This new Hyperion recording
of Dufay’s mass cycle of the late 1450s enters a fairly competitive
market, but it has one trick up its sleeve.
On the Lyrichord Early
Music label, Capella Cordina, directed by the Dufay scholar
Alejandro Planchart, offer Dufay’s chanson
Se la face
ay pale and the five movements of the
Missa Se la
face ay pale without any attempt to place them in liturgical
context. There’s nothing wrong with this approach, of course;
it’s the normal practice in performing late medieval and
renaissance mass settings, and the Lyrichord 2-CD set includes
a good deal of other music by Dufay, including the
Missa
Sancti Jacobi. Both CDs in this set are rather short
and I rather think that Lyrichord recordings are not currently
generally available in the UK, making an eMusic download
the only way to obtain this recording.
The Hilliard Ensemble
perform the five movements of the Mass interspersed with
other Dufay compositions on a Coro reissue of a 1990s recording
(COR16055) and there is also a performance by the Tölzer
Knabenchor and Collegium Aureum on Deutsche Harmonia Mundi. The
Coro CD received a generally warm welcome.
The strongest competition,
however, for the new recording comes from a 2003 Alpha recording
by Diabolus in Musica (Alpha051). As I write, this recording
is also available at super-budget price with the 2008 Alpha
catalogue; the catalogue is an inseparable part of the CD
package, which makes the whole thing rather bulky – when
Harmonia Mundi do this, they put a removable cardboard wrapper
around the separate CD and catalogue – but the saving is
very worthwhile. It certainly tempted me to replace my now
elderly Gillesberger/Vanguard version (not currently available,
nor is Munrow’s EMI/Virgin CD) and I haven’t regretted the
substitution.
The trick up the sleeve
of the new recording is a McCreesh-style reconstruction of
the polyphonic sections of a complete Mass. The Alpha recording
employs the plainchant propers – Gradual, Sequence, Offertory
and
Ite missa est – for Trinity Sunday from a fourteenth-century
missal from Cambrai Cathedral (MS BN Latin 17311) and polyphonic
settings of the Introit, Alleluia and Communion from MS88
in the Biblioteca Nazionale at Trento (ca.1455) long believed
to have been composed by Dufay himself. Hyperion go one
better by taking all the propers from a polyphonic Mass in
honour of St Maurice, plausibly associated with the Court
of Savoy and only slightly less plausibly with Dufay himself.
Despite their name, there
is nothing diabolical about the performances by Diabolus
in musica – if anything, their singing is a little understated
and their tempi on the slow side. Where the Binchois Consort
on the new recording take 3:36 for the
Kyrie, Diabolus
take 4:40. Similar, though slightly less extreme, differences
apply in the other movements. I’m playing the Alpha recording
as I write this paragraph to make sure that they don’t sound
too slow; in fact, what I hear is a deliberate performance
of the
Kyrie, bringing out the penitential significance
of the words –
Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord
have mercy – but not one which drags. They didn’t record
the music in a particularly reverberant acoustic, but this
would be about the right tempo for a large church or cathedral – or
in the ducal chapel at Savoy, as illustrated on the cover
of the Hyperion CD. Nor do the
Gloria, or any of
the remaining sections drag; if you can still obtain this
in its super-bargain version, you need have no hesitation. It’s
also available to download from eMusic – even cheaper still.
I must admit, however,
that, after a comparatively short acquaintance, the Alpha
recording is likely to be replaced for regular listening
by the new Hyperion CD. The brisker tempi adopted by the
Binchois Consort are perfectly apt – never remotely too fast – and
more in line with Planchart’s on Lyrichord. There’s nothing
at all wrong with the Alpha CD, but listening to the Hyperion
immediately afterwards adds that little indefinable extra
that makes a very good recording potentially a great one;
it’s a completely inadequate epithet, but the best I can
come up with is to call the new recording brighter. Despite
the faster tempi, the Binchois Consort bring out the weight
just as well and they stress the beauty even more effectively
than Diabolus.
The Binchois Consort have
already exhausted my critical vocabulary in reviewing the
Hyperion Helios reissue of their performance of Dufay’s Mass
for St Anthony of Padua (CDH55271 – see
review). What
I haven’t said there has been said by Em Marshall in reviewing
another Dufay recording by the Consort (CDA67474 – see
review)
and by Robert Hugill in his review of yet another CD, Music
for St James (Helios CDH55272 – see
review.) The
only possible reason not to buy the new CD would be the availability
of those two Helios reissues at such a reasonable price,
two CDs for less than the price of one.
I’ve just completed my
Recordings of the Year for 2008, in which CDH55271 was a
strong contender; if continued listening proves as rewarding
as first impressions, the new CD will be a hot contender
for a Recording of the Year 2009. The only reason why I
haven’t made it a Recording of the Month is that I expect
to award that accolade to the new Linn/Dunedin Consort recording
of Handel’s
Acis and Galatea.
The Alpha recording is
lavishly presented, as part of their
Ut pictura musica series,
in which the music is illustrated with a contemporary work
of art, in this case a depiction of the Trinity from a Book
of Hours. The Hyperion recording, you will not be surprised
to hear, is equally well presented; the only complaint I
have ever had about their packaging is that the booklets
are sometimes too large and lavish to get back into the case. The
illustration of the ducal chapel on the cover of this CD
may be well known – it features in many a coffee-table book
of medieval art – but thoroughly apt.
More to the point, the
notes in the Hyperion booklet, by Philip Weller, tell the
listener just about everything (s)he might want know, not
least the rationale behind the inclusion of the other polyphonic
movements. Given that the quality of the music itself, when
as well performed as it is here, bears out the attribution,
I’m convinced – who else could have written music of this
quality at this time? Whoever the composer, an all-polyphonic
solution seems marginally preferable to the part-polyphony/part-chant
on the Alpha recording.
The Binchois Consort round
off their recording with fine performances of the motet
O
très piteulx, the ballade which provides the
cantus
firmus of the Mass,
Se la face ay pale – why not
sing this before the Mass, as on the Lyrichord recording? – and
the motet
Magnanime gentis.
The sound on the Alpha
CD is excellent, that on the Hyperion just about as flawless
as CD sound can be, with the voices placed just right in
the sound perspective. Clarity of words is not always a
major consideration in polyphonic music – both the reformers
and the Council of Trent in the next century recalled composers
to considerations of verbal audibility – but nothing is lost
here owing to the singer’s diction (they employ the French
ü sound
for the vowel
u) or the quality of the recording. Those
who hanker after vinyl should recall how perilously close
to distortion LP sound could be in polyphonic music, even
with one of the top-range arm/cartridge combinations.
If, as seems to be the
case, my affections seem to be shifting from the music of
Guillaume de Machaut to that of the later Guillaume, Dufay,
the Binchois Consort’s recordings will have played no small
part in the change.
Brian Wilson
The Binchois
Consort/Andrew Kirkman 
