Capella Alamire, The Woodman Consort of Viols, Peter Urquhart - Nicolas Gombert: Motets; Chansons; Magnificat (2006)

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Capella Alamire, The Woodman Consort of Viols, Peter Urquhart - Nicolas Gombert: Motets; Chansons; Magnificat (2006)

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It's always great to encounter the recording that can "crack" a composer open, making his or her music accessible to a general listening public. And it's all the better when such a recording comes from beyond the usual quarters, as, for example, with this American recording of Renaissance polyphony. Nicolas Gombert was a Flemish Renaissance composer, a successor (and possibly a student) of Josquin who entered the service of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. His music, especially in his masses, tends to present itself as a dense, unbroken flow of polyphony. Gombert is one of the composers music history students tend to slog through in hopes of getting to the good stuff. One noted Renaissance scholar used to refer to him, Adrian Willaert, and Giaches de Wert as "the Ert brothers." All that could change with this disc of Gombert motets and chansons. These works are less dense than his masses, but not by much, and they are considerably less limpid than Josquin's pieces in the same genres. But here it is the performances that clarify them. The Massachusetts ensemble Capella Alamire (the name is a pun on an aspect of an old solmization system) under director Peter Urquhart, recording in a church in Portsmouth, NH, slows the motets down slightly and addresses them with a group of eight singers – the black belt of choral singing. They bring out the rich detail of Gombert's polyphony – the intricate crossings of lines, the currents that seem to eddy through the music like whitecaps on a rushing stream, the pungent dissonances that Gombert uses to mark section ends in place of clear cadences, and more. And the singing is gorgeous in itself, with individual voices emerging just slightly from the group like shades of light. The mix of motets and chansons is also satisfyingly executed. The sonic resources deployed are completely different; the chansons are sung by a soprano (Noël Bisson), accompanied by a viol group, the Woodman Consort. But Urquhart forges the same kind of clear yet lyrical interpretation in the chansons as in the motets; they don't come off sounding as though they came from a completely different musical sphere, as often happens with secular recordings of music from the sixteenth century. What makes all this even more remarkable is the recording's academic provenance; Urquhart is a professor and researcher at the University of New Hampshire. Academic recordings of Renaissance music tend to be unbearably dull, but this one is lovely and instructive, one of Naxos' best Renaissance releases, and enthusiastically recommended to libraries, students, instructors, and general listeners.

Review by James Manheim, Allmusic.com

Nicolas Gombert (c. 1495–c. 1560) was recently accorded a summation of his place in the record catalog (29:5). That account of attention given his works would have been even longer if this splendid recording, most of it made almost 10 years ago, had appeared more promptly. But such are the vicissitudes of small labels, the ones this American vocal ensemble has dealt with in the past, that it was necessary for Naxos to take up the slack. That says more about the record market than about the superb quality of these performances. In an unaccustomed ploy, Urquhart has distributed five motets among the 10 chansons before concluding with a Magnificat, the one in the fourth mode. The Magnificat, the motets, and two chansons are sung by Urquhart’s group, while the rest of the chansons (recorded two years later) are given to Noël Bisson’s light and flexible soprano supported by the viol consort, except for one that is rendered instrumentally.

Three of the five motets seem to be first recordings, while the Salve regina is on the Hilliard Ensemble program (29:5) and Ave regina caelorum is on an old Bruno Turner LP. Urquhart had earlier included three other motets of Gombert on a Titanic CD (16:1, where the big news was Busnois). As evident already on that disc, Urquhart shares the views of such interpreters as Jonathan Brown who find the cross-relations in the linear movement of the music to be essential to an appreciation of music that was, after all, written in part books, not in score. Scores tend to encourage focusing on the vertical harmonic element in the music.

The chansons are uniformly new to disc, for I cannot find a single title in my collection or in the last Bielefelder Katalog . Noteworthy is O malheureuse journée , one of two sung by the Capella, an extended song for five voices that expresses a bleak but unexplained despair. Urquhart’s notes, which clarify the difference between the liturgical and paraliturgical motets on the disc, are succinct but informative, and all the sources of first publication are noted. He also points out the effective use of cross-relations to support the meaning of the text at the climax of Tous les regretz . Certainly this program was worth waiting for. The sound captured in a Portsmouth, NH, church is vivid in a natural, unobtrusive way. The price makes this even more desirable.

Review by J. F. Weber, FANFARE

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Capella Alamire, The Woodman Consort of Viols, Peter Urquhart - Nicolas Gombert: Motets; Chansons; Magnificat (2006)

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Capella Alamire, The Woodman Consort of Viols, Peter Urquhart - Nicolas Gombert: Motets; Chansons; Magnificat (2006)

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