Three Christmas Discs We Missed

Program: #22-51   Air Date: Dec 19, 2022

I. Les Miracles de Saint Nicolas (Venance Fortunat/Anne-Marie Deschamps). L’empreinte digitale CD ED13153

Plays telling saints' legends were among the earliest Medieval mystery plays. Four St. Nicholas miracle plays were in the 12th century Fleury manuscript and it is believed some go back to the late 11th century. The plays, set to music, were sung in Latin and still had connections to liturgy, though it is unknown just where they were performed.

II. O Magnum Mysterium: Sacred Music of Giovanni Pierluigi Palestrina (Vienna Vocal Ensemble/Vijay Upadhyaya). Dorian CD DOR-93255.

From Classics Today: The CD catalog is loaded with recordings of Palestrina’s masses and motets, but considering his relatively large, consistently high-quality output, it’s amazing that a handful of works gets most of the attention, most notably the Pope Marcellus mass, which appears on no less than 17 currently-available recordings. Presumably this popularity owes to the work’s long-assumed but now disproved role in “rescuing” polyphonic style from an impending ban by the Roman church, and not because it is musically superior to Palestrina’s other 100-plus masses. Of course, the Missa Papae Marcellae is a masterpiece, but the mass featured on this program is well worth the serious attention it gets here from this excellent choir, and deserves yours as well. (One other recording of it is available, on a 1996 Centaur CD by Chicago A Cappella, which I have not heard.)

From the opening of the Kyrie, we recall the brilliant sonorities and flowing lines of the motet on which Palestrina based the mass–the motet that opens the program–and throughout we hear the familiar mix of chordal/homophonic writing and perfectly integrated polyphonic passages. At 32 minutes, it’s among Palestrina’s more substantial masses (although somewhat shorter than the Pope Marcellus). However, it’s the motets that provide the disc’s most immediately appealing–and best-sung–music. If the singing in the mass shows just a smidgen of intonational wear around the edges (during the Gloria and Credo especially) and some flagging of energy in the longest movements, the motets are near-perfect–crisply and cleanly articulated, confidently phrased, and pleasingly resonant, with excellent pacing that creates a natural, unforced momentum.

Palestrina was a master of text-setting, and if you find the “right” tempo, the language and music flow easily together, as they do in these performances. Just listen to the motet Tu es Petrus (another of this composer’s more popularly recorded works) and you’ll appreciate both these and other characteristics of Palestrina’s masterpieces, including the soaring soprano, artfully woven interior parts, and harmonic progressions that give sustenance to long, powerfully dramatic stretches between cadences. With their vibrant, well-balanced sound and intelligent interpretations that effectively preserve the meaning of the texts as well as the clarity of all the components of each work, Vijay Upadhyaya and his Vienna Vocal Consort (a group made up of “professional singers from all over Europe”) make a strong and welcome entry to the discography of under-recorded Palestrina. And the sound, from Kollegiatstift Eisgarn, Austria, has just the right brightness and resonance to perfectly complement this music.

III. Navidad Iberica: Spanish Christmas Music and Villancicos from the Renaissance (Ensemble Corund/Stephen Smith). Dorian CD DOR-93249.

The end of the 15th century in Spain saw a consolidation of power and a resulting political stability. The marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castille brought about a union of these two kingdoms in 1479. Granada, the last Muslim stronghold, was conquered in 1492, the same year in which Columbus set out on a voyage of discovery which took him to what would later be known as the Americas. Thus the Spanish Renaissance, the Siglo de Oro ("Golden Age"), and the period from which the pieces on this recording are taken, began with Spain at the height of political and military strength.

Composer Info

Giovanni Pierluigi Palestrina, Francisco Guerrero, Cristóbal de Morales, Juan Esquivel, Tomás Luis de Victoria,

CD Info

L’empreinte digitale CD ED13153, Dorian CD DOR-93255, Dorian CD DOR-93249