentis, crucifixi, and Dum emisit spiritum ("He yielded up His spirit"). A high point of the evening was Clerestory's moving performance of Giacomo Carissimi's "Plorate Filii Israel" ("Weep, children of Israel"), a lament from his oratorio Jephte (ca. 1648). Written in six parts, it was harmonically rich and emotionally heartfelt.
Leaving Latin (and the church) behind, the singers went back to the 15th century and secular songs by Josquin des Prez: a charming love dialogue, En l'ombre d'un buissonnet ("In the shadow of a little bush"), and a deeply felt song of parting, Mille regretz ("A thousand regrets"). In Hayne Van Ghizeghem's rebellious song Alles regretz (which declares good riddance to an ex-lover), the singing was reckless and occasionally out of tune — appropriately so, given the subject. The concert ended with sprightly Elizabethan songs by William Byrd, Thomas Morley, and Thomas Weelkes, followed by a couple of Henry Purcell's alcoholic rounds and Thomas Ravenscroft's treatises on ale and tobacco. The enthusiastic audience was granted an encore, Ralph Vaughan Williams' Bushes and Briars, and a password to enable access to the concert on their computers back at home. (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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