What are you listening to right now?

Tagalie and Bazza:

Memories for me from what you are saying of my music master at school making me listen to Benedicite one lesson while following the score (Not a big class, the A-level class was one of one).

But what a great work, Benedicite, full of wonderful modal harmonies...Time for me to re-connect with VW choral work!

Mark

The Willcocks 'Five Tudor Portraits' is the only one I know. Interesting you should call it fairly tame because, the Jane Scroop Romanza aside, I've always found the work underwhelming. I can't escape the feeling there's much more to it than is on this recording. Can you recommend one Bazza?

Good to hear from you as usual, Mark. Your championship of Ockeghem has me curious. I know nothing of him. Where would you recommend starting?

I came to a similar conclusion after hearing Dona Nobis Pacem live. Recordings of VW choral works tend to be too careful. And since he chooses texts that are actually worth reading (and sets them very appropriately) we need to be able to hear them. Like Echo and the Bunnymen, much of the joy comes from interaction between words and music.

I've had similar problems with most of the extant dvds of Brittern operas until I recently watched the Fenice performance of Death in Venice and the Barstow Gloriana, both happily lacking the uptight quality that plagues many realisations of his works.

Hi Tagalie! Glad you're back with us.

The Ockeghem is fascinating stuff. My current collection has 8 masses:

Missa Caput on Glossa - Graindelavoix
Ecce Ancilla Domine on DHM - Pro Cantione Antiqua
Au travail suis/Sine nomine a 5 on ASV - Clerks' Group/Wickham
Requiem/Missa Prolationum - Musica Ficta/Bo Holten on Naxos
De Plus en Plus on Brilliant Classics - Orlando Consort
L'homme arme on Naxos - Oxford Camerata/Summerly

It's all good, but personally I wouldn't start with Missa Prolationum. It's written in the form of a set of prolation canons (a very difficult form to pull off - Part's Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten is the only modern example I know). In other words (sorry if its granny and egg sucking time, but granny was always kinda weird) the separate voices sing the same music at different speeds/note values. My gut feeling on this mass is that it's a bit of a straitjacket to think so cerebrally for Ockeghem, because his natural style is free flowing polyphony.

I started with De plus en plus and L'homme arme.

IMO the Requiem and Caput are musts, so I would say those 4.

I still have left 6 of his 14 masses to collect, though there is some doubt by the scholars as to whether the sine nomine a 3 was actually penned by Ockeghem.

Try De Plus en Plus Orlando Consort, and the Requiem. (Though I'm not sure about Ficta/Holten's version of the Requiem and I think it's ok but there are probably better).

Personal advice - after you've heard one or two go for Caput on Glossa by Graindelavoix, but not first. If you go for it first it will spoil you, because it is something else altogether, the performance and approach.

Graindelavoix describe themselves as an ethno-music ensemble and not a pretty choir, so it's singing that sounds like it's coming from another place and time. Remarkable, though not to everyone's taste. I noticed a review of a CD by them in Gramophone a few months ago and the reviewer wasn't sure if it was art or gimmick or a bit of both. But as you can see, Brumas, Chris and me think it's stunning.

Imagine if Victor Frankenstein had created a tribe of creatures and they all found God. On their way to their mass funeral pyre on the ice they decided to stop off at a remote church in Belgium with a spookily spacious echo and record Caput. THAT is what graindelavoix sound like. It's deep from the gut and the grave, a performance that definitely sounds like it's coming from another time and place. And as Brumas said on another thread, a time where sanctity was understood...

I'm not totally sure myself what draws me to Ockeghem, but I think it is the harmony. It's wonderful...

(Gotta go. Started a new placement Monday in yet another school that the inspectors have damned and that's in trouble. Don't these people ever say anything positive...?)

Mark

Great idea Tagalie re: the Brown song. I suggested it to the head on Friday for an assembly next week, but his response was something along the lines of, 'Inappropriate messages to the students (they're all students nowadays apparently) containing anti-Christian symbols which would result in parental complaints from those with strong Christian affinities. The mention of the God of Christianity is also forbidden under the school's diversity policy. The pyrotechnics would also be a serious health and safety issue'.

Oh well...

Meanwhile there's an article coming up I think in April's issue where Fabrice Fitch is recommending 10 early requiems. My Jan - March copies having arrived, I think the mention of it is in there somewhere. Dr. Fitch is an early music scholar and his doctoral thesis on Ockeghem entitled Ockeghem Masses and Models was published by Honore Champion Paris. I have it here at the moment on Inter-library loan and have been delving into it. It's a great piece of scholarship alright, I just find the glossary of terms you need to really understand composers like Ockeghem is a bit beyond my understanding at the moment in some ways. But he uses some interesting ideas such as chant migration, to describe when the melody deviates from the original chant. (Now that's in the kind of language I can grasp). He misses out of the study the two more unusual masses, the Prolationum and the one on different modes - I think it's Cuisvis Toni, plus the Sine Nomine a 3 which he agrees has a bit of a tenuous link maybe to the rest of Ockeghem's output, and therefore can't be confidently ascribed to Ockeghem. He concentrates on the remaining 11 masses.

(Amusingly, when I rang the Gramophone subscription number the music they play when you're on hold is, wait for it...Michael Buble! Everyone plays Mozart's Eine Kleine - the bank, the council, the gas board you name it, but not our magazine!)

Meanwhile I've got Schubert and Bruckner symphonies am working my way through, and I'm behind on my Listening Project homework.

If you want to dive in at the deep end, go for Caput by Graindelavoix, or a good version of the Requiem. It might be an interesting experiment to compare another version of Caput with Graindelavoix. Might try that myself!

I found he has a Russian drama in his conducting, Naupilus. The recording helps him to this end. However, Gergiev is not a Mravinsky. So, it may not deliver to the more Germanic-oriented (or even Anglosaxon) audiences. Janowski is in store, somewhere in the future. Till then, perhaps Simone Young's fine conducting venture, on OEHMS, might suit you. However, the singing is not much higher than the average, taking into account the availability of modern Wagnerian singers.

Parla