With very few reservations, Johan van Veen recommended Schola
Hungarica’s earlier recording for BMC (Budapest Music Center). This was Polyphonic
Vespers (BMCCD128) – see review
and link there to earlier recordings by this ensemble. Now they
follow up that success with a recording of music from the Office
and Mass of the feast of Corpus Christi. The Vespers CD was rather
short value at 47 minutes. The new recording offers a much more
reasonable 61 minutes.
The new recording contains the music for a feast
of comparatively late provenance. It celebrates the institution
of the Eucharist in a manner not possible in the crowded liturgy
of Holy Week, when Maundy Thursday celebrates not only the events
of the day before the Crucifixion but also the blessing of the
oils for use throughout the year. With the doctrine of transubstantiation
firmly established as the norm of medieval orthodoxy, it was
felt important to set aside a day outside Holy Week and Eastertide
to celebrate the institution of the Eucharist. The Thursday
after Trinity Sunday was chosen for that feast-day.
Before the regulation of services by both reformers
and counter-reformers in the Sixteenth Century, a variety of
local rites existed. In England, Sarum or Salisbury use was the most common,
but there were important variants centred on York, Hereford and other cathedrals.
Cranmer, in the preface to the first, 1549, English Prayer Book
regarded this ‘great diuersitie in saying and syngyng in churches’
as a nuisance to be reformed, ‘in consideracion of the greate
profite that shall ensue therof’. The Roman Catholic church,
at the Council of Trent, agreed. There may well have been great
profit from the new uniformity, but a great deal of beautiful
music became obsolete overnight, except where local usage was
so ancient as to be tolerated – especially the Ambrosian rite
at Milan and the Mozarabic at Toledo. As JV explains in that
earlier Schola Hungarica review, the reforms of the early 20th
Century were equally disastrous. Those of the late 20th
Century, in the Roman and Anglican churches, almost drove good
church music out into the wilderness.
Medieval Hungary had its fair share of this beautiful music, local
settings of universal texts. If you followed my recommendation
last December (2008) in my Christmas Downloads Supplement to obtain
Anonymous 4’s recording of Medieval
Hungarian Christmas Music (HCX3957139), you’ll already know
how beautiful some of it was. Add the three pieces by Guillaume
Dufay on this new recording and you have the makings of an attractive
programme.
These Dufay pieces are not readily available elsewhere
to the best of my knowledge, apart from track 7, the Sanctus/Ave
verum Corpus. This has been recorded by Cantica Symphonica
on Stradivarius STR33440, a CD of fragments of music for the
Mass, Fragmenta Missarum. Though the Dufay settings
stand out from the other items, they do so as first among equals
rather than as the proverbial sore thumb.
None of the music outstays its welcome, though
you may find the three readings from Thomas Aquinas, labelled
Sermon (trs. 8, 10 and 12) the least congenial. They
are the three readings of the third nocturn of Matins and chanted
to a tone similar to the Epistle at Mass (tr.16). Just sit
back and let it soak in if that’s your mood. If you think that
Antiphon with trope sounds boring, just listen to Melchisedec
rex Salem, track 5.
The singing of Schola Hungarica may not be as ethereal
as that of Anonymous 4 on the Christmas recording or as finely
honed as some of the Binchois Consort’s Dufay recordings that
I’ve reviewed recently (The Court of Savoy, Hyperion
CDA67715 – see review;
Music for St Anthony of Padua, Hyperion Helios CDH55271
– see review).
However, they come pretty close in both respects and they’re
well recorded. Though two directors are involved, I wasn’t
aware of any qualitative differences between their contributions.
The notes in the booklet by László Dobszay, are
helpful and in readable English, if not always quite idiomatic.
The translations of the Latin text are taken from the Book of
Common Prayer, which means that they don’t always correspond
with the Latin. Cranmer, translating from the Sarum Breviary
and Missal, asks in the Te Deum that we may be numbered
with the saints (numerari) where the Hungarian text has
the (correct) reading munerari, may we be rewarded.
The presentation, in a gatefold sleeve, is attractive,
though the naïve art on the inner gatefold, attractive as it
is, might lead prospective purchasers to expect less than accomplished
music and performance. This could hardly be further from the
truth.
If you haven’t yet spent £5 on the Harmonia Mundi
CD of Anonymous 4, or downloaded it for slightly less, you should
do so now. It’s the kind of Christmas CD that you can play all
year round, with not a hint of the Good King Wenceslas anthology
that you’re pleased to put away on Twelfth Night. Otherwise,
you may buy the new CD with confidence, unless you’re terminally
averse to medieval music, in which case you won’t have been
reading this review.
If you’re still wondering about that strange title,
Delectamentum, I can do no better than quote BMC’s own
note, adding only that I obtained a great degree of delectation
from the CD:
“The title of this record
has three levels of meaning. Delectus = selection: this points
to the programme of the record, which is the result of a very
special selection. Delectamentum = delight: this implies that
the record makes a delightful music – a medieval delicacy, one
could say – audible, some of it for the first time in the modern
age. And: “Panem de caelo praestitisti eis, omne delectamentum
in se habentem – Thou didst send them Bread from heaven having
in itself every delight”: this is the most frequently quoted biblical
verse of the feast Corpus Christi, and so the title refers to
the solemnity (or feast) from which the material for this record
was drawn.”
Brian Wilson
