Pierre de LA RUE (c.1460-1518)
Missa de Feria [25.18]
O domine, Jesu Christe (two lutes) [2.43]
Regina Celi (two lutes) [4.06]
Salve Regina (two lutes) [3.25]
Pater de celis Deus [9.36]
Missa Sancta Dei genitrix [22.39]
Gothic Voices/Christopher Page
Christopher Wilson (lute); Shirley Rumsey (lute)
rec. September 1997, Boxgrove Priory, Chichester, United Kingdom
Originally issued as CDA67010
HYPERION HELIOS CDH 55296 [65.35]
It was over the twenty or more years that Gothic Voices were producing their
annual and eagerly awaited recording; in all about twenty discs. There is
no doubt that although Christopher Page caused much controversy in the otherwise
quiet coterie of early music scholarship their performances were often riveting,
involving and exciting. One admired the ensemble work, the choice of repertoire,
the revealing booklet notes and the sheer quality of the singing. Almost everything
was a cappella with just an occasional medieval harp which Page himself
played. It seemed that the music spoke much better without the colourings
of weird and wonderful crumhorns, cornemuse and percussion that we had been
used to. To a great degree this is an opinion still held by many including
this reviewer.
All that said, I started to have some reservations in the mid-1990s, if not
earlier, when I first heard an a cappella version of Machaut’s
Rose Liz by the American group Project Ars Nova on New Albion Records
(NA068). I knew the Gothic Voices version on The Mirror of Narcissus
(Hyperion CDA 66087) but had come to find it chaste and overly clean, very
open and front of the mouth. This American version was a little more closed,
subtle and rather more melancholy with a lovely rubato-like sensitivity to
line that Page’s bright, harder-edged reading did not possess. I fell
in love with this music for the first time.
I then started to ask myself questions about dynamics. I have sung much early
music from my boyhood and listened to and studied a great deal. I am aware
that the audience’s attention often needs to be held and one way of
achieving this is through dynamic shading. This is surely a natural and needful
thing for performers and listeners. In the GV recordings of secular music
most of the pieces last two or three minutes and in that case the problem
is not especially acute however when they started to tackle Mass settings,
spinning polyphony over an extended period then lack of dynamic colouring
became a problem. We have no idea how medieval musicians approached dynamics
and many will argue that the general thinning and thickening of texture, the
rise and fall of lines will create dynamics naturally. I have remained unconvinced.
I needed to listen again to a continental group and get away from the Oxbridge
sound that GV represented. I didn’t have far to look. I chose a Mass
by de la Rue’s contemporary Josquin, his Missa Gaudeamus performed
by A Sei Voce. This was recorded in 1997 (Auvidis E8612). They use a slightly
larger group, but one to a part for certain sections and children on the top
part, but that’s another story. I only had to go as far as the opening
Kyrie to hear a superb dynamic contrast between the Kyrie and
the Christe which was hushed and mysterious. Throughout their performance
dynamic contrast serving to highlight structure and text is prevalent. This
makes their performance not only more musically interesting but also spiritually
more concentrated. Dynamic contrasts like this might be considered to be Romantic
but who is to say that to a certain extent this is not what Josquin and de
la Rue expected to happen.
As I listened to de la Rue’s motet, the canonic six-part Pater
de celis Deus, recorded here by GV, I realized how incredibly
uninteresting, inexpressive and even dull the performance was. I have felt
the same about GV’s recording of the anonymous Missa Caput (Hyperion
CDA66857). Another reason I started to feel this was because of the unrelenting
tempo. The Missa de Feria is an extremely professional
piece of work. It is meant as a workaday or as lay-clerks often call these
things ‘washday’ service but if it has anything at all profound
to say then through this performance or the music itself it has sadly eluded
me. One other reason may be, and setting aside for one minute the scholarly
need for solid evidence, is that surely there needs to be tempo variety of
some sort. A Sei Voce as well as other (often continental) groups attend to
this, quite naturally depending on the exigencies of the text, not in an excessive
(Romantic) sense but by using their musical sensibilities both as performers
and as potential listeners.
In his brilliantly argued book ‘The Modern Invention of Medieval Music’
(Cambridge University Press, 2002) Daniel Leech-Wilkinson devotes over twenty
pages to discussion of GV’s CDs sometimes in some detail. Even so, he
never once mentions this de La Rue disc and the reason, I believe, is that
it is not one of their most interesting or, for that matter, most controversial
discs. In addition Pierre de La Rue himself is something of an outsider never
having been taken up by a writer or group. He is less impressive, less innovative,
less tightly ordered than say Josquin or Brumel. His music is even more imitative
than that of his contemporaries and seems to be a little too clever. One wonders
why Page decided to record him.
Let’s look at the always informative and useful booklet notes. He writes
that the composer “is still very little known” and very prolific
having written “twenty-nine masses ... six Magnificats, fourteen motets”
and much more. He adds later that the group, being unfamiliar with the style,
found “themselves initially disorientated”. I have a feeling that
he is being more honest here than he realized.
Having said all of that - and I’m sorry not to be entirely helpful -
the four-voiced Missa Sancta Dei genetrix comes off well.
I can’t decide if it’s because the singers are more on top of
de la Rue’s language or whether, and this seems more likely, it is a
much better piece. It is succinct and based on a memorable head motif. Page
describes it as “radiant”. I’m not sure, having known this
CD now for a dozen years, if I quite feel that myself. However, the expressive
nature of the lines, especially the bass part, enables GV to bounce the ideas
off each other like chamber music. Page describes the effect as “mutual
dependency and co-operation”.
An especially charming feature of the disc is the sequence of three motets
transcribed in the style of Phalèse the Louvainese music publisher
and known to de la Rue. The transcriber, Christopher Wilson, plays them with
Shirley Rumsey. They are mostly unadorned and reflect “the Flemish or
north European tradition of lute playing in the lifetime of the composer.”
Gary Higginson
Incredibly uninteresting, inexpressive and even dull.