Parisian Plainchant - Mass For Christmas Day XVIIe and XVIIIe siècles (17th-18th Centuries) / Peres, Ensemble Organum [Import]

Andre Campra (Artist, Composer), Peres (Artist, Composer), Michel-Richard Delalande (Artist), Anonymous (Artist), Marcel Peres (Artist), Ensemble Organum (Artist), Les Pages de la Chapelle (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Composer: Andre Campra, Peres
• Audio CD (December 8, 1998)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Harmonia Mundi Fr.
• ASIN: B00000G3YR
• Also Available in: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,188,175 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Quiz question: when was Gregorian chant composed? Most people figure it was some indeterminate point in the Middle Ages. In fact, new chants were being composed (by, among many others, Dufay and Palestrina) at least through the 18th century. For example, 17th-century France saw an effort to Gallicize plainchant: virtually the entire liturgical repertory was recomposed in French Baroque style--including trills and ornaments. (Think of monks singing Couperin.) This recording by Marcel Pérès, who has done fascinating work reviving chant from many different times and places, re-creates a 17th-century Parisian Mass for Christmas Day, using a contemporary missal compiled for Nôtre-Dame as well as chants by Campra and Delalande. The superb singing by Ensemble Organum and the boys of Les Pages de la Chapelle is more accessible than that on some of Pérès's other recordings. Best of all, following old French practice for festal Masses, verses of chant alternate with verses improvised on the organ: playing a fine 17th-century instrument, Pérès improvises the organ verses himself, exercising musical skills many of his fans didn't know he had. --Matthew Westphal

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review (from Gramophone), January 25, 2009

By 

Slobberer "Slobberer" (Astoria, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Parisian Plainchant - Mass For Christmas Day XVIIe and XVIIIe siècles (17th-18th Centuries) / Peres, Ensemble Organum (Audio CD)

Gregorian Chant Mass for Christmas Day. Ensemble Organum; Les Pages de la Chapelle: Maitrise du centre de musique baroque de Versailles / Marcel Peres (org). Harmonia Mundi © HMC90 1480 (72 minutes: DDD: 1/96). Texts and translations included. Recorded 1993.

This disc is a welcome addition to the growing number of chant recordings illustrating various repertoires and styles of performance over the centuries. It is not the first time that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century organ chant, alternatim has been recorded, but there cannot be many discs with a programme of pieces drawn from the old rite of Paris; a splendid rite destined, sadly, to disappear at the end of the nineteenth century. There are even fewer, if any, in which organ improvisation alternates with the chant, as is the case here, and since this form of performance would have been the norm during this period in the majority of cathedrals and churches - even in convent chapels - it is of the greatest interest to hear how it might have sounded to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ears. It all seems to tie up extremely well: the utterly splendid Parisian chant, quite different from its Roman counterpart, provides the pieces of the Proper for Christmas Day. These are sung with appropriate ornamentation - only in two pieces, the Alleluia and the Sequence, does Peres find the temptation to introduce his customary Eastern effects too strong to resist. As for the Ordinary, Campra's magnificently tuneful 'neo-Gallican' plainchant provides the organist with the material on which to base his improvisations, and the choir a chance to prove that a slow, dignified tempo will match up to the noble versets on the eighteenth-century Cliquot organ at Houdan far better than those hurried snatches of chant one so often hears. However, there is more: the introduction of the trebles (Les Pages de la Chapelle) was an inspired stroke, especially for a Mass of Christmas. They sing with strong, confident young voices, and have no fear of sustaining long phrases of slow notes, nor of adding some conventional ornamentation of the period.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another Hit for Peres in History of Chant Collection, September 27, 2000

By 

Patrick T. Michaels (Menlo Park, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Parisian Plainchant - Mass For Christmas Day XVIIe and XVIIIe siècles (17th-18th Centuries) / Peres, Ensemble Organum (Audio CD)

For some years now, Marcel Peres and the Ensemble Organum have been making available to the public at large a taste of the history of religious chant. These recordings have always been historically interesting and often, quite beautiful. This recording wins in both categories. Beautifully recorded and rendered, the music presented here transported this listener to another time and place. The music is haunting and yet quite comforting, bringing a sometimes forgotten flavor to a holiday season (Christmas) often overrun with a wearying hectic-swallow-it-fast-for-the-next-bite sort of pace. The pieces by Andre Campra (as realized by Peres) and Michel-Richard Delalande find themselves set beautifully in the context of the plainchant. This recording has been a welcome expansion of the regular Christmas repetoire. Unlike what seems to be a norm in popular music, you get your money's worth in over seventy minutes of tonal splendor.