Livre du Saint Sacrement

Today is one of the notable musical dates of 2017: the 25th anniversary of the death of Messiaen. Some might recall that I’ve ambitions to listen to all of his music this year, and today I was enjoying Livre du Saint Sacrement, one of his major compositions for organ. Here is the final section, “Offrande et Alléluia final”, played by Monica Czausz.

I adore Messiaen’s organ music; for me is the greatest composer for the instrument after Bach. Imagine, for a moment, that the throne room of Heaven were opened, and we could hear the music of the Heavenly Court. It would be terrible and majestic, like an angelic host, solemn, and so beautiful that it would overwhelm our senses, just as the sight of that Court would dazzle our eyes. It would, in other words, sound like the music of Messiaen.

Easter Sunday, 2017

I got me flowers to straw thy way;
I got me boughs off many a tree:
But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st thy sweets along with thee.

The Sunne arising in the East,
Though he give light, & th’ East perfume;
If they should offer to contest
With thy arising, they presume.

Can there be any day but this,
Though many sunnes to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we misse:
There is but one, and that one ever.

– George Herbert (1633)

Happy Easter!

Gloria in profundis Deo

In the world of early music, where manuscripts are often bereft of temporal markings, dynamic markings, and even pitch indications, a certain amount of creative interpretation is an inescapable part of any performance. But there’s interpretation and interpretation: sometimes musicians come along with a bold challenge to the received wisdom about how the music of a particular time and place should sound.

Case in point: Graindelavoix give us a version of Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame that is frankly bizarre: pitches slide all over the place, the timbre is rough and unpolished, and ornamentation, inspired, it sounds, by Middle Eastern and Arabic singing, pervades all.

This embedded video contains a full performance of the Mass, with propers, but I’m queuing it up to the Gloria, which lasts for about 6 minutes. I’m mostly thrilled by the bass in this ensemble, who is some kind of monster: listen, for example, to the notes he sings at “Jesu Christe” (about 2-1/2 minutes in, and again at about 4 minutes in). Amazing.

I’m honestly not sure if I like what they’re doing — it comes close to being an early-music freak-show — but I do like that they emphasize how little we really know about how this music sounded to those who first wrote and performed it. And I definitely like that bass.

If you don’t know how this Mass usually sounds, here is a fairly typical reading of the same section.