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
Vox Altera Ensemble/Massimiliano Pascucci 
