Gavin BRYARS (b. 1943)
All suon dell’acque scriva
Second Book of Madrigals [59:59]
Fourth Book of Madrigals, No. 1: A qualunque animale [11:21]
Vox Altera Ensemble/Massimiliano Pascucci
rec. 22-28 October 2008, Church of Santa Maria Assunta, Lugano, Switzerland
GB RECORDS BCGBCD16 [71:29]
Gavin Bryars’ Second Book of Madrigals is a collection of fourteen
unaccompanied pieces plus one more, entitled Marconi’s Madrigal,
that uses some percussion. This disc also contains the first number of his
Fourth Book of Madrigals.
A word, first of all, about the performances. The madrigals are sung one to
a part. The Vox Altera Ensemble is an absolutely outstanding group, secure
in intonation and with some extremely beautiful voices amongst the individual
members. Their performances of this music cannot be faulted. The recording
is very fine, though perhaps rather close and with surprisingly little sense
of a church acoustic. The booklet contains two essays in English and Italian,
one from the composer and one from the conductor, plus the sung texts in Italian
with English translations. It is pretty to look at, but the decision to superimpose
parts of it over photographs of architectural features and a choice of typeface
bordering on the bizarre seems to have been made with the express view of
discouraging the collector from reading it. Strange, but true. Nonetheless,
I make no apology for quoting at length from it as a way of introducing this
music.
The composer writes: “It was in 1998 that I embarked on a project to
write 3, 4 and 5-part madrigals for the Hilliard Ensemble, working within
the spirit and aesthetic of those from the Italian Renaissance…By coincidence
the first four settings were written on Mondays and I took the decision to
write the remaining nine on Mondays too…sometimes writing two, and once
three, in a day. This strategy clearly committed me to writing at least seven
books of madrigals. The Second Book (Tuesdays) was written for a 6-part group…These
madrigals set Petrarch in the original 14th century Italian…I wrote
14 madrigals for this book…I also added an extra madrigal (“Marconi’s
Madrigal”). This derives from a radiophonic piece commissioned by CBC
Radio for its celebration of the centenary of the first transmission of a
radio signal - a single letter - across the Atlantic Ocean by Marconi…in
December 1901. I speculated that the “S” that was transmitted
was, in reality, the first letter of a Petrarch sonnet…”
The conductor writes: “The composition technique is still that of…letting
the form compose itself, with no prior formal planning, so that the musical
sections are created independent of each other and characterized exclusively
by their expressive adherence to the text … Bryars’ compositional
language [is] seemingly austere and restrained, but actually with a daring
use of a wide range of styles, from late Romantic tonal chromaticism, to a
modal system reminding us of Gesualdo, Debussy or Martin, to dreamy jazz harmonies…His
constant preference for slow tempos…indicates expanded, leisurely time,
in which the music reverberates physically in space and time, enhancing its
pauses.”
Of the six or seven collections of Italian Renaissance madrigals on my shelves,
there probably isn’t one that I would listen to from beginning to end.
Instead, I pick out a favourite madrigal or two, then add on a couple more
that I know - or remember - less well. I won’t be listening to this
disc all the way through in the future either, but for different reasons.
The music is predominantly slow, and there is little in the way of variety
of texture. Contrapuntal writing is sparing, the composer apparently preferring
blocks of sound from different groups of voices, to contrast with the predominantly
homophonic writing for the whole group. The Second Book is written for a group
of three sopranos and three tenors. There is a lot of “close harmony”
writing, some of it very close indeed, with frequent semitone clashes. The
music journeys very widely through different keys, but at any given moment
tends to firmly tonal. An exception is the seventh madrigal, which contains
the phrase from which the disc takes its title and which begins with a list
of rivers, the thought of which will never alleviate the poet’s pain.
The subject is a painful one, which perhaps explains why the harmonic language
is more chromatic and harsher in dissonance than is the general rule. The
piece ends on a resounding major chord, though.
If there is a lack of variety in this music there are, nonetheless, many passages
of great beauty, and in short doses it makes compelling listening. The ear
is led from one lovely event to another by way of highly effective and sonorous
choral writing. The harmonies, surprising though they sometimes are, are rich
and beautiful. The overall atmosphere is tranquil and reflective, with only
occasional - and short-lived - bursts of something more passionate. And though
the booklet notes refer to the composer’s careful response to the text,
this seems very generalised, given the overall uniformity of mood, more uniform,
indeed, than the mood of the poetry. When, at the end of the seventh madrigal,
the composer repeats the word “sospiri” (sighs), the listener’s
attention is drawn in a way that singles out this piece of word-painting as
unusual in context.
In spite of the frequently ravishing sound of this music, it can also
be emotionally arid. I find this in particular in madrigal 9: the poet
is captivated by the sight of a white doe, but I don’t sense anything
approaching the feeling in the music. Madrigal 12 features another list -
“flowers, leaves, grass, shadows” - during which one wonders why
a particular word elicits a particular compositional response. Madrigal 13
is a song of mourning, but in spite of some more quite evident word painting,
this listener heard no more sadness in the music than in many other pieces
in the collection.
I have listened to all the pieces on this disc three times, and some individual
pieces more than that, and so little difference does there seem between many
of them that I don’t think I would necessarily recognise a given piece
in a “blind” test. An exception is Madrigal 14, another song of
mourning, in which the atmosphere is well captured and whose final bars bring
a sense of closure, suggesting that the composer intends the book to be performed
in order and perhaps in its entirety. Marconi’s Madrigal, too,
has a particular character setting it apart from the others, though the discreet
percussion elements - including a typewriter and wood blocks to re-create
the sound of the Morse machine, plus, I think, some mouth noises from the
singers - obviously contribute to this. The first madrigal from Book Four
closes the disc, the bass voices appearing for the first time, and most welcome
they are.
William Hedley
The Italian Renaissance madrigal seen through contemporary eyes, superbly
sung.