Comparison Recordings of music by
Charpentier.
Te Deum. Martini, Pasdeloup SO, Jeunesses
Cho., mono LP MHS 531 (USA only)
Messe de Minuit pour Noël, William
Christie, Les Arts Florissants Erato
8573-85820-2
The US won her independence
from England in one very nasty war.
As the younger Mrs. Windsor reminded
citizens of the US during her address
to us in 1976, her family at once took
the initiative in trying to heal that
breach, such healing being largely complete
by 1917, a mere 140 years or so. Canada,
on the other hand, fought at least three
wars with England including two with
the US before finally attaining full
nationhood after two hundred years of
gradualism. As if to make up for lost
time, Canada has moved rapidly forward
into the task of creating a unique nation
and unique institutions to serve her.
Any person or nation who assumes that
Canada is merely an unimportant appendage
upon either the UK or the US is setting
themselves up for an embarrassing comeuppance.
Over the years I have
greatly enjoyed many weeks of visiting
in Canada with Canadians and I entertain
the strongest best wishes for them.
And, all music lovers everywhere are
aware of the great contributions made
to modern musical art by such Canadian
artists as Glenn Gould, Bernard Labadie,
and Maureen Forrester.
One of the areas where
Canada has greatly excelled her southern
neighbours is in the respect accorded
to her native peoples, who are now uniformly
referred to as the "First Nations"
on the modern territory [even at times
when it is rhetorically absurd to do
so]. There is, naturally, in their mutual
history a complex sequence of barter,
cultural approach, cultural mixture,
cultural domination, cultural subversion,
heroism, tragedy, and other facets of
intermingling. At the time Charpentier
was writing this mass, using contemporary
French Christmas carols as themes, a
French Jesuit missionary was teaching
Christianity to the native Canadians
and translating this same French Christmas
music into their language. In commemoration
of this event in their history, one
of the Canadian artists in this recording
sings that carol not in Latin, nor in
French, but in the Huron language as
translated from the French in 1642.
Europeans and Americans in the US may
see this as an annoying bit of obscurantism,
but I see it as a proud and noble gesture,
an assertion of the original inclusive
spirit of Christmas in an age when that
spirit has been subsumed into a banal
commercialism — and perhaps more important
a uniquely Canadian gesture.
The Te Deum,
whose introductory march was made famous
as the opening music for a television
drama program, is brilliantly performed
in beautiful modern sound, with flamboyant
flourishes from the timpani. One is
naturally reminded of the fabulous Louis
Martini recording from 1949, first released
in North America on LP on the Haydn
Society label, and one of the finest
recordings of anything ever done.*
The Christmas Midnight
Mass as presented here is an odd
work. The kyrie is made up of
traditional French Christmas carol tunes,
and in this recording they are each
sung first with the original French
words, and then with the Latin words,
except for the third of them sung in
the Huron language. Ah, you say, with
my modern programmable CD player I can
skip these interpolations and play the
mass as it usually is played — but I’m
afraid you can’t. You either hear the
Kyrie exactly as they want you to or
you don’t hear it at all. If this is
a problem for you, then you will prefer
the more conventional Christie recording,
which stays with the Latin texts, but
give you some instrumental-only versions
of the carols which you can skip if
you choose.
Forward from the gloria,
which is only a brief bit of chant,
both groups play the same notes and
things are more conventional.
This group recently
recorded the Vivaldi Dixit Dominus
RV 595 which is fast and joyous, similar
in mood to the Handel Dixit Dominus
which I have always loved. Charpentier’s
setting of the text begins more solemnly,
opening up into a grandeur reminiscent
of Gabrieli.
Overall, apart from
the differences in the program, Les
Arts Florissants perform with stricter
authentic performance practice, all
their soloists being drilled to the
final edge of perfection in period vocal
technique, whereas the Canadians are
equally as enthusiastic. The other items
on the disk are more interesting, but
their soloists tend to sound a little
churchy.
* Astonishingly, that
monophonic recording was able to capture
the rich reverberant acoustic of the
French cathedral, a feat hardly duplicated
since then.
Paul Shoemaker
see also review
by Robert Hugill
Jane Archibald, Michele de Boer, Anne L’Espèrance,
sopranos; Marion Newman, Nancy Reynolds, altos;
Colin Ainsworth, James McLennan, David Nortman,
tenors; Giles Tomkins, Esteban Cambre, basses
