Customer Reviews

Utopia Triumphans

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This recording well matches its subtitle - "The great polyphony of the Renaissance." The multi-voice works collected here are indeed the pinnacle of vocal polyphony. I don't think anybody after Tallis wrote such complex music for an unaccompanied choir. From the first listen, I was struck by the similarities between Tallis' Spem and Striggio's Ecce Beatam Lucem. Turns out, as the booklet informs, the similarities were not accidental. Striggio was first to write his 40-part motet, and it had an extraordinary success in London. Piqued, the British fired back, by charging one of their best composers, Thomas Tallis, with the rebuttal (supposedly, the request came from the Duke of Norfolk). In the spirit of competition, Tallis deliberately included audible references to Striggio into his composition. These go beyond the choice of 40 voices (in fact, as far as I know, Spem is really for 41 voices, which is the way the Tallis Scholars perform it). The two compositions also share the same base key, G, an occasional melodic quote, and the technique of accumulating polyphony, in which voices enter one by one (or choir by choir) to culminate in mighty multi-person chords. Reportedly, upon hearing Tallis' Spem, the British concluded that their side won. Actually, I think so too. But maybe that's only because I heard Spem so many times before, and Ecce Beatam Lucem is new to me. The Huelgas Ensemble sing Spem with grace and balance. Their version seems much slower than the Spem of the Tallis Scholars, even though in fact the difference is only 15 seconds in a 10-minute piece (I checked). The perception of a slower tempo must be due to the reserved approach Van Nevel takes to Spem. I must confess that I much prefer the Tallis Scholars' jubilant rendition, with the dazzling treble voices reaching up like the spires of gothic cathedrals. The structural hierarchy of the piece is also more evident with the Tallis Scholars, who must have performed in less-reverberant acoustics: the entrance of voices and the brief pauses between some movements are more effective because they are not echoed. In addition, while the Huelgas recording has a constant fizz of consonants, the Tallis Scholars swallow most consonants, in a wise recognition that no one will be able to make any sense of the words in a 40-part vocal composition anyway. Not only is the blend smoother, but the result is also more consistent with the aesthetics of the day. Of course, this is not to criticize the Huelgas Ensemble, it's just my opinion. Of the other pieces on this disc I especially enjoyed Ockeghem's amazing 36-part canon Deo Gratias. Almost without varying the two-word canon, Ockeghem manages to sustain the listener's attention over a period of six minutes by manipulating the number and combination of singing voices. The disc also includes Giovanni Gabrieli's 16-part Exaudi me Domine. The group probably didn't know of the existence of Gabrieli's 33-part Magnificat, which would have been a nice addition to this disc. You can hear it on Music for San Rocco/McCreesh, Archiv 449 180-2.

To clarify a previous reviewer, the Spem in Alium is for 40 voices (8 sopranos, 8 altos, 8 tenors, 16 basses) despite the fact that the Tallis Scholars used 41 singers (they doubled up on a soprano part which is surprising since the sopranos already completely dominate the sound in that recording). I personally prefer hearing audible consonants as in this recording because it allows one to hear the intricate rhythm of the piece ... it would be somewhat uninteresting to simply hear waves and waves of vowels as in the case of the Tallis Scholar recording. It is true the Hueglas Ensemble recording of the Spem has some understated sections but the voices are balanced and the singing is natural.

Sony chose the rational way of recording these large polyphonic works: singers arranged in a large circle around the microphone hovering above the center. I disagree with a previous reviewer who said that the Tallis recording of Spem is more inspiring. The Tallis recording is terrible: ugly inbalance in the voices and the feeling that the Tallis Scholars were sight reading the Spem. The Huelgas Ensemble ... wow, the voices are very balanced - the high soprano lines float above the choir rather than suffocating the other 32 voices as in the Tallis Scholar recording; and it sounds like they really took the time to rehearse. All the pieces on here make great listening (esp the Porta for 14, Gabrieli for 16, and Tallis for 40 voices) except possibly the Manchicourt motet because it is for a mere 6 voices. There are a few sections that I felt were a little understated; but on the rarity of the pieces and the great singing and sound, 5 stars.

Paul van Nevel and the Heulgas Ensemble convey an intensely intimate yet ultimately powerful impression with this collection of gigantuan polyphonic works of mind boggling contrapunctal complexity. If you thought that some of Bach's four part counterpoint was exceedingly complex then try to get your mind around the fact that here you will find 12 voice, 24 voice - all the way up to 40 voice counterpoint! The audacity of such complexity is infinitely fascinating and utterly hypnotic. Though the mind may boggle in trying to follow the kaleidoscopic display of infinitely complex part writing, these are yet works of just enormous immediacy of emotional and spiritual appeal that makes them a far cry from the academic works they might seem to appear. These works are a testimony to the fact the composers of the Renaissance are every bit the equal of their peers in other arts such as painting and architecture, for in turns of the sheer phenomenal complexity of that these rich works display, the world has never since seen their equal.

The richer sounds of this continental European ensemble in comparison to the relentless purity of English groups is also highly welcome. As usual Paul van Nevel encourages a vocal sound that comes more from the chest giving a darker hued color that also has great expressive warmth. There is no attempt to artificially brighten up the upper registrars by doubling the soprano parts for example. In an age dominated by Cambridge style English cathedral style singing from groups which can sometimes start to sound all the same, it is wonderful to hear a group that dares to occupy so unique and distinctive a sound world as theirs.

The Spem in Alium is a good case in point for the performance here is wonderful and quite unique. As for the claim that this performance of the 'Spem in Alium' is somehow weak, you can safely ignore that. Yes, the Tallis Scholars are still excellent too but there is a place for a less ostentatious and relaxed-intimate 'chamber' approach to this music. The performers even stood forming a circle in church to record these works. Warm and understated poetic intimacy are wonderful virtues that the Huelgas Ensemble always convey in abundance.

In all this is one of the absolutely essential recordings of Renaissance polyphony. It is a must have for anyone who loves fine music and it you only own one recording of Renaissance polyphony this might well be it. It certainly has a firm place on my desert island collection.

I listen to this CD on a daily basis. It contains what is for me the definitive recording of Talis' "Spem in Alium" - I would agree that it is far superior to the Tallis Scholars pacey yet frigid recording, which is completely dominated by the sopranos. Throughout this CD the Huelgas Ensemble bring a warmth and sonority to some beautiful pieces, particularly the Porta, Desprez and Ockeghem. It would be worth the price of purchase for any one of these pieces alone. If you want a CD that will continue to play on in your mind long after it has stopped playing on your CD player... this is the one.

I admit I bought two versions of Spem In Alium performed by Huelgas Ensemble and the Tallis Scholars. There are strong and weak points in both of the recordings but what strike me most about the Huelgas' interpretation, like other reviewers covered in this review portion (and I completely agree), is its balanced performance of the piece. I could actually hear the forty voices without "drowning" and outdoing each other, unlike the Tallis Scholars' recording. However, some parts of the choral (I'm referring to Spem only) are kind a bit sloppy and technically inferior as compared to the Tallis Scholars' version. Example of this is in the portion of "ET OMNIA PECCATA HOMINUM" followed by a pause and "IN TRIBULATIONE" where the Tallis Scholars captured it best. The portion "RESPICE" is almost a whisper in the Huelgas' recording while the Scholars' interpretation of it is like Tchaikovsky's cannons in his 1819 (is the date right?) Overture, which in my opinion, is the proper interpretation (it is one of the high points of the piece, by the way) and Huelga misses this one. All in all I will rate the Scholars' performance 4 stars for its technicality and 4 stars to Huelgas' for its balanced performance. I'm just wondering if Alessandro Striggios' 60 part choral "Sanctus" survived will give these fine performers something to look forward to recording. I bet it will make Handel look like a first grader in music!!!

The perfection of balance of voices (as well as sopranos that float so elegantly that they almost sound like overtones, Halellujah!) and intonation with which the Huelgas Ensemble performs these phenomenal works of art is alone worth the disc. It is definitely a recording that anyone interested in Renaissance music or musicology in general should own. It is by far and wide the most exquisite performance of Spem in Alium I have ever come across. My only criticism of this recording might be that the manner of recording (rather than the performance) has not allowed the listener to get the full effect of the antiphonal effects in the multichoral pieces. This is the truly definitive recording of Spem in Alium, and the only recording of all the others. Each these pieces are cathedrals in sound, and glorious celebrations of the human voice.

All praise and tribute to Paul van Nevel and the Huelgas Ensemble for this magnificent effort at recording the unrecordable! The result is inevitably a qualified triumph, a CD that is thrilling to hear and yet that doesn't consistently capture the 'greatness' of the music it contains. Six of the seven works recorded here were composed for massive forces of singers, by 16th C standards, but decidedly NOT for a large choir. The pieces by Thomas Tallis and Alessandro Striggio were composed in 40 separate polyphonic lines, to be sung by 40 separate voices, as they are performed on this occasion. All six pieces are effectively 'poly-choral' in various configurations:

Tallis/Spem in alium: eight 5-part choirs
Costanzo Porta/Sanctus&Agnus Dei: three 4-part choirs plus a detached cantus firmus
Josquin Deprez/Qui habitat: four six-part groups, not intended as separated choirs
Johannes Ockeghem?/Deo gratias: four nine-part groups, not intended as separated choirs
Giovanni Gabrieli/Exaudi me domini: four 4-part choirs, distinctly separated
Striggio: ten 4-part choirs

Though one might assume that having so many more voices -- remember that the overwhelming majority of polyphonic motets and masses were composed to be sung in for-to-six lines with one or two voices per line -- would massively increase the "possibilities' of composition. Such is not the case. Given the overweening centrality of modal consonance in the 'harmonic' language of the Renaissance, the necessity of putting all those voices somewhere, of giving them a pitch to sing, seriously restricted the composers' horizontal freedom of melody-shaping and of rhythmic expression. In other words, when most chords are 'triadic', more and more voices will have to be landing on the same pitches, spread vertically. The effect can almost be predicted: monotonous grandeur! That is, to my ears, even in live performance, the effect of the famous Tallis 'Spem in alium'.

If much is lost in many-part polyphony, is anything gained? Yes, indeed, and composers of the later 16th Century -- Gabriel in particular -- became adept at exploiting the gain: space! dimension! direction! The Gabrieli "Exaudi me Domine" is easily the most successful composition qua music on this CD; it makes acoustic sense. But Gabrieli and others of his generation wrote for acoustic situations radically unlike the modern concert hall; in a symphony hall, all ears are funneled toward a focus point at the conductor's desk. In a cathedral, the normal venue for hearing polychoral polyphony, the choirs would have been stationed at the four corners of the listener's consciousness. Directionality would have been an essential element of the music. Given the laws of sound propagation, however, 'volume' and 'resonance' would also have depended on the listener's particular acoustic vantage point. And since sound travels at a sluggish speed through air, there would have been split-second-but-audible discrepancies in the perceived attacks of pitches. The greatest and most insightful composers of the era would not have ignored such matters; instead they would have, and did, make the acoustic anomalies integral parts of the music. Perhaps it's clear now why I regard this repertoire as 'unrecordable' -- in practical terms, that is, for reproduction through the two-to-five speakers, however fine, in your home theater qua living room, however grandiose.

The two motets by Ockeghem and Deprez, generations younger than Gabrieli, are nonetheless quite spectacular. Spine-tingling, hypnotic, almost psychedelic in effect, like LSD in the abandoned abbey by moonlight. Both composers chose to make the most of the monotone, the insistent tonic drone, the bell-like tolling of the canon. Ockeghem wasn't fond of canonic effects, by the way, and it seems to me very unlikely that this piece is really his work, but it's quite a fine piece, whoever wrote it.

Conductor Paul Van Nevel made an inspired choice by including the one 'normal' six-part motet "Laudate Dominum" by Pierre de Manchicourt among these gigantesque abnormalities. It's a very fine motet, sung very well in this recording, and it demonstrates exactly what I'm trying to say about the larger possibilities of 'movement', both harmonic and rhythmic, in compositions with fewer voices.

On the other hand, Van Nevel made an error, though it may well have been a practical necessity, in having his singers form a circle to be conducted and recorded. That circle is pictured in the note booklet, and one of the singers there was my very close friend Mitchell Sandler, possibly the only American in The Huelgas Ensemble in 1995. Judging by names, Van Nevel assembled nearly all the most skilled choristers of the Netherlands and Belgium for this session; if a plague had struck, as often happened in the 16th C, the revivification of Franco-Flemish polyphony in our times would have been dealt a fatal blow. Singing in a circle no doubt allowed for greater precision of tuning and attack, but it minimized the 'directional' separation of the music.

The Huelgas Ensemble has also issued a CD titled "40 Voix", featuring the same repertoire (in fact, three pieces are repeated) and performed with the same high standards but also the same quixotic limits.

This magnificent recording is sure to delight all lovers of Renaissance a capella performance. The voices come over clearly and brightly with the interplay of parts easily heard in every piece. The information provided with the CD is sufficiently detailed to more than adequately place the pieces within both historical and musical context. Several of the works (Porta's 'Sanctus', Manchicourt's 'Laudate Dominum') are, I think rarely heard but hold their own well with the more frequently heard works Desprez, Ockeghem and Gabrieli. Of particular interest to me is the performance of Striggio's rarely heard forty part motet Ecce beatam lucem. The opportunity to compare and contrast this fine work with Tallis' own (and much performed) forty part motet Spem in alium is greatly enhanced by the performance notes.

The music and performance are trully breathtaking. When I recieved this disc I was in a bit of a stressed mood. I put it on to provide 'pleasant background music'. My stereo was left a little louder than I usually have it set and the CD player was on Shuffle. Track 3, DesPrez "Qui habitat" randomly came up--within seconds I was breathless because I did not want to breathe and interfere with the music I was floating on! If you are like me when listening to this Album you'll need a handkerchief or a rag of some sort to wipe the drool from your chin!

It's worth the asking price for the Ockeghem offering alone.

Paul van Nevel and the Huelgas Ensemble have nearly achieved "Utopia" with this performance. BRAVO!