title: Reflections in the prism of rippling water

text:
I don’t usually buy CDs of Jazz – it’s the “Satie” part that attracted me here. These compositions – most by founder and leader of the Vienna Art Orchestra Mathias Rüegg – are less “arrangements” of Satie than “inspirations from” Satie – Rüegg calls them “Reflections on” and, yes, that’s what they are, in both senses and, in meaning # 2 (“the act of reflecting, as in casting back a light or heat, mirroring, or giving back or showing an image; the state of being reflected in this way”), provided you consider that the mirror is a distorting one, or the reflection, one in the prism of rippling water. In many cases I don’t even get the core Satie cell, through lack of familiarity with the original pieces (tracks 1 to 4, based on the three pieces from the “Avant-Dernières Pensées” collection, and Sévère Réprimande” from “Véritables Préludes Flasques”) – but, checking on the scores, sure, the root is there, oftentimes the compositions start with what is indeed an arrangement of the Satie piece, but when that is stated, they take flight. The third Gnossienne, track 5, is even only that, an orchestration with a few added syncopations in the accompanying chords.

But the point is: the program is very enjoyable without making any reference to its Satiesque origin. Instrumentation is skillfully and entertainingly varied from composition to composition – prominent trombone then flute in the first, voice and metal percussion with underpinning of brass followed by solo trumpet in 2, tuba (or is it trombone?) and bells then solo soprano sax in 3, various metal percussion including, I think, vibraphone, and softly whispering flute in 4 soon joined by soprano (singer) playing in unison with various winds etc. The three Vexations, tracks 9-11 – the only tracks not credited to Mathias Rüegg - are improvisations, respectively for tenor sax, voice, and bass clarinet, over the terse and brooding ostinato bass line (played by vibraphone) of the famous obsessively repetitive piece of Satie (premiered, we are told, by John Cage and a group of pianists in 1963, in an 18-hour long concert), and the result is suitably obsessive, and strangely fascinating. The soloists are virtuosic and hugely exciting – soprano Lauren Newton’s scatting vocalizes in tracks 2 and 10 makes you wish for more (and her singing in unison with the wind instruments in various tracks is also quite beautiful), and Karl Fian’s trumpet in 2 is hilariously insane. Is it even Jazz? Sure, the saxophone, trumpet, brass combo point to Jazz and some moments are distinctly Jazzy. But some others, and other instrumental combinations, are closer to some forms of contemporary classical. Jazz is a vast territory.

Why Satie? According to the elaborate liner notes by famed Vienna composer HK Gruber, because Satie refused to distinguish between “high-browed” music and popular music – or rather, he did, by rejecting what was accepted in his time as “art music” and by elevating popular and other “low-browed” music to the status of art. “Jazz – by now an emancipated musical form – returns the sympathies of “Monsieur le Pauvre”, the (nick-)name Satie liked to give himself, and in its turn makes use of the composer’s ideas for its own innovations”. Also because of Satie’s utter rejection of psychology, sentimentalism and even sentiment in music, his creation of a “musique d’ameublement”, a notion wwhich the liner notes inaccurately translate into “furniture music”, but it goes way beyond, because there is a figurative meaning to the verb “meubler” in French, not just to fill with furniture, but to fill any void, any emptiness (especially silence) with a presence of something that is is little more than a semblance, a make-believe, but in truth even emptier than the emptiness that it is meant to fill. It is used very much with silence being filled by idle chatter, and it’s a notion actors use, when one of them forgets his lines. So “musique d’ameublement” could very well be translated by “music to hide silence under the carpet”.

The Vienna Arts Orchestra was a prominent Austrian Jazz Ensemble, founded in 1977 by Mathias Rüegg and, after various tribulations, changes of personel and size, terminally disbanded in 2010, whose core performers were saxophonists Wolfgang Puschnig and Harry Sokal, singer Lauren Newton, and tuba player Jon Sass. This recording was one of the ensemble’s, and of the Swiss label Hat Art’s, most popular successes. It first came out in 1984 as a double LP, hat ART 2005, and was issued to CD on CD 6024 in 1989. Bizarrely it’s been reissued twice on hat ART’s series Hatology, 560 (in 2001, [[ASIN:B00005MH94 The Minimalism of Erik Satie]], ASIN B00005MH94) and 671 (in 2008, [[ASIN:B0044ZQ8R6 Minimalism of Erik Satie]] ASIN B0044ZQ8R6). Why did they not simply re-press 560, don’t ask me. Buyers, beware: Amazon has automatically linked the three entries, the one for the original CD issue, CD 6024, and the two on Hatology, so that the reviews published under one will automatically appear under the two others. The one I have and which I am reviewing is the original issue, and if for some reason this is the edition you want, you will find it under ASIN B000025YVO, [[ASIN:B000025YVO The Minimalism of Erik Satie]]. Be careful when you click on the offers, the link might lead you to the other entries and editions. I assume, but don’t know for sure, that the elaborate presentation by HK Gruber has been reproduced in the two reissues. TT 75:14


title: the absence of libretto makes it a self-defeating proposition

text:
This might have been an interesting listen. Kleist Oper in an opera written between 2006 and 2008 by German composer Rainer Rubbert (born 1957) on a libretto by Tanja Langer, and premiered at the Brandenburg Theatre near Berlin on March 22, 2008, by the same forces who perform it here (we are not told the exact date of the recording, so I don't know if this is the recording of the premiere). It is based on the life of early 19th Century playwright Heinrich von Kleist, still quite popular today on German stages, despite the fact that he was scorned by no less than Goethe. Some of his plays have also been popular as material for opera librettos, among which the two best known are probably Othmar Schoeck's Penthesilea and Hans Werner Henze's Prinz von Hombourg. But, says Rubbert, when he received the commission to write an opera with a relation to Kleist, he wanted to avoid writing yet another one of a Kleist play, and decided instead to depict Kleist himself "as a passionate,struggling and loving artist".

If you are into contemporary music, the music is interesting, sounding like a kind of modernized Berg. Rubbert is one of those many many composers who didn't make it to great recognition (a search on his name doesn't yield much, even on German Amazon), but he is obviously skilled and knows his craft. The singers are excellent, the orchestra seems on top of it.

But here's the big BUT: the 2-CD set from the label Duo-Pho Classic comes in German only, and with no libretto: only a very short synopsis is provided, but so terse that it's hard to reconcile the few short phrases supposed to depict the action and what you hear on the recording. My German isn't bad but not good enough to understand all the details of what is being sung (added to the fact that I'm not always sure who sings), which means I don't know what's going on. That limits very much the interest and pleasure of hearing an opera, and this one in particular.

The CD's back cover tells you that you can find the score for 30 euros, the vocal score for 30, and the libretto (64 pages, ISBN 9783940494078) for 6 euros. Well, that must have been in 2008. It's now sold 30 on Amazon Germany, and 18 directly at the publishers, Ries & Erler. Now come on you guys, if we buy the CD we want to get everything necessary to be able to listen to it, and that means NOT shelling out 18 or 30 more just to be allowed to know what's going on!

The website of Rubbert gives a few more details than the CD about what the opera is about. Apparently the libretto is more about Kleist's fantasies around his own life and works, than the actual life of Kleist. The "Oper" tab of the website features a number of video excerpts of the opera, which will give you a good idea of what the music sounds like. But to me, because of the absence of libretto, this is a self-defeating proposition, to be reserved to the friends and fans of the composer (anyone reading this review?) and/or librettist or those doing academic research on operas based on the life and works of Heinrich von Kleist.


title: Among the best recordings ever of these works, but there's no real incentive to favor this MHS reissue over the Chandos original

text:
Neeme Järvi is a polymath in music, his discography is daunting, and besides the big warhorses there's no obscrure to unknown repertoire that he doesn't seem avid to tackle, and with all that you may wonder, being apparently such a non-specialist of anything, if there's anything that he does really good, was any special insights.

Well, I won't make any general pronouncement of Järvi, but, having heard nearly every recording ever made of these two Honegger symphonies, I can say with a modicum of assurance that Järvi offers what is among the very best versions of the 3rd (Liturgique) and THE best of the 5th (Di Tre Re). But the original edition of this recording, on Chandos, [[ASIN:B000000AS2 Honegger: Symphony No. 5; Symphony No. 3; Pacific 231]], still sells irresistibly cheap, so there is no real incentive to buy this Musical Heritage Society reissue. All the details about what makes these among the best interpretations of these works are in my review under the Chandos CD.


title: this may not conform to the dictates of modern-day Machaut musicology, but it is great music nonetheless

text:
There's a remarkably informed and informative article on French Wikipedia about Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame (not translated in English alas). Reading it, you fully realize that when you listen to Machaut's Mass, you don't just listen to Machaut's Mass, sit back and enjoy the music, and, if you have an interest for such things, try to assess the comparative interpretive merits of the performers, as you would with, say, Bach's Mass in B or a Beethoven Symphony. You also get enmeshed into the evolutions of and controversies around Medieval performance practice. Not every and any performance of the score is musicologically "catholic".

The Mass is the oldest surviving example of a four-part polyphonic mass composed on the complete six parts of the Ordinary (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei - followed by a concluding "Ite missa est") by a sole and identified composer. It is thought that the Mass was composed around 1360-1365 although the circumstances of its composition remain undetermined, and the dedication to "Nostre Dame" (the Virgin Mary) appears only in one of the five extant manuscripts (it was long thought, based on no evidence, that it had been composed for the coronation of King Charles V in 1364, but strong arguments were given in the 20th Century against that thesis) and, with those aeons of time separating us and it, much remains open to conjecture. One of those is to decide if the four parts should be sung by solo voices or chorus - both options seem admitted by modern musicology. The other is to decide if the Mass should be sung only by male voices or mixed - apparently in Medieval French churches only men sung. And then another one is to decide if the vocal parts should be doubled by instruments.

The first transcriptions of the complete Mass in modern notation to make it performable were published only as late as 1948, one by Jacques Chailley and the other by Armand Machabey. They were followed by many others - the last ones being those of Denis Stevens (1973), Daniel Leech-Wilkison (1990, recorded on Naxos, [[ASIN:B0000014AN Machaut: La Messe De Nostre Dame; Songs from Le Voir Dit]]) and Lucy Cross (1998). But Chailley strongly influenced musicology and performance practice up until the early 1980s. He was of the firm opinion - he even claimed that "no doubt can remain" - that the Mass wasn't sung a cappella, but that the lower parts of tenor ("teneur") and contratenor ("contreteneur" - the latter in fact corresponding to the modern day basso or baritone) were to be doubled by organ, vielle or cornet.

The earliest recorded performances of the Mass - four movements by Guillaume de Van in 1936 for the label "Anthologie sonore" 31/32 (he published his own edition in 1949), the Kyrie by Chailley in 1939, and the first complete performance by the Dessof Chorus and the New York Brass Ensemble under Paul Boepple for Concert Hall Society in 1951 - had the Mass sung by mixed chorus underpinned by a sizeable instrumental ensemble comprised mainly of brass (with the notion that it was a Coronation mass). The research of Armand Machabey, Leo Schrade and Safford Cape (the latter published a groundbreaking article in The Score in 1959, "The Machaut Mass and its Performance") brought forth a new musicological and performing approach, favoring solo voices and instrumental ensemble comprised of vielles and lute. Cape recorded his own version in 1956 for Archiv (APM 14063), and the recording had a strong influence on the subsequent recordings, those of Deller and of the Basel Schola Cantorum under August Wenzinger in 1969 (again on Archiv, 2533 054). So far as I know the two Archiv recordings have not been reissued to CD. The Schrade edition is available on the International Music Scores Library Project (a thousand blessings to them) and it is the one that Deller seems to perform - I hear no discrepancy between what I hear and what I see. The year of publication of the Schrade edition, 1956, makes it very compatible with the Deller recording, made in 1961.

It was on the occasion of the sexcentenary (yeah yeah, that's the official term, see the Wikipedia entry on "Anniversary") of Machaut's death in 1977 that Andrew Parrott gave, at the York Festival of Ancient Music, a performance of the Mass that stirred considerable interest and was to have considerable influence on the subsequent interpretive approaches. It was sung in its liturgical context, e.g. with Machaut's movements alternating with sung prayers from the Gregorian "proper" ("The proper, Latin proprium, is a part of the Christian liturgy that varies according to the date, either representing an observance within the liturgical year, or of a particular saint or significant event" - thanks again Wikipedia free source of universal knowledge two clicks away) - not the first time this had been done, The London Ambrosian Singers and Les Menestrels de Vienne under John McCarthy had already recorded it that way in 1966 for Belvédère/Centrocord ELY 04-30, with the Gregorian proper for the feast of Mary's Assumption. But Parrott used solo voices, a very low pitch, and consequently, did without countertenor for the the higher part, but employed two tenors and two bassos. But, mainly, it was sung entirely A Cappella, and since then, the performances of the Mass have been sung without instruments. Parrott recorded the Mass in 1984, [[ASIN:B00BF3U4VG Guillaume De Machaut: Messe De Noster Dame - Taverner Consort, Andrew Parrott (Reflexe)]].

So, long story to explain that one doesn't just listen innocently to Deller's Machaut Mass, sit back and enjoy. It is representative of a certain historical moment of Machaut's musicology and performance practice. It may have been cutting edge when it was recorded in 1961, but no more. Singing Machaut's Mass with accompanying instruments is anathema to present day Machaut musicology. It's archeology has become itself archeological, as much as Heinrich Schliemann's digging of the remnants of Troy in 1865.

Well, with all that said and done and all due genuflections made to present-day musicology: one MAY just listen innocently to Deller's Machaut Mass, sit back and enjoy. It may not conform to the dictates of modern Machaut musicology, but who cares: as it is, it is great, and pity the learned ignorants who in the name of present-day musicology would begrudge its beauties and appeal. Whatever the realization, the music remains great, with its incredible vocal virtuosity, the vowels of key words taken as excuses for those long and angular melismata (in the Credo, track 3, the vocalize on the A of "Amen" goes on for 1:15 minute), the angular rhythms and  hocketing effects (Machaut has a predilection for the eighth-note / quarter note / eighth-note beat in fast tempo), the clashing syncopations of the Sanctus (track 4), and all those typical "medieval" harmonies with many grating semitones. I find the music almost threatening in its stark and forbidding grandeur. It is probably my imagination more than the music itself, but listening to it I can picture something of the "dark" and troubled ages of plagues and famines, widespread violence and hundred years wars, religious zeal and heresies. It is music for Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. The doubling of the lower parts by instruments does have the disadvantage of covering some voices - in fact, I must admit to being often incapable of locating the voice of baritone Maurice Bevan, so present is the doubling trombone. But I find that the instruments, with their piercing and buzzing tones, add a layer of starkness and savagery to the music's own.

The two Graduals of Perotin, "Sederunt principies" (track 7) and "Viderunt omnes" (track 10) and the Alleluia Nativitas (track 12), also leave my mouth gaping. "Sederunt principies" opens with 2:40 minutes of vocalize on the vowel e of "sederunt", on a very limited melodic ambit and on a rocking ternary rhythm whose sheer obsessiveness confines to madness, and it and its two companions go on in the same manner for more than 10 and 6 (Alleluia) minutes. No wonder Reich and the American minimalists loved the music of Perotin. Deller's version is certainly less refined and elegiac than the Hilliard Ensemble's on ECM (sung a cappella, but I need to spare my product links, search ASIN:B000025ZXO), but again its greater roughness and even savagery as well as of jubilation suits well a certain image one can have of Medieval times.

Deller's Machaut Mass and Perotin's Gradual Sederunt were recorded in 1961 and first published on Vanguard's subsidiary label The Bach Guild, BG 622 (mono) / BGS 5045 (stereo) under the title "Notre Dame Mass & works of Perotin", together with Perotin's other Gradual Viderunt, recorded the year before. The recordings were also licensed to Harmonia Mundi in Europe, which, in its various issues, published the Mass with the same or other couplings... or with no coupling, on 10-inch LPs. On Vanguard the instrumental ensemble was dubbed, in the original release, The Renaissance Chamber Ensemble and on later reissues (as Vanguard HM 1 SD), "The Medieval Chamber Ensemble". Harmonia Mundi put things right: they were the members of Collegium Aureum, including Franz-Joseph Maier at the fiddle and Hans-Martin Linde at the flute (names that amateurs of period-instrument playing will easily recognize).

In the CD era Vanguard USA (twice), Deutsche Harmonia Mundi when a label of EMI (once), BMG (three times) or Sony (once) reissued The Machaut and two Perotin Graduals, complemented with excerpts from another Vanguard/Deller LP of French Medieval music, The Bach Guild BG 656 (mono)/BGS 70 656 (stereo), "Music of Medieval France - Sacred & Secular". That LP, published in 1964, began with four tracks of sacred music, including Perotin's Alleluia Nativitas, which were leftovers from the 1960 and 1961 recording sessions that yielded the Machaut and Perotin Graduals, and it was great to have it all finally reunited together (they are on tracks 8, 9, 11 and 12). Those reissues are:

Vanguard OVC 8107 [[ASIN:B0000023G7 Machaut: Notre Dame Mass, Master Perotin: Gradales (Vanguard)]]
Vanguard SVC 36 [[ASIN:B000009L9K Musique De Notre Dame]]

Deutsche Harmonia mundi "Editio Classica" (EMI) CDM 7 69 479-2 (1988), [[ASIN:B000H72FD6 Machaut - Perotin Musique a Notre Dame]]

Deutsche Harmonia mundi "Editio Clasica" (BMG) GD 77064 (1990), [[ASIN:B000001TWQ Guillaume de Machaut: Messe Nostre Dame]] (don't trust the cover photo there, it's the one for the next edition hereunder. The entry's barcode tells the truth, not the photo). There's another edition of the same with a different barcode, not listed here, EAN doublezero35627706424 [I've had to cheat on that one to prevent Amazon from changing it into a Skype phone number, Jeez!], ASIN B00004SKBC on the European sister companies

Deutsche Harmonia mundi "Baroque Esprit" (BMG) zero5472 77 416 (1995), which is this one, but there is a more "official" entry for it (the present one has no barcode associated to it, so there's no telling what the sellers are actually offering), [[ASIN:B00002587H Machaut: Messe Nostre Dame]]

Deutsche Harmonia mundi "Splendeurs" (BMG) 82876 68 362-2 (1998), [[ASIN:B0007XT4O8 Machaut:  Messe a Notre Dame]]

Deutsche Harmonia Mundi (Sony) 82876 70035 2 (2005) [[ASIN:B000B7G0RO Machaut: Perotin: Musique a La Cathedrale]]

I have both Vanguard SVC-36 and the Deutsche HM "Baroque Esprit" release from 1995. The latter was a budget issue and it is a cheap one too, with neither the singers from the Deller Consort nor the instrumentalists from Collegium Aureum individually listed. I had to retrieve that info (and much more) from the great Deller discography of Pierre-F. Roberge hosted by Medieval dot org. Since I don't know how precise the credits were on this DHM-EMI "Editio Classical" were, here they are:

The Deller Consort
Alfred Deller (counter-tenor)
Wilfred Brown (tenor)
Gerald English (tenor)
Maurice Bevan (baritone)
Alfred Deller, dir.

Collegium Aureum:

in Machaut: Helmut Hucke (soprano bombardon), Heinrich Göldner (tenor bomardon), Hans-Martin Linde (recorder), Helmut Schmitt (trombone), Franzjosef Maier (fiddle), Johannes Koch (regal)

in tracks 7-9 Helmut Hucke (soprano bombardon), Albrecht Renz (cornett), Hans-Martin Linde (recorder), Johannes Koch (regal)

in tracks 10-12 Helmut Hucke (soprano bombardon), Albrecht Renz (cornett), Ilse Brix-Meinert (fiddle), Johannes Koch (recorder), Rudolf Ewerhart (regal)

All the remasters used in those DHM releases are those of the 1988 reissue. I don't hear any clear superiority of the transfer used on Vanguard SVC-36; there is slightly more tape hiss on DHM but also slightly more clarity, sometimes to the point of producing, on comparison, a certain harshness of the sound, that never becomes disagreable though and that I find entirely suited to the music. I have anoter edition of the four complements to the Machaut Mass, on a European Vanguard CD ressue, 08 5058 71, [[ASIN:B000026367 Music of Medieval France 1200-1400]], and it's interesting to note that it's NOT The same transfer as on Vanguard SVC-36 or DHM, but it sounds closer to DHM's than to SVC-36 (e.g. louder). Anyway, whatever the differences, I'd be happy with any. The voices sound as if recorded in a church - with a certain distance and some resonance - which is exactly the case. The tape hiss is very limited. So I'd advise to go for the cheapest you find.


title: It's not the musicology that counts - it's the mesmerizing voice of Montserrat Figueras

text:
There is musicology behind this disc - reconstructing three different historical stages of the music setting of one of the Oracles of the Sibyl, the prophetess of ancient Greece and Rome, that apparently was much in vogue in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, as it was considered to have announced the coming of Christ: "From Heaven a God will come for centuries to come, present in the flesh to judge the world". Its original Greek version is also an acrostic, the first letter of each of the five first verses forming the Greek code word ICHTUS, "fish" but also Iesous CHristos Theou hUios Soter, Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour. Sibyls were actually very trendy in Antiquity throughout the Mediterranean area, and this one is attributed to the Sibyl Erythrea of Anatolia / Asia Minor. The Chant has been made part of the Christmas liturgy and, although it was banned from Christian liturgy by the Council of Trent in the late 16th Century, it is still in vogue in some parts of Mediterranean Europe, like Malta, Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, Sicily and other parts of Italy. Augustine gives a Latin translation (that he doesn't claim to be his) in City of God XVIII-23, which served as a basis to the versions current in the Medieval times. The French Wikipedia entry on Ichtus gives an earlier Latin translation by Emperor Constantine of Byzantium, from Oratio Sanctorum Coetus, side by side with what seems to be the, or "a" Greek original, but strangely, the English corresponding Wikipedia entry doesn't display the same document (see my upload). The text is incomplete but I've found another website which gives the complete Constantine poem in Latin, and Constantine's translation is interesting for extending the acrostic to form the words Jesus Christus Dei Filius Servator Crux (Augustine did the same only on the 15 first verse, which read JESUCS CHREISTOS), but when you look closely at the hard-to-decipher Greek text, it's puzzling to see that the third verse seems to fall out of sequence, with a Sigma Σ that shouldn't be there. You can also find online (on "Mystagogy", the weblog of John Sanidopoulos, of all places...) an English translation of what seems to be the Constantine poem which restitutes the full acrostic of 31 verses, Jesus Christ Son Of God Saviour Cross: well done, Mystagogue John!

Almost 30 years after this disc was recorded (1988), the Wikipedia entry on the "Sibylline Oracles" is far clearer than Savall's liner notes about the history and medieval posterity of these oracles: those in vogue in Medieval Europe had actually nothing to do with those of Ancient Greece and Rome. Let me quote: "The Sibylline Oracles (Latin: Oracula Sibyllina; sometimes called the "pseudo-Sibylline Oracles") are a collection of oracular utterances written in Greek hexameters ascribed to the Sibyls, prophetesses who uttered divine revelations in a frenzied state. Fourteen books and eight fragments of Sibylline Oracles survive. These are a collection of utterances that were composed or edited under various circumstances, probably between the 2nd and 6th centuries AD, and are not to be confused with the original Sibylline Books of ancient Roman religion which are now lost. Some apocalyptic passages scattered throughout seem to adumbrate themes of John's Book of Revelation and other Apocalyptic literature. The oracles have undergone extensive editing, re-writing, and redaction as they came to be exploited in wider circles." I've also found online an erudite article about the musical setting of this particular Oracle in the Middle Ages, more up to date than Savall's 1988 musicology, but in French only.

Incidentally, speaking of the loss of the original Sibylline Books, we are all horrified to see the illiterate thugs of Da Esh destroy the remnants of pre-Islamic civilizations wherever they rule, but who refers that to the hundreds of thousands (no exaggeration) of pre-Christian documents kept in "pagan" libraries and temples that the Christians destroyed in the 4th and 6th centuries? There's a Wikipedia entry about that in French, German, Danish and even Latin... but, strangely, not in English. Mmmhh... I wonder if there are things English-speaking Christians would prefer not to remember. It starts like this: "the losses of books in Late Antiquity (between the end of the 3rd century and the end of the 6th century) represent an irretrievable damage to the cultural heritage of Classical Antiquity. Through the loss of transmission of a great part of the ancient Geeek and Latin literature, the number of works that were kept until the Modern times is extremely small. Most of the texts that were transmitted were done so through medieval copies, and the original fragments of texts from Antiquity are in very small numbers". By some estimations, only 1 out of 1000 pre- or non-Christian texts have been bequeathed to the future. The last great Library of Constantinople, when it accidentally burnt in 475, had 120 000 codexes (books); in 576, the first Christian library of Cassiodorus, the Roman councilor of King Theodoric the Ostrogoth in Ravenna, Italy, had 100 ("Cassiodorus also collaborated with Pope Agapetus I in establishing a library of Greek and Latin texts, which were intended to support a Christian school in Rome"). Yep, nothing changes, the actions and effects of illiterate and intolerant religious zealotry remain the same then and today, a brutal onslaught on historical memory. But you can say, of course, that it's not because we did it 15 centuries ago, when we knew much less, that it justifies them of doing it today, when they should know much more. Religious zealotry never learns.

Anyway, Savall and his band present three different versions of, basically, the same Chant/Prophecy, the first in Latin (Augustinus' translation) from the 10th/11th century, the second in Provençal from the 13th Century, and the third from the Renaissance in Catalan (a language VERY similar to turn-of-the-millenium Provençal). It's not entirely clear from the liner notes which sources they used, apparently a combination. See what YOU make out of this:

"Realizing today an historical version of the Sibyl's Chant supposes that we are in a dynamic perspective in time, as if we were trying to grasp its coming into being at one moment without interrupting the source of its essence and of its mystery. Our method consists of first cataloging in chronological order all the known versions of each chant in a way that allows us to proceed without a break for example from the first little ornamented chants of the tenth century to the more melismatic versions of the twelfth centuries without interrupting the continuity of the chant. It was clearly necessary to determine the selection of the different versions according to the character of the text for each verse."

Anyway, ultimately, it's not the musicology that counts. Much of it is very speculative anyway; is this how the music really sounded in the 10th/11th century, 13th Century Provence and Renaissance Catalonia? In truth, I don't think we know for sure, but it certainly matches our fantasy of how it might have sounded. What counts are the moods elicited, the first Chant austere, bare, with only, past its introduction with bells and a call of chalumeau (medieval oboe), a cappella chorus with drone for the refrain and an accompaniment of vielle for the soloist, still meditative and dreamy with its accompaniment of oud / Arabic lute in the Provençal second, and the third still meditative and wistful but also more grandiose, with its full accompaniment of viol quartet, cornet, sackbut, and drums and polyphonic chorus.

And what counts is the angelic voice of Montserrat Figueras. This is a voice to send you high (even if - or maybe even because it is on a very uniformly meditative mood throughout).

Another attraction, at least for the French-speaking listener, is the Provençal and Catalan languages, so alien and yet so resemblant to modern French.

TT 54 minutes. Two sequels were later recorded, first in 1996, [[ASIN:B000003II1 El Canto De La Sibila II: Galicia Castilla]], on the label Audivis-Fontalis, which also reissued what had then become volume 1, [[ASIN:B000003II0 El Cant De La Sibil-La I (Catalunya)]], then volume 3 in 1999, on Savall's own label Alia Vox, [[ASIN:B000026BTH El Cant De La Sibil-La]]. Both volumes 1 and 3 were also issued or  reissued on Alia Vox in SACD version, [[ASIN:B004DY5B1M El Cant de la]] and [[ASIN:B0002XNM64 Cant De La Sibil.La 3]] - but not (yet?) volume 2, which exists only in Red Book form. At the time of writing the SACD edition of volume 1 sells just a little more expensive on the marketplace than this original and non-SACD editon. But it is two later budget reissues by Naïve, in non-SACD format, that right now sell cheapest, [[ASIN:B000062U66 El Cant de la Sibil-la I: Catalunya - Montserrat Figueras / La Capella Reial de Catalunya / Jordi Savall]] and [[ASIN:B00CMSP1GG El Cant De La Sibil-La (The Song Of The Sibyl)]].


title: A Vanguard rarity - but no revelation

text:
Never heard of Jacques de Menasce, other than this CD. Contrary to what his name suggests, he's not French, but Austrian, born in Bad-Ischl, trained in Vienna, with Emil von Sauer in piano and Josef Marx (among others) for composition. And he's long dead: born 1905, died fairly young in 1960. Although the liner notes don't say anything about it, he must have been Jewish. Or why would he have left Vienna in 1938 for Holland and Switzerland, then immigrated to the US in 1941? (confirmed by a check on his short entry on Wikipedia). The Piano Concerto (De Menasce's second of two) was a commission from the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and was composed in 1938-39, the Divertimento on a Children's Song for Piano and Orchestra (De Menasce's version of Dohnanyi's Variations on a Nursery Rhyme) in 1940 for the Lausanne Conservatory Orchestra (and premiered by the same conductor who recorded it here, the Swiss Edmund Appia), and the Little Suite for Piano in 1951. CRI (Composer's Recordings Inc.) also published on LP of chamber music of De Menasce (which can be found now as a burn-on-demand CD-reissue directly dubbed from the LP, [[ASIN:B003MAE6SW Jacques de Menasce]], and Hugues Cuenod recorded a few of his songs, and that's about it for De Menasce's representation on disc: not a household name, then.

It's my interest for the label, Vanguard, that led me to explore this disc and composer. Complicated story, that of the Vanguard CD catalog. The label was founded by the Solomon brothers, Seymour and Maynard, after World-War II, and they rose with the LP. Their greatest popular hit was Joan Baez of course, but they built a fine classical music catalog as well, including the famed sub-label The Bach Guild. But what goes up eventually goes down, and when the CD took over they sold the catalog to a Welk company, in the mid-1980s. Welk started reissuing some of the classical catalog (also licencing it to various companies in Europe, so that you can occasionally find their issues under labels such as Start in the UK, or Carrère/Vanguard in France), but were obviously more interested by the pop music catalog. In the early 1990s Seymour Solomon, through his company Omega Records, was able to re-purchase the classical music catalog from Welk, in cooperation with a Dutch company called Arcade. Solomon/Omega retained the distribution rights on one side of the Atlantic, and Arcade on the other and, from the early 1990s to the early 2000s (and Solomon's death), the program of reissues was extensive. In many cases, the reissues were identical on both sides of the Atlantic, with only the label number and barcode changing (Omega's were typically OVC followed by four digits or SVC-1 to 150, Arcade's were 08 followed by four more digits then 7 and one digit representing number of CDs). Sometimes reissues appeared on one side of the Atlantic and not the other - and not always the side you'd expect: who'd have an interest for Leroy Robertson's [[ASIN:B0000254I8 Oratorio from the Book of Mormon]] outside of Salt-Lake City? Yet that one was reissued only in Europe, not the US, go figure ... And Henry Lazaroff's Structures? Quite a rarity, that was also reissued only in Europe, as a pairing to Maurice Abravanel's recording of Varèse's Amériques, Nocturnal and Ecuatorial (not listed here, ASIN B000024YAE on the European sister companies) - always coupled with Honegger's Pacific 231 in its various US reissues. As a general rule Arcade's catalog was more extensive than Solomon's.

Long story to say that this is one of those Vanguard rarities that was published only by Arcade, 08 9196 71, without an equivalent from Omega's side.

That said, it may be a rarity, but the music of De Menasce is no revelation: two servings of Prokofiev, a serving of Gershwin, another one of Poulenc, a little bit of Milhaud, the run-of-the-mill of the mild and unexceptionable version of pre- and post-war modernism. Not that it's not agreeable for a listen, and the slow movement of the Piano Concerto even rises above that, bringing to mind some of the music of Ernest Bloch, just that it lacks a distinctive personality something that will catch the ear and make you want to explore more. The Vienna State Opera Orchestra, one of the regulars of Vanguard, seems particularly under-rehearsed in the Divertimento. The sonics are not very good - an exception among those Vanguard reissues - sounding mono and distant.

Still: it's a good catch in my extensive library of Vanguard CD reissues, if only for its rarity value. Straight reissue of the LP, TT 41:19, but you can't ask too much of rarities.


text:
There is musicology behind this disc - reconstructing three different historical stages of the music setting of one of the Oracles of the Sibyl, the prophetess of ancient Greece and Rome, that apparently was much in vogue in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, as it was considered to have announced the coming of Christ: "From Heaven a God will come for centuries to come, present in the flesh to judge the world". Its original Greek version is also an acrostic, the first letter of each of the five first verses forming the Greek code word ICHTUS, "fish" but also Iesous CHristos Theou hUios Soter, Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour. Sibyls were actually very trendy in Antiquity throughout the Mediterranean area, and this one is attributed to the Sibyl Erythrea of Anatolia / Asia Minor. The Chant has been made part of the Christmas liturgy and, although it was banned from Christian liturgy by the Council of Trent in the late 16th Century, it is still in vogue in some parts of Mediterranean Europe, like Malta, Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, Sicily and other parts of Italy. Augustine gives a Latin translation (that he doesn't claim to be his) in City of God XVIII-23, which served as a basis to the versions current in the Medieval times. The French Wikipedia entry on Ichtus gives an earlier Latin translation by Emperor Constantine of Byzantium, from Oratio Sanctorum Coetus, side by side with what seems to be the, or "a" Greek original, but strangely, the English corresponding Wikipedia entry doesn't display the same document (see my upload). The text is incomplete but I've found another website which gives the complete Constantine poem in Latin, and Constantine's translation is interesting for extending the acrostic to form the words Jesus Christus Dei Filius Servator Crux (Augustine did the same only on the 15 first verse, which read JESUCS CHREISTOS), but when you look closely at the hard-to-decipher Greek text, it's puzzling to see that the third verse seems to fall out of sequence, with a Sigma that shouldn't be there. You can also find online (on "Mystagogy", the weblog of John Sanidopoulos, of all places...) an English translation of what seems to be the Constantine poem which restitutes the full acrostic of 31 verses, Jesus Christ Son Of God Saviour Cross: well done, Mystagogue John!

Almost 30 years after this disc was recorded (1988), the Wikipedia entry on the "Sibylline Oracles" is far clearer than Savall's liner notes about the history and medieval posterity of these oracles: those in vogue in Medieval Europe had actually nothing to do with those of Ancient Greece and Rome. Let me quote: "The Sibylline Oracles (Latin: Oracula Sibyllina; sometimes called the "pseudo-Sibylline Oracles") are a collection of oracular utterances written in Greek hexameters ascribed to the Sibyls, prophetesses who uttered divine revelations in a frenzied state. Fourteen books and eight fragments of Sibylline Oracles survive. These are a collection of utterances that were composed or edited under various circumstances, probably between the 2nd and 6th centuries AD, and are not to be confused with the original Sibylline Books of ancient Roman religion which are now lost. Some apocalyptic passages scattered throughout seem to adumbrate themes of John's Book of Revelation and other Apocalyptic literature. The oracles have undergone extensive editing, re-writing, and redaction as they came to be exploited in wider circles." I've also found online an erudite article about the musical setting of this particular Oracle in the Middle Ages, more up to date than Savall's 1988 musicology, but in French only.

Incidentally, speaking of the loss of the original Sibylline Books, we are all horrified to see the illiterate thugs of Da Esh destroy the remnants of pre-Islamic civilizations wherever they rule, but who refers that to the hundreds of thousands (no exaggeration) of pre-Christian documents kept in "pagan" libraries and temples that the Christians destroyed in the 4th and 6th centuries? There's a Wikipedia entry about that in French, German, Danish and even Latin... but, strangely, not in English. Mmmhh... I wonder if there are things English-speaking Christians would prefer not to remember. It starts like this: "the losses of books in Late Antiquity (between the end of the 3rd century and the end of the 6th century) represent an irretrievable damage to the cultural heritage of Classical Antiquity. Through the loss of transmission of a great part of the ancient Geeek and Latin literature, the number of works that were kept until the Modern times is extremely small. Most of the texts that were transmitted were done so through medieval copies, and the original fragments of texts from Antiquity are in very small numbers". By some estimations, only 1 out of 1000 pre- or non-Christian texts have been bequeathed to the future. The last great Library of Constantinople, when it accidentally burnt in 475, had 120 000 codexes (books); in 576, the first Christian library of Cassiodorus, the Roman councilor of King Theodoric the Ostrogoth in Ravenna, Italy, had 100 ("Cassiodorus also collaborated with Pope Agapetus I in establishing a library of Greek and Latin texts, which were intended to support a Christian school in Rome"). Yep, nothing changes, the actions and effects of illiterate and intolerant religious zealotry remain the same then and today, a brutal onslaught on historical memory. But you can say, of course, that it's not because we did it 15 centuries ago, when we knew much less, that it justifies them of doing it today, when they should know much more. Religious zealotry never learns.

Anyway, Savall and his band present three different versions of, basically, the same Chant/Prophecy, the first in Latin (Augustinus' translation) from the 10th/11th century, the second in Provençal from the 13th Century, and the third from the Renaissance in Catalan (a language VERY similar to turn-of-the-millenium Provençal). It's not entirely clear from the liner notes which sources they used, apparently a combination. See what YOU make out of this:

"Realizing today an historical version of the Sibyl's Chant supposes that we are in a dynamic perspective in time, as if we were trying to grasp its coming into being at one moment without interrupting the source of its essence and of its mystery. Our method consists of first cataloging in chronological order all the known versions of each chant in a way that allows us to proceed without a break for example from the first little ornamented chants of the tenth century to the more melismatic versions of the twelfth centuries without interrupting the continuity of the chant. It was clearly necessary to determine the selection of the different versions according to the character of the text for each verse."

Anyway, ultimately, it's not the musicology that counts. Much of it is very speculative anyway; is this how the music really sounded in the 10th/11th century, 13th Century Provence and Renaissance Catalonia? In truth, I don't think we know for sure, but it certainly matches our fantasy of how it might have sounded. What counts are the moods elicited, the first Chant austere, bare, with only, past its introduction with bells and a call of chalumeau (medieval oboe), a cappella chorus with drone for the refrain and an accompaniment of vielle for the soloist, still meditative and dreamy with its accompaniment of oud / Arabic lute in the Provençal second, and the third still meditative and wistful but also more grandiose, with its full accompaniment of viol quartet, cornet, sackbut, and drums and polyphonic chorus.

And what counts is the angelic voice of Montserrat Figueras. This is a voice to send you high (even if - or maybe even because it is on a very uniformly meditative mood throughout).

Another attraction, at least for the French-speaking listener, is the Provençal and Catalan languages, so alien and yet so resemblant to modern French.

TT 54 minutes. A companion disc was later recorded, in 1996, on another label, Audivis-Fontalis, [[ASIN:B000003II1 El Canto De La Sibila II: Galicia Castilla]], which also reissued this recording, now become volume 1, [[ASIN:B000003II0 El Cant De La Sibil-La I (Catalunya)]]. Note also that the product photo on the present entry is the one of this later Fontalis reissue, which apparently bears the same barcode as the original edition, albeit a slightly different label number, ES 8705 vs E 8705 for the original edition. See my upload for the cover photos of the original edition. Both volumes were also reissued on Alia Vox, Savall's own label, in SACD version, [[ASIN:B004DY5B1M El Cant de la]] and [[ASIN:B0002XNM64 Cant De La Sibil.La 3]] (no reason why it should be titled "3", it's in fact 2, although even that indication appears nowhere on the disc's front or back cover), and, at the time of writing, this first volume sells cheaper on the Marketplace in its SACD format than this original edition or the Fontalis reissue. But it is two later budget reissues by Naïve, in non-SACD format, that right now sell cheapest, [[ASIN:B000062U66 El Cant de la Sibil-la I: Catalunya - Montserrat Figueras / La Capella Reial de Catalunya / Jordi Savall]] and [[ASIN:B00CMSP1GG El Cant De La Sibil-La (The Song Of The Sibyl)]].

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title: Don't miss this extraordinary work by this extraordinary composer

text:
Although Zelenka (1679-1745) is far from a neglected presence on CD, he is still not, I think, given the public recognition he deserves: quite simply, when it comes to choral/religious music (in which Zelenka very much specialized), based on what I've heard of his compositions, he is, in my opinion, one of the very greats of the first half of the 18th century, on a par with Bach, Handel, Vivaldi and Telemann.

This Missa Dei Patri is a good case in point. Despite its small catalog numbering, ZWV 19, it is one of Zelenka's ultimate compositions, from 1740. It is part of a cycle which Zelenka intended to reach six such masses, but ultimately he composed only two others, the Missa Dei Fili ZWV 20 and Missa Omnium Sanctorum ZWV 21. Apparently he wrote them with no performance in mind (no parts exist, only a conductor score), and they weren't performed during his lifetime.

Like its two companions, Missa Dei Patris is an incredible masterpiece, with an opulence that seems to point to the great masses of Haydn, choral numbers of explosive power and/or tear-wringing solemn beauty (the choral "ascent to heaven" at 0:30 in the Sanctus, track 15, is one of these moments) and often with surprising melodic twists, fugues that equal those of Bach, if not surpass them in their searing and sweeping passion ("Cum sancto spirito", track 9, repeated on the final chorus, Dona nobis pacem, track 20), and a melodic writing for soloists that, like those of Handel and Vivaldi, is always distinctive and invigorating. Zelenka's orchestra is reduced to strings, with two oboes that are, here, unless I've missed something, never given a solo role but always double the strings, but there is nothing austere in his accompaniment, on the contrary he uses his ensemble in a highly colorful and virtuosic manner, as exemplified by the extraordinarily florid accompaniment in the Quoniam Tu Solus Sanctus (track 8) and even more of Et resurrexit (track 13). Truly, when I'm  listening to this extraordinary and breathtaking invention that is the Et resurrexit followed by the Et vitam venture saeculi, I don't know who else composed like that around 1740. In fact, I'm not even sure Haydn or Mozart composed anything of such furious power, fifty years later. And I'm thinking that Zelenka didn't reach much success and recognition in his lifetime, because he was too daring, way too much in advance on his own time.

And yet, when you have zillion of performances and recordings of Bach's Mass in B, Handel's Messiah and Vivaldi's Gloria, this is only one of the two recordings of Missa Dei Patris represented on CD (there was another one in the LP era), and the situation is the same with the Missa Dei Filii and Missa Omnium Sanctorum. It was made in 1988 and was a pionneering effort, in a time when Zelenka was still very much a Czech specialty. Frieder Bernius, who made a great recording of Missa Dei Filii in 1989 for Deutsche Harmonia Mundi ([[ASIN:B002HQWQOI Zelenka: Missa Dei Filii / Litaniae Lauretanae]]), recorded the Missa Dei Patri in 2000 for Carus ([[ASIN:B000AAIWGY Missa Dei Patris]]). There are also only two recordings of ZWB 21, one by Bernius again from 1997 for Sony that wasn't even distributed in the US and isn't offered at the time of writing, [[ASIN:B000025L56 Musik aus der Dresdner Hofkirche: Missa Omnium Sanctorum]] and ditto for the French budget reissue, [[ASIN:B000065EQ4 Zelenka: Messe Ultimarum Sexta (Missa Omnium Sanctorum), Zwv 21]]), and one by the Prague Baroque Soloists under Adam Viktora, [[ASIN:B0064DI9QO Zelenka: Missa Omnium Sanctorum, Christe eleison, Barbara dira effera]].

Although my comparative appreciation is tentative because tainted by the fact that I've listened to Bernius not from the CD but from the YouTube upload and hence probably in inferior sonic conditions, ultimately, if you have only one, I find Güttler's version preferable. His is an approach on a grand scale, with a sizeable orchestra (Bernius' Stuttgart Baroque Ensemble sounds more astringent and typically period-instrument) further magnified by sonics with a long resonance. Compared to Bernius, Güttler also has a somewhat thick and heavy continuo and oftentimes a heaviness of motion and lack of dynamism, especially at the beginning of the work (as in the orchestral introduction, or the fugue on the opening Kyrie track 1 at 2:21, the Domine Fili track 6, the Credo track 10). Some of the more funeral passages can take that approach (as the Domine Deus, track 5), but sometimes Güttler is also entirely up to the music, as in his exhilaratingly dynamic Gloria, track 4, much better than Bernius here. He is impressively powerful in Qui sedes track 7, in Crucifixus, track 12, Et resurrexit track 13, searing in the Cum Sancto Spirito fugue (track 9), and in the Quoniam Tu Solus Sanctus trio (track 8) he is suitably dynamic and there is little to choose there between him and Bernius. But, even when Güttler occasional plods compared to Bernius (as in the Credo, track 10), the choral moments are always grand and powerful and particularly well spotlighted by the sonics, more so than with Bernius whose chorus (with the proviso that this may be an effect of hearing it on Youtube) sounds smaller-scaled and less impressive. Although I've always found René Jacobs sour in tone, the soloists (which include Olaf Bär) are fine. I had never heard or heard of soprano Venceslava Hruba-Freiberger, but she sings exquisitely. In the Benedictus (for baritone, track 16) and Agnus Dei I (for alto, track 18), it is Bernius who is more plangent and funeral, and excessively so I find, it bogs down the music: Güttler's more animated tempi are preferable here. The Mass is a huge work, running here 70 minutes. It is, as its companion the Missa Dei Filii, one of the great masterpieces of early 18th Century sacred music. Experience shows that it is possible to survive without knowing the music of Zelenka (or Bach, or Handel), but life is way more fulfilling and fulfilled when you do.

The Dresden library, where hundreds of manuscripts of Zelenka are held, has done a tremendous and admirable job at scanning them and putting them online on the International Music Scores Library Project. It's very moving to see those manuscripts. Some - and it is the case with Missa Dei Patris - are in a dangerously tattered condition, and they are occasionally difficult to read, because hastily handwritten with nearly undecipherable indications, with compositional conventions different from those of today (for instance, the rhythms on the different staves are often not aligned vertically), sometimes in faded ink and on damaged sheets of paper. But in the case of Missa Dei Patris, for the info of anyone who'd be interested, like me, in listening to the music while following with the score, I must say that whoever did the uploading job made things particularly difficult for the reader, because some of the movements are a jumble of pages out-of-sequence. So you first have to realize that something is wrong ("why am I lost?"), then try to figure out what the problem is. It took me hours - which at least were hours spent with the Missa. For instance, the Gloria, which starts page 34 on IMSLP, gos in a sequence 34, 36, 35, 38, 37, 40, 39, 42, 41, 44, 43, 46, 45, 48, 47, 49 and from there back to normal. Things are even more complicated in the Domine Fili, because there Zelenka wrote on two systems, and obviously the score is to be read upper system page left to upper system page right, then lower system page left to lower system page right. But since the pages are loaded one after the other (and out of sequence) and must be scrolled vertically, you get a sequence of 58-1, 60-1, 58-2, 60-2, 59-1, 61-1, 59-2, 61-2 etc. In order to follow the Agnus Dei Aria for alto (track 18), you need to realize that it's written on three systems, so the sequence is 184-1, 185-1, 184-2, 185-2, 184-3, 185-3 and repeat with 186-187 (but I haven't found the four bars of coda on the manuscript). The final fugue, Dona nobis pacem, track 20, past its first page (189), is also written on two systems, so the sequence is 190-1, 191-1, 190-2, 191-2, 192-1 and so forth.The one that gave me the most trouble was the beginning of the Et resurrexit. Things go smoothly when the chorus enters, but I simply couldn't reconcile what I heard and what I saw during the extrarordinary orchestral introduction, tried to see if the first page of the movement had not been put out of its sequence but just couldn't find the page that corresponded to the music I heard.... until I realized that the first page (page 134 on IMSLP) was perfectly in its sequence... but turned upside down! Well, it is certainly music to bowl you over.

(And a P.S. from August 7: I mustered by best German and reported the problem to the Dresden library. They acknowledged receipt, explained that the Missa manuscript was a complicated case because it is one of the rare instances in which the manuscript is in the form of loose, unbound sheets of paper, and the page numbering is sometimes faulty, with recto and verso inverted. They'll fix it. Glad I could bring a very small contribution to the posterity of this great work.)


title: an edition of choice

text:
A quasi-exclusive listener of classical music, I'm an ignoramus in jazz, so I'm not going to even try and give an opinion on the artistic value and historical significance of these original recordings of Mel Powell and partners from 1954. There are excellent and well informed reviews, especially under another edition by another label, Avid Records, [[ASIN:B008FNZAJA 4 Classic Albums Plus - Mel Powell Borderline / Thigamagig / Out on a Limb]]. But I'm a record collector and a meticulous discographer, and as I was researching the Vanguard CD catalog, I chanced on this edition, which seemed intriguing enough, and, as sold on the UK sister company's marketplace, cheap enough for me to investigate.

It's a release from 1993, copyrighted Vanguard/USA but marketed for the French and some other European markets by the French retailer Fnac Music (although the liner notes are exclusively in English, reproducing the original ones by John Hammond), and for which, in my research on the Vanguard catalog, I have found no direct US equivalent. It offers the very coherent and satisfying compilation of two albums, "Borderline" and "Thigamagig", recorded a week apart by Powell and partners, on 17 and 24 August 1954, both times with drummmer Bobby Donaldson, and with tenor saxophonist Paul Quinichette (Borderline, tracks 1 to 7) and trumpetist Ruby Braff (Thigamagig 8 to 15). There are two other Mel Powell CDs released by Vanguard USA, [[ASIN:B00000IWPM The Best Things In Life]], which compiles seven out of the eight tracks of Thigamagig (missing is "Don-Que-Dee") with others from the albums "The Mel Powell Septet" (December 1953), "The Mel Powell Bandstand" (December 1954) and "Out on a Limb" (October 1955), and [[ASIN:B00000J81B It's Been So Long]] with the full seven tracks from Borderline, paired with other selections from the same other albums. But I find it more satisfying to get the two sessions from August 17 and August 24, 1954 on a single CD.

There's a small blurb on the back cover of the liner notes, saying this: "Recording information. These analog recordings from 1954 were made directly onto acetate discs and were not transferred onto tape before 1957. Despite the restoration of the tapes by Cedar treatment, there are sstill some inherent flaws such as hissing, distortion and analog dropouts".

Well, I haven't heard them, and until reading that blurb I had never suspected that this had been originally recorded on anything else but tape. It comes in excellent sound, so good that, if I didn't know 1954 acetates must have been mono (in classical music the first commercial stereo recordings were made in 1954, although they weren't released as such at the time and some even got their first issue only in the CD era), I coulnd't tell or sure if it was in mono or stereo. Obviously I haven't heard the 2-CD compilation of Avid Records mentioned above, which to these two albums adds the full contents of Out on a Limb and Bandstand and excerpts from Septet and a few other tracks, and I don't know if they are an official licencee that made its transfers from the Vanguard 1957 tape transfers, or just dubbed and remastered from the LPs.

The CD is not offered here at the time of writing, but for fans of Powell it may be worthwhile to look for it on .uk, where it still sells cheap.


title: A Feast of Music in the age of Louis 15

text:
François Francoeur (1698-1787) isn't as popular today as his colleague and near-contemporary Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764), although he was in his lifetime. His dates make him principally a musician of the age of Louis the 15th. A skilled violinist, trained by his father Joseph, he began his musical career at the early age of 15, when he was hired by the Orchestra of the Royal Academy (the Paris Opera), before being appointed, 14 years later, in 1727, musician of the King's Chamber. In 1744 he succeeded Colin de Blamont as superintendent of the King's Chamber Music, a post a retained until 1776, although he practically ceased composing 20 years earlier. One of the distinctive characteristics of Francoeur was his longstanding collaboration with fellow composer François Rebel (also a "son of", here of Jean-Ferry), which produced a string of highly successful operas between 1726 and 1747. From 1757 on he shared a 10-year tenure with Rebel as co-director of the Paris Opera, during which he did his best to promote the operas of Rameau.

The liner notes are very informative about the occasion and source of the Symphonies played here by Hugo Reyne and his period-instrument ensemble La Symphonie du Marais. In 1773, the 16 year-old Comte d'Artois - the grandson of Louis 15, brother of Louis 16 and much later, after the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period, King of France under the name of Charles 10, for a short five years before he was chased away by the 1830 Revolution - got married to Marie-Therèse of Savoy. It is for the festivities following the religious ceremony and the royal feasting in the evening, that Francoeur compiled and arranged in the form of four Suites the orchestral excerpts and dance movements from a number of previously composed operas, not only his own but, as was the custom of the times, those of a number of his colleagues, including Rebel and Rameau. All those pieces are collected in a manuscript, titled "French Concert, arranged by Mr Francoeur, superintendant of the King's Music", now kept at Bibliothèque nationale de France.

From these, Reyne reconstructed three Suites made exclusively of the Francoeur compositions (except for one Menuet composed by Rebel, that segues directly in a Menuet II of Francoeur), to which he added, to complete his third reconstructed suite, in F, three Francoeur Dances in the same key but from another manuscript also kept at Bibliothèque nationale de France, a "Collection of Different Airs of Simphonies of Mr Francoeur".

So what we have is a kind of reconstructed, (almost)-all Francoeur Tafelmusik following the glorious model of Delalande's Symphonies for the King's Suppers (also recorded complete by Reyne, [[ASIN:B00000077L Symphonies for the Royal Supper]]). The music is fine, maybe not as learned and lush as the orchestral suites from Rameau's operas but pointing to that direction, as regally grandiose, poetic, evocative, entertaining and exciting as Haendel's own orchestral suites, and including two great Chaconnes.

The three suites were recorded in 1993, and this is the original issue, on the label Fnac Music. The recording was later reissued by Virgin, [[ASIN:B00002CF2K Francoeur - Symphonies pour le Festin Royal du Comte d'Artois / La Simphonie du Marais · Reyne]] (Virgin also reissued it on a twofer with another disc by Reyne of music of Philidor originally published by Fnac Music, [[ASIN:B004OGDW5G Francoeur / Philidor: Festive and Ceremonial Music for Versailles]]). Compared to the later recording of a few of the same numbers by Daniel Cuiller and the Stradivaria ensemble ([[ASIN:B000056F74 Francoeur / Rameau: Suites de Symphonies]]), Cuillier is generally (but not systematically) beefier, less solemn and more dynamic and exuberant. That said, the excerpts hardly overlap, since Cuiller's disc mates the Francoeur excerpts with some orchestral excerpts from Rameau's Indes Galantes, and includes (without clearly saying so) some of the pieces from composers other than Francoeur, namely Mondonville and a great Chaconne by Berton. Because of its completeness and quasi-all Francoeur selection, Reyne's recording remains first choice. Fans of Delalande's Concerts, Rameau's orchestral music and Haendel's Royal and Fireworks music, don't miss this, many pleasures in store.


title: Italian rarities from the British Arturo Toscanini Society

text:
I'm (happily) surprised that this 2-CD set is even listed here. It is a publication from the British Arturo Toscanini Society, and to the best of my knowledge their only CD publication. It was published in 1993 - and reviewed in The Gramophone of May 1994 - but could be obtained only through direct order to the Arturo Toscanini Society in London. It bears no barcode, which is a great impediment to listing on Amazon. Of course, the three-digit price demanded for it on the marketplace isn't right: but it's rare stuff indeed. Well, you need to fish for bargains: I've just bought mine from Irvington music... for six bucks! Bless them.

Like its counterpart the American Arturo Toscanini Society, the British ATS had an invaluable role, in the late LP era, in releasing broadcast performances of Toscanini, which expanded significantly on the Maestro's repertory as documented in the official RCA releases. Much of this was later plundered by a number of bootleg CD labels, Italian or else - not that I have any complaint about it, since the two societies seem to have gone inactive enough in the 1980s and later to not offer such CD reissues themselves, except for this one - the American ATS was in fact, according to the Wikipedia entry on Toscanini, forced to close down by RCA and the Toscanini heirs. It terms of discographic releases, the British society was less active than its American counterpart, with 26 LPs, some of them coming in 2-LP sets, against nearly 80 for the American ATS.

Most of the material gathered here had already been published on LP, first by the British ATS, on ATS 102: Bazzini's Saul-Overture (CD 1 track 4), Bolzoni's Medieval Castle Serenade (CD 1 track 8), Olivieri's Garibaldi War Hymn (CD 2 track 8), Bossi's Intermezzi Goldoniani (CD 2 track 2), the orchestral arrangement of the 3rd and 4th movements of Verdi's Quartet (CD 1 track 5). Left out from that LP were also Arturo Franchetti's Cristoforo Colombo Nocturne from 14 December 1940 and Jacopo Foroni's Overture in C minor from 2 September 1945.

Much of the rest comes from - or at least, was already featured on - releases by the American ATS: Boccherini's Minuet (CD 1-2) and Cherubini's Scherzo (CD 1-3) from ATS 1036, Mancinelli's Flight of the Lovers (CD 2-1) from ATS 1038, Tommasini's "Good-Humoured Ladies" ballet suite after Scarlatti (CD 1-1), Sinigaglia's Baruffe Chiozzote Overture (CD 2-3) and Wolf-Ferrari's Overture of "The Secret of Susanna" (CD 2-5) from ATS 1039.

So the only ones for which I haven't found trace of earlier releases are Martucci's Novelletta (CD 1-6), Bolzoni's Minuet (7), Busoni's Berceuse élégiaque and Rondo arlecchinesco (9 & 10 - but the complete concert from which Rondo arlecchinesco is derived, from 15 January 1938, can be found on YouTube), the two movements from Sinigaglia Piedmont suite (CD 2-4), Tommasini's Carnival of Venice (but the complete broadcast, from March 29, 1941, was released by Naxos in 2000, [[ASIN:B00004GLLL Schumann: Symphony No. 2 / Wagner: Faust Overture / Martucci: La canzona dei ricordi / Tommasini: Carnival of Venice (Variations on a Theme of Paganini)]]) and Rieti's Symphony No. 4 (CD 2-7).

Many of these tracks, even those for which I haven't found previous releases, seem dubbed directly from LPs, but given that all these recordings date from 1938 to 1948, they were originally recorded on acetates anyway, so the LP surfaces (if that's what they are, rather than those of the original acetates) don't add much deterioration in terms of swish, scratches or pops, to what the original sources probably had already. The degree of surface disturbance varies from track to track, but, notwithstanding that factor, many of these tracks sound remarkably good for their vintage. The two Busoni pieces, even the Berceuse, which is the latest recording contained on the set (from March 13, 1948 - the January 15, 1938 Rondo arlecchinesco being the earliest) are sonically inferior, but in the case of the Berceuse, despite the pronounced crackling and swish, it may be an impression derived from the fact that the dynamics are always very soft: the Martucci Noveletta from the same broadcast doesn't sound as distant. Sometimes the editing work is sloppily done - at the end of Busoni's Rondo arlecchinesco, for instance, it is clear that the applause has been abruptly cut off (presumably to get rid of the host's announcement), and the claps from an other concert spliced it. And it doesn't fit. Also, whoever was responsible for this reissue - presumably Michael G. Thomas, who was I believe very much the sole operator of the British ATS - hasn't been very helpful by not providing the first names of these composers: and they are far from household names. When it's Mozart or Beethoven, or even Boccherini, Cherubini or Busoni, okay. But Sinigaliga, Bossi, Mancinelli?

When you look at the contents of this set, you might get the impression that Toscanini programmed A LOT of obscure and minor Italian music. Not really: Toscanini led the NBC Symphony for 17 seasons from Christmas 1937 to April 1954, conducting an average of 15 broadcast performances every year (and I'm not counting the non-broadcast concerts given on tour) - and that average includes his fifth season, after his temporary resignation at the end of the fourth season, during which he conducted only six, and the 14th season, 1950-1951, during which, for cause of knee problems, he led only four. I haven't counted the total number of works he programmed during those seventeen seasons (including those given multiple times), but a rough and conservative estimate indicates more than 600. So sure, the obscure and minor Italian pieces did show up once in a while, and in fact some of these pieces were featured during his very first season - Busoni's Rondo arlecchinesco with Jan Peerce and Tommasini's Carnival of Venice on his fourth concert, the one from 15 January 1938 (it's a later performance of the Tommasini that's on the ATS set, from March 29, 1941), Tommasini's The Good Humored Ladies Ballet-Suite after sonatas of Scarlatti on his seventh program, on 5 February of the same year (also a later performance on ATS' offering, from March 24 1946). But overall, looking at Toscanini's NBC seasons (reproduced in Mortimer H. Frank's authoritative study, [[ASIN:1574670697 Arturo Toscanini: The NBC Years]]), those pieces do not strike you as over-prominent. Beethoven, Beethoven and Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, and to a lesser extent Haydn, Mozart, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Franck, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Strauss, the great orchestral warhorses of Schubert, Schumann, Mussorgsky, Dvorak, Smetana, and finally Verdi, mainly through the Requiem and Te Deum, programmed many times, plus less than a handful of operas given only once: yes, these are prominent.

There's a lot that's entertaining and charming here, but it's light-fare, and there's not much that can be considered major - but when the first notes of Busoni's mysterious Berceuse élégiaque start playing, CD 1 track 9, you suddenly lend a more careful ear, despite the more distant sound and swishing surfaces. The Rondo arlecchinesco - an offshoot from Busoni's opera Arlecchino - is in the nature of a Scherzo, but it remarkably anticipates the Commedia dell'Arte passages of Strauss' Ariadne in Naxos, and sometimes even Prokofiev's Love of three Oranges. Jan Peerce makes a unique guest star appearance - singing 30 seconds of la-la-la at the very end followed by a big laughter, from the wings. I wonder what fee he got for doing that. This is as close as Toscanini ever got to conducting "modern" music - he only once did also two movements from Stravinsky's Petrouchka, and a number of times Prokofiev's Classical Symphony, Shostakovich's First and Seventh. And he must have liked it, since he programmed it two more times in his NBC years.

He also programmed Mancinelli's entertainingly romping but inconsequential "Flight of the Lovers" from his "Venetian Scenes" three times, in 1944, 1946 and 1948, and the version featured here, the one from 1946, is "interesting", in its own distorted way, for presenting a very rare occurrence in Toscanini's recording heritage, and probably conducting career: for whichever reason, the strings flunk their first attack, have to stop, and resume again.

Rieti's Fourth Symphony is the most ambitious work here, and it's invaluable to have a document of Toscanini conducting it - the first broadcast performance, from November 25, 1945, of a work completed in 1944. Stravinsky professed his admiration for Rieti, so it's no surprise if the Symphony should evoke Stravinsky, but it's the lighter and neo-classical Stravinsky of the Symphony in C or Concerto in D. There's a certain dramatic sweep to the outer movements of Bossi's Intermezzi Goldoniani, for strings alone, and a certain sentimental poetry to its second movement, and some nice touches of orchestration in Tommasini's light-hearted Carnival of Venice, but Sinigaglia's Piedmont Suite is so trite in its pseudo Smetana pastoralism that it rapidly outstays its interminable 16:20 minutes. Harvey Sachs, the reputed biographer of Toscanini, quoted by Mortimer H. Frank, recounts that when, in 1910, Sinigaglia dedicated the Suite to Toscanini, Toscanini noted: "The suite is dedicated to me - help" ([[ASIN:B000GT3U1G Toscanini]]). One wonders why he programmed it, and one cannot help but question his motives and taste, as with a number of these other pieces. At least, the motives of Toscanini for programming Olivieiri's orchestration of Garribaldi's War Hymn are clear: they're entirely patriotic, and absolutely not musical. This is music for Barnum, a degenerate mixture of Offenbach and Sousa, the kind of thing that must have given Charles Ives a peevish urge to turn it upside down and inside out.

Here are the complete contents, but reordered chronologically:

CD1-10 Ferrucio Busoni: Rondo arlecchinesco (Jan Peerce) 15 Jan. 1938

CD 1-4 Antonio Bazzini (1818-97, one of Puccini's teachers): Saul Overture 14 Jan. 1939

CD 2-6 Vincenzo Tommasini (1878-1950 - Toscanini had collaborated with him on the posthumous completion of Boito's opera Nerone): Carnival of Venice 29 March 1941

CD 2-4 Leone Sinigaglia (1868-1944): two movements from Piedmont Suite 12 April 1941

CD 1-2 and 3 Boccherini: Minuet and Cherubini: Scherzo from Quartet in B flat 4 April 1943

CD 1-7 Giovanni Bolzoni (1841-1919): Minuet in B 20 June 1943

CD 1-8 Bolzoni: Medieval Castle Serenade 18 July 1943

CD 2-8 Alessio Olivieri (1830-1867, mis-spellt by ATS OlivEri): Garribaldi's War Hymn 9 Sept. 1943

CD 2-2 Enrico Bossi (1861-1925): Intermezzi Goldoniani 3 Sept. 1944

CD 2-7 Vittorio Rieti (1898-1994): Symphony No. 4 (Sinfonia Tripartita) 25 Nov. 1945

CD 2-1 Luigi Mancinelli (1848-1921): Flight of the Lovers 13 Jan. 1946

CD 2-5 Ermano Wolf Ferrari: The Secret of Susanna Overture 20 Jan. 1946

CD 1-5 Verdi: 3rd & 4th movements from Quartet in E minor 27 Jan. 1946

CD 1-1 Tommasini:"The Good-Humoured Ladies" Ballet Suite after Scarlatti 24 March 1946

CD 2-3 Sinigaglia: "Le Baruffe Chiozzote" Overture 23 Feb. 1947

CD 1-6 and 9: Giuseppe Martucci (1856-1909) Noveletta & Busoni Berceuse élégiaque 13 March 1948?

I'm indebted to Frank's study and to the various Toscanini websites for much of the chronological and discographic information contained in this review.

TT 79:12 and 75:11, if British ATS didn't offer more, it's really because they couldn't fit it in. For the fans of Toscanini, this set is evidently a must. For the others, even fans of the music of Italian composers... it isn't.... especially if they don't have any more copies at Irvington!


title: Stokowski at his most un-eccentric

text:
Stokowski isn't exactly, I think, a recognized Beethovenian: probably too much granitic discipline required, not enough scope for romanticizing. For a man who started recording in 1917, still in the acoustic era, it is significant that this is should be his only studio recording of Beethoven's Eroica and that it was made almost 60 years after his recording debut, in 1974, by a conductor then aged 92 (there was a live version with Philadelphia from 1963 once published on an obscure LP label - information from Enno Rikiena's invaluable online Stokowswki discography). His last recordings, with the so-called National Philharmonic Orchestra (a London pickup orchestra), were made three years later, a mere three months before his death.

From Stokowski you expect the exceptional, the thought-provoking, the eccentric, and maybe even the outlandish, and in that respect this late Eroica is a bit disappointing, at least in its first movement: it's an honest reading in the Germanic style, safe and traditional, "kapellmeisterish" even, one you wouldn't have been surprised to find the name of Karl Böhm, Eugen Jochum or Günther Wand tagged on, expansive in tempo, maybe not like Furtwängler's, Klemperer's or Walter's, but in that direction. It's not sluggish, the accents aren't mellow, but they are not particularly biting or punchy either, staccato doesn't stick but it doesn't truly bounce either, tempo is steady, there's no extreme tempo flexibility as in many of Furtwängler's performances - nothing here to shock the comfort of the traditionalists; on the contrary, this is a totally uneccentric Stokowski that should satisfy them. Those with a taste for more spicey meals may think, at that point, that the main reason to keep this version is to use it as their trump card to prove to anti-Stokowskites that, no, their peeve was NOT eccentric, rather than for any particular illumination brought by the interpretation.

But things get more exciting as the symphony proceeds. Stokowski' Funeral March is fine, suitably pathetic, again with accents that are moaning rather than explosive  - not an inappropriate expressive choice here - but with moments of great vehemence, rather flowing in its tempi although it doesn't really convey that impression at the beginning: but Stokowski's great control over the agogics is remarkable, especially in the acceleration in the fugato section starting at 6:55, very organically done and very dramatic in its effect. Another thing that attracts attention throughout is the somewhat reedy tone of the solo oboe. The Scherzo flows nicely, not as breathlessly urgent as Toscanini's or Scherchen's, not as massively trudging as Furtwängler's or Klemperer's, although Stokowski markedly slows down for the trio with horns, conveying there a fine character of bonhomie and genial hunting. There's also a nice personal touch, when on the repeat in the trio the horns play louder the second time (3:44), as if the hunting party had moved closer. From its opening hurling downward strings, the Finale is wonderfully swift and energetic, not quite Toscanini, but in that direction.

So, ultimately, this Eroica was worth the near-60 year wait. This may not be the most revelatory,  thought-provoking or devastating Eroica ever recorded, but it will shame no one's collection, and is a fine tribute to its conductor. As a bonus, Stokowski's Coriolan-Overture, recorded at the same session, provides an unexpected and interesting contrast with the first movement of the Eroica, and stands out because it reverts to an intepretive model that wasn't fashionable any more in the 1960s and 1970s, although it used to be dominant until the late 1950s, one that relied not just on orchestral power to generate drama and tension, but also on breathless urgency: it was the model followed by Toscanini (between 1936 and 1953), Munch (1956), Reiner (1959). And Stokowski is in their league, he grabs you by the collar with the very first orchestral explosions and doesn't let you go until the end of his helter-skelter ride, 6 minutes and 40 seconds later (for comparison: it was 9 with Karajan). His accents may not be as explosive and devastating as those of Toscanini, Reiner and Munch - but they are explosive enough.

This edition on RCA's Legendary Performer's series was published in 1984, and its sonics sound perfectly good to me. The same two works were reissued in 1998 on RCA's Stokowski Stereo Collection, with the complement of Brahms' Academic Festival Overture, [[ASIN:B000025667 Beethoven: Symphony No.3, 'Eroica'/ Coriolan Overture / Brahms: Academic Festival Overture (Stokowski Stereo Collection)]]. The full series, 14 CDs, was reissued in 2014 by Sony, [[ASIN:B006ZJJ70O Leopold Stokowski: The Stereo Collection 1954-1975]].


title: All you can expect from a composer from that time and place

text:
Michel-Richard De Lalande (or Delalande as it is often spellt), 1657-1726, musician of the Sun-King and of his successor and grandson Louis 15, is not I think among the most acknowledged French composers of that era: posterity and recent discographic activity have not been as kind to him as to his near-contemporaries Marin Marais (1656-1728), André Campra (1660-1740) or even Henry Desmarest (1661-1741) - to say nothing of their illustrious predecessors Jean-Baptiste born Giovanni Battista Lully (1632-1687) and Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704). There's an erudite entry on De Lalande on French Wikipedia, which indicates that he fell in complete oblivion after the French Revolution, and details the the 20th-century attempts at a revival, first after World War II and in the early 1950s, under the auspices of Gaston Roussel, vicar at the Saint-Louis Cathedral in Versailles who had discovered Lalande's manuscripts in the Philidor collection at the Versailles city library. The rediscovery received a new fillip in 1957, on the occasion of the three-hundredth anniversary of the composer's birth, and again in 1990 and 2001, when the Center for French Baroque Music ("Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles") hosted at the Versailles Palace - wouldn't it be great to work there! - staged two Lalande festivals. In the UK, musicologist Lionel Sawkins has also been a major champion of the composer's cause, and in 2005, after 35 years of research, he published a catalog with 3180 entries.

That said, the representation of Lalande on disc remains fairly scanty. This one belongs to the handful of those published between 1990 and 1992, together with those of Higginbottom, recorded in 1988 and published in 1990 by the same label as this one, Erato Musifrance ([[ASIN:B000009IGL Lalande: De Profundis / Confitebor tibi Domine/Miserere]]), Christie on Harmonia Mundi ([[ASIN:B00000077T Delalande: Te Deum / Gens, Piau, Steyer, Fouchécourt, Piolino, Corréas; Christie]] in 1990 and [[ASIN:B000025YS9 Delalande: Petits Motets]] 1992), and Herrewegne for the same label ([[ASIN:B000X200LO Delalande: Dies Irae / Miserere]], 1990). The music is what you can expect from a composer of that place and time. The three works, Jubilate Deo, Te Deum and Confitebimur Tibi, are scored for soloists, sometimes singing in ensemble ("small choir") opposed to the chorus ("great choir"). They feature some beautifully intertwined melismata from the soloists, the Te Deum has moments of regal brilliance that recall the more famous Te Deum of Charpentier, some movingly meditative choruses (track 12), many more fine arias and ensembles, some accompanied by obbligato solo (oboe track 14), some reflexive, wistful and plangeant, some assertive and upbeat, but with never quite the power of similar works of Charpentier or Desmarets, nor the brilliance of, say, Haendel or Vivaldi. The performances seem top-notch, but I don't have any alternative version to make entirely sure. The singers and chorus deserve but praise. TT 73.


title: Horatiu Radulescu's sonic plasma

text:
For the layman I am, the liner notes, in which Franck Mallet explains the two works performed here, are incomprehensible. I pity Mary Dibbern, who had to translate them to English! What to make out of a phrase like "the pitches used by the musicians are spectral components with an intense `life-timber', spectrality of spectrum, `emanation of the emanation'. The formants/chords (zero degree of this music) describe zones: explicit compact spectrums; inverted spectral regions - secondary functions, tertiary in low pitches, primary functions in the high pitches; spectral functions, auto-generating spectrums, p.E. `ring functions' ". Or: "this progressive micro-formal modulation gives a sentiment of continual ascension even if the global evolution of the registers is written in a `sleeping hourglass' of seven octaves - focal unison with halo - and progressively reopens to seven octaves". And lest you think that something may have been "lost in translation", I can vouch that the English makes at times even more (a semblance of) sense than the original French. The last phrase for instance should have been: ...the global evolution of the registers develops within in a `lying hourglass' of seven octaves -> unison focus with "halo -> and progressive reopening on seven octaves".

Well then, do without the (liner) notes, and just listen to the music. With music as way out and fascinating as this, of course, you want to know a little more about the secrets of the kitchen, what the compositions are about, what they aim for, how they are constructed. But you don't absolutely need to know what happened in the kitchen to enjoy your meal - in fact, it's probably best NOT to know.

What little you do understand from the liner notes and what you hear is that this music is an exploration of sound, slow-moving, ritualistic, a thick mass of fascinating clusters and halos of sounds, an immersion into what the liner notes call a "sonorous plasma" and that's really the best possible description of Radulescu's music. This is the musical equivalent of the "sea" in Stanislas Lem's / Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris. At one point, almost 30 minutes into Iuribi, there's a storm; it recedes rapidly. There's no striking difference between both pieces, one runs 20 minutes and the other twice that long, but they could as well be one single 60-minute piece, or even a small excerpt of a piece that never ends.

Radulescu was an interesting and often fascinating composer in his willingness to explore un-chartered territories and try outlandish musical experiments. He was born in Bucarest in 1942 but established in France since 1969, acquiring French citizenship in 1974. He died in 2008 - and was of course very much around when this disc was recorded, in 1994. Although not officially associated with the French school of "Musique Spectrale" whose main proponents are Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail, he was one of the first composers, in the 1970s, to make music based on the spectral properties of sound, e.g. the physical property of a tone to produce a spectre of overtones.The highly esteemed critic and musicologist Harry Halbreich considered him a genius, some of my musician friends thought he was complete phoney. I'm not sure this disc, or the others of Radulescu I've heard ([[ASIN:B000K7UGO8 Intimate Rituals]], [[ASIN:B000027NFN Radulescu: Inner Time II]], [[ASIN:B00KW5HC90 Dizzy Divinity / Byzantine Prayer / Frenetico Il Longing di Amare / Capricorn's Nostalgic Crickets]], [[ASIN:B0001D0FL0 Radulescu - Lao Tsu Sonatas]]), allow to conclude for one or the other (and maybe it's both) but they certainly provide fascinating - or infuriating, depending on how partial you are to this kind of avant-garde) - listening experiences.


title: A French outsider and an original compositional voice

text:
Though something of an outsider on the French contemporary music scene and certainly an obscure figure internationally, François-Bernard Mâche (born 1935) is one of France's most original composers of today, and this CD provides a good introduction.

Taking my examples in Kengir for voice and sampler, the 1991 piece that opens this disc, written for the same Françoise Kubler who performs it here, I would mention four features that distinguish Mâche's compositions and constitute their originality and appeal:

1. The extra-european inspiration of much of his music. Kengir is the name that the ancient Sumerians gave themselves in their own language. Mâche has a degree in Greek archaeology as well as in musicology, and his composition sets to music five poems in Sumerian language, said in the liner notes to be mankind's earliest love poems: it sounds like an invented language, like the one often used by Claude Vivier, pure play on phonemes and colors (but I guess any language that you don't understand functions like that, Hungarian as well as Wolof). The music sounds like some reinvented ritualistic music that could come from anywhere, Africa (especially in Kengir 4 Kubatum with its quasi-balafon and kora) to Mongolia.

2. His use of samplers "in lieu" of an orchestra or instrumental ensemble; Mâche, a pupil of Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire, was the founder with Pierre Schaeffer of the French Public Radio's electronic studio GRM; he was, I think, one of the first composers to make such a systematic use of samplers, in the early 1980s, when these machines were still hot and new, and he uses them very imaginatively, to great timbral color and fine atmosphere. In the five songs that make up "Kengir", you hear distorted bells and their distorted resonance (Innana), distorted drums (Enlil), the percussive phonemes from a male spoken over which Françoise Kubler deploys her wordless vocalises (Shusin), quasi-balafon and kora (Kubatum), Ligeti-like organ and Stokhausen-like (the Stokhausen of Gesang der Jünglinge) female chorus (Dumuzi).

3. His very specific rhythmic writing. The treatment of the vocal phonemes in Kengir 3 is very typical: they are treated like a melodic typing machine or morse code, synchronized with similar harp punctuations. There are the same effects in Kengir 1 (Innana) at 2:38, in Kengir 2 (Enlil). It is somewhat reminiscent of the vocal writing of Aperghis, another remarkably original "outsider" on the French contemporary music scene.

4. The melodic appeal of much of his music. Mâche doesn't shy away from the haunting vocalise, as in Kengir 3, or the sweet oriental-balinese melody in Kengir 4.

The same originality of rhythmic invention and timbral imagination through the use of electronics is at play in Aulodie for clarinet piccolo and tape (1983). The electronic sounds were realized in the composer's studio and use both sounds produced by digital synthesis and sounds of instrumental origin, then processed with one of the very first sampler keyboards that was marketed. They are not only imaginative, they are extremely funny and the clarinet engages with them in a voluble dialogue, a contest of yackety-yacking evoking some alien birds. I love that piece and it should be in the repertoire of every clarinet player worth his salt.

The other compositions are purely instrumental: Phénix for percussion (vibraphone and toms) written in 1982 for Sylvio Gualda, Brûlis a trio for piano clarinet and cello, written for Accroche Note and premiered by them in 1999 (at times energetic and dance-like like American minimalist music, at times surprisingly lyrical), and Figures for bass clarinet and vibraphone (1983). They are pleasant but less original. It is when Mâche uses sampler and voice that he is the most original, intriguing and appealing.

The CD provides no copyright date, but it was recorded in 2000. It was later reissued by the label L'Empreinte Digitale, [[ASIN:B000WTYQUO François-Bernard Mâche Kengir - Phénix - Brûlis - Figures - Aulodie]]. Note however that two pieces on this CD, Phénix and Aulodie, are reissues of recordings originally published on a 1993 Erato-Musifrance Mâche collection, [[ASIN:B005ZGLABW F.-B. Mâche By Accroche Note]], whose program also included an earlier recording of Figures by the same interpreters, and another great piece for voice, instruments and sampler, Aliunde.

Authoritative interpretations by performers long-associated with Mâche and who premiered some these pieces. The Mâche entry on Wikipedia is close to nothing, but there is a good essay (but in French) on the Brahms.Ircam online data base. There isn't much Mâche available on CD, and even less on this website. Other Mâche CDs include:

L'Estuaire du temps / Braises / Andromède, originally published in 2000 by MFA/Radio France (ASIN B00004SRGI in France) and reissued by a label called "Densité 21.5",  listed here, [[ASIN:B000EHPY00 L'estuaire Du Temps-Braises-and]]

Manuel de Résurrection for voice and two keyboards / Kassandra for ensemble / Sopiana for flute and piano / Amorgos for ensemble / Moires for string quartet, 1999, Musidisc-INA/GRM, available here on download ([[ASIN:B00260T9CW François-Bernard Mâche]]), CD in France ASIN B00002R2VT (it is offered once in a while).

[[ASIN:B0009YSGDK MacHe : Marae - Aera - Khnoum - Le Printemps du Serpent [Import]]] by Percussions de Strasbourg, 2005.

Mâche's music for pianos on Naxos, [[ASIN:B000H1QUQU MUSIC FOR TWO PIANOS]], paired with Maurice Ohana's Sorôn-Ngô for two pianos (2006).

Other Mâche pieces are available in composite collections also.


title: It's when he uses tape or sampler that Mâche is the most original, intriguing and interesting

text:
François-Bernard Mâche, born in 1935, is in my opinion one of the most interesting and original French composers from the generation after Xenakis (1922-2001) and Boulez (1925), and one whose recognition isn't up to his compositional originality: he's certainly had his share of commissions and official honors in France, but he's not acknowledged internationally and has relatively limited representation on record. A founder with Pierre Schaeffer of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) at the French public radio, he's a pioneer of mixing acoustic instruments (including voice) and tape, and later, with technological progress, sampler. He's also an ethnomusicologist, and his compositions are infused with extra-european influences. One of the most fascinating and appealing aspects of his compositional output is when he models his melodic lines after natural phenomena analyzed and abstracted, whether spoken language or birdsong. Because of that, he's been called (and is called by the liner notes) a "naturalist" composer, for whatever that's worth: but his music is NOT evocative of Schaeffer's or Pierre Henry's "musique concrete": whatever sounds of nature he goes from, they are so metabolized as to become abstract sound-forms. All this makes him an independent, one not enslaved to the rules and strictures of Boulez' serialism and post-serialism, part of no school, which may explain why no school has championed his work.

That said, this Erato CD, published  in 1993, may not be the best introduction to his music. It mixes pieces for percussion (Phénix for vibraphone and tom-toms, track 2; Kemit for solo darabukka e.g. Arabian goblet drum, track 7) or solo wind and percussion (Figures for bass clarinet and vibraphone, track 6) and works for voice, alone (in Three Sacred Chants, track the singer occasionally accompanies herself with small strokes of percussion, metal plates or frame drum) or with instruments (Aliunde, track 1). Only two use the sampler or tape, Aliunde and Aulodie.

Kemit, the piece for darabukka, from 1970, sounds very much like something that would have been improvised by an advanced "ethnic" darbuka player. The vibraphone which has the stage alone in Phénix (1982) for almost four minutes is dreamy and atmospheric, but then 4 minutes of dreamy vibraphone, joined, or perhaps challenged, by the toms for another 5 minutes (maybe a musical metaphor of man wooing woman), despite moments of great beauty, don't seem to entirely impose the sense of their necessity. The processes seem to be very sophisticated - the liner notes explain that the rhythms played by the toms are modeled after the meter of the ancient Greek poetry of Pindar - but you don't really hear that in the music. Much the same can be said of Figures (1983): so, you get a contemporary piece for bass clarinet and vibraphone, with the former using plenty of contemporary playing techniques but sounding none-too aggressive, and it may be great for a clarinet-percussion couple frustrated not to be able to play the Brahms Sonatas together. But for an audience, there's nothing revelatory or truly attention-grabbing here.

The interest of Three Sacred Chants (composition date not given, but a check online shows that it is "1982-1990"), is that they are sung - a cappella - in lost languages, Hittite (the oldest surviving Indo-European language, from around 1300 BC), Etruscan, and Celt/Gaulish. Mâche's attraction to these lost or rare languages (in other works he has also used Guayaki, Selk'nam, Xhosa, Eskmo, Kawi, Telugu and Dargwa) is not principally archaeological or ethnological, despite his early training in that area. The liner notes aptly comment that "what matters to him above all else is the revival of utterly different worlds of sound encapsulated in dead or remote languages, an act of resuscitation which succeeds when the audience listens only to the specific phonetic features regardless of any semantic concern". Maybe, but the Three Sacred Chants still sound like a cappella singing, somewhere in between folk and contemporary, ritualistic, somewhat dry, and they could be simply, for all we know, sung in Turkish or Hebrew, and Mâche might just as well have invented a language of phonemes, as Claude Vivier and Georges Aperghis have occasionally done. The third chant, very rhythmic and vehement and accompanied by drum, with the singer using a "coarse" voice reminiscent of some Mediterranean folk traditions, reminded me very much of the music of Carl Orff for Sophocles/Hölderlin's [[ASIN:B00000E56G Antigonae]].

So the two best pieces, the most typical of the most original and intriguing Mâche has to offer, are the two using tape or sampler, Aulodie (1983) and Aliunde (1988). In the former, the "orchestra" provided by the tape is lots of fun, with its stereo tossing of shards of ironic sounds from channel to channel (they often evoke some serious version of R2D2, and sometimes they sound like Reich's In C), and its pointillistic writing for the clarinet, as a voluble babbling dialogue of alien birds.

Aliunde, the longest piece on the CD (19:44), is in many ways a synthesis of the art of Mâche, as it mixes the exotic/ethnic inspiration (it starts with Indian tablas alone and sounds there like little more than "ethnic" music as it would be improvised by a local player, although one admittedly well-versed in contemporary rhythms), the combination of voice, used in a purely instrumental capacity singing wordless chant, and instruments (clarinet and percussion), and the combination of acoustic instruments and sampler. It's mostly soft, dreamy, terse even, and very "-ic": atmospheric, pointillistic, enigmatic, ritualistic, and poetic. It also has moments of playfulness (still in terse and enigmatic mood), with onomatopea and jumps by vocalist over shards of intriguing sounds by clarinet, percussion or sampler, and moments of lush melismata. The end, with long lines of soprano and clarinet against "spatial" waves of sounds by sampler, sounds like Ligeti.

These are the two pieces that truly warrant listening to this CD. But note that Aulodie (together with Phénix) has been reissued, first in 2000 by the label Assai, [[ASIN:B000063XPF François-Bernard Mâche: Kengir - Phénix - Brûlis - Figures - Aulodie]], then later by l'Empreinte Digitale, [[ASIN:B000WTYQUO François-Bernard Mâche Kengir - Phénix - Brûlis - Figures - Aulodie]], together with other pieces of Mâche performe by Ensemble Accroche Note, including a new recording of Figures and a fine piece for voice and sampler, Kengir.

TT 73 minutes, dense and informative liner notes. Accroche-Note, an ensemble formed in 1981 around soprano François Kübler and clarinetist Armand Angster, have enjoyed a long companionship with Mâche, and Aliunde was written for them. Their execution can be considered authoritative.