Customer Reviews

Pierre de la Rue: Missa di Sancta Anna & Lamentatione Jeremaie

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The music of La Rue is not as well-known as it should be, but perhaps the next wave of early music recordings will rectify this. The music, especially the Lamentations, is somber and haunting, with some arresting (and forward-looking) chromaticisms. I wanted to like this CD, but unfortunately this ensemble is plagued throughout by noticeably sour intonation, especially the baritone (Billingsley). This has the effect of making one extremely uneasy and edgy while listening: the sublime harmonic progressions that are the core of this music miss their mark and never quite jell. That's really too bad, because Moll's reading is largely competent and emotive. Wait for another recording.

... I left this CD behind on one of my trips. It's not worth hearing twice (and yet I've just listened to it -- most of it anyway -- without suffering any mortality). It sounds like the work of a large non-professional choir of mixed voices male and female, conducted firmly by someone who felt his first task to be holding the tactus, sung from modern notation with bar lines and possibly rehearsed with a piano so that the singers don't mean-temper their chords. And gosh-oh-golly, that's what it was, from a session in Harvard's Memorial Church in 1995. And, as one of the previous reviewers noted, the tuning isn't magnificent and some of the "musica ficta" is dubious.

So why did I just listen to it again? Because I came upon it and didn't remember it at all. Most importantly, because Pierre de la Rue was a very fine composer, second not even to Josquin. Though his motets and chansons crop up on lots of multi-composer CDs, good recordings of his masses are few -- precisely six that I know of, NOT including this one. Here they are, more or less in the order that I esteem them:
Pierre de la Rue: Incessament
La Rue: Missa De Feria
Pierre de la Rue: Requiem; Antoine Brumel: Requiem
Missa De Sancta Cruce / Lamentations {But this one is unavailable.)
Pierre de la Rue: Messe "L'homme arm", etc / Visse
Sacred Music: Missa Cum Iocunditate/Motets

Other performances are listed on amazon, but believe me, they're inferior. And among them is possibly the worst performance of polyphony I can imagine:
Pierre de la Rue: Mass of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin; Easter Mass

It is unfortunate that the present recording is the only one available of this beautiful and highly approachable Mass by the still under-rated Pierre de la Rue. The singing is very ordinary, with poor balance, intonation and ensemble. The vexed issue of 'musica ficta' is also poorly handled, making this performance almost unlistenable to someone - like me - with particular ideas on this subject. The Lamentations are no better, I am afraid.

This is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard. La Rue is a melodically gifted composer, and the mass on this album is one of his finest works -- approachable, easily drawing one in, yet complex enough to hold one's interest over repeated listenings -- speaking from experience here, having listened to the recording over 50 times in the last few months. The voices are all wonderful, and nicely balanced, without the soprano overshadowing the others. The ambience of the hall is very good, adding lovely depth to the sound without making it muddy. The tempo, too often rushed with La Rue's music, is just right. Lastly, the technical quality of the recording is high. Of the two dozen or so albums of polyphony I own, this is easily my favorite.