Enlivening a Legend

I would have liked to see Davitt Moroney's reaction when it dawned on him precisely what that dusty box of partbooks in the Bibliothèque Nationale contained. As the picture gradually came into focus that this was Alessandro Striggio's long-lost 40- to 60-part Missa sopra "Ecco sì beato giorno," it could not have taken him long to realize that his find would soon generate a buzz in the international music world of unequaled magnitude. Whether early or late, Western or non-Western, popular or not, there is no known piece of music that rivals Striggio's achievement in transnational political import or sheer polyphonic massiveness. The work has been legendary since its first performances in 1567, while it has remained a crucial footnote in music history as the inspiration for Tallis' Spem in alium. Even without a surviving score, we could vaguely imagine the impact this work must have had on its first audiences. In no other documented instance has a composer written a work in 40-part polyphony, only to bowl the audience over with a 60-part finale. Now that a copy of the score has been brought to light and painstakingly transcribed, it was with tremendous anticipation that we awaited its North American premiere under Moroney's baton as part of Cal Performances' Berkeley Festival and Exhibition on Sunday at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley. Not only was the concert program itself eagerly awaited, but also the opportunity arose to witness a rare collaboration among five distinguished Bay Area vocal ensembles, seldom if ever seen onstage together. Striggio's Mass calls for a division of its 60 parts into five distinct choirs. To further accentuate each choir's individual identity, Moroney assigned each choir to one ensemble apiece. This patchwork assemblage reflects Renaissance practices, where in certain cities it would have been necessary to draw on the musicians from multiple civic and sacred institutions to perform a work such as this, being of the highest ceremonial splendor.

Thus Moroney organized members of Magnificat, Philharmonia Chorale, American Bach Soloists, Schola Cantorum San Francisco, and UC Berkeley's Perfect Fifth in a semicircle around the Bassus ad organum instrumentalists, with himself in the center and His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts (yes, true name) standing in the back.

With so many local groups performing Renaissance repertory in proximate isolation, this concert also gave listeners a chance to compare these ensembles side-by-side. The first choir was made up of members of Magnificat who, as the most featured choir in Striggio's work, also shone most brightly. This may have been a disadvantage for the Philharmonia Chorale singers beside them. The American Bach Soloists, strengthened with brass instruments, and Schola Cantorum San Francisco were both relatively strong, but Philharmonia Chorale faded somewhat precipitously into the background.

Perfect Fifth, a student ensemble specializing in medieval, Renaissance, and contemporary music, may have had the least professional experience, but they were hardly the weakest group onstage. Rather, the young singers' flexibility and visible excitement served to invigorate the overall performance, while reflecting the variety in age and experience intrinsic to most early-modern choirs. The rarity of the event was such that whatever the audience may have expected was sure to be surpassed. We are accustomed to a certain visual uniformity to a choir onstage, but to see Striggio's Mass performed was to witness the opposite, as each singer both visually and aurally stood separate from those around him or her. The result was a wealth of animated movements onstage as each responded to his or her individualized score. It is hard to convey how impressive this looked in the live performance. When people listen to traditional polyphony, the emergence of and then engulfment in individual lines often brings order to their listening experience, but such absorption is impossible in a work like this. As soon as you have picked out one individual strand, you have lost it, and all that remains is an irresolvable skein of lines. Only in the final Agnus Dei was there clarity to the structure on a line-by-line basis, as the singers entered one after the other, but even this compositional conceit quickly was lost, once voice number seven or eight made his or her entry. Antiphonal exchanges among the choirs, and textural contrasts in the number of simultaneous choirs, both worked to magical effect. Perhaps clear in the score or at many moments during the performance, even these distinctions often evaporated in the maelstrom of activity. As it was surely meant to do, Striggio's Mass overwhelmed the senses, both visually and sonically.

Amazing Brass Artistry

His Majesty's Sagbutts and Cornetts, flown in from the United Kingdom, brought further magnificence to the overall sound while doubling the third of the five choirs. This group demonstrated an astonishing skill and artistry that elevated them far beyond similar brass ensembles. Along with the keyboard players, they opened the program with five early Baroque instrumental pieces in the Venetian style by Giovanni Battista Grillo, Aurelio Bonelli, and Giovanni Gabrieli.

A particular highlight was Grillo's Canzon in ecco, during which half the ensemble stood facing the back wall in the balcony behind the audience, echoing the cadences of the group onstage. Meanwhile, it was difficult not to stare mouth agape at Wim Becu as he worked an extraordinarily rare contrabass sackbut a few feet taller than the performer himself. The instrumental works made an excellent prelude to the featured work on the program. They hinted at the variety of antiphonal effects and polyphonic divisions exploited by early-modern Italian composers who wrote for large ensembles, and suggested the ways that architectural space can contribute spectacularly to live performance. To coordinate six-plus ensembles accustomed to their own conductors provided obvious challenges to Moroney on the podium. (It would also have been nice to see a few more female instrumentalists alongside the singers.) It was to the benefit of us all that Davitt Moroney met this challenge as well as he did, leaving us to wonder when he will present his marvelous discovery to the public once again.