We’ve probably all
seen the ads for ‘the only CD of relaxing
classical music you’ll ever need to
buy’. This recording doesn’t advertise
itself in this way but it could. If
you’re looking for the ideal disc to
unwind by, this could be it. I commend
it alongside my previous recommendation
for soothing ‘crossover’ music: if you
haven’t yet encountered Karl Jenkins,
the mid-price Essential Collection
on EMI 3 53244 2 is the best place to
start. Otherwise Adiemus is preferable
to his Requiem. Placing Angeli
in the same league as Adiemus
is not meant to be disparaging of either.
Though recorded as
long ago as 1995 and now issued at bargain
price - around £7 in the UK - I do not
recall any previous UK issue of Angeli,
though I understand that it was reviewed
in the Fanfare magazine in 1996.
As usual, Telarc make
a great deal of their recording techniques,
even specifying the cable used. Though
not in SACD format, this disc is recorded
with a technique which claims to give
an impression of surround-sound, even
with two speakers. Certainly the sound-stage
gives the impression of depth, appropriate
for this music, as well as lateral separation.
The programme consists
of genuine medieval music, two pieces
by the now-ubiquitous Hildegard of Bingen,
two from the Worcester MS and three
from the Notre Dame repertory, together
with modern music written in a style
evocative of medieval Ars Nova by composers
who work with the ensemble.
Patricia van Ness stresses
that her music is not designed as imitation-medieval:
in combining upper and lower voices
she believes that she is overcoming
the limitations imposed by the segregation
of men and women. Most non-specialist
listeners would probably find it hard
to tell which pieces here are genuine-medieval
and which modern compositions. Van Ness’s
three pieces grouped under the title
Arcanæ, for example, sometimes
sound more like Hildegard von Bingen
than Hildegard herself
The booklet contains
useful information but is far from exhaustive.
It fails, for example, to explain what
the Worcester and Notre Dame collections
are, or even to give them a date. The
Notre Dame School, generally classed
as a fore-runner of Ars Nova,
flourished from around 1170 to 1250.
The Worcester Fragments also date from
the 13th-century, short pieces
of music and fragments of early Middle
English from one collection which came
to be dispersed. 25 of them – about
a quarter of the total, with no overlap
with the works on the present CD – have
been recorded by the Orlando Consort
on Amon-Ra CDSAR59.
Sanctus Christe
yerarchia is described in the track-listing
as a ‘troped Sanctus’, with no explanation
of what a trope is. As church music
developed, there arose a feeling that
short pieces such as the Sanctus,
sung immediately before the Canon of
the Mass in which the elements are consecrated,
was not long enough for such a sacred
moment. At a very early date the Benedictus
was added, to follow the Sanctus,
but soon this was not felt to be enough
either, so extra words were added to
the texts in the missal. The troping
in Sancte Christus expands the
original considerably and also serves
to demonstrate the erudition of the
troper: the pseudo-Greek word yerarchia
in yerarchia Sabaoth, Lord of
Hosts, is pure showing-off.
Most non-specialists
will also require some explanation of
Te domine/Te dominum: why are
there two texts for this piece and what
is meant by calling one of them a triplum
and the other a duplum? Both
texts are expansions of the hymn Te
Deum, sung at Matins. Space does
not permit a detailed explanation but
what happens is that the texts are sung
alongside each other, distinguished
either by the type of voice employed
or by the tempo of each text.
Nor are the translations
infallible: the rendering of "O
gloriosissimi lux vivens angeli qui
infra divinitatem divinos oculos cum
mistica obscuritate omnis creature aspicitis"
as "O most glorious light, living
angels who look on the Divine eyes with
the mystic darkness of every creature"
is impossible. The full stop in the
booklet after ‘angeli’ is incorrect;
‘vivens’ (singular) agrees with ‘lux’,
not ‘angeli’ (plural): "O most
glorious living light, you angels who
…" Later in the same text, it was
Satan who was ‘latens’ (skulking, in
hiding) rather than, as the translation
has it, "he wanted to fly above
the hidden pinnacle of God."
The translation of
the modern pieces is more accurate:
they started life in English and were
specially translated into Latin by a
Jesuit whose Latinity I would not dare
to question apart, perhaps, from his
politically-correct rendering of the
guardian angel as angela, feminine,
a form unknown, I think, to medieval
Latin, though Milton assures us that
angels may assume either sex, or both:
For Spirits when they please
Can either Sex assume, or both; so
soft
And uncompounded is thir Essence pure,
Not ti’d or manacl’d with joynt or
limb,
Nor founded on the brittle strength
of bones,
Like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape
they please …
Can execute thir aerie purposes.
Milton’s presumed source,
the learned neo-Platonist Johann Weyer,
alias Wierus, merely says that
dæmons can change at will into
male or female. Milton added the ‘or
both’.
There are, basically,
two ways of performing early music,
especially vocal music. One is to emphasise
the rough edges, an approach which used
to be associated with Musica Reservata
and their lead-singer Jantina Noorman.
The other extreme is to employ a gentle
style and the performers on this Telarc
disc certainly incline towards the latter.
In the opening Salve
virgo the all-female singers are
too dreamy for my liking but matters
improve in Arcanæ (tacks
2-4). I have already said that this
collection of three pieces sounds Hildegard-like
and the singing here is reminiscent
of the approach adopted by Sequentia
in their numerous recordings of Hildegard.
Ego sum custos angela
is a more individual piece by van
Ness, less in the Hildegard manner,
though still hard for the non-specialist
to distinguish from the real medieval
pieces. I found this piece more attractive
musically than Arcanæ,
though the text is a little too ‘new-age’
for my liking. Medieval visionaries
like Hildegard and Dame Julian of Norwich
would not have thought of angels in
the way that this text suggests. The
booklet credits harp and tanbur accompaniment
for the two van Ness pieces, but these
are by no means intrusive, merely providing
a pleasing background texture.
In the genuine Hildegard
pieces, too, the performers here sound
much more like Sequentia than like Gothic
Voices on their ground-breaking recording
of her music, A Feather on the Breath
of God. There is room for both approaches,
especially when we know so little about
performing styles of the period. At
times Hildegard soars into mystic realms
which her own paintings and human performers
of her music can only hint at, but the
performers here come about as close
as any modern singers can do.
O lilium convallium
and, to some extent, Gaude Maria
revert to the rather dreamy style of
the opening piece. Gaude Maria
rather outstays its welcome if sung
in this manner: after all, the words
exhort the Virgin Mary to rejoice.
The singing and recording
of Te domine/Te dominum are sufficiently
clear for the two texts to be clearly
differentiated. Here again, I might
have preferred a slightly less dreamy
style for such laudatory music. Sanctus
Christe is sung in a much more declamatory
style, appropriate to music and text
which are both designed to be showy.
The final piece, Hildegard’s
O gloriosissimi lux, rounds off
the disc very nicely. I found the performance
not quite the equal of that of the other
Hildegard items, but more amenable than
in the more dreamy items. None of the
Hildegard pieces here duplicate the
various CDs of her music by Sequentia
which I own but I was again reminded
of their style.
Apart from Arcanæ
and Ego sum custos, the vocal
items are performed unaccompanied. The
jury will probably remain permanently
out on whether music of this period
should be accompanied but the approach
associated with Christopher Page – normally
no accompaniment except very rarely
and of the least obtrusive kind – is
the safest compromise.
As on some of Page’s
Gothic Voices recordings there are two
purely instrumental interludes. The
first is Crawford Young’s Custos
desertorum, the second Shira Kimmen’s
Au renouvel. Both are as nearly
indistinguishable from the true-medieval
as the van Ness pieces: both are well
performed on vielle and lute and well
recorded. The slightly distant sound
accorded to these pieces – well set
back in a recording with credible depth,
both here and in the vocal items – is
preferable to the more up-front style
of recording sometimes employed for
such music.
This is not really
a recording for medieval specialists:
they will be better served by one of
the Gothic Voices reissues which I have
recently reviewed. Those specifically
seeking performances of Hildegard of
Bingen should, of course, make A
Feather on the Breath of God their
first port of call: this recording is
currently on offer in a special-price
3-CD set, but I hope that Hyperion will
soon reissue it on its own. My own pre-recorded
cassette version of it is now obsolete
(no cassette deck any more) and I already
own the two other CDs in the 3-CD pack.
Rob
Barnett reviewed this CD in 2000
and Em
Marshall the 3-CD set earlier this
year.
Otherwise there are
various recommendable BMG/DHM recordings
by Sequentia, some at full-, some at
mid- and some at bargain-price.
Non-specialists looking
for soothing and uplifting music will
probably enjoy what they hear more unreservedly.
Just before completing this write-up
I spent a whole day watching paint dry,
as it were, setting up a new lap-top
with Windows Vista to work with a scanner
and printer which, although purchased
recently, had set-up CDs which were
not compatible with Vista. This CD and
a 2-CD distillation of the Chapelle
du Roi’s Tallis recording which I am
about to review provided background
music which kept me more or less sane
during the process of trying to find
suitable drivers on-line. That at least
qualifies this CD as attractive background
listening.
Brian Wilson
for details
Ensemble P.A.N. (Project Ars Nova: Laurie
Monahan (mezzo); Michael Collyer (counter-tenor);
Shira Kammen (vielle and harp); Crawford
Young (lute and tanbur)) with guest ensemble
Tapestry (Cristi
Catt (soprano); Sandra Morales-Ramírez
(soprano); Laurie Monahan (mezzo); Daniel
Tošič (alto)) and William Hite (tenor),
Harlan B Hokin (tenor) and Paul Cummings
(baritone) 
