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I’ll get straight to the point and say that this new release from The Sixteen, celebrating the Renaissance tradition of borrowing between composers, is worth hearing even though I find much of it very frustrating.
For one thing, it’s an odd mix of things that amply deserve coverage and would warrant an entire programme by themselves – confronting the madrigals by Casulana with those of Lassus, for instance, or the Magnificat settings of Lassus based on preexisting polyphony, or again (though it’s already got a distinguished discography) the host of pieces based on Josquin’s Benedicta es; frustrating, also, for where alternative performances exist one cannot help finding The Sixteen wanting: compare Lassus’s Osculetur me and the Credo based upon it with The Tallis Scholars’ much cleaner and clearer version, or several performances of Josquin’s Benedicta es, beginning with David Munrow’s nearly 50 years ago – Harry Christophers’s sharpening of the leading note at the final cadence (which Josquin seems to have gone out of his way to obviate) being the most obvious irritation. And I remain unconvinced by Christophers’s insistence on performing madrigals with his full complement of singers. While there’s no denying that The Sixteen make a great sound, they are at their boldest and most outgoing in the concluding psalm-setting by Bob Chilcott, a stirring if conservative setting whose last chords elicit the punch and precision that one often misses elsewhere.
You may then ask for what reason I wrote at the start that I enjoyed this. I’ll give three: first, Lassus’s Magnificat based on Benedicta es is a masterclass of invention (hence my call for a whole disc of them); second, his Salve regina a 6 replicates one of the principal techniques used by Renaissance singers to improvise upon a cantus firmus, with the chant in equal notes in the bass with no rests; and finally, because The Sixteen make a much better fist of Guyot de Châtelet’s marvellously batty reworking of Josquin’s Benedicta es than the recent recording by the Namur Chamber Choir (Ricercar, A/23). |
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