Pros: Budget sampling by finest artists offering hugely diverse selections of Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque music
Cons: Liner notes are minimal; samplers rarely offer you whole compositions. (Nature of the beast.)
The Bottom Line: Jordi Savall and Monserrat Figueras ringlead a charming and fantastic tour through centuries of Western classical music before Bach. Budget price = low risk/high value purchase.
trust12345's Full Review: Harmonie Universelle - Jordi Savall, La Capella Re...
Harmonie Universelle is a compilation disc of Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music issued at a budget price range by one of the world’s finest groups of early music on period instrument ensembles, Hésperion XX, headed by Jordi Savall. It has no liner notes to speak of save a booklet advertising the discs from which this compilation’s selections derive. With its generous playing time of just under 80 minutes and its wide swathe of periods represented (without much regard for conventional notions of programming forethought), we can assume that this disc’s primary function is that of a sampler to stir potential interest in the CDs thus advertised. As such, it serves its purpose surpassingly well: I want to buy three or four of the source CDs this one draws from.
Since this is not a conventional recording, but rather an overview of recordings from disparate epochs, I feel justified in taking some time to offer an overview of the state of early music in America. My main argument is that period instrument recordings suffer the double neglect of being not only disregarded by people who don’t listen to classical music, but also by some aficionados who find such recordings unpleasant based on notions of intonation and timbre. I contend that such charges are largely unfounded any more, and that this disc, an inexpensive sampling covering a huge range of styles, can serve both to inform neophyte listeners of a compelling and exciting tradition existing before bigwigs like J. S. Bach, as well as convince any doubters of the beauty and finesse of period instrument performances. If you want to skip my little essay, jump to my concluding discussion of the contents below the second set of asterisks.
* * *
At some point in the mid-1990s, I think coinciding with the massive publicity blitz and ensuing craze for Chant: Monks Of Santo Domingo De Silos , issued in 1994, the history of recorded early music on period instruments took a strange turn. Surprisingly, this unprepossessing CD of Gregorian chant (monks singing early Medieval music in hallowed unison in the echoing chambers of a church) topped the billboard charts for months. (You might remember the cheesy cover: monks raining from the sky much as men in bowler hats do in the painting by Magritte.)
The inevitable second and third volumes of Gregorian chant by the same monks, as well as countless spin-offs by others in the holy orders, hit the shelves, most of these dying silent deaths in their shrinkwrap packaging— but not before ushering in a new hybrid crossover that wedded Chant to Techno. Suddenly, Madonna and others were recording electronica singles with unison-chanting monks in the background, and everyone started going bananas for angels. (The stage had already been set by the 1990 documentary Ghost starring Patrick Swayze et al.)
Period instrument specialists such as Sequentia, sensing the zeitgeist spotlight was heading straight for them, released trendily dressed albums of suddenly trendy Middle Ages music. Notably, Hildegard von Bingen, a visionary composer and dramatist of the 11th Century, was reborn in Sequentia’s hands as a patron saint of proto-feminist mysticism. Her return was heralded with synthesizers and acid blue album jackets. Since New Age spirituality-groping was replacing Old Age Christian doctrinalism, and Kabbalah Mysticism (again, with Madonna at the helm) was replacing Jewish doctrinalism, and neutered versions of Buddhism were sweeping the coasts— why not, said these period music groups (money bags beaming in their eyes), jump on the bandwagon?
Meanwhile, back in the mountains of Spanish Catalonia, a virtuoso viol da gamba player and conductor named Jordi Savall was forging ahead with early music recordings that stayed wide and clear of the New Age Jabberwock. He was not alone in awaiting this tide of dross to pass: expat William Christie (formerly of Brooklyn) and his group, Les Arts Florissants; Philippe Herreweghe of Holland, Marcel Pérès of France; Chiara Banchini of Italy; Andrew Manze and Christopher Hogwood of England; Gustav Leonhardt of Germany; and Lawrence Dreyfus/Phantasm of America— to name just a few— all held their breath as early music went through its awkward growing pains associated with courting the mass market.
Period instruments’ growing pains are not new: in the 1970s, during their major revival (particularly in the U.S.), they suffered a reputation that they still have not sufficiently shook off, namely, that music played on authentic instruments (practically dirty words to some) was out of tune, flat and screechy. "Caterwauling" was a nicer epithet thrown in their miserable direction in those days.
All of the artists just named, and plenty more, are coming out with superb recordings, and it is increasingly rare to find period instrument performances that are plausibly susceptible to the old complaints; a tremendous surge in interest and talent from new generations of historically informed performers using period instruments and the latest scholarship on historical practices (perfect "accuracy" always remaining a contentious notion), should by now have dispelled the old stereotypes. One of the leaders of the recent generations of these devoted artists is Jordi Savall, whose work on Alain Corneau’s film, Tous Les Matins Du Monde (All The Mornings of the World) created a small but perceptible seismic shift in the classical music world. His perfectionism, consummate skill as a viol player, and exquisite choices in repetoire and collaborators have attracted a steady base of listeners while spawning any number of yeoman artists in the field.
* * *
If your idea of Early Music is Elvis or Chuck Berry, or perhaps Mozart or Vivaldi (getting hotter), this excellent compilation should expand your awareness a few centuries yet further back. It ranges from 15th Century Spain (no Gregorian chant, here), through Renaissance England, France, and Italy, culminating in the works of German Baroque composers Heinrich Biber and Johann Sebastian Bach. There is an emphasis on the music of Savall’s native Spain, but the disc’s title is apt, capturing a pan-European cross section of music, both sacred and secular, large scale and intimate, intricately composed and spontaneous.
The selection of styles is determinedly broad, all the better to frame both a portrait of the musical cornucopia as well as the groups that Savall conducts: Hésperion XX, La Capaella Reial de Catalunya, and Le Concert des Nations. World class musicians such as the theorbo/lutenist Rolf Lislevand and harpsichordist Ton Koopman are featured, but the most remarkable artist, aside from Savall, is his wife Montserrat Figueras, whose soprano voice only improves with time (a miraculous thing considering she has been a pillar of the field all along). In their devotional and unostentatious fashion, these artists have been churning out winsome, exquisite recordings for years.
Some highlights:
One track, featuring a 15th Century anonymous Mallorcan Song of the Sibyl (Al Jorn del judici-Ans del judici-Déus dirà aycels), is awe-inspiringly beautiful. Figueras sings a rhapsodically sacred chant above a drone in the viol da gamba, her voice seeming to reverberate within itself in cycles of breath and tone that escalate away from and then fall back to the drone. When she reunites with the pedal tone, and after a pregnant silence, the gamba takes over in a brief flourish, half-mimicking the arcs of her incantation, until it too comes to rest on the tonic, slipping into silence. This poignant paralleling between solo string and voice, taking turns on the Sephardic-influenced scales, is suddenly wrenched open by a choir of voices, sighing in polyphonic chords of shifting modalities until these come to rest. This exquisite piece sounds like Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa, whose simplicity of tonal palette and reverential toying with silence is of course a reflection of precisely this kind of ancient music.
Upbeat, flamenco-like gems such as the Jose Marin selection (see below for full details) pose a perfect antidote to the intensely elegiac offering by Marin Marais and an anonymous grouping of voices and instruments in the Adoramus te Domine, or perhaps the reverse is the case: these mournful, pathopoeiac masterpieces provide the perfect antidotes to the bright cheer of other pieces. Ideally, of course, you will find something that speaks to your personal taste, and you will feel compelled, as have I, to locate the full versions and contexts of your new, beloved treasures.
"And hath thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.
--Lewis Carroll
The CD’s contents:
1. Rodrigo Martinez
Composed by Anonymous (1490)
with Jordi Savall, Hesperion XXI
2. El moro de Antequera (Rhodes)
Composed by Sephardic Traditional
with Montserrat Figueras, Hesperion XXI
3. Hermoza muchachica (Jerusalén)
Composed by Sephardic Traditional
4. Adoramus te Domine, for 4 voices, CM 4
Composed by Canciero de Montecassino Anonymous
5. Dindirin Dindirin
Composed by Anonymous
6. Browning My Dere, for 5 recorders
Composed by Clement Woodcock
7. Mallorcan Song of the Sibyl Al Jorn del judici-Ans del judici-Déus dirà aycels
Composed by Mallorcan Anonymous
with Montserrat Figueras
8. Mille regretz, song for 5 parts
Composed by Josquin Desprez
9. Heigh Ho Holiday
Composed by Antony Holborne
10. No piense menguilla ya, for voice & guitar (or continuo)
Composed by Jose Marin
with Pedro Estevan, Montserrat Figueras, Adela Gonzalez-Campa, Rolf Lislevand
11. Les Voix Humaines
Composed by Marin Marais
12. Il pianto di Erinna
Composed by Nicolo Fontei
with Montserrat Figueras, Ton Koopman
13. Sonata for viola da gamba & keyboard No. 2 in D major, BWV 1028 Adagio-Allegro
Composed by Johann Sebastian Bach
with Ton Koopman, Jordi Savall
14. Batalla Imperial for organ
Composed by Juan Bautista Jose Cabanilles
15. Missa Bruxellensis, mass for double chorus, orchestra, percussion & continuo (attribution uncertain), C. App 100 Agnus Dei
Composed by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber
with Le Concert des Nations
16. Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, comédie-ballet, LWV 43 March pour la Cérémonie turque
Composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully
with Le Concert des Nations
17. Musikalisches Opfer (Musical Offering), BWV 1079 Canon perpetuus super Thema Regium
Johann Sebastian Bach
TT=79:40
For a more in depth review on a Spanish Medieval/Renaissance recording (by an ensemble less dedicated to historical accuracy), visit: http://www.epinions.com/content_88151854724
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