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| Appréciation d'ensemble / Overall evaluation : PERFORMANCE *** RECORDING **** | ||||
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Reviewer: Kate
Bolton‑Porciatti Until
recently it was thought that only fragments of Antoine Brumel’s setting of the
Lamentations of Jeremiah survived, but Musica Secreta’s co-director Laurie Stras
has just unearthed, in a Florentine library, 17 formerly missing verses.
Recorded here for the first time, the complete Lamentations for Good Friday
are built up from cell-like motifs that are interleaved, varied and
hypnotically repeated, creating a monumental work! This performance imagines
them being sung in a 16th‑century nunnery, so Brumel's original low‑voice
scoring is transposed for female singers, with an organ and a viol providing the
lower parts. The resulting sound is radiant but it lacks the tenebrous quality
that better reflects the plangent Passion Week text.
Along with the new discovery is a
rosary of works copied by the same scribe as the Brumel in an anthology
belonging to two Florentine nuns. There are some lovely, anonymous settings of
familiar Marian hymns,
but the
highlights are Josquin's Recordare virgo Mater and Compère's
Para-nymphus salutat virginern. The all‑female vocal ensemble produces a
delicate, unforced, vibrato‑less sound, but the timbre is inevitably somewhat
unvaried, and the uniformity of effect is enhanced by taking each piece at the
tread of a heartbeat.
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