Document

  1998
    April 1998
        Choral and song
                Ockeghem Sacred Choral Works.

Ockeghem Sacred Choral Works. Oxford Camerata / Jeremy Summerly.

Naxos (Super budget price) (CD) 8 554297 (57 minutes: DDD). Texts and translations included.

Ockeghem: Missa l’homme arme. Ave Maria. Alma redemptoris mater. Josquin Desprez: Memor esto verbi tui. Plainchant: Alma redemptoris mater. Immittet angelus Domini. Anonymous: L’homme arme.

The centrepiece of this recording is Ockeghem’s L’homme arme Mass. Oxford Camerata’s choice for the Ockeghem quincentenary is most apt, since they have already given us Dufay’s setting on the famous tune (Naxos, 10/95). Besides, although this isn’t the first recording of Ockeghem’s Mass on CD, it is far and away the most accomplished, and is the first to be widely available. L’homme arme may be one of Ockeghem’s earliest Masses, dating perhaps from the early-1450s. It is also one of his most curious. For the most part it lies in a relatively high register, belying the composer’s usual predilection for low bass ranges; but every now and again the basses descend in spectacular fashion. In the third Agnus, they hold down the tune in very long notes, with the other voices seeming to float above them (as also happens throughout Ockeghem’s Caput Mass). Seldom before in the history of music can the articulation of time have been so clear a feature of a piece’s design: it seems almost to have been suspended altogether. It is an extraordinary moment, and extraordinarily difficult to pull off in performance, but here the singers seem to have got it right. Elsewhere, Summerly’s approach is nicely varied, but on the whole more meditative than emphatic; one might say that the performance grows in stature with each movement, as though keeping pace with the cycle’s ambition. In its details the reading is not without the odd glitch, but taken as a whole it is a fine achievement.

The accompanying motets work very well, too, though the treatment of musica ficta puzzles me. In particular, Summerly’s decision to sharpen leading-notes in Josquin, but not in Ockeghem, strikes me as odd (the same happened in his reading of another Ockeghem motet, Intemerata Dei mater in their anthology of renaissance masterpieces – Naxos, 3/95). A shame, too, that the choir’s richness of sound is not quite matched by the acoustic. They deserve a more inspiring venue. But the overall impression is resoundingly positive: those who didn’t hear any Ockeghem during his anniversary year should find this super-budget disc too good an opportunity to pass up.

FF



		The centrepiece of this recording is Ockeghem’s L’homme arme Mass. Oxford Camerata’s choice for the Ockeghem quincentenary is most apt, since they have already given us Dufay’s setting on the famous tune (Naxos, 10/95). Besides, although this isn’t the first recording of Ockeghem’s Mass on CD, it is far and away the most accomplished, and is the first to be widely available. L’homme arme may be one of Ockeghem’s earliest Masses, dating perhaps from the early-1450s. It is also one of his most curious. For the most part it lies in a relatively high register, belying the composer’s usual predilection for low bass ranges; but every now and again the basses descend in spectacular fashion. In the third Agnus, they hold down the tune in very long notes, with the other voices seeming to float above them (as also happens throughout Ockeghem’s Caput Mass). Seldom before in the history of music can the articulation of time have been so clear a feature of a piece’s design: it seems almost to have been suspended altogether. It is an extraordinary moment, and extraordinarily difficult to pull off in performance, but here the singers seem to have got it right. Elsewhere, Summerly’s approach is nicely varied, but on the whole more meditative than emphatic; one might say that the performance grows in stature with each movement, as though keeping pace with the cycle’s ambition. In its details the reading is not without the odd glitch, but taken as a whole it is a fine achievement.



		The accompanying motets work very well, too, though the treatment of musica ficta puzzles me. In particular, Summerly’s decision to sharpen leading-notes in Josquin, but not in Ockeghem, strikes me as odd (the same happened in his reading of another Ockeghem motet, Intemerata Dei mater in their anthology of renaissance masterpieces – Naxos, 3/95). A shame, too, that the choir’s richness of sound is not quite matched by the acoustic. They deserve a more inspiring venue. But the overall impression is resoundingly positive: those who didn’t hear any Ockeghem during his anniversary year should find this super-budget disc too good an opportunity to pass up.