Wonder and mystery from The Sixteen

The Sixteen's Song of the Nativity is an outstanding Christmas disc of the more contemplative kind. There are celebratory pieces here, but the nativity is a low-key, hushed affair.

O magnum mysterium,
et admirabile sacramentum,
ut animalia viderent Dominum natum,
jacentem in praesepio!

O great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the new-born Lord,
lying in a manger!

Putting across this combination of wonder and mystery requires great control and finesse, which Harry Christophers and his wonderful singers The Sixteen provide at the highest level, for example in this beautiful version by Morten Lauridsen which leads off the album.



The control and purity of the voices is really outstanding. Christophers and his choir sustain the long lines of Peter Warlock's great Bethlehem Down in spite of an audaciously slow speed. I wasn't convinced at first, but the beautiful sound they make almost convinces me the choice of tempo wasn't a mistake. The program doesn't provide much variety of mood or styles, but rather it provides a respite from Holiday hustle and bustle, and perhaps a chance to meditate upon more serious matters than shopping or parties. There are occasional breaks into less sophisticated and subtle music, including a number of rustic "traditional" songs where the singers sometimes indulge in a bit of Celtic celebration, but nothing too raucous! The album comes to a triumphant close with James Macmillan's O Radiant Dawn from his Strathclyde Motets, which is about light shining on "the darkness of those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death."

Music of tribute

We've all been told many times that classical music's focus on dead composers is an oddity of the modern period, and in previous times art music was contemporary music. Indeed, I'll tell you that very same thing myself, one more time. Not that we shouldn't listen to four-centuries-dead Monteverdi. He's awesome, and we should listen to him even more. Only we should listen to Kate Moore and Lydia Kakabadse as well. Anyway.

I'm not sure if this is sociologically significant, but something interesting happened after the death of Claudio Monteverdi in November 1643. In 1650 Monteverdi's pupil Francesco Cavalli published a posthumous collection of music, a tribute to his teacher. It was called Messa a quattro voci et salmi, and it included sacred music not included in Selva morale e spirituale of 1641, the last sacred collection published by Monteverdi in his lifetime. Monteverdi was well-loved in his lifetime, and there was plenty of interest in his music after the great master's death. Cavalli slipped in a piece of his own, a 10-minute Magnificat that matches his teacher's work.

Surprisingly, not all of this music has been recorded, which I find astounding. Every little bit of Monteverdi seems special to me, and there's nothing below a very high level on this disc, the first volume in Harry Christophers' new series with The Sixteen. This is choral singing of a high standard, with able support from "the continuo team", as Christophers calls the instrumentalists in his entertaining note on the 5-day recording session at St. Augustine Church in Kilburn,  London. The Sixteen recorded "in the round":

Everyone was in eye contact so that each subtle nuance and invention could be passed aurally and visually from one to another with great ease. 

There's a relaxed feeling in this music that comes from the recording setup, the obvious work taken by these musicians to become comfortable with the intricacies of Monteverdi's music, and the trust between musicians that is required to make great choral, or any kind of music.

Here's a behind the scenes look at the recording, from The Sixteen's YouTube channel:

Special intersections of art and belief

I've been listening to more than a few CDs for review, but this new one from Harry Christophers and The Sixteen has knocked me for a loop. The title track, "The Deer's Cry", is written by Arvo Pärt. The text is an amazing poem (which Pärt sets in English), written by St. Patrick (372-466):

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in me, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me,
Christ with me.

Though I'm not a believer, I was raised in the Christian tradition and often feel myself stirred by special intersections of art and belief: the great Medieval cathedrals of Europe, Bach's St. Matthew Passion, the Eisenheim Altarpiece of Grünewald. This intimate piece sounds so personal, almost like a confession. But behind it is the long, vital stream of faith and tradition going back to St. Patrick and the early church. And surrounding it is the darkness of Pärt's world in communist Estonia, and of all faith under the threat of intolerance. This is such beautiful, moving music, and it affected me deeply.

These themes of tradition and faith under fire are two of three that tie together the music of Pärt, who was born in 1935, with the two Tudor composers who share the disc, Thomas Tallis (1503-1585) and William Byrd (1539-1623). Like Pärt, Tallis and Byrd (both 'unreformed Roman Catholics') were at times unable to openly practice their religion. Also like Pärt the two earlier composers built on the music of their English and continental precursors. Indeed, there is literal building going on in the amazing Miserere nostri, where the pupil Byrd writes a four-part piece upon which his master Tallis, in a technical tour de force, adds three more voices. And it's all astonishingly beautiful:



That's the third theme Harry Christophers brings to this music: craftsmanship. Canons, crab-canons, inversions, and all sorts of ingenious musical tricks are in play.  Here's how the low-voice singers treat the portion of the Miserere nostri that Byrd wrote:

The first sings the line exactly as written. The second doubles all the durations of the notes (x2), and turns all the intervals upside down. The third singer quadruples the durations (x4) and resorts the intervals. The fourth octuples the durations (x8) and re-inverts the intervals. Thus four different versions of the same melody sound simultaneously, in various states of augmentation and inversion - a conceit that is utterly impossible to follow in sound.

For someone who can just barely get through Row, row, row your boat, this is heady stuff. I'm not sure if the singers were expected to do this all in real time, or if they went away and practiced their part for a very long time. As John Milsom says in his informative liner essay, these complex puzzles aren't necessarily designed to be heard in performance, but appreciated by the singers.

One of the coolest of these begins the album. In Diliges Dominum William Byrd has written a musical palindrome. It's an eight-part motet that sounds the same sung backwards as it does forwards. As Milsom suggests in his essay, I tested this out. I loaded the MP3 into Audacity, clicked on Effects, and Reverse, and it indeed sounded the same backwards. Well, not quite the same. There's an odd, other-wordly feel to this track when it's played backwards. Besides the fact that the words are backwards as well, the reverb in the church where it was recorded comes before a phrase rather than after, and there's immediate silence after instead. It comes out a bit like this:




In any case, I recommend this disc very highly. The Sixteen have made this repertoire the basis of this year's Choral Pilgrimage. They'll be taking this repertoire to 33 sites in Britain, including the great college chapels and cathedrals, beginning in April 2016. The disc is available for pre-order now at Amazon.com; its release date is April 1st.