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EARLY MUSIC REVIEW An Equivocal "Flowering" November 5, 2002
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By Kaneez Munjee
The British a cappella vocal ensemble The Sixteen made San Francisco a stop on their U.S. tour on Tuesday evening, with a well-received appearance to
a nearly full house at Herbst Theatre. The group, made up of eighteen singers and led by conductor Harry Christophers, has had a stellar recording
career and gained a powerful international reputation for clarity, beauty, precision and dramatic intensity. Tuesday's performance saw all those qualities in evidence, and yet much of the program was beset by difficulties surprising in an ensemble of this rank and reputation.
The program, "The Flowering of Genius — Music of the Anglo-Spanish Court," comprised music from the middle of the sixteenth century. In 1553, Philip II of Spain married Queen Mary Tudor of England, and the following year brought his court and the musicians of his Capilla Flamenca to England. There, the Spanish musicians joined forces with the Choir of the Chapel Royal. This collaboration between the musicians of both courts lasted for barely over a year — until Philip left Mary and went back to Spain with his retinue. Yet the musical legacy left by this association is a rich one, marked by a blend between the styles prevalent in both musical traditions.
The evening's most exquisite example of this musical collaboration was the "Gloria" from Tallis' "Puer natus" Mass, written in 1554 to celebrate both Christmas and Mary's (false) belief that she was pregnant. This piece is unusual in that it calls for seven voices — a combination reflecting the joint forces of the Spanish and English royal chapel choirs. Christophers' programming by and large stressed the compatibilities between the Spanish and English compositions of the time. He placed two movements of the Tallis Mass (that "Gloria" and the "Agnus Dei") amongst pieces by Tomàs Luis de Victoria and Alonso Lobo, a mixing of this repertoire that is not often heard. Similarly, at the end of the concert, Christophers juxtaposed Philippe de Monte's poignant "Super flumina Babylonis" and William Byrd's exuberant "Quomodo cantabimus," moving from one to the other without a break. This connection was drawn from the texts of the pieces — "Super flumina" has the opening text of "Quomodo cantabimus" embedded in it. Christophers' connecting the two heightened their emotional contrast, but also showed their stylistic similarities. His brilliant interpretation of "Quomodo cantabimus" was one of the highlights of the program. Two Victoria motets likewise found the ensemble at its best. The radiant final cadence of "Vadam et circuibo" gave the countertenors a deserved turn in the spotlight, showing off their pure, clear, round tone. And the rhythmic energy of the ensemble was especially vivid in the closing doxology of his psalm setting, "Laudate Dominum." Throughout the evening, the choir's strengths lay in their flawless intonation, their command of the dynamic range, their clarity of diction, their facial and bodily expressions of engagement with both the music and their conductor, their sense of ensemble, their ease and familiarity with the disparate musical styles of the pieces, and the sensitivity and emotion with which they sang. Yet there were lapses in the concert and its production that were odd in a group of this caliber. The program notes, for example, were inadequate to the task of illuminating the rich historical background of the program. Their two paragraphs were barely enough to tell the story of Philip and Mary's brief marriage. The pertinent details of which musicians were involved in the Anglo-Spanish court, or how the cross-cultural musical influences were felt, were not explained.
And then the choir seemed unable to adjust itself to the uncongenial acoustic of Herbst Theatre. The rather dry Herbst is a far cry from the resounding acoustics of the Renaissance chapels, and the ringing sounds which are so familiar at the ends of Renaissance motets were missing on Tuesday night. This point was amplified by Christophers' long pauses at the end of each piece, when he held his hand high and staved off the applause for several seconds after the piece was over, but with no remnants of the musical sound dying away. This effect was consistent with Christophers' flamboyant conducting style overall, which generally seemed grander than necessary with such a small ensemble. The dryness of the hall also meant that the singers sounded not as blended sections but as groups of individual voices, especially at the beginnings of pieces and in unison passages. It didn't help that some but not all of the singers, particularly the sopranos, used perceptible vibrato. As something unusual in the British early music vocal idiom, the vibrato was at first noticeable but not unpleasant. But by the end of the concert, it had become wearing. Overall, the soprano sound was slightly more prominent than that of the lower voices, undoubtedly due to the acoustic of the hall and to their placement on the stage. (The six sopranos were spread out on stage level, close to two feet in front of the twelve men, who were on a riser behind.) And the two soprano sections were not balanced in terms of vocal quality. The second sopranos had consistently darker vowels than the firsts, who seemed as a section more free on their highest notes. For all these flaws, there was still much beautiful and intense music-making, as well as an emotional depth lacking in many other professional groups of similar international reputation. The Sixteen's tour program is available on their most recent CD, also titled "The Flowering of Genius."
(Kaneez Munjee is a doctoral candidate in Musicology at Stanford University, a singer, and editor of the newsletter of the California Bach Society.)
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