The Hilliard Ensemble

The Hilliard Ensemble: Walter Frye (ECM New Series 1476)

| Tyran Grillo

Walter Frye

David James countertenor
Rogers Covey-Crump tenor
John Potter tenor
Gordon Jones baritone
Recorded January 1992, Stadtkirche Gönningen, Germany
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

This early ECM New Series offering chronicles the music of Walter Frye, a 15th-century English composer whose biographical details are as elusive as his music is captivating. He is survived by a significant handful of vocal works, of which the Hilliard Ensemble gives us a thoughtful cross section. Of these, the Ave regina is the most well known, though the Missa Flos regalis forms the backbone of this altogether revelatory album. The mass itself—which, in true Hilliard fashion is divided among a selection of motets—is a brooding flow of delicate harmonies, seamless “hand-offs,” and intimate exchanges. Its inward-looking tone invites the listener into a prayerful space in which worldly cares are both the source of one’s burdens and the key to absolving them. Frye’s motets are also indicative of a great craftsman at work. Sospitati dedit is a compelling processional prosa (i.e., a celebratory song chanted before the gospel during religious festivals—in this case the Feast of St. Nicholas) that is the most rhythmically adventurous piece on the album. The Salve virgo is another breathtaking setting and soothes with its melodious unfolding. Also of note are the lovely rondeau Tout a par moi and Myn hertis lust, one of the few surviving examples we have of Frye’s English ballades. As for the Ave regina, performed here in three- and four-part versions, one can only praise its brevity and exquisite construction.

The countertenor lines stand out in every piece, not only because of David James’s flawless singing but also because of the ways in which Frye weaves them into the choral fabric at hand. This top-heaviness lends the music a peculiar balance that is meticulously maintained throughout. Frye has been represented elsewhere by the Ferrara Ensemble on their fine disc Northerne Wind. Along with this effort by the Hilliards, one can only hope the future will direct more attention toward a composer who might have easily been trampled in the march of history.

<< Miroslav Vitous/Jan Garbarek: Atmos (ECM 1475)
>> Thomas Demenga: J. S. Bach/Sándor Veress (ECM 1477 NS)

Arvo Pärt: Miserere (ECM New Series 1430)

| Tyran Grillo

Miserere

Arvo Pärt
Miserere

The Hilliard Ensemble
David James countertenor
Rogers Covey-Crump tenor
John Potter tenor
Gordon Jones baritone
Paul Hillier director
Orchester der Beethovenhalle Bonn
Western Wind Chamber Choir
Dennis Russell Davies conductor
Sarah Leonard soprano
Christopher Bowers-Broadbent organ
Pierre Favre percussion
Recorded September 1990, St. Jude-on-the-Hill, London (Miserere, Sarah Was Ninety Years Old)
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Recorded December 1990 at Beethovenhalle, Bonn (Festina Lente)
Engineers: Peter Laenger and Andreas Neubronner
Produced by Manfred Eicher

For reasons perhaps too numerous to list here in full, Arvo Pärt’s Miserere remains my most cherished of the Estonian composer’s ever-growing book of masterworks. Suffice it to say that its magic lies in its stillness. For such an expansive piece—scored as it is for choir, soloists, organ, and ensemble—it is remarkably introspective. Its opening invocation of Psalm 51 fleshes out a corpus of spoken language made melody. A statement from the clarinet follows every word, not so much commentative as dialogic. Once harmony is introduced in the second vocal line, the pauses become even more gravid and rich in spatial detail. The soloists gather up all remaining threads, persevering through mounting tensions with the blunt instrument that is the interjected “Dies irae.” This is more than just a thunderous meditation. It is a wringing-out of the heavens, the earth a mouth gaping to catch all that drips down. Voices burst like supernovas around thunderous timpani, crashing into the oceans until only a tubular bell is left to caress the newly razed soil. The heartfelt baritone of Gordon Jones describes the ruins with mellifluous sensitivity. A wind section breathes through every pause like a ghostly antiphon and provides a dark interlude. As the soloists arise en masse, David James flares with his resplendent countertenor colors, whereas the deep intonation of soprano Sarah Leonard marvels amid the fumes of destruction. Another stunning interlude, this time introduced by Christopher Bowers-Broadbent on organ, coaxes the winds into more independent recitations, accentuated by a crystalline tambourine and triangle. We arrive to an a cappella passage that is transfiguration incarnate, each soloist pawing the air like a sleeping lion. The winds slog through the valleys, heavy sins in tow, while voices linger in the firmament. Leonard is unmatched in her ability to put her entire being into a high note, and the moment one finds at the 30:13 mark is perhaps her finest example. This touches off one of the most breathtaking lifts ever set to music, as all the voices scale a ladder of chaos into a world of silent order. Miserere is all about the “in between,” the lesson of interrupted thought, and our fearful awe over the mystery of creation.

Festina Lente (1988) for orchestra and harp is dedicated to Manfred Eicher. The title means “make haste slowly” and acknowledges the importance of flux in any creative endeavor. Like Eicher’s own aesthetic path, it is a resonant spiral that goes both downward and upward.

Awe is the operative concept in Sarah Was Ninety Years Old (1977/90). Drums cycle through an arithmetic exploration of high and low beats, cradling wordless passages from tenors Rogers Covey-Crump and John Potter. This process repeats until the organ makes its humble entrance, even as Leonard pushes her voice to dizzying heights. One would think such a piece might escape today’s trigger-happy musical culture, but I have recently encountered the drums from Sarah, as effective as they are surprising, being sampled by German electronic artist HECQ in his track “Aback,” off the wonderful album Night Falls.

This disc has been with me for nearly half my life. The Miserere in particular drew me into a love of singing. As a teenager I used to spend hours singing along alternately with the baritone and alto lines until the booklet yellowed and nearly fell apart from excessive handling (I even went so far as to purchase a backup, just so I would have a pristine copy on my shelf). After so much physiological engagement with its textual and aural shapes, it has become an integral part of my person. Listening reminds me that with each new step I take on the path to independence, I grow closer to who I have always been: a human soul sustained by all others in a world where time is infinitely malleable, and the only thing that’s real is my surrender to the moment.

<< Eleni Karaindrou: Music For Films (ECM 1429)
>> Christopher Bowers-Broadbent: Trivium (ECM 1431 NS)

Jan Garbarek/The Hilliard Ensemble: Officium (ECM New Series 1525)

| Tyran Grillo

Officium

Jan Garbarek soprano, tenor saxophones
The Hilliard Ensemble
David James countertenor
Rogers Covey-Crump tenor
John Potter tenor
Gordon Jones baritone
Recorded September 1993, Propstei St. Gerold
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Behold now, I shall sleep in the dust:
and if thou seek me in the morning, I shall not be.

1994 was an intriguing year in music. Jeff Buckley had begun his tragically halted rise to fame with the debut studio album Grace; Portishead brought trip-hop to the mainstream with Dummy; Kurt Cobain shocked many of my generation with his suicide; Pierre Boulez won the Grammy for Best Classical Album with his Deutsche Grammophon recording of Bartók’s The Wooden Prince; and the wildly popular Chant by the Benedictine monks of Silos had taken the North American market by storm. And then there was Officium, a humble recording with the distinction of being the only ECM album I have ever seen advertised on television. I don’t think anyone knew what to expect of its unique combination of soprano and tenor saxophones and choral skimmings from the 12th, 15th, and 16th centuries, but I can still remember the splash it created, selling the better part of a million copies. I made sure to buy mine on the day of its release, simply because of its label and its musicians, and continue to be mesmerized by its sounds to this day. With so many ECM recordings floating through my CD player, it had actually been years since I’d heard this album before revisiting it for this review. I’m pleased to say that, despite the unwarranted flak it has drawn (which, as much as I can tell, is far less than the praise), Officium has aged beautifully and remains a pinnacle of nostalgia in my life as a listener, for it provided some of the most delectable nourishment imaginable at a time when my budding mind was ravenously hungry for new sounds.

At its core is the Hilliard Ensemble’s choice of music, much of it open to interpretation even in its day, by composers such as Pérotin, Pierre de la Rue, and Guillaume Dufay, in addition to a range of earlier anonymous (much of it Czech) material. The opening track, combining Garbarek’s liquid improvisations with the Parce Mihi Domine of Cristóbal de Morales, will always be the one that speaks to me most clearly, if only because it was first to lure my heart into the album’s many inner sanctums. I would say that any claims of disjointedness are quickly dispelled by the anonymous Primo tempore that follows, in which Garbarek’s tenor swells with the mournful quality of an additional human voice. Some tracks are more seamless than others, which is to be expected in the first release of this innovative and ongoing project. Regnantem sempiterna, for example, gives Garbarek less room to work with, forcing him to wriggle his way through a narrower set of possibilities. But then there is the Pulcherrima rosa, during which I sometimes need to remind myself he is even there. There are also those fascinating moments, especially in the Sanctus, when Garbarek descends into unexpected territories, as well as his seductive solo turn in Virgo flagellatur. Either way, Garbarek has an acute ear for vocal contours and matches his playing accordingly. The Hilliards are in typically fine form. Procedentem sponsum and Beata viscera both feature sublime solos from David James, who navigates the droning landscape with utter faith, and Gordon Jones’s* lone rendition of the Gregorian chant Oratio Ieremiae provides some of the loveliest moments on the entire album. Parce mihi domine is reprised at the program’s center (without saxophone) and again at the end (this time, with), thus enacting a tripartite ritual throughout its overall cohesion.

I like to think that Officium led listeners to look at some of ECM’s other fine recordings, if not at other choral albums in general, both new and old. Regardless of any dismissals of this album as a failed New-Age experiment, I like to think of it as a glorious window into a timely solace that enriched the lives of many. Like any album, it may not be for everyone, but one need only take a peek to see what effect(s) it might have.

*Many thanks to Joanna Z. for this correction.

<< Sidsel Endresen: Exile (ECM 1524)
>> Louis Sclavis/Dominique Pifarély: Acoustic Quartet (ECM 1526)

Gesualdo: Tenebrae (ECM New Series 1422/23)

| Tyran Grillo

Carlo Gesualdo
Tenebrae

The Hilliard Ensemble
David James countertenor
Ashley Stafford countertenor
John Potter tenor
Rogers Covey-Crump tenor
Mark Padmore tenor
Paul Hillier baritone
David Beavan bass
Recorded March 1990, Douai Abbey, England
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Those who have read my first post on this site will know that my teens marked an important transition in my listening life through the discovery of classical music, in particular by way of ECM’s New Series. At the same time, I found my mind and ears opening to more esoteric forms of musical expression. This, coupled with my growing interest in Japan, led me to discover Haino Keiji, who after decades is still the reigning troubadour of the Japanese underground and whose discography numbers well over 100 albums. During my first trip to Japan in the summer of 1998, I had the honor of attending two of his performances in Tokyo. Haino often likes to spin a CD before he takes the stage, coaxing his audience into a certain mood that prepares them for what they are about to experience. And sure enough, before one of these shows, he was playing a recording of choral music by Carlo Gesualdo (ca. 1561-1613). I had one of the greatest meetings of my life when a contact arranged an informal interview with Haino after the second show. During that conversation, Haino professed his adoration for Gesualdo, which, if you’ve ever heard Haino’s music, may come as something of a surprise. He went on to tell me that, in his estimation, Gesualdo had explored almost every harmonic possibility available to him, and that in so doing had left behind a musical corpus that was in its own way “complete.” I was already quite familiar with the Hilliard Ensemble’s standard-setting ECM recording of the Tenebrae Responsoria and, upon my return from Japan, I went back to this recording with renewed interest, and discovered in it far more than I had ever dreamed. Years later, I find that its mysteries still evade me. By “mysteries” I do not mean to mythologize an already indisputably gorgeous exposition of polyphony, but to uphold it as a singular testament of a troubled soul.

The details of Gesualdo’s life are likely familiar to anyone who has delved even briefly into the biographies of the Renaissance’s most revered composers, for in 1590, the Neapolitan-born nobleman would stain his reputation with the blood of his first wife, who he had murdered along with her not-so-secret lover in the throes of what they believed to be a clandestine passion. According to some researchers, his second infant son—whose paternity Gesualdo may have doubted—also fell victim to his indignation. In spite of his heinous crime(s), Don Carlo’s noble rank as Prince of Venosa absolved him of any and all legal repercussions, though as a precaution he relocated from Naples to a private residence in Fererra, where he would meet and marry his second wife before returning to his castle. Their marriage was not a happy one, and Gesualdo was plagued by depression after the death of their son in 1600. Speculations abound as to the nature of this depression, though the evidence suggests he’d been confronting the specter of his past deeds. These responsories for Holy Week were to be his final compositions, and their Passion texts deal appropriately with crucifixion and betrayal, reflecting the inner turmoil of a mind in decline.

I somehow feel it would be a disservice to Gesualdo to single out any particular responsory over the rest, just as it would be impossible to single out any of the tears I imagine were shed in his lifetime. Every piece blossoms with the unstoppable force of nature, even as it questions that very nature for having driven a man to such extremes. The music is knotted with gut-wrenching and unbridled honesty. It is a wellspring of supplication into which one never dives and from which one never emerges, filling one nostril with the stench of death and the other with the perfume of remorse. It seems to puncture holes in the sky and thread through them a most painful confession that supersedes our peripheral constellations. The music also has a peculiar quality that I can only describe as an “ascendant descension,” as it always seems to reaching toward some semblance of God, even as it feels itself being pulled underground, so that by the end its identity has been torn and exists in neither place. This would seem to be the nature of Gesualdo’s repentance: one that dissolves rather than resolves. The tectonic plates of his chosen texts shift beneath their execution. Even in the greatest moments of upheaval they retain earthly shape. The final Miserere alternates between recitative polyphony and monophonic chant, animating the formless into the material. This pattern continues until the final chant disappears into the darkness: a star that burned out millennia ago, but which only now blinks from the sky unnoticed.

It’s difficult to imagine the Hilliard Ensemble sounding better than they do here in their duly magnified incarnation. The addition of Ashley Stafford broadens the already heavenly palette of David James, and both of them form the shining sun in the center of this choral zodiac. The performances are replete with unpredictable key changes, rhythmic anomalies, and luscious morphological details, so that every word seems its own composition, bound to its neighbors by a narrative that may only be divinely understood.

Just last night I was present at a live performance by Pomerium in the beautiful acoustics of St. Patrick – St. Anthony Church in Hartford, Connecticut, where they sang two of the Gesualdo responsories in a program of carefully chosen mannerist music. Finally hearing Gesualdo live brought a whole new understanding of the tortured drama that binds them. Like the Hilliards, Pomerium’s conductor Alexander Blachly has been a tireless champion of music that is both well established in the repertoire and that which begs exposure. If anything, his fantastic ensemble taught me one thing: music from even the most despicable circumstances can indeed transcend those circumstances through each new listener. The power of collective musical ablution may have no equivalent, but in this recording we get to experience just that in solitude.

<< Keith Jarrett Trio: Tribute (ECM 1420/21)
>> Gavin Bryars: After the Requiem (ECM 1424 NS)

Stephen Hartke: Tituli / Cathedral in the Thrashing Rain (ECM New Series 1861)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Stephen Hartke
Tituli/Cathedral in the Thrashing Rain

The Hilliard Ensemble
David James countertenor
Rogers Covey-Crump tenor
Steven Harrold tenor
Andreas Hirtreiter tenor
Gordon Jones baritone
Michelle Makarski violin
Lynn Vartan marimba, cymbals, shaker, cup bells, wood block
Javier Diaz marimba, cymbals, shaker, cup bells, wood block
Donald Crockett conductor
Recorded February 2003 at Mechanics Hall, Worecester, Massachusetts

Cease now, my mother, to torment yourself
in vain sobs of wretchedness all the day,
for such grief has not befallen you alone:
the same has befallen mighty kings as well.

From the First Punic War in Tituli (1999) to the dawn of World War I in Cathedral in the Thrashing Rain (2000), the music of American composer Stephen Hartke is firmly rooted in the intersection between the spatial and the temporal. It is about the vicarious presence of bygone eras engendered by their ruins; it is language as architecture, and architecture as history.

The Old Latin and Etruscan fragments of Tituli (scored for five solo male voices, violin, and two percussionists) were inscribed on pre-Imperial Roman artifacts: oracular and sacred law texts, cryptic offerings, and even a Palermo shop sign pass the Hilliards’ lips in a deft melodic oratory. In the opening “Lapis Niger,” every word rolls over the next with the perpetuity of an incoming tide. “Columna rostrata,” an account of Rome’s first major victory in Carthage, is the most dramatic section and rises like its titular structure into an audible testament of a fledgling empire. The tenderest moments are to be found in “Elogium parvuli,” an epitaph written for a six-year-old boy named Optatus, and for whom the music works its way darkly through every powerful sentiment in a beautiful twelve-minute lustration. The music of Tituli traces the contours of every word with archeological care. Violin and percussion make careful appearances, never intruding upon the texts at hand, and leave their deepest traces behind in the final two sections.

Cathedral in the Thrashing Rain for countertenor, two tenors, and baritone takes its direct inspiration from a poem by Japanese poet and sculptor Takamura Kōtarō (1883-1956), and appears here in a striking English translation (with some duplicate lines in Japanese) by the inimitable Hiroaki Sato. When I saw the Hilliard Ensemble live in 2004, they closed with this piece, leaving the audience spellbound. The concert began with a motet by Pérotin, which was written to be sung inside Notre-Dame, whereas here the sentiments are of a secular artist seeking shelter from the elements in the cathedral’s looming magnificence. Takamura cannot help but think of his homeland: “Storms are like this in my country, Japan, too,” he muses. “Only, we don’t see you soaring.” The chromatic flavor of Hartke’s setting surprises at every turn, treating each stanza as its own compositional bead on a long poetic necklace.

I have been a great admirer of Hartke since I first heard Michelle Makarski and Ronald Copes’s spirited rendition of the blues-inspired Oh Them Rats Is Mean in My Kitchen on New World Records. His acute and colorful music is resilient like a tightly knit sweater and just as comfortable to try on for size. His choral music represents a big development in a mostly instrumental oeuvre and these landmark performances are so precise and well recorded that one can almost smell the patina of age they wear. The Hilliards sing with unbridled conviction and even do a competent job with their Japanese enunciation, while the instrumentalists play with a subdued electricity all their own. This being ECM’s first Super Audio CD (SACD) recording, it practically begs to be listened to on the right equipment. Either way, its energy comes through just the same, taming our desire for the old and the new in one go.

A Hilliard Songbook (ECM New Series 1614/15)

| Tyran Grillo

 

The Hilliard Ensemble
A Hilliard Songbook: New Music For Voices

The Hilliard Ensemble
David James countertenor
Rogers Covey-Crump tenor
John Potter tenor
Gordon Jones baritone
Barry Guy double-bass
Recorded March/April 1995, March 1996 at Boxgrove Priory, Chichester
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Those who approach this album like I did—that is, only after listening to the Hilliard Ensemble’s many early music recordings—may be in for a surprise. Whether that surprise is a pleasant one or not may depend on the listener’s openness to new sounds. The opening convulsion that is Barry Guy’s aphasic Un coup de dés would seem to foreshadow a bumpy ride. Its whirlwind of extended double bass techniques and choral acrobatics leaves us hard pressed to find our bearings. The score, Guy tells us, encourages improvisation and even the modification of what has already been written. Using a section from a Mellarmé poem, which likens the process of thought to a mere dice-throw, the piece works its way into our ears like a dwarfing star. It is abstract, agitated, and unsettling, yet full of gracious detail we cannot help but enjoy. The Hilliards demonstrate that they can execute a piece of such technical difficulty and “modern” sensibility with as much fluidity as they approach their more familiar repertoire—at least insofar as their recordings are concerned, for they have always been known for juxtaposing contemporary works with those of bygone ages in their live performances. And then we get the short and sweet Only, the earliest published composition of Morton Feldman. In less time than it takes to microwave a frozen dinner, we are utterly transported by Feldman’s visceral melodic rendering of a Rilke sonnet, brought to its fullest fruition through the angelic voice of Rogers Covey-Crump. It is a folk song for its own sake, a funereal hymn for the living. This sets off a spate of shorter pieces by Ivan Moody and Piers Hellawell. Moody’s viscous miniatures live up to the composer’s name, taking us through a range of emotional colors. Endechas y Canciones sets Arabic-Spanish poetry from the 15th and 16th centuries. The second of these, “Endechas a la muerte de Guillén Peraza,” is a dirge from the Canary Islands that pulls at the heartstrings with a pace slow and focused, like moderated speech. The Hilliard Songbook by Hellawell, on the other hand, is a whimsical journey through A Treatise Concerning the Arte of Limning by Nicholas Hilliard (1547-1619), the celebrated Elizabethan portraitist. This is the centerpiece of the album, both in title and in song. The treatise’s idiosyncratic descriptions of color inspired the composer to recreate those very colors with voices. Regulating the piece is a refrain taken up each time by one member of the ensemble: “True beautie of each perfect cullor in his full perfection in perfect hard bodies and very transparent.” Through this many-hued ode we are given valuable insight into not only the Hilliards’ vocal art, but also into the visual mind of their namesake.

Of the longer pieces represented here, Paul Robinson’s Incantation is textually the broadest. The words are adopted from Byron’s poem of the same name—what Robinson calls a “vitriolic curse”—through which the composer sought to foreground the Hilliards’ sonority over the work being performed. As the music marks its slow path through a rather morbid text, we feel the voices blend into a single destination. Kullervo’s Message, by Estonian composer Veljo Tormis, recounts a dramatic episode from The Kalevala, Finland’s nineteenth-century national epic. From a line of skillfully harmonized textual lifts, Tormis hangs a series of messages by which the eponymous tragic hero is informed of the deaths of his loved ones, even as he prepares to exact his revenge upon those whose ridicule led him to such self-destructive fervor. Tormis’s melodic and programmatic colors are ideally suited to their source material, moving with the virtuosity of a master storyteller. Scottish composer James MacMillan offers his own epic statement in the form of …here in hiding…, a deceptively simple mesh of the poem “Adoro te devote” by St. Thomas Aquinas in both its Latin and English forms.

The remaining pieces comprise a flavorful mixture of words and musical ideas. Two exemplary statements from Arvo Pärt, And One Of The Pharisees… and the splendid vocal version of Summa, make fine company of Elizabeth Liddle’s Whale Rant, which takes its cues from Moby-Dick, and works its music like clock hands, with one arm counting the hours while another traces a faster, larger circle. The second hand becomes invisible, implied only in the vocal gestures of the sensitive performance, and is forever lost in the ocean of its source. Joanne Metcalf’s Music For The Star Of The Sea, is a thinly veiled meditation on the words “O ave maris stella” (“O hail star of the sea”) that extends the possibility of a single utterance into a vast Marian fabric. Sharpe Thorne by John Casken paints an image of Christ impaled, while Michael’s Finnissy’s Stabant autem iuxta crucem praises the one who bore him. And in Canticum Canticorum Ivan Moody again dazzles with this setting of verses from the Song of Songs and its loving incorporation of Byzantine chant.

Those wishing to hear the range of the Hilliards’ technical prowess will want to check out this collection for sure. This humble quartet sings with such clear articulation of phrase that one accepts every note like the nourishing morsel it is. While the music is for the most part contemplative and lovely, never ceasing to fascinate even at its least accessible moments, much of it feels spun from the same thread. The pieces by Ivan Moody stand out here as being the most well thought out and textually aligned, while the Hellawell, Tormis, and Guy enchant with their distinctive flair. That being said, it seems a shame to think that cultures outside a Eurocentric Judeo-Christian context should be shunted here. Considering that nearly all of these pieces were written for the Hilliard Ensemble, and that some of their composers were involved in the Hilliard Summer School led by the ensemble in residency, a narrow scope is perhaps understandable. Geographical limitations aside, the traveling instinct is still there in the Hilliards’ adventurous spirit, captured in every flawless phrase, in every committed performance that continues to issue from their very throats.

Arvo Pärt: Passio (ECM New Series 1370)

| Tyran Grillo

Arvo Pärt
Passio

The Hilliard Ensemble
David James countertenor
Rogers Covey-Crump tenor
John Potter tenor
Gordon Jones baritone
Lynne Dawson soprano
Michael George bass
Elizabeth Layton violin
Melinda Maxwell oboe
Elisabeth Wilson cello
Catherine Duckett bassoon
Christopher Bowers-Broadbent organ
Western Wind Chamber Choir
Paul Hillier conductor
Recorded March 1988, St. Jude-on-the-Hill, London
Engineers: Peter Laenger, Stephan Schellmann
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Sometimes music arrests you the moment it begins. Arvo Pärt’s Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi secundum Joannem of 1982 is just such a piece. Its opening proclamation speaks directly to the heart. Although the music is rooted in St. John’s Gospel, one need not be a believer to feel its spiritual tug. Pärt’s is one of an outstanding line of St. John Passions, most notably those of Orlande de Lassus (1580), Heinrich Schütz (1666), J. S. Bach (1724), and more recently of James MacMillan (2008). Pärt’s music is distinct from these in that it is so uniquely situated both in and out of its own time. His setting harks back to the monophony of the spoken word and accordingly makes us of an antiphonal structure determined by the rhythms and dynamics inherent in the Latin text. Passio is scored for bass and tenor soloists (as Jesus and Pilate, respectively), an SATB quartet as the refracted evangelist, choir, and a modest assortment of winds, strings, and organ. Under the sensitive direction of Paul Hillier, the musicians achieve an utterly breathtaking unity of diction and tone throughout the entire unbroken 70-minute duration.

Microtonal harmonies dominate the lead solos as the piece leads in from its captivating intro, rendered all the more dialogic with the countertenor’s entrance. The sopranic evangelist adds a feathery fringe to an already gauzy sound, even as it needles the patchwork it borders. The voices build into ascendant clusters against occasional commentary from woodwinds. Michael George is heartwrenching in the title role and sings with an almost orthodox flair. The higher voices work their way into compact triangles in a tessellation of strings and throats as winds weave their way through with the surety of fish swimming through water. A shaft of light cuts through the solace as the organ blossoms with fuller force and the entire choir bursts forth with flowering tendrils of fire, hurtling massive emotions into the cosmos. From this dense overgrowth emerge clusters of voices in a far-reaching conversation. The piece evolves in textually ordered sections, using its own remnants to build new vocabularies along the way. As such, the music feels “recited” more than played (not unlike the sacred works of Alexander Knaifel), gathering energy from the very blessing of articulation and peaking as that energy becomes concentrated when bid to be sung. Vocal lines bleed into one another, brought to life by the connective tissue of faith that flows through them, covering the score’s skeletal structure with skin while leaving stigmata untouched. These brief moments, during which the full weight of the assembled performers comes crashing down, are simply earth shattering and leave us effectively stilled for the quieter contemplations in which they are housed. This album is filled with moments of heart-stopping beauty: a high note from Lynne Dawson at 25:09, John Potter’s solo 90 seconds later, the chromatic climb from David James at 40:40 (and another at 54:11), the proclamation at 58:50, and of course the glorious final minute that leaves us spellbound.

One of the Estonian composer’s most beloved works, Passio is an epitome of the tintinnabuli style and ranks alongside such masterpieces as his Stabat Mater and Miserere. While Passio treats each section of text as its own poetic enclosure, a certain continuity casts the entire work in a light of repentance, a planetary prostration at the feet of something so almighty yet so pliant that only music can even begin to express in human terms that which is anything but.

Of the small handful of versions available on disc, this is the first and most definitive. A manifold approach to the recording is evident in every aspect, striking an ideal balance between intimacy and sheer vastness of sound. Some may be put off by a single long track that offers little respite for the overwhelmed listener, but the rewards that await us at the end far outweigh the patience required to get there.

<< Heiner Goebbels: Der Mann im Fahrstuhl/The Man In The Elevator (ECM 1369)
>> Markus Stockhausen: Cosi Lontano … Quasi Dentro (ECM 1371)

Thomas Tallis: The Lamentations Of Jeremiah (ECM New Series 1341)

| Tyran Grillo

Thomas Tallis
The Lamentations Of Jeremiah

David James countertenor
John Potter tenor
Rogers Covey-Crump tenor
Paul Hillier baritone
Michael George bass
Recorded September 1986, All Hallows Church, London
Engineer: Antony Howell

“The joy of our heart is ceased;
our dance is turned into mourning.”
–Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet

I remember first hearing The Lamentations of Jeremiah of Thomas Tallis (1505-1585) as performed by the Deller Consort on an old Vanguard LP. Needless to say, my fifteen-year-old ears were awestruck by the ache of their eponymous emotion. In the hands (or should I say mouths?) of the Hilliard Ensemble the music of Tallis has become something else entirely. What the Deller recording displayed in brooding sensibility, the Hilliards have matched tenfold in the sheer expanse of their craft and in the ways in which that craft unfurls in a realm of earthly care. Composed during the latter half of the sixteenth century, the Lamentations are of the utmost spiritual refinement. Yet Tallis scholar Paul Doe asserts that the Lamentations “were not conceived as church music at all, but rather for private recreational singing by loyal Catholics.” Nevertheless, their masterful shifts in harmony and register make for a challenging “recreation” to say the least. Tallis has forged a delicate balance between each vocal line, and recreating this balance requires astute attention to many intricacies beyond the printed score. This the Hilliards pull off with dutiful concentration in a fluid and precise performance. The sheer sense of continuity and retrograde motion in these motets lends itself well to the shape and mood of their source texts. Each voice is clearly heard, rising intermittently above the others in slow waves in one of the most stunning examples of polyphony ever composed.

A languid tenor line spins the second setting into a gorgeous tapestry and intensifies the sonic textures. Here, Tallis constructs his voices much like cells: each one seems to subdivide until it develops into a living, breathing organism in its own right. Bodies individuate, shedding skin and emotional excess. In this pollinated space the Hilliards display an almost intuitive control of dynamics, and the way they ease into minor-to-major shifts at the ends of phrases is a perfect example of their ability to restrain at near silence, letting syllables breathe on their own without losing any harmonic tension. And perhaps this is exactly what these cells are: “pure” morphemes building into larger texts that become more recognizable with age. By the end they have successfully rendered the words of God’s subjects, who themselves interpret audible impulses of spiritual awareness into concrete blocks of meaning to be transcribed and notated by the faithful composer living through the religico-musical gesture alone. In this manner Tallis caresses the text, laying his hands upon the words with every note, and in doing so lays them also upon the listener. For this recording of the Lamentations the Hilliards have used a score tuned to modern pitch—which requires a deeper, more demanding sound palette—avoiding the pitfalls that transposed renditions often create when breaching into soprano territory. The countertenor is ideally suited to the haunting quality of the work, and in this regard David James paints a lower ceiling toward which the other voices may waft.

After these juggernauts come Salvator mundi and O sacrum convivium, two shorter motets that pave the way for the monumental Mass for Four Voices. In these pieces the alto line becomes more than a thread, but a thick, heavy cord that anchors the music down with its gravid faith. The music climbs and waits in the rafters to breathe in preparation for the Mass-ive descent to follow. Where the Lamentations are a tightly meshed macramé, in the Mass they resemble a lattice through which the wind blows freely. The voices are like water caught in a cove—sometimes they crash against the rocks; others they trickle between them, eddying in eroded pockets, splitting in infinitesimal directions. As such, they remain divinely ordered, flowing to the rhythm of some invisible articulation that can only be implied through the sounds of the sea, the trickle of a stream, the rush of a geyser, the tranquil violence of a waterfall.

This album represents a collection of music that has been “left behind,” having survived centuries of upheaval. In order to be heard and experienced, it must be transmitted from paper to voice, from materiality to intangibility, from the mundane to the sacred, only to be reinscribed onto a compact disc and sold as a commodity. Either way, the music outlives its creator. From the opening strains of the Lamentations to the harmonic gumbo of the closing Absterge Domine, we are treated to a veritable feast of sounds upon which the mind and body may gorge in abstract mastication. The recording is flawless—with just enough sheen from the highs and a touch of earthly muddiness in the lows—and couched in just the right amount of reverb. David James never fails to amaze throughout, while the two tenors (and Rogers Covey-Crump in particular) outdo themselves in the Mass. Like a freshly broken geode, the music they create surprises with its inner wealth. Its intense complexity and dissonant grinds make its moments of resolution all the more breathtaking. Those unsettling harmonies shake the listener down to the feet, underscoring the fallibility of the body. They also characterize the turbulent era in which Tallis lived, marking humanity at the center of music that is otherwise ecclesiastical. In listening to this disc one loses all sense of time and place, and in doing so begins to latch on to whatever individual voices are discernible from this beautifully ordered cacophony. The sheer variety of color shifts is beyond comprehension: it seems inconceivable that one could sit at a piano or organ and pluck these sounds from the ether. It is a music of dreams, of visions, and I daresay a music of divine inspiration. As such it lays itself bare as a supremely constructed object, though like any object it can be used to create magic. With all the formative elements nested in this world—earth, water, wind, air, fire—this music reminds us that, to that list, we must also add: light.

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>> Christy Doran: Red Twist & Tuned Arrow (ECM 1342)

Arvo Pärt: Arbos (ECM New Series 1325)

| Tyran Grillo

Arvo Pärt
Arbos

The Hilliard Ensemble
David James countertenor
Rogers Covey-Crump tenor
John Potter tenor
Gordon Jones baritone
Christopher Bowers-Broadbent organ
Gidon Kremer violin
Vladimir Mendelssohn viola
Thomas Demenga cello
Brass Ensemble Staatsorchester Stuttgart
Dennis Russell Davies conductor
Arbos, An den Wassern zu Babel, Pari Intervallo, De Profundis, and Summa recorded March/August 1986, Karlshöhe, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland (Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg)
Stabat Mater, Es sang vor langen Jahren recorded January 1987 at St. John’s Church, London
Engineers: Peter Laenger and Andreas Neubronner (Südwest Tonstudio, Stuttgart)
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The music of Arvo Pärt, says Wilfred Mellers in his liner notes, is “concerned with the numinous”; as direct a statement as one can make about the sounds contained in this relatively neglected disc, overshadowed as it often is by the popularity of Te Deum and Tabula Rasa. For those new to Pärt, the wide selection represented in Arbos makes a solid primer. From the succinct to the majestic, the listener is treated to a carefully programmed process of transformation, culminating in one of the great masterpieces of modern choral literature.

The journey begins with the title piece, a terse blast of energy scored for brass and percussion. While cacophonous and chromatic, it is also perpetual and dark, providing the core for the “Dies irae” of Pärt’s later Miserere. On its own, it swirls into a self-sustaining galaxy that becomes more ordered with distance.

An den Wassern zu Babel saßen wir und weinten renders the well-known “By the rivers of Babylon” passage from Psalm 137 in a series of lilting triads, alternating between men’s and women’s voices. Here and elsewhere throughout the album one encounters the essence of the composer’s “tintinnabuli” style. Sustained tones from organ thread a line of subdued vocal beads, reaching ever higher, only to fall like kites whose strings are cut.

Pari Intervallo provides respite from denser surroundings. Comprised of gravid lead tones resting on a blanket of softer commentary, it is a funereal postlude, waiting and watching as the end draws near, promising not cessation but new life in its reverberant heart. It is a sublime meditation on the meaning of divinity and the divinity of meaning, a soul left unscripted by the wayside, where it can be captured neither on paper nor in sound. And yet, here we find an attempt to sketch its contours against our better judgment, against our feelings of inadequacy, against our assumptions of complexity in all things spiritual. In this piece we find the fibers that bound the garments of Christ on the cross, the creaking of knees of those who knelt at his feet. Pari Intervallo shimmers like heat distortion, moving with the force of a slow tide before receding into a still sea.

This is followed by Pärt’s stunning De Profundis, which also makes an appearance in the Miserere, if augmented by a broader choral palette. Different also here is the recording, which is less spacious (the bass drum, for one, is far more present). The voices are allowed to luxuriate in their own fallibility, in that beauty of impermanence that makes them human. In exposing its fragility so readily, the music becomes resilient. An organ provides the waters upon which this vessel of music floats, while a gong adds a dual note of ceremony. Whereas this piece brings us to the end in Miserere, as a standalone composition it seems to suggest a beginning.

Es sang vor langen Jahren sets a German poem (text and translation available here) by Clemens Brentano (1778-1842) for alto, violin, and viola. Alto Susan Bickley weaves a delicate song in this bare setting. Her tone is rich, as if residing somewhere in the back of her throat, heard before it is seen. The strings are like a lectern upon which the poetry rests, its pages bronzed with age.

Next is Summa in its original choral version. It is the quintessential Pärt composition: balanced, lush with triadic splendor, and concise. Along with Fratres in its many guises, Summa is a red thread in Pärt’s oeuvre and shines in this heartfelt performance.

This is followed by a curious reprise of Arbos that may divide listeners. Either way, it startles us from our reverie before pushing us into another.

At last we come to the highlight of an already fine disc: the 1985 Stabat Mater for 3 voices and string trio. The downward movement of its opening strings presents us with a unique metaphorical inversion. Where many a Stabat Mater works toward transcendence in its mourning, here we are brought from Heaven to Earth, even as we know that we must look from the latter to the former. The voices are the Trinity in a single open Ah, as if to spin their grief beyond the confines of language. Only then, after a brief comment from strings, does the text reveal itself. David James is the standout performer here, leading the way to a more rhythmic passage, echoed sul ponticello. Soprano Lynne Dawson enters like light through a window, bringing a maternal edge as she joins with James in duet, dotting the frosted glass of eternity with her warm fingertips. From Mount Zion they overlook the valleys—as green as they are brown—until everything that we have known is washed away in sound.

On the whole, Arbos goes down like a potion brewed in a vast melodic crucible. This is music that revels in its own exiguousness, for it is within those empty spaces that the greatest discoveries await us.

<< Jan Garbarek: All Those Born With Wings (ECM 1324)
>> Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy: Avant Pop (ECM 1326)