I am happy to say that a new ensemble, the Chalice Consort, is the second finest all-volunteer chamber choir I have heard in my 10 years in the Bay Area (I'll take perverse pleasure in letting readers guess the first). On Saturday night, the chorus, in its second concert under the direction of guest Music Director Matthew Walsh, took on the challenging task of presenting an all a cappella program of music from Renaissance Spain, and succeeded magnificently.
I say "magnificent" due to the chorus' consistently accurate tuning and the beautiful pure-voiced and appropriate choral tone of the soprano section, something rarely heard from a volunteer choir and a quality that often foils professional ensembles. Walsh, a former music director at three cathedrals, polished the choir's performance with consistently clean cutoffs and diction. I had never been to the Roman Catholic parish of Santa Monica in San Francisco's Outer Richmond District. It is a resonant Mannerist building lacking the gaudiness of many Catholic churches. Its flattering acoustic provides, but for its remote and somewhat inaccessible location, what could be a favored choral concert space.
A cruel collusion between the bus system and San Francisco's famed paucity of taxis allowed me to hear only the tail end of the concert's opening work,
Audivi vocem de caelo, a motet by Portuguese composer Duarte Lobo, a piece I knew from making a performing edition while a high school junior. The chorus sang this from the rear of the church as in a Mass Introit, so as I was darting down the aisle for a seat, the chorus processed on my heels singing
Parce mihi Domini, a work by Cristobal Morales (1500-1553) that was once made famous in a Hilliard Ensemble recording where a jazz saxophonist improvised over the composer's setting of Job's lamentation.
The meat of the Chalice Consort's program was a requiem Mass by Pierre de Manchicourt (1510-1564), which was especially appropriate to the recent All Souls Day — an annual day of remembrance celebrated by Western Christian congregations on November 2. Manchicourt was a Flemish composer employed by the Cathedral in Madrid, as well as in the private chapels of the Spanish emperors Charles V and Philip II. This was a transitional time in Renaissance music. Reforms suggested by the Council of Trent led composers toward new approaches in text setting. Religious music lost the more decadent stylings of the post-Josquin generation, as epitomized in works by Spanish court composer Nicolas Gombert. The "purer" polyphony of the Italian Palestrina and the Spaniard Tomás Luis de Victoria became the standard. Manchicourt sets his Mass to a cantus firmus (the sopranos sing a very slow chant melody while the lower voices sing polyphony), sounding very Palestrinalike but with the occasional indulgence in Gombertian dissonances and cross relations, as befits this transitional period.
Majestic Approach
I believe Walsh and his choir approached the music with monumental and architectural perspective — the chorus singing with diffident reserve and majesty, much as the overwhelming and otherworldly artworks of a cathedral are intended to induce religious awe. Vocal range and addition of voices provide climax. Other repertories from this time (Tudor English music comes to mind) demand more personal and emotional expression. It remains to be seen how the Chalice Consort would fare on non-Renaissance repertory.
My favorite work on the program, a Manchicourt motet titled
Ego sum panis vivus, concluded the concert. This exuberant piece climaxes in an elaborate and exciting "Alleluia." Walsh evidently enjoyed the work, as well, as he brought the chorus up to an impressive forte and relished in a concluding dissonance. Other choirs should check out this piece.
Having been raised Orthodox Christian in the Eastern Rite, I grew up with a sort of veneration for religious works of art. Although no longer practicing (or welcome) in that system of belief, I still cringe a little when, for example, I see historic icons displayed in a clinical museum gallery. This mind-set extends to music — a situation that choirs often discover when performing the great Vigil services of Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky.
Therefore I found it disconcerting that the Chalice Consort opted to chant the gospel reading, the responses, and the Eucharistic prayer from the Roman Mass between movements of Manchicourt's Requiem, even to the extent of including a chant of a private prayer that all Catholics say when they receive communion. In the Catholic liturgy, both before and after the Counter-Reformation, as well in modern times, these prayers are specifically reserved for ordained priests and deacons. The Eucharistic prayer is believed to be the prayer that actually causes the transformation of bread and wine into something greater. Whether to a fervent believer, a music "expert," or just a nonreligious bystander wanting to hear pretty music at a concert, this must be somehow inappropriate.
I can imagine plainchant alternatives to break up the Mass movements and evoke a sense of liturgical pacing appropriate to the composer's intent. In lieu of the gospel and so on, the choir could sing a psalm, an alleluia chant, the commendation chant, or the dreaded Dies Irae sequence. This leaves the problem of the Sanctus, which is a response to a priest's chant (the bane of Orthodox liturgies in concert where most of the choral music consists of short responses to a priest).
Too many concert performances of church music eliminate any sense of liturgical context; this approach has its problems. Here, I feel the Chalice Consort swung a bit far in the opposite direction. After all, a concert is a concert, not a service. This week especially, I admit sensitivity to public assertions of religious practice in the secular world (as is a concert open to the public). Lurking in the background of this chapel music for the Spanish Hapsburg court is the height of the Spanish Inquisition, the repression of Calvinists in the Spanish Netherlands culminating in the "Council of Blood," the fierce bloody conquests of Mexico and Peru, expulsion and forced conversion of Jews in Iberia, and the expansion of the slave trade to mine South American silver in order to finance religious wars in Europe. Some things are better presented out of context.