This is a fascinating and highly successful project. Without
going into the kind of detail which the booklet notes give us,
this is Johannes Ockeghem´s Missa pro defunctis,
integrated with newly composed movements by Bengt Sørensen
to create what is, if not an entirely new piece, certainly a
very new and fresh way of connecting the new in the old, with
the old in the new. This is an extension of Paul Hillier’s
more frequent combining of contemporary with early music in
his programming, and here he has brought in Bengt Sørensen
to complete ‘the bits which are missing’ in Ockeghem’s
work.
Ockeghem’s Missa is full of moments which can wrong-foot
you into thinking that you are hearing something contemporary.
Harmonic shifts and quasi-romantic melodic lines abound, and
just listen to some of those startling female-only passages
in the Kyrie. The Graduale flows from Sørensen’s
Lacrimosa as if from the same fearlessly expressive source,
and there are moments in the Offertorium which are truly
overwhelming.
Sørensen’s contributions are idiomatically sensitive
and integrate by way of atmosphere, but are by no means a soft-pedalled
imitation of ancient style. The opening Responsorium
has plenty of reassuring parallel intervals and open harmonies,
but immediately alerts the ear to what is to come, with close
harmonies and strange dissonances which have inner resolution,
but no ultimate cadence. The central Recordare Jesu pie
in the Sequentia is one of those impossibly melting creations
which make your hairs stand up with some kind of prehensile
spiritual angst. Separated by plainchant, the first two minutes
of the following Lacrimosa is truly beautiful: a moment
of suspended time where the tears fall, but never reach the
ground. There are moments of restrained drama here and in the
Benedictus, where vibrato is used as a textural effect,
making the air itself ring like a Tibetan bowl. The entire Requiem
cycle closes with Sørensen’s In Paradisum,
is the most extensive and in some ways the most far reaching,
as the booklet notes describe, “with cluster-like chordal
effects that are thinned out, recondensed and break like waves
against each other.”
All of the texts are printed in the booklet in Latin, English
and Danish, revealing a contribution from Dylan Thomas in the
Responsorium: Memento mei Deus: “Hourly I sigh,/for
all things are leaf-like/and cloud-like. Flowerly I die/for
all things are grief-like/and shroud-like.” There is a
diagram at the back of the booklet which shows the position
of singers and microphones, with a more conventional choir setting
for the Ockeghem, and singers all around the venue for Sørensen’s
work. In stereo this effect is not so very noticeable, though
there are enough added dimensions and everything remains perfectly
balanced. With a surround set-up the effect is quite magical.
I searched high and low for the name of the church where this
was recorded, but even un-named this is a perfect acoustic for
such unaccompanied vocal scoring. This is one of those recordings
for which you close your eyes and give yourself entirely over
to a very rich musical experience indeed. Paul Hillier’s
Ars Nova Copenhagen is a remarkable collection of vocalists
for which this work is tailor-made, and the music is brought
to life in a way which shoots straight into the soul and lingers
long in the mind.
Dominy Clements
Ars Nova Copenhagen/Paul Hillier 