Guillaume Dufay

[kishnevi]

Anyone able to give an opinion about this recording?

Another CD by this group was mentioned in thd Best Purchases of 2015.
But I have not heard of them before.

[kishnevi]

Thanks. To the back burner it goes (,the CD, not the music)

[Mandryka]

They slow the music right down, and in some way I haven't quite understood they have smoothed the music out: it sounds much much much older, more sedate and prayerful and introspective in a way that recalls the effect of some 13th century music. The downside, and I can imagine that for some this may be a deal breaker, is the relative absence of dramatic contrasts within sections. For me there is contrast enough, but only just.

I must say I find the tempo of Capella Pratensis really challenging, but that's not really important because I know I'll adjust my expectations once I forget Binchois Consort. My intuition is that CP find the elusive heart of the music, but I'm no expert.

Anitner go at this:



Still think it is way too to slow and is underarticulated.
The sounds of the chorus is pleasant and transparant but lacks, apart from expression, sonority.


Q

There is an interview here with one of Lionel Meurnier which addresses some of these issues

http://lepoissonreveur.typepad.com/le_poisson_reveur/polyphonies/

A l'écoute de vos enregistrements, on est d'emblée marqué par la clarté mais aussi la souplesse de la ligne. Comment travaillez-vous pour créer cette identité sonore qui est déjà bien identifiable ?

L.M. : la ligne est en effet déterminante. Il y a certes la rhétorique, seulement quand on chante par exemple Schütz a cappella (quand je dis a cappella, cela veut aussi dire des chanteurs uniquement accompagnés par un continuo, orgue simple ou orgue et viole de gambe), il faut évidemment articuler le texte mais articuler ensemble, c'est beaucoup plus efficace que parfois de la prononciation trop accentuée où le texte perd alors son sens et cela devient une carricature. On se rend alors compte qu'il y a des lignes d'une beauté incroyable. Si on respecte bien cela, la musique prend tout son sens. C'est, par exemple très clair dans la première plage de notre disque Schütz (le "Herr, nun lässest..").

Mon travail a été alors axé sur le recrutement de chanteurs qui ont une très bonne expérience du répertoire de la Renaissance ou pré-Baroque (ou le potentiel pour devenir des « spécialistes » au sens noble du terme) car la justesse est déterminante ainsi que la recherche de timbres, de couleurs vocales qui s'assemblent naturellement pour que le groupe soit cohérent, homogène. Ensuite, nous travaillons, répétons sans cesse et ceci depuis le début, même quand nous n'avions pour ainsi dire aucun concert.

Notre ensemble existe depuis bientôt dix ans et nous sommes finalement restés "underground" pendant au moins quatre ans, mais avions énormément répété et travaillé aussi bien sur la justesse, la clarté de la ligne, les intonations que sur la signification du texte pour l'inclure dans cette « science » qu'est quelque part la rhétorique. Dans le groupe, nous avons des croyants pratiquants, non pratiquants et des athées.  Pour ces derniers, je leur demande, le temps des interprétations, aussi bien pour les enregistrement que pour les concerts, de croire, d'être investis par le texte.

Un point important est alors que chacun s'investisse pleinement pour que l'on atteigne le niveau d'intensité recherché. Je suis très soucieux que chacun puisse s'exprimer et éventuellement apporter au groupe. On fonctionne alors, que ce soit à 4, 10 ou 14, comme un ensemble de chambre.

Je retrouve même dans votre style, si je peux me permettre, une certaine forme de lyrisme qui sert admirablement ces œuvres car il leur donne chaire

L.M. : le terme de lyrisme ne me choque pas. Je dis souvent que je trouve la musique romantique très proche de la musique de la Renaissance. Si on fait abstraction du vibrato, le point commun est indéniablement la longueur de la ligne. Dans les deux cas, les lignes sont longues. C'est comme un arc que l'on étire pour atteindre un point culminant.

Entre aussi en jeu le tempo. Vos phrases semblent plus allongées, si bien que clarté de la ligne ne veut absolument pas dire sécheresse mais bien souplesse, plasticité

L.M. : en effet, nous restons attachés à un bon tempo. Beaucoup d'ensembles actuels qui interprètent la musique ancienne et baroque mènent une sorte de course à la rapidité et particulièrement sur certains compositeurs bien précis.  Ceci est certainement dû à notre rythme de vie. Il faut alors se mettre en condition, se projeter dans le contexte de l'époque où la perception du temps était complètement différente. Cette relative lenteur, conjuguée à une ligne claire, juste, permet d'atteindre une plénitude, un niveau de dépouillement au service de la densité de ces œuvres. C'est un pari qui peut d'ailleurs se révéler risqué dans le cadre d'un CD mais qui nous demande justement encore plus d'effort à chacune des prises que nous faisons. J'aime me dire qu'il existe encore beaucoup de gens en quête de cette spiritualité et de l'émotion que la musique peut nous apporter. Elle peut certes et heureusement nous divertir, mais elle ne doit pas être que cela.

It would be interesting to compare these ideas to the things Björn Schmelzer says in the booklet for his new Machaut CD, and elsewhere.

[Que]

There is an interview here with one of Lionel Meurnier which addresses some of these issues

http://lepoissonreveur.typepad.com/le_poisson_reveur/polyphonies/

It would be interesting to compare these ideas to the things Björn Schmelzer says in the booklet for his new Machaut CD, and elsewhere.

Does the booklet have anything to say about the style? (I think it it very expressive actually.)

I thought for a minute that we were hearing totally different things, but judging from your earlier comments this is not the entirely the case...
The reasoning in the booklet goes as follows. The music was written between 1420 and 1435 in Italy, and is a mix of Franco-Flemish, French (faux bourdon), English and Italian styles. Since the music was written in Italy and had "Italian Ciconia" as model, for the recording an Italian approach was chosen:

"direct and clear, with no accents but with phrasing mostly from long to short (in contradiction to the normal French short-long pattern); with more attention to dramatic content and the linguistic shape of the text; with a more flexible approach to questions of tempo and mensuration than is normally possible with French music; with special care given to the cantus coronatus (a type of fermata used for large cadences or important words): with a sharper, more Italian, more "Pythagorean" approach to the (double) leading tone cadence; with an approach to musica ficta which, at least in a rising melody, refelcts this preference, even within a phrase."

But..."However, Dufay was a Burgundian Frenchman by birth, uprising and early training. At certain moments, especially when counterpoint and the rhythms are at their most complicated or "fractured" it is absolutely necessary to lighten the vocal approach and to become more overtone oriented, to allow snippets of melody to pass from one voice to another, to "feign consonance" when a harmonic function clashes with a melodic one."

Wait, this hotchpotch of performing styles is not done yet... "And thirdly one of Dufay's aims, at least in the last three movements of his mass was, as he had been learning from the English "de faire frisque concordance" At these moments the purely chordal style of the movements ask for a more fullbodied English sound[/i]" (!)

And there is more to the mix: "Dufay's models (forms, styles, mensurations, tempi, number and use of voices, cadences and even sound ideal) were medieval. But his attitude to all these influences was decidedly modern experimental, text oriented and ultimately unifying"

And about the morbid tempi Rebacca Stewart writes: "The sheer concentration of his writing and the quickness with which he changes from one idea to another demand that all tempi be taken more considerately yhan the current "orthodoxy" [....] Dufay's Missa Sancti iacobi [...] asks to be discovered at its leisure, not our pleasure"

Well, I certainly didn't get much pleasure out of it...... Mission accomplished....
There obviously went a lot of thinking in these performances, but the results of this "synthetic" approach utterly fail to convince me...

Wait a minute, Mandryka, did I just type endless excerpts from the liner notes in the booklet because you are one of those "convenient" (lazy) download types...? 

Q

[Mandryka]

It's very good of you to type it, I appreciate it and didn't expect it. Thank you.

I've listened to the recording again, a couple of times in fact, since you posted it, I will try to get clearer about what I think about it and post it up soon.

It is really a shock to compare what they do to other recordings of the same mass - Dufay Ensemble and La Reverdie. You can see I reacted like you last year. You really have to completely forget any presuppositions about what the music has sounded like in other people's hands.

[Que]

It's very good of you to type it, I appreciate it and didn't expect it. Thank you.

You're welcome - all in the interest of good conversation....

I've listened to the recording again, a couple of times in fact, since you posted it, I will try to get clearer about what I think about it and post it up soon.

It is really a shock to compare what they do to other recordings of the same mass - Dufay Ensemble and La Reverdie. You can see I reacted like you last year. You really have to completely forget any presuppositions about what the music has sounded like in other people's hands.

It surely is different.... Don't you think the result of this "mixing of styles" combined with "progressivity" sounds completely random ?
I do...

Q

[Mandryka]

You're welcome - all in the interest of good conversation....

It surely is different.... Don't you think the result of this "mixing of styles" combined with "progressivity" sounds completely random ?
I do...

Q

Well I've tried to get my head around this mass as sung by CP, and also Binchois Consort and, to a lesser extent, La Reverdie.

One thing to say is that I think that what BN does sounds uncontrived, so no, I guess I don't hear randomness. I'm pretty naive about styles in this sort of music though.

Another thing to say is that I think that some of the things I said before exaggerated the difference between CP and others, at least apart from tempi.

But I'm having a lot of difficulty in locating some of the things they say they do in the booklet. This comment in particular got my attention because it made me think of problems  later generations (Bach's generation) had with contrapuntal music, but I just can't find examples of what they're talking about in the performance.

At certain moments, especially when counterpoint and the rhythms are at their most complicated or "fractured" it is absolutely necessary to lighten the vocal approach and to become more overtone oriented, to allow snippets of melody to pass from one voice to another, to "feign consonance" when a harmonic function clashes with a melodic one."[my italics]

Generally I enjoy what they do in the Gloria, Sanctus and Agnus Dei, and it's interesting to see that they single out these movements as demanding a distinctively English style. Once again, I'm not really able to say with confidence what they're doing which is different to Binchois Consort or Reverdie there.

Generally I prefer the sound Binchois Consort make, sometimes I wonder if Capella Pratensis have more voices on a part, I can't be sure. 

[PeterWillem]

Highly recommended this year's double-cd recording:


There's already a review on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Du-Fay-messes-%C3%A0-teneur/dp/B01BLQJ44O

[Que]

Highly recommended this year's double-cd recording:


There's already a review on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Du-Fay-messes-%C3%A0-teneur/dp/B01BLQJ44O

Definitely on the wishlist!

Gramophone review:

Author: David Fallows

This is a red-letter day: at last we have uniform and sensible recordings of the four great cantus firmus Masses that are more or less all we have from the last 20 or so years of Dufay's life. As luck would have it, these Masses are not just all top-flight masterpieces but all slightly different in layout and approach: the Missa Se la face ay pale is built on the tenor of a much earlier polyphonic song of his own; the Missa L'homme armé is probably the first of the 40-odd known Masses built on that monophonic song of unknown origin; the Missa Ecce ancilla/Beata es uses two different chants; and the Missa Ave regina caelorum uses the chant in both the lower voices. Between them these works marvellously chart the state of the cyclic Mass in the third quarter of the 15th century.

The ensemble Cut Circle – already famous for their earlier double-disc set of Josquin and De Orto, also for Musique en Wallonie – comprises just eight singers, with two women on the top voice. Dufay would have had men on top, but Carolann Buff and Mary Gerbi are so good that nobody will regret their contribution. These are all top-rate singers with pure and excellently focused voices: every one of them appears here as a soloist in one of the duet sections, and the intonation and ensemble are beyond reproach.

What some listeners may find a stumbling block is the speeds Jesse Rodin adopts. For example, the Kyrie of the Missa Se la face ay palecomes in at 3'09", far faster than any of the 12 other recordings apart from Thomas Binkley in 1987 (3'04") and almost double the speed of what I still think of as one of the most marvellous Dufay records ever, directed by David Munrow in 1973 (5'07"). Not all the movements sound quite so hectic but most are the quickest available, and to my ears one consequence is that rather too much of the detail is swallowed. Some may also find that the lack of space rather trivialises the music and occasionally results in the singers putting too much effort into the sound. But it does at the same time make it easier for the long phrases to hang together and for the movements to come across as coherent music units.

There are many other recordings of all these works, but surely all serious collectors will want this issue of all four works, beautifully sung, beautifully recorded, beautifully presented and always exhilarating.

MusicWeb review: http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2016/Jun/Dufay_masses_MEW1577.htm

Q

[Mandryka]

Coming back to see this thread, it's interesting to see how much angst there was about Cappella Pratensis's Missa Sancti Jacobi, which I've been listening to again, with great pleasure because I like very much these aspects of their singing style:

1. No projection out
2. Constantly changing timbres
3. The basic assumption is that the sound will be quiet. There is some dynamic range.
4. The impression is often soft speech

As far as tempi is concerned, I'm fine about it. Que's word "morbid" is unfair, the performances are full of inner life, due to the kaleidoscopic timbres partly. Lionel Meunier's comments on tempo in the interview I posted above seem spot on to me.

I also think "hotchpotch" is unfair, since to my ears I don't get that there's anything incoherent about the music making, like one bit sounds in a totally different style to another. On the contrary it sounds coherent.

[Que]

Coming back to see this thread, it's interesting to see how much angst there was about Cappella Pratensis's Missa Sancti Jacobi, which I've been listening to again, with great pleasure because I like very much these aspects of their singing style:

1. No projection out
2. Constantly changing timbres
3. The basic assumption is that the sound will be quiet. There is some dynamic range.
4. The impression is often soft speech

As far as tempi is concerned, I'm fine about it. Que's word "morbid" is unfair, the performances are full of inner life, due to the kaleidoscopic timbres partly. Lionel Meunier's comments on tempo in the interview I posted above seem spot on to me.

I also think "hotchpotch" is unfair, since to my ears I don't get that there's anything incoherent about the music making, like one bit sounds in a totally different style to another. On the contrary it sounds coherent.

Well, it is always a good thing when a musical performance is appreciated.

But I'm not sure why you would label our conversation on this recording as "Angst", which would refer to a state of  mind I personally don't associate with previous proceedings.

Facts are that Rebecca Stewart purposely opted for extraordinarily slow tempi and tried to combine different (regional) musical styles - not just as audible musical influences but as a synthesis. Whether that resultated in morbid tempi and incoherence, is up to personal taste. I still think it does.

Which leaves us with diametrically opposite opinions on musical performance, but that can hardly be a surprise anymore...

Q

[San Antone]

St James Mass from Cappella Pratensis.



They slow the music right down, and in some way I haven't quite understood they have smoothed the music out: it sounds much much much older, more sedate and prayerful and introspective in a way that recalls the effect of some 13th century music. The downside, and I can imagine that for some this may be a deal breaker, is the relative absence of dramatic contrasts within sections. For me there is contrast enough, but only just.

I must say I find the tempo of Capella Pratensis really challenging, but that's not really important because I know I'll adjust my expectations once I forget Binchois Consort. My intuition is that CP find the elusive heart of the music, but I'm no expert.

At any rate I can say that these recordings are really stimulating because so very different.

Sound very interesting to me.  But I cannot find this recording anywhere.  The other five in the series of Flemish music by CP are easily available, but this one is not turning up.

Where did you get it?

[North Star]

Sound very interesting to me.  But I cannot find this recording anywhere.  The other five in the series of Flemish music by CP are easily available, but this one is not turning up.

Where did you get it?

It's included in this treasure chest
[asin]B005IIA9GY[/asin]

or from Outhere

[San Antone]

It's included in this treasure chest
[asin]B005IIA9GY[/asin]

or from Outhere

Oh, I have that box.  I'll dig into it, thanks.  But the individual recording seems to be blocked in the US.

[San Antone]

It is really a shock to compare what they do to other recordings of the same mass - Dufay Ensemble and La Reverdie. You can see I reacted like you last year. You really have to completely forget any presuppositions about what the music has sounded like in other people's hands.

I just listened to it.  My initial reaction is to say I loved it.  I am certainly someone who looks for a spiritual aspect to performances of this music, and this one delivered on that.  I probably will also check out the competition just out of curiosity - but I usually don't allow one recording to dictate how I think the music should go.  My only complaint is that if they had pitched it lower I would have enjoyed it even more.

Thanks for reminding me of this mass, and thanks to North Star for telling me where to find it.  (I am really glad I bought that box when I did, today it is OOP and very expensive, at least on Amazon.)

[Mandryka]

I just listened to it.  My initial reaction is to say I loved it.  I am certainly someone who looks for a spiritual aspect to performances of this music, and this one delivered on that.  I probably will also check out the competition just out of curiosity - but I usually don't allow one recording to dictate how I think the music should go.  My only complaint is that if they had pitched it lower I would have enjoyed it even more.

Thanks for reminding me of this mass, and thanks to North Star for telling me where to find it.  (I am really glad I bought that box when I did, today it is OOP and very expensive, at least on Amazon.)

Did you ever get to hear Rebecc Stewart's Machaut mass? It's very much in the same style. Let me know if you want it.

She's now working with a group called Cantus Modalis, they've recorded some Heinrich Isaac which, to judge by the clips, sounds interesting to me, I've ordered the CD.

http://www.cantusmodalis.org/component/content/article/61-teachers-biografies/33-rebecca-stewart

[San Antone]

Did you ever get to hear Rebecc Stewart's Machaut mass? It's very much in the same style. Let me know if you want it.

She's now working with a group called Cantus Modalis, they've recorded some Heinrich Isaac which, to judge by the clips, sounds interesting to me, I've ordered the CD.

http://www.cantusmodalis.org/component/content/article/61-teachers-biografies/33-rebecca-stewart

I ordered the Machaut but it has not arrived yet.

[Mandryka]

I ordered the Machaut but it has not arrived yet.

No you won't get the one I mean like that as far as I know, it's never been released as far as I know, it's a concert recording which used to be downloadable here, if there's a problem let me know and I'll upload my copy


http://intoclassics.net/news/2010-09-17-18584


More generally, there's a paper I'd like to read called "Performing Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame: from Modernist Allegiances to the Postmodern Hinterland" by Kirsten Yri, published in The Machaut Companion (Brill) The book's too expensive, and even downloading the paper from the publisher is more than I want to pay. Can anyone let me have it?

[San Antone]

No you won't get the one I mean like that as far as I know, it's never been released as far as I know, it's a concert recording which used to be downloadable here, if there's a problem let me know and I'll upload my copy


http://intoclassics.net/news/2010-09-17-18584


More generally, there's a paper I'd like to read called "Performing Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame: from Modernist Allegiances to the Postmodern Hinterland" by Kirsten Yri, published in The Machaut Companion (Brill) The book's too expensive, and even downloading the paper from the publisher is more than I want to pay. Can anyone let me have it?

You recommended a recording of the Machaut that I ordered, I just assumed you were talking about the same one.



But now I see it is by Rene Clemencic.  Thanks for the link to Rebbecca Stewart's Machaut, but I avoid Russian downloads.

I have a little book, "Machaut's Mass: An Introduction" - but I haven't looked into it for a long time.  I will see what the author says about performance.



I subscribed to both Early Music (Oxford) and The American Musicological Society Journal in 2015 and both would have articles from time to time about 14th Century performance issues.  In one of them is probably where I read the article on pitching the music down a fourth.  Unfortunately, I did not keep my back issues.

That Brill book looks very interesting.  I don't have it, and you are right currently expensive (a used copy can be got for $159.00).

Machaut is such an interest for me, I might break down and buy it anyway.

[Mandryka]

I'm beginning to get much clearer about what I'm looking for in early music performance, and so I was pleasantly surprised to find that the above CD from Studio der Frühen Musik goes some way to fitting the bill, at least some of the time. No forceful projection out, the basic assumption is that the voice will start small. This is a very great Dufay CD IMO.