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CD REVIEW
Out of the Cloister, Into the Spotlight
January 15, 2002
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By Michelle Dulak
Chiara Margarita Cozzolani: Vespro della beata Vergine
(SFCV intends in future to feature reviews of recordings by Bay Area musicians.)
Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, 17th-century Milanese nun and composer, rates all of three sentences in what I suppose we are now calling the "old" New Grove. The "new" New Grove more than quadruples her space, with a short but informative essay by Robert Kendrick, a list of her published works, and a bibliography.
The "ONG" had a bad reputation when it came to female composers. (I remember the eight-word "article" on Rebecca Clarke: "English violist and composer, wife of James Friskin." You could get more information on Clarke, to be sure, including something of her career and the titles of her principal works, in the article on her husband, a pianist and composer now a heck of a lot more obscure than she is.) But lest the "NNG" be suspected of over-compensating in the name of "political correctness" or whatever with its expanded coverage of Cozzolani, the Bay Area early-music
ensemble Magnificat's new recording of much of her Vespers music ought to be supporting evidence enough that she deserves the space.
Magnificat has assembled a complete Vespers service from the two of Cozzolani's publications that survive complete. Big (double-choir) settings of the Vespers Psalms and the Magnificat come from one print, solo and duet motets (serving here, following common practice of the time, as substitutes for the repeats of chant antiphons that the Vespers liturgy requires after each Psalm) from the other.
Both are full of sumptuous and often startling music. The big pieces are meticulously and cannily written, though the mere sound of so many fine female voices in close counterpoint is really almost as amazing as anything in the musical text itself. The motets are even finer, sometimes hair-raisingly sensitive to unnervingly intense texts. ("O quam bonus es," a duet meditation on the wound of Jesus and the breast of Mary, has a not-terribly-veiled erotic charge to rival anything in 17th-century opera.) And the performances are very strong — not altogether immaculate (there are smudged bits of coloratura, intonational mishaps, imbalances and the like here and there), but quite amazing given the difficulty and unfamiliarity of the music. Whoever sings the alto motet "Concinant linguae" really deserves particular praise (the booklet, alas, doesn't tell who sings what), but the level overall is high. I was surprised not to find anything either in the printed booklet (the otherwise-excellent notes are by Kendrick of the aforementioned NNG article) or in the recorded "Beyond The Notes" CD (a sort of audio program note that the Musica Omnia label has pioneered) about the substitution of sopranos and altos for the tenors and basses in the Psalms and the Magnificat. That they've done it is clear enough — Jennifer Lane, for example, is designated "bass (alto)" — and the reason is clear enough too. Cozzolani's prints, being meant for the wider world rather than for her fellow sisters, would have assumed a mixed-voice choir, and so included male voices as a matter of course; Magnificat has just moved them back up an octave. The same thing has been done successfully with Vivaldi's sacred music (also written for all-female choirs, and published for mixed choir for the same reason). Bottom line: marvelous music, bravely and lovingly performed. I would say "more, please," except that the request is already answered: Magnificat's second Cozzolani program, a Mass service that will also be recorded for Musica Omnia, is being performed three times in the Bay Area over the next week. (See www.magnificatsf.com for more information.)
(Michelle Dulak is a violinist and violist who has written about music for "Strings," "Stagebill," "Early Music America" and The New York Times.) ©2002 Michelle Dulak, all rights reserved |