Sound Recording Reviews

Editor's Choice: Michael Alan Anderson, Director West Meets East: Sacred Music of the Torino Codex Schola Antiqua of Chicago, Discantus Recordings 1002 (2010), CD.

This is the second Discantus Recordings release by Schola Antiqua of Chicago, a professional vocal ensemble dedicated to the study and performance of medieval plainchant and early polyphonic music before the year 1500. The album is taken from a live performance on May 15, 2010 at St. Benedict Parish in Chicago, and it contains never-before-recorded plainchant and polyphonic music from the early fifteenth-century Torino Codex (Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS J.II.9). Artistic Director Michael Alan Anderson offers context for this lack of prior recordings in his liner notes, positing that although this is the largest musical source in the French tradition between the Ars nova manuscripts of the fourteenth century and the Franco-Burgundian manuscripts of the late fifteenth century, the music of the Torino Codex has attracted comparatively little attention from performing ensembles and scholars due to almost all of the pieces being both anonymous and significantly lacking in concordances with other known sources. Anderson explains that the music, ranging from sacred plainchant and polyphony to secular song, appears to have originated on the island of Cyprus at the court of King James I of the ruling Lusignan family, with the manuscript accompanying Anne of Cyprus as part of her dowry in her marriage to Louis of Savoy in 1433. The program for this album derives from the first three principal parts of the manuscript: chant (fascicle 1), Mass Ordinary movements (fascicle 2), and motets (fascicle 3). Music in honor of St. Anne and St. Hilarion, two saints celebrated in the first fascicle, is also included. The group has a lovely sound, with all nine voices blending well into the homogeneous ideal for early music ensembles. William Chin is the only soloist, delivering a strong performance on the plainchant Alleluia verse Ave sancte Ylarion. As it is a concert recording, there are numerous instances of ambient sounds joining with the voices throughout. The first noticeable noise occurs at 2:58 of the second track (Gloria), when what sounds like a large door slams, reverberating through the church for several seconds. It is jarring on the first listen, but I grew to expect it on subsequent listens, looking forward to its attack as well as the decay in the church. It functions to heighten my awareness, to make me aware of the messiness of life and the permeability of walls, and to remind me this timeless music was made in a specific time and place. There are other door sounds, errant knocks, and the rumblings of traffic audible at various moments later in the performance, all of which increases my sense of the cavernous space in which the singing is occurring. I enjoy the "audio vérité" approach of the recording, but I realize other listeners might not share my opinion, so consider this both a celebration and a caveat. There are also moments when errant sounds are coming from the singers. I can hear the protestations of every choir director I have known while listening to the susurrus of s sounds throughout the Sequence for St. Hilarion: Exultantes collaudemus. Anderson might have preferred a more uniform delivery, but chose to present the concert recording intact. The integrity of the concert performance would have been better served by the audio engineer allowing the decay to continue at each selection's conclusion, fading into the start of the next track without any audible interruption (as heard between tracks 4 and 5). This is a minor quibble, but the space shaped by the architecture is as much a participant in this performance as any one of the singers, and to clip the sounds as they decay is to denigrate its role. A viola da gamba is added to the ensemble in the three motets included to great effect. It is neither too intrusive in the mix of voices nor too far in the background as to be ineffectual. The only piece on the program not found in the Torino manuscript is Machaut's rondeau Rose...