Love Divine
luminatus/David Bray
rec. 2024, St. Mary’s Parish Church, Woburn, UK
Reviewed as digital download
Convivium Records CR102 [75]
This new album from the vocal ensemble luminatus and David Bray reflects the recent preoccupations of their work together: previously unrecorded music of the Renaissance and new work by contemporary female composers. Both explorations are really welcome, although you may want to award yourself an interval halfway through and have a walk around the virtual cloisters to clear your head sonically before the 450 year leap.
The Renaissance segment of the programme begins with a parody mass and the motet on which it’s based: the (mostly) five-part Missa Ad te levavi oculos meos by Philippe de Monte, proceeded by Cipriano de Rore’s motet. Until recently De Rore was known principally as one of the great composers of the madrigal, but thanks particularly to recordings by the Tallis Scholars and The Brabant Ensemble, his sacred music has become more widely heard and deservedly so. His motet Ad te levavi oculos meos is a setting of Psalm 122 (vulgate numbering) in two sections with some beautifully florid writing.
De Monte is again perhaps better known as a madrigal composer, perhaps unsurprisingly given that he published some thirty-four books of them in his lifetime. His sacred output is also considerable though, with just under forty mass settings alone, most of them unrecorded. When Cinquecento made a well received recording of the Missa Ultimi miei sospiri in the late 2000s (review) I’d hoped that it might pique the interest of choral directors and record companies, but I don’t think there have been any new recordings of his masses since until this one. The Missa Ad te levavi oculos meos is a glorious work. De Monte makes ear catching and creative use of some of De Rore’s ornamental writing in a number of places and his own harmonic and melodic gifts combine effortlessly to underline what a memorable and worthwhile discovery this is. luminatus give a really fine performance of both motet and mass. I particularly admired the warm, at times almost impassioned, singing they bring to both, a refreshing corrective to the tendency some choirs have adopted in music of this period which at times seems to favour an overly clinical detachment of tone.
Next, a real rarity and a composer new to me: the motet Cantabant sancti canticum novum (from Psalm 96) by Ippolito Baccusi. The booklet notes don’t enlighten us much, ‘the work of Baccusi is little researched and, to date, very rarely performed’. I have to say that despite a committed performance here, there was little that I found distinctive or worthy of further exploration, but I’d accept of course that a motet of less than two minutes is a ludicrously small sample on which to make any sort of wider judgment.
Tiburtio Massaino, three of whose motets close the first part of the recital, was an Augustinian friar, choir master and composer. Interestingly, he and de Monte met in Prague in the 1590s, where the motets recorded here were first published. Glad though I am to have heard these works, I would gently question programming three consecutive motets by any composer of this period unless they are markedly differentiated. Massaino’s Salvatorem expectamus is a vigorous, if unoriginal, setting of an advent text. The two motets that follow, O Domine Jesu Christe (text from a prayer by St Gregory) and Ne timeas Maria (an antiphon from Vespers of the Feast of the Annunciation) are much more contemplative though and although luminatus sing both with great poise, my own sense of the album’s momentum was lessened a little by the end of that third motet.
The second and shorter part of the album consists of those new works. I liked the simplicity of both settings by Agneta Sköld, a Swedish organist and composer. The famous text of the Corpus Christi Carol really benefits from her clear and direct writing and her version of a text taken from Psalm 67, God be merciful, builds on this approach with some very sparing use of dissonance. luminatus sing both with a lovely broad sense of line.
Becky McGlade, a composer from Cornwall, draws her text from the Book of Revelation for I saw a new heaven. I admired the way this piece slowly builds its texture as it reaches its climax. It’s sung with an appropriate sense of wonder. Her setting of Wesley’s Love Divine is a little more conventional I suppose, but I very much liked the counter-intuitive quiet and calm of the ending so that there really is a sense of being humbled and awestruck at the concluding words ‘Lost in wonder, love and praise ‘.
Eleanor Daly, a Canadian choral director and composer, provides the final work, a setting of Christina Rossetti’s O ye who taste that love is sweet. This is a beautiful composition, simple in its organisation and writing and sung with great radiance by luminatus. After my minor gripe above about how the album is sequenced, I should say that I thought this a perfect and well-chosen way to conclude.
This is a genuinely interesting recital then from a fine vocal ensemble, well recorded in a good acoustic. I would guess that most readers would want to have this in their libraries for the De Monte. There’s much else to enjoy on repeated listening though, as I hope I’ve made clear. Texts and translations are included in the booklet. David Bray’s own note is informative, if somewhat lapidary.
Dominic Hartley
Availability: Convivium Records
Contents
Cipriano de Rore (1515, or 1516–1565)
Ad te levavi oculos meus
Philippe de Monte (1521–1603)
Missa Ad te levavi oculos meos
Ippolito Baccusi (c. 1550 – 1609)
Cantabant sancti canticum novum
Tiburtio Massaino (before 1550 – after 1608)
Salvatorem expectamus
O Domine Jesu Christe
Ne timeas Maria
Agneta Sköld (b. 1947)
Corpus Christi Carol
God be merciful
Becky McGlade (b. 1974)
I saw a new heaven
Love divine
Eleanor Daley (b. 1955)
O ye who taste that love is sweet
