Obrecht: Missa Caput; Salve Regina
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Composer: Jacob ObrechtComposer: Gregorian Chant
Conductor: Jeremy Summerly
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1998-06-02
Music Label: Naxos
Soundtracks:
- Salve Regina (4 Voices)
- Venit ad Petrum (Mode 8)
- Missa Caput: I. Kyrie
- Missa Caput: II. Gloria
- Missa Caput: III. Credo
- Missa Caput: IV. Sanctus
- Missa Caput: V. Agnus Dei
- Salve Regina (6 Voices)
Music reviews of Obrecht: Missa Caput; Salve Regina
Music Review: Flamboyant Gothic!
Rating: 5 Stars
"Flamboyant Gothic" is a specific designation in architecture, the meaning of which should be obvious "on the surface". If ever a piece of music could bear comparison to the flamboyant architectural extravagances of the portals of a Gothic cathedral, or to the prismatic radiance of Gothic stained glass windows, it would be Jacob Obrecht's Missa Caput, with its 'surface' of restless ornamental energy, its constant rhythmic prolations and colorations (also specific terms, referring to shifts in rhythm, usually between twos and threes), and its expressive exuberance, so distinct from the common apprehension of Obrecht as an 'intellectual' composer of otherwordly devotions. But, just as the most gargoyled and bedizened Gothic cathedral is supported on buttresses of exquisite engineering, structured in space and time by mathematics and pragmatic masonry, the Missa Caput is supported by a remarkably firm frame of 'cantus firmus' derived from a widely-known anonymous "Flamboyant English" mass which uses as its 'tenor' the melimastic last phrase, on the word CAPUT, from the plainchant antiphon 'Venit ad Petrum'. The tern 'tenor' is also specific in musicology, referring not to the high male voice but rather to the line of music, often expressed in long notes, that 'holds' (mainTAINs) the composition together. For Obrecht, and for Obrecht's generation, the evolution of the tenor, the structural role of the tenor, was probably the most significant question of musical theory.
Obrecht borrowed more than the simple tenor sequence of pitches for this mass. Essentially he recycled the whole lay-out of voices, spreading the tenor role throughout the various parts in all five sections of the 'ordinaries' (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei). Why he chose to do so is the sort of subject doctoral candidate salivate over. But then, there's a mystery about Obrecht's musical personality -- his constantly changing stylistic experimentation -- that attaches to nearly all of his 30 surviving masses, despite the fact that Rob Wegman has written the most ample and insightful biography about Obrecht of any Renaissance composer. The mystery is even stranger when one realizes that Johannes Ockeghem, Obrecht's great musical model, also recycled the English Missa Caput as the foundation of one of his own most energetic masses. Competition? Emulation? Aspiration? Or some spiritual urge that Obrecht's peers would have taken for granted but that is impenetrable to us today?
The Oxford Camerata is an ensemble that I have sometimes found disappointing. With twelve or more voices, they can sound awfully "choral" and stodgy. This performance, however, is one of their best... I might even crawl out on the limb and say, their very best. The musical texture, despite all the flourishes and whirligigs, is wonderfully 'transparent', allowing each part to declaim its own musical ideas distinctly, and the Camerata makes the most of that transparency. They could stand a little more testosterone in the lower parts -- an Italian ensemble like La Risonanza could lend them a bass -- unless, as I suspect, they are transposing the whole score to suit the ranges of their female sopranos. There is a level of artistry that the Oxford Camerata doesn't reach; if you want to hear that level, listen to The Clerks' Group singing Pierre de la Rue's Missa de Santa Croce, another example of flamboyant polyphony. In comparison to that performance, this CD doesn't merit the full five stars. Four-and-a-half, okay.
This is one of the only five CDs of the masses of Jacob Obrecht that I recommend. The others are:
The Tallis Scholars - "Maria Zart"
Cappella Pratensis - "Sancto Donatiano"
The Clerks' group - "Sub tuum praesidium"
The Clerks' group - "Malheur me bat"
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