Pedro de Cristo

Program: #23-02   Air Date: Jan 09, 2023

NOTE: All of the music on this program comes from recording Pedro de Cristo: Magnificat featuring Cupertinos and led by Luis Toscano. It is in the Hyperion label and is CDA68393.

‘Who is she that rises like the gathering dawn? Beautiful as the moon, special as the sun, awesome as an army drawn up for battle.’ Adoration of the Virgin Mary reached its apogee in 16th-century Spain and Portugal, and this antiphon from a Mass by Pedro de Cristo (1550-1618) is typical. He was born in Coimbra, one of Europe’s most prestigious centres of musical activity, and was an exceptionally versatile musician: a noted keyboardist as well as adept on the harp, bassoon and flute. He didn’t enjoy the worldly success of his better-known contemporaries Duarte Lobo, Manuel Cardoso and Filipe de Magalhães, and none of the 250 works attributed to him were published. Roughly handled and incompetently archived, it is largely thanks to the tenacity of the Cupertinos ensemble and their leader Luís Toscano, we can now savour them in their proper form.

Cristo’s polyphony is unshowy but always graceful, and the church acoustic in which this selection of antiphons plus a Mass has been recorded perfectly sets off the unadorned freshness of the voices. When the music’s decorous emotional restraint relaxes, passion shines through: poignantly in the Stabat Mater, and with exquisite pain in the Cuius animam gementem (‘Whose groaning soul’) which follows. Cupertinos – and Hyperion – are to be congratulated on bringing this radiant music to light.

From MusicWeb International:

Pedro de Cristo (c.1550-1618)
Magnificat
Missa Salve Regina
Marian Motets
Cupertinos/Luis Toscano
rec. 2021, Basilica do Bom Jesus, Braga, Portugal

HYPERION CDA68393 [75]

Until the arrival of this disc, the only recordings I had come across of music by this shadowy figure were on anthologies of Portuguese Sacred music such as ‘Music from Renaissance Coimbra’ (Hyperion CDA66735) recorded in 1994 by A Capella Portuguesa under a great expert on Portuguese music of this period, Owen Rees, and Masterpieces of Portuguese Polyphony Volume 2 recorded in 1991 by the Choir of Westminster Cathedral (Hyperion CDA 66512) It is good, therefore, to have an opportunity, via this wonderful choir, to hear more of the music of this composer, who was associated with the beautiful and ancient cathedral city Coimbra. It is even better that the choir here is under another musician who has researched the composer and edited these hitherto unpublished works from various, often obscure, manuscripts.

The sources are four manuscripts found in the library in Coimbra and a further three found in Lisbon. It has clearly been a labour of love to piece some of the music together, as several pages of these manuscripts have been mistreated or have faded over the last hundred or more years due to neglect. Toscano seems to imply that the music is only now being discovered; this is only partially true, as can be seen from the two recordings mentioned above. This is, however, the first disc to be completely devoted to Pedro de Cristo, and despite the fact that approximately 250 works are attributed to him, we read that curiously the Salve Regina is his only surviving mass.

The selected motets for this disc are almost entirely Marian; their style can be austere but also very lyrical with a yearning harmony resulting from regular suspensions. His counterpoint is often compact; as a result, the Gloria of the Mass and indeed the Agnus Dei are clearly focused and not at all prolix, but the part writing is often strongly imitative, even canonic, as heard especially in the Credo. The plainchant, which is used for alternate verses in the Salve Reginamotet is clearly audible in the Mass across its four-part writing as in the opening of the Sanctus in particular. Cristo can write simply as well, as in the mainly homophonic Sancta et immaculata. Taking the richest and most expressive works here, I suggest that if you can, you first listen to some of the Beata viscera Mariae in five parts and the joyous Ave regina caelorum.

The only eight-part works are the Magnificat and the Ave Maria. How much Cristo was aware of developments in Italy we can only speculate, but the early baroque idiom is never used.

The excellent booklet essay by Toscano not only offers us the full texts and translations but also photographs of some the manuscript pages which are described in a second essay by José Abreu and Paulo Estudante. Hyperion has again divided the pieces up into no fewer than forty-two tracks and while I understand how useful this could be for teaching purposes and is especially useful in the mass where, for example, the Credo is given three tracks, I fail to grasp why short motets such as the two-stanza Stabat Mater and the even shorter Ave regina caelorum need to be divided.

I like this choir very much with their Italianate, open vowels, clear tone quality, precise intonation and immaculate diction. This is their third CD for Hyperion; I waxed lyrical about the singers when reviewing their recording of another Portuguese composer Duarte Lobo (Hyperion CDA68306 - review) in 2020, when I described their sound as ‘thrilling’. They have also returned to the basilica in Braga, the acoustic of which has been beautifully handled. Not only is this music wonderfully moving and uplifting but the performances are of outstanding quality.

Gary Higginson

Composer Info

Pedro de Cristo (c.1550-1618)

CD Info

Hyperion CDA68393, HYPERION CDA68393