A monk’s life
The Brabant Ensemble/Stephen Rice
rec. 2023, Westminster Chapel of Harcourt Hill campus, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford
Texts and translations provided
Reviewed as a 16/44 FLAC download
Hyperion CDA68447 [72]
The latest release from the excellent Brabant Ensemble of Oxford is a project devised by Drs Barbara Eichner of Oxford Brookes and Stephen Rice focussed on music from Counter-Reformation Germany. Most of the music is hitherto unrecorded and will be unknown to most of us.
The Brabant Ensemble is now over 25 years old and has an amazingly rich discography built up over most of those years on Hyperion. They have mainly focussed on the nooks and crannies of the Renaissance repertory and many of us will have been delighted with the discoveries they have given us in unfailingly winning performances. In over twenty CDs, they have enriched our understanding and experience of a wealth of composers in the hundred years that separate Josquin’s rise in the 1480s and the death of Palestrina and Lassus in 1594.
Not all their records were new discoveries – I remember they did the Lassus Prophetiae Sibyllarum back in 2010 – but most were and this new one definitely falls into that category. It is also unusual in that it is features music by several composers, whereas most of their discography consists of discs devoted to one name.
The program is based on the life of a monk from his entry into the vocation, the daily monastic routines he undergoes including Mass and Vespers, his elevation to Abbott and finally death and reception into heaven. Barbara Eichner contributes the excellent notes to the project which guide us through the stages and their accompanying music.
Lassus is the anchor musically, and as our Monk and his community are German, this is truly fitting. Lassus was in Munich from 1556 and despite overtures from practically everywhere, he was loyal and never left. His output was staggering: more than 70 masses, over 100 Magnificats, motets exceeding 500 in number – and that’s just the sacred music. Here, we have a lovely six-part motet at the start Sposa Dei and the eight-part Quis rutilat Triadis? at the end of the program. In between, we have the Missa super Veni in hortum meum, a parody mass, as is usual with Lassus, this time based on his own motet of the same name.
Interestingly, the court of Duke Albrecht V in Munich was a kind of microcosm of what was going on in Europe at that time. In 1563 the Council of Trent ended and the Catholic church was ready to take on Protestantism in what we now know as the Counter-Reformation or Catholic revival. The liturgy had been revised and the use of music in church amongst many other things had been clarified. Lassus’ predecessor in Munich Ludwig Daser had been won over by Luther and the Duke himself wobbled, although Lassus was ever loyal to Rome. After the eighteen-year council, which had been presided over by three different Popes, had finally concluded, the progress of Protestantism in Bavaria was gradually curtailed. This is the background to which most of the music on this CD belongs.
Klingenstein, the Director of Music at Augsburg, contributes a motet De vita religiose that would be most appropriate and reassuring for a young man about to take his vows of chastity, obedience and poverty. Any doubts about leaving his friends and family might be forgotten listening to the benefits the text lays out on the religious life.
Could we perhaps have had more of the music the monk might have heard in the everyday cycle of the hours? We don’t get a morning Benedictus, or a Noontime Angelus, nor the night Canticle of Simeon Nunc Dimittis,just the late afternoon/early evening Magnificat. Dr Eichner reminds us this would be the service most village/town folk might attend as they would have finished their daytime duties by then. The Brabant Ensemble treat us to a six-voice Magnificat by the Benedictine Abbot Carolus Andreae. As was usual for these times, we get half the text in plain-chanted verses and half in glorious polyphony. The voices are clearly defined and the Hyperion recording team as usual capture the groups luminous sound brilliantly well.
After the Vespers section we come to Eating and Drinking. These monks are very well behaved and we get a lovely five-part motet by De Rore to accompany our meal. You will be happy to know though that the wine does indeed flow and after the calming graceful lines of the motet, we indulge in a jolly tune extolling the fruit of the vine. I was a little disconcerted by the prominence of sopranos and altos in the refectory but it’s all great fun and I would have loved a little more like this in the program.
Blasius Amon of the Order of Friars Minor wrote a six-voice motet that is included in the selection to encapsulate the feelings of our young monk now ordained about to offer his first mass. As usual with the Brabant Ensemble, all the vocal lines are heard clearly delineated and the textures are so clear. It is a lovely piece and good to have.
As I mentioned earlier, the mass is a five-part Lassus. We have two voices per part here and the performance is majestic. Once again, clarity is the word I would choose to sum up the reading but there is a warmth and glow to the choir that is very special. Between the Gloria and Credo we have a lovely psalm setting Os iusti from Jacob Regnart that Drs Eichner and Rice have found in manuscript; in fact, the notes tell us several of these pieces are from manuscripts in Augsburg, Regensburg and Munich.
Another monk, this time the Cistercian Johannes Nucius, contributes a five-voice motet Vana salus hominis. This work precedes the final section of the program which contains two masterworks by Clemens non Papa and Lassus on final and eternal things as well as another contribution from the religious. This last time we have Benedictine Sebastien Ertel’s eight-part motet Aeterno laudanda choro. The piece by Clemens non Papa In te Domine speravi is for me the jewel of the running order but the Lassus which follows it, another eight-part work is essential listening, too. Dr Eichner describes the rays of sun literally bursting through at 3:44. She is right and in this performance we really get a sense of Lassus’ experience and his ability to hold the interest of the listener over an expanded span.
This is another super release from The Brabant Ensemble under their founder Stephen Rice to add to their growing and estimable back catalogue. I hope the project gets the success it deserves.
Philip Harrison
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Contents
Lassus: Sponsa Dei
Klingenstein: De vita religiose
Erbach: Deus in adiutorium
Andreae: Magnificat super Si ignoras te
De Rore: Agimus tibi gratias
Gastoldi: Wer wollt den Wein nit lieben?
Ammon: Sacrificate sacrificium iustitiae
Lassus: Missa super Veni in hortum meum
Regnart: Os iusti
Reiner: Veni Creator Spiritus
Nucius: Vana salus hominis
