A THOUSAND BEAUTIFUL AND GRACEFUL INVENTIONS
The University of Queensland Chamber Singers
Move Records MCD 663
As you can see from the cover, this CD is concerned with canons from the eras when this device was integral to choral composition. What we hear comes from research conducted by Denis Collins and Jason Stoessel; both are academics with Collins an associate professor of musicology at the University of Queensland, Stoessel also an associate professor of musicology and digital humanities at the University of New England. In combination, these two are the CD's artistic directors, even if the actual man out front is Graeme Morton, senior lecturer at Queensland University and probably the most well-credentialed choral conductor in that state.
In its display of canons, the CD holds 17 tracks. Six of these feature works by Palestrina and Agostini: first, a Sanctus and Agnus Dei from the former's Missa Sacerdotes Domini; then, from Agostini's Missa Pro vigiliis ac feriis in canone, the Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus Dei and Sit nomen Domini which is a pontifical blessing that sends everybody home in high ecclesiastical spirits. Preceding these samples of canon in late Renaissance choral music, the University of Queensland Chamber Singers wend their placid way through another Kyrie and Sanctus from a 14th century manuscript found in the Cathedral of Tournai, written by anonymous hands (or a hand); the original manuscripts found between the pages of the celebrated Mass of Tournai. Then follows a group of three canonic pieces by Matteo da Perugia, Du Fay and Okeghem, a set of three chansons by Jean Mouton, before another triptych by Prioris, Josquin and Willaert.
It's with reference to the last of these that the CD finds its title: a quote from Gioseffo Zarlino, the 16th century composer/theorist who was one of Willaert's pupils and who wrote of his teacher in glowing terms: 'One can hear daily many compositions by the most excellent Adrian Willaert which, in addition to being full of a thousand beautiful and graceful inventions, are eruditely and elegantly composed'. Well, you can't say fairer than that, can you? But, as with every composer here, the emphasis is on a particular type of invention - the use of canon and the complexities that involves
Such complications start straight away. The Tournai Kyrie is for three lines but the canons are eventually sung simultaneously so that, despite the linear mesh, everybody sings the same words at the same time. It all works out neatly with nine sections - three Kyries, three Christes, three Kyries - and you can hear repetitions of patterns as the lines wind around each other, more obvious with some rapid semi-ornamental work in the final pages that is shared across the parts. When we get to the Sanctus track, your reception becomes easier as the entries into the canon are staggered (as in the Kyrie) but the canonic material is rather plain. Still, the same principle applies about the words which are (generally) sung simultaneously.
These opening tracks offer the UQ singers in exposed fashion, the Kyrie involving female singers, the Sanctus/Benedictus given to the males. Both groups are solid enough, the females having one individual whose timbre shines through at certain points, while the men have all the emotional control of a French monastery group from those mid-20th century recordings of Gregorian chant.
Matteo da Perugia's Gloria Spiritus et alme presents as a simple section of the Common of the Mass but with interpolations at the end of certain lines which stand as praises to the Virgin; rather exceptional in the context of this extolling of the Triune God. Like a rather striking sample of conductus, this piece speaks with remarkable vivacity, clear in all its parts, but I think that might be due to the two dancing upper lines being sung by individual sopranos. Here, the canon is located in two slow-moving bass parts; for this impatient ear, you'd need a score to trace it.
Dufay's Gloria ad modum tubae sets up two canons: the first is between two upper voices who follow each other without trickery or, for that matter, much melodic intrigue, while a pair of bass lines sing the same two notes in imitation of those promised trumpets; might have been better to use the actual instruments. But the effect is breezy and forthright: one of the quickest Glorias I've come across and handled with excellent pitching by the Singers' women.
We move to the secular with Okeghem's Prenez sur moi, a buoyant canon for three voices in which the UQ tenors acquit themselves very well, as do the sopranos, although the alto line is very restrained in volume. This is a sample of that generous well-crafted language, musical and literary, that exemplifies good old-fashioned cortoisie, if with a dose of cynicism, but expertly delivered here - twice, as it happens, as the singers repeat the piece.
Mouton's three chansons begin with En venant de Lyon which documents a vignette - observing Robin and Marion up to some bawdy congress in a thicket. The canon is for four lines, each following the other in quick succession as though to delineate the rapid nature of the focal pair's activities. The double canon that follows, Qui ne regrettroit on the death of fellow-composer Antoine Fevin, shows a more serious aspect, the soprano (cantus) in canon with the tenor, alto and bass pursuing each other in this calm, expressive elegy. Finally, Adieu mes amours presents another double canon, sopranos and altos dealing with one, tenors and basses with the other, all matched in a seamless web that sets forth plainly the composer/poet's humorous farewell to life because the king hasn't paid him.
The shadowy figure of Prioris (Johannes? Denis?) produced a brief sample of splendour in his Ave Maria setting which is an eight voice work featuring four canons. I have to admit that, while the first two canons can be followed part of the way through this brief score, the other two are almost impossible to pick out, even if you have the four Incipit phrases in front of you. For all that, the Chamber Singers invest it with a placid fervour, their output measured and finely-shaped even if the top sopranos dominate the texture.
Josquin, the master of the canon in every age, is represented in this tour d'horizon by his six-line setting of Se congie prens, which deals with a lover departing the scene before further suffering at the hands of his cold non-inamorata. The program notes speak of a canon between the two middle voices, but I can only hear one between what my score calls the Quinta Pars and the Sexta Pars, and an intermittent one between the two lowest voices (tenor and bass). The construction of his piece rewards study but in actual performance all you concentrate on is the countertenor part, here sung by some confident tenors who cope with a cruelly athletic line to fine effect showing only one sign of strain.
The mellifluous Willaert hits us with a double canon in his motet Christi virgo dilectissima; soprano and bass form one pairing, alto and tenor the other. In this performance, I think the alto line features male voices but I could be wrong, being sadly unfamiliar with the sound quality of the Queensland mezzo voice. This composer moves on from the rhythmic simplicity of his predecessors and has the lines operating in different time zones, adding contrapuntal complexity to the mixture. This is one of the more substantial tracks so far, helped in that by being divided into two segments to reflect the textual matter although both conclude with the same plea for help.
The interpretation is a strait-laced one with the dynamic range kept limited and that serves to underline the composer's calm pace of inventiveness. Then we come to Palestrina, from whose Missa Sacerdotes Domini we hear the Sanctus and Agnus Dei. I won't insist that we've come to a new plane of creativity, but it's certainly different in its ease of utterance and the actual presence of six interdependent and independent lines. The opening sounds like a canon involving all the voices, but you could say the same about any number of Palestrina masses that open with the same scrap and then move onto their own paths that imitate details from each other without strictly following the set line.
When we reach the Pleni sunt caeli, the vocal lines cut to three and here the canon is emphatic but the male voices curvet around each other with apparent freedom, the UQ men having an amiable felicity with these pages. And you might be forgiven for seeking canons in the four-part Benedictus but it comes down to imitative entries that veer off onto individual trajectories. With the Agnus Dei, the singers give us only one of the three sentences; understandable as Palestrina apparently didn't supply a separate dona nobis pacem setting. I think that the canon here obtains between the pairs of tenors because, while everybody takes up the initial bass phrase, several voices dip out on their own excursions by the time we come to Qui tollis.
You think its all going to be plain sailing when you arrive at Paolo Agostini's Mass which begins with a transparent canon for four voices in its Kyrie, all the more eloquent for its brevity and the clarity of its structure. And so it proves to be with the entries just as plain in the Sanctus, Osanna, and the two settings for the Benedictus - the first without basses, the second without sopranos. As in the Palestrina, the Singers give us only the first verse of the Agnus Dei, a movement in close canonic quarters with a particularly fine amplitude effect at the miserere nobis.
The Sit nomen Domini blessing is notable for the addition of an extra bass line which operates with its partner in a rich sequence of consecutive thirds while your regulation soprano, alto and bass voices outline the canon entries on top in a brief touch of sweet harmony to finish the disc. And, with a few exceptions, that is a lasting impression - one of brevity. The length of each track is not given in the accompanying booklet but my count puts the CD's length at 47'34"; the longest track is the Willaert motet (7'01"), followed by Palestrina's Sanctus (6'58"), with Perugian Matteo's Gloria coming third (5'10). Two offerings come in at under a minute, five at under two minutes, five a bit over two minutes, with the remaining two averaging four minutes between them.
What you get is a well-sung set of choral canons, most of them traceable by the ear alone. It's a fair mixture of the sacred and profane, although the former predominate. Further, the performances are secure and controlled; full marks to an organization that escaped my notice during the years I spent in the neighbourhood.. And further congratulations to the felicitous ease with which all concerned handle what could have been a dry academic exercise.
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