The Best (and Worst) Recordings of Palestrina

Considering the undisputed significance of Palestrina in the history of music, and the uniformly high quality of his output, it is amazing that only a selection of his works is available on CD. For instance, a famous work that has never, not even once, been recorded on a commercially available CD is his Missa ad fugam, an early masterpiece in which two pairs of voices are composed throughout in canon at the fourth. Another unfortunate fact is that new CDs tend to feature the same works repeatedly. Due to the colorful myths associated with its creation, Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli receives a disproportionate amount of attention. This work is certainly of outstanding quality, but so are his hundred-and-three other settings of the Mass! However, encouraging signs indicate that the situation may change in the years to come. This is largely thanks not to Italian, but to British choirs.

If anyone ever doubted it, British choirs are best. Over the past thirty years, The Tallis Scholars, directed by Peter Phillips, have played a key role in setting the standards for performances of Palestrina's music. Their discography includes exquisite recordings of the Missa Assumpta est Maria, the Missa Sicut lilium inter spinas, and the Missa Benedicta es. There appears to be a world-wide consensus among music critics that the quality of these recordings remains unsurpassed. Yet there are several other British choirs and vocal ensembles whose Palestrina recordings from the 1970s to the present are of an exceptionally high standard: The Sixteen, Westminster Cathedral Choir, The Hilliard Ensemble, Oxford Camerata, Pro Cantione Antiqua, The Cardinall's Musick, Christ Church Cathedral Choir, and others. It may seem paradoxical that, in Italy, choirs are far less interested in exploring Palestrina's legacy. It is tempting to quote Giuseppe Verdi (see Conati, 1984, p. 153):

You [Germans] are fortunate in still being the sons of Bach! And we? We too, sons of Palestrina, used to have a great tradition, and our own! It has now become bastardized, and ruin threatens us! If only we could go back to the beginning?!

In fact, if one were to look for nominees for the worst Palestrina recording of all time, the first CD that comes to mind is an all-Italian production. I am thinking of a 3-SACD box set featuring the entirety of Palestrina's Missarum liber primus, recorded and released in 2003. The conductor, Roberto Gabbiani, seems to lack even the most rudimentary feeling for stylistic issues; and the sound of the choir, Coro Polifonico dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, is amateurish to the point that any listener would feel insulted. Luckily, this is not the whole story. There is an old stereotype that Italian singers are more comfortable as soloists than as members of a big choir. When it comes to Palestrina, this stereotype is certainly accurate to some extent. Thus, examples can be found of small Italian ensembles universally praised for their fine interpretations of Renaissance music. The Naxos CDs featuring the Cappella Musicale di San Petronio di Bologna, directed by Sergio Vartolo, break away from the idiom grown out of the English choral tradition, but are highly worth listening to. So are the three Palestrina CDs released some fifteen years ago by Delitiae Musicae, directed by Marco Longhini. Nevertheless, the conclusion is clear that British choirs and vocal ensembles are bursting with so much creative diversity that when speaking of Palestrina, their Italian colleagues would have to go a long way to match the quality of their singing.

Recommended Listening

• The Tallis Scholars Sing Palestrina [2-CD box set]. The Tallis Scholars, Peter Phillips (dir.), Gimell CDGIM 204.
• Palestrina Masses, Missa Nigra sum. The Tallis Scholars, Peter Phillips (dir.), Gimell CDGIM 003.
• Palestrina Masses, Missa Benedicta es. The Tallis Scholars, Peter Phillips (dir.), Gimell GIMSE 402.
• Palestrina, Volume 1. The Sixteen, Harry Christophers (dir.), CORO COR 16091.
• Palestrina, Missa Tu es Petrus. The Choir of Westminster Cathedral, Martin Baker (dir.), Hyperion CDA67785.
• Palestrina, Canticum canticorum, Spiritual madrigals [2-CD box set]. The Hilliard Ensemble, EMI Records/Virgin Classics 7243 5 62239 2 9. (Originally issued in 1986.)
• Palestrina, Missa Papae Marcelli, Missa Aeterna Christi Munera. Oxford Camerata, Jeremy Summerly (dir.), Naxos 8.550573
• Palestrina, Missa de Beata Virgine I (1567). Soloists of the Cappella Musicale di San Petronio di Bologna, Sergio Vartolo (dir.), Naxos 8.553313
• Palestrina, Missae ex Cipriano de Rore. Delitiae Musicae, Marco Longhini (dir.), Stradivarius Dulcimer STR 33423.
• Palestrina, Missae ex Jacquet de Mantua, volume I. Delitiae Musicae, Marco Longhini (dir.), Stradivarius Dulcimer STR 33477.
• Palestrina, Missae ex Jacquet de Mantua, volume II. Delitiae Musicae, Marco Longhini (dir.), Stradivarius Dulcimer STR 33478.
• Palestrina, Choral Music (O Magnum Mysterium). Vienna Vocal Consort, Vijay Upadhyaya (dir.), Dorian Sono Luminus DOR-93255.

Bibliography
Conati, Marcello (Ed.). (1984). Encounters with Verdi (Richard Stokes, Trans.). Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. (Original work published in 1981).

The Fascination with Bach's Last Fugue

As a follow-up to my previous post on Thomas Daniel and his completion of Bach's last fugue, I would like to offer some thoughts on a doctoral dissertation by Indra Hughes (2006). Hughes, an early-music specialist living in New Zealand, completed his dissertation four years before the publication of Daniel's book, but is not mentioned by Daniel. Both authors share an interest in Bach's use of numbers and gematria. However, the conclusions reached by Hughes differ radically from those of Daniel.

The dissertation seeks to explore the idea that the unfinished state of Contrapunctus 14 is not to be explained as a result of Bach's sudden death. Rather, Bach's intention in the first place was to leave the final fugue of The Art of Fugue unfinished, and to provide a number of hidden hints as to how the performer might complete the fugue. In other words, according to this hypothesis, Contrapunctus 14 should be viewed as a type of exercise in composition! The basis for the hypothesis is the observation that Bach's fragment breaks off after 239 bars. The sum of the digits of this number is 14, a number of great significance to Bach. (If the value of each letter equals its position in the alphabet, the letters BACH can be combined by summation to yield the number 14.) Taking Gregory Butler's 1983 article as a starting point, Hughes argues that the number of missing bars is exactly 47. Markings at the end of the score are used as corroborative evidence for this inference. However, these considerations do not lead up to a full completion of the fugue. Instead, the reader is introduced to a schematic solution that involves a number of "building blocks."

The background material on gematria is well worth reading. However, a general impression is that Hughes's interpretations of the evidence are too speculative to warrant serious consideration. The idea that Bach intentionally refrained from completing the fugue is in fact a recycled version of the notion that, with this fragment, Bach wished to create a deliberate torso. As pointed out by Daniel, such a notion is anachronistic (see Daniel, 2010, p. 9, n. 4). A further weakness is that it is not clear from the dissertation why Bach would wait until the final forty-three bars of this long fugue to introduce the main theme of the cycle. Finally, it is understandable, yet disappointing, that Hughes declines to compose a completion of the fugue, declaring the task to be "outside the scope" of the dissertation.

Hughes's dissertation is available for free public access via the following page:

http://www.indrahughes.com/indra_hughes_downloads.htm

Bibliography

• Butler, Gregory (1983). "Ordering Problems in J S Bach's 'Art of Fugue' Resolved," in: The Musical Quarterly, 69, pp. 44-61.
• Daniel, Thomas (2010). Bachs unvollendete Quadrupelfuge aus "Die Kunst der Fuge." Studie und Vervollständigung. Cologne: Verlag Dohr.
• Hughes, Indra (2006). "Accident or Design? New Theories on the Unfinished Contrapunctus 14 in J. S. Bach's The Art of Fugue BWV 1080." Doct. diss., University of Auckland.

Instrumental Accompaniment before 1600

It is not unusual to hear the claim that Palestrina is "boring." The term "Renaissance polyphony" all too often evokes the image of an unaccompanied choir or a group of three to six singers performing austere music with no instrumental accompaniment. Traditional notions of how to perform the music of Palestrina, Lasso, Victoria, and other sixteenth-century composers were, at least in part, shaped by Cecilianism, a nineteenth-century movement aimed at eliminating "secular" elements in religious music. Another contributing factor has been the erroneous view that the practice of thorough-bass accompaniment arose as a Baroque phenomenon, distinguishing the seventeenth century from the preceding period. (What was new, of course, was the notational practice of adding figures to a bass line; see Ashworth and O'Dette, 2007.) Over the past four decades, a desire to challenge the conventions has resulted in a growing number of innovative recordings. A recent example is a CD recorded by Ensemble Plus Ultra in 2008 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the death of Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611). The CD, part of a box set of ten CDs, includes a transcription of a six-part motet, "Vadam et circuibo," reduced to a single voice, with the remaining parts arranged for the organ. This highly ornamented version was published by Giovanni Battista Bovicelli in Venice in 1594, and certainly challenges the listener to think differently about the assumed uniformity of Renaissance polyphony (cf. Sherman, 1997, pp. 100-116). Alfred Einstein, writing in 1949, characterized Bovicelli's versions of this and other compositions as "monstrosities," and later scholars tended to agree (see Brown, 1976). However, it is only during the past two decades that early-music performers have begun to make recordings of these rather extreme pieces. They sound far less frightening than they look on paper. Hence, musicologists may have been too quick in judging music they had never actually heard.

The use of colorful instruments to double or replace vocal parts inevitably raises the question of historical plausibility. Evidence does indeed exist that, in Spain, Burgundy, Austria, Bavaria, and other places, combinations of voices and instruments were used in liturgical contexts. For instance, the richly decorated volumes containing Lasso's Penitential Psalms, illuminated by Hans Mielich (1516-1573), as well as other sources, make it possible to determine which instruments were available to the court in Munich. Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden and Holger Eichhorn relied heavily on this information when creating their idiosyncratic arrangements of the psalms, featured on two captivating CDs. For those interested in the subject, the below list of relevant recordings might provide a starting-off point.

Victoria, "Vadam et circuibo," opening (click to enlarge)

Suggested Listening

• Tomás Luis de Victoria, Sacred Works [10-CD box set]. Ensemble Plus Ultra, Michael Noone (dir.), DGG Archiv 477 9747.
• Lassus and Palestrina, Motetti, Madrigali e Canzoni diminuiti. La Fenice, Ricercar RIC 208.
• Thomás Luis de Victoria, Et Jesum—Motets for Solo Voice. Carlos Mena (countertenor), Juan Carlos Rivera (lute and vihuela), Harmonia Mundi HMG 507042.
• Orlando di Lasso, Prophetiae Sibyllarum, Christmas Motets. Weser-Renaissance, Manfred Cordes (dir.), cpo 777 468-2.
• Alessandro Striggio, Mass in 40 Parts. I Fagiolini, Robert Hollingworth (dir.), Decca 478 2734.
• Orlande de Lassus, Laudent Deum—Sacred Music. Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts, Timothy Ravalde (organ), Andrew Nethsingha (dir.), Chaconne CHAN 0778.
• Lassus, Hassler, Erbach, Festival Sacred Music of Bavaria, c1600. Westminster Cathedral Choir, His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts, James O'Donnell (dir.), Hyperion CDA66688.
• Orlando di Lasso, Penitential Psalms [Nos. 1-3]. Tölzer Knabenchor, Musicalische Compagney Berlin, Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden (dir.), Capriccio CAP 67 018.
• Orlando di Lasso, Penitential Psalms [Nos. 4-7]. Tölzer Knabenchor, Musicalische Compagney Berlin, Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden (dir.), Capriccio CAP 67 130.

Bibliography

• Ashworth, Jack; O'Dette, Paul (2007). "Proto-Continuo," in: Jeffery Kite-Powell (Ed.), A Performer's Guide to Renaissance Music, 2nd edn. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, pp. 225-237.
• Brown, Howard Mayer (1976). Embellishing 16th-century Music. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
• Einstein, Alfred (1949). The Italian Madrigal, 3 vols. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, vol. 2, pp. 840-842.
• Sherman, Bernard D. (1997). Inside Early Music: Conversations with Performers. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.