Duarte Lôbo is not entirely
unfamiliar, though not to be confused with his Spanish near-contemporary
Alonso Lobo – the Concise Grove manages a brief entry
on him – but the name Filipe de Magalhães,
with no entry in Concise Grove, will be both unfamiliar
and unpronounceable to most. Try holding your nose for the nasal
sound of the –ães syllable and slurring the final s. The Anglicised
version of the name, ‘Magellan’ is familiar as the name of the
explorer. One Pedro Ayres Magalhães
is a guitarist in the modern Portuguese band Madredeus;
perhaps he is a descendant of Filipe.
In fact both works by Lôbo
on this CD have been recorded elsewhere; at this bargain-price
level the obvious comparison is with two Naxos recordings: the
Schola Cantorum
of Oxford directed by Jeremy Summerly have recorded the Requiem coupled with Manuel
Cardoso’s Requiem on 8.550682
and Audivi vocem is on
a CD entitled Portuguese Polyphony, including Magalhães’s
Mass O Soberana luz
(Ars Nova/Bo Holten
on 8.553310).
Lôbo’s Requiem – the alternative
Latin title Missa pro defunctis or Mass for the dead describes its function
– is one of two which he composed, the other setting being for
six voices. Both English and Portuguese music of this period
would have sounded rather old-fashioned elsewhere in Europe:
English music was isolated by the Reformation, Portuguese, despite
the union with Spain, by geographical isolation and by the innate
conservatism of centres such as Évora
and Coímbra. As a result, both the
Lôbo and the Magalhães sound more
like Palestrina’s or Victoria’s music of the late sixteenth-century
than that of their contemporary Monteverdi. Even in Lutheran
Germany at this date composers like Praetorius
and Schütz were influenced by Venetian
and other Italian music before the 30-Years War intervened to
enforce a starker style. For an idea of what English church
music of the time sounded like, try the excellent recent Helios
reissue of the Winchester Cathedral/David Hill CD of music by
Gibbons on CDH55228.
In his booklet notes, Bruno Turner describes Lôbo’s Requiem as “the kind of music that looks nothing
on paper, yet in performance has great dignity and atmosphere”,
a description which is certainly more apt to this performance
than to Summerly’s. The Naxos notes stress
the music’s blend of skilful polyphony with more modern dissonances;
the Oxford Camerata emphasise this
virtuosity rather than solemnity, though theirs is also a thoughtful
performance, whereas the William Byrd Choir make the music sound
much more like that of the great English polyphonic composer
from whom they take their name. If I describe Turner as more
intense, Summerly
as more scholarly, that is not to suggest that the former is
an academic slouch – far from it – or that the latter makes
the music seem dry.
Both interpretations are valid; the Helios is more
evocative of the kind of occasion on which this music may have
been used, at the incense-wreathed funeral of some dignitary
– the kind of occasion depicted in El Greco’s famous painting
The Burial of the Count of Orgaz.
If the Naxos is perhaps more evocative of the soaring perpendicular
architecture of a large English church or cathedral – it was,
in fact, recorded in the chapel of New College, Oxford – the
Helios reminds me of the sound of hearing a Victoria setting
at High Mass in Toledo Cathedral many years ago, an acoustic
very similar to the large Portuguese churches of the early seventeenth
century, I imagine.
On first playing the two recordings through, I
had the impression that on Naxos the plainsong introduction
to each section is sung at a slightly more sedate pace than
on Hyperion but that otherwise Summerly tends to be a little faster than Turner. In fact,
close comparison proved me wrong: Summerly
is faster in the opening plainsong, too. Both are rather brisker
than would have been the practice in singing plainsong in 1621.
I do not wish to over-emphasise these differences, which become
apparent only in close comparison; both performances sound excellent
when heard on their own.
Turner follows the Requiem with another
funeral piece, Audivi vocem,
familiar from the Book of Common Prayer Burial Service
: “I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me, Write,
From henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the Lord.”
This motet also features on Holten’s Naxos recording and again honours are about equal,
with Holten adopting a slightly more
leisurely pace than Turner.
Magalhães’ penitential Commissa mea pavesco, also a funeral motet, is another work common
to the Holten and Turner recordings.
This time Holten is noticeably faster than Turner. In both works the
acoustic of Kastelkirken, Copenhagen on Naxos, is appropriate to the
music. The ambience of both Naxos discs is rather more open than that on
the Helios, though this is fully acceptable within its own terms.
So far as I am aware, there is no other current
recording of Magalhães’ Mass Dilectus
meus. I cannot imagine a better
performance than Turner’s. As the title suggests, it follows
the common renaissance practice whereby the cantus firmus
is based on another piece of music – in this case, presumably,
a (now lost) Marian motet with words from the Song of Songs,
a practice dating back to the fifteenth century, which would
have seemed as old-fashioned elsewhere in Europe as the continuing
composition in England, well into the seventeenth century, of
polyphonic instrumental pieces based on the in nomine
of Taverner’s Missa Trinitatis from a century before.
I may have made this music sound too dry and academic
when nothing could be further from the truth. That the music
would have sounded old-fashioned by comparison with Monteverdi
hardly impedes its enjoyment by a modern audience: anyone who
likes Palestrina, Victoria or Byrd will be thoroughly
at home here and should enjoy these performances immensely.
Heard on a quiet evening, this music is as close to heaven as
most of us are likely to get.
Those who wish to explore Portuguese polyphony
further might well start with the two fine Naxos CDs, even though
it involves some duplication. If you must choose either the
Helios or the Naxos version of the Lôbo Requiem, the deciding factor may be your preference
for another contemporary composer’s Requiem (on Naxos) or a contemporary mass
in more cheerful vein on Helios. (Not that either Cardoso’s
or Lôbo’s Missa
pro defunctis is any more lugubrious than Fauré’s Requiem since, like him, neither sets the terrifying
sequence Dies iræ.) Unusually
for Naxos, the Lôbo/Cardoso CD has very brief notes and no texts. The other
Naxos disc, like the Helios,
contains full texts and translations and a helpful set of notes:
as with other Helios reissues these are at least as complete
as those on the original full-price issue.
Otherwise I note that Hyperion have just reissued
a further disc of Portuguese polyphony with the Westminster
Cathedral Choir under James O’Donnell, containing music by Cardoso,
Rebelo and de Cristo
(CDH55229). I have not heard this CD in its previous incarnation
but, from knowledge of the performers in similar repertoire,
I cannot imagine anyone being disappointed by it: I hope to
offer a review of it in the near future. In fact, you could
buy the two Helios reissues and both the Naxos discs for not much more
than the cost of one premium-price CD.
Alternatively a bargain-price Gimell 2-CD set (CDGIM205) combines performances by the Tallis Scholars of the Cardoso and
Lôbo Requiems with music by
Alonso Lobo and Victoria, thus providing an opportunity to compare
and contrast the two Portuguese composers with the earlier Spanish
polyphonic style. (NB – not to be confused with full-price CDGIM028,
which offers Duarte Lôbo’s other,
six-part, Requiem and the Missa
vox clamantis)
The Gimell cover illustration is a detail from the El Greco painting
to which I have referred above – doubly appropriate because
El Greco and Victoria were both non-Spaniards who made strong
impressions on the artistic life of sixteenth-century Spain.
The cover-pictures of both Helios discs are somewhat
nondescript – both Naxos CD covers and the Gimell
are more attractive – but that is a very small criticism of
an excellent reissue.
Brian
Wilson
