Singing about the dark times

Pater Peccavi: Music of Lamentation from Renaissance Portugal; music by Brito, Cardoso, Lobo, Magalhães, Morago

In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times. 

- Bertold Brecht, Motto to the 'Svendborg Poems'

The sensuous, fiercely sad music of 16th and 17th century Portugal can be so intensely emotional that the centuries between slip away, and one responds as if to a death in the family or some local tragedy. As Rory McCleery documents in his fine liner essay to his superb new disc with The Marian Consort, at least some of these musical laments are more than personal declarations of grief or devotional works, but also political statements, and even underground expressions of activism against the rule of the Spanish Habsburgs in Portugal. So underlying the bitterness of the lamentations is a strongly burning hope, a hope, indeed for eventual salvation, but also for the restoration of a Portuguese monarch, which indeed happened with the accession of John (João) IV in December 1640.

Duarte Lobo's Missa Veni Domine is almost certainly a political as well as a devotional and artistic statement. Its text asks God to return without delay in order to "ease the wrong done to your people, and call back to their land those who have been dispersed. Stir up your power, O Lord, and come that you might save us."



Humans will always look to art for hope, from Lisbon in 1640 to Brecht in exile in 1939, to the many great artists working in the shadow of the worldwide fascist redux of today. This release is a profound example of how political action can be mobilized and supported by art.

This album will be released on November 2, 2018.

Slip, slidin' away

Orazio Vecchi Requiem: Rubens's funeral and the Antwerp Baroque

I've been immersed in the Glenn Gould world lately, reading Sandrine Revel's new graphic novel and watching 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould. The reason I mention this here is that Gould's 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations was such a ground-breaking event, a revolution in performance practice. Looking back on some of the early responses to Gould's interpretation, his use of a piano in the repertoire, even the choice of music itself, some of it seems quite reactionary more than 60 years later. I dabble, at most, in music from the Renaissance and early Baroque, so I don't know too much about how this music should be sung. My first thought, though, was that the ornamentation, mordents (trills) and slides in abundance, threatens to swamp the music entirely. Trying to keep an open mind I was alternately swept away by the choir's gorgeous singing of unearthly beautiful music and irritated by the swoops and curlicues Bjorn Schmelzer has introduced into the music in apparent imitation of the sound of cornets and sackbuts of the Venetian composers of the time. Frank Sinatra famously imitated Tommy Dorsey's trombone style in developing his vocal technique. Similarly, Ella Fitzgerald once said "I stole everything I ever heard, but mostly I stole from the horns." This cross-fertilization is a sign of a vibrant musical culture, and the reluctance to fall in line with an exact precision of ensemble and a punctiliously straight-forward presentation is very much the same. The music should swing, but maybe not quite so much.

Schmelzer places this music at Rubens' funeral in Antwerp in June of 1640, perhaps on some rather sketchy evidence. This is what got me interested in this album; I adore Rubens' paintings and admire him greatly as a artist and a person (I highly recommend Mark Lamster's book Master of Shadows, by the way, a fine portrait of a cosmopolitan man of letters and public affairs). Vecchi's Requiem was published in Antwerp in 1612, so at least we have the geography lined up. I guess it doesn't really matter too much in the end; we all have our own lineup of people to remember when we listen to Requiem masses, and the list gets longer for all of us every year.

Come back to this review in 60 years to see if I've missed the boat here. What I mainly am right now is puzzled.

Here is the Dies Irae from the Vecchi Missa pro defuncta.