On Saturday I joined a group of singers in Cambridge to give a scratch performance of Antoine Brumel's Earthquake Mass. It sounds an unlikely event, given that the mass is a substantial work in 12 parts, but having spent the day rehearsing we managed a very creditable performance of the work.
The piece gets its name because Brumel uses the plainchant Antiphon from Lauds for Easter which includes the bit from St. Matthew's Gospel about the veil of the temple being rent and the earth quaking. Brumel uses a lot of canonic effects so that the work sound tremendous. Rather curiously, the majority of parts lie in the tenor range. The soprano parts are low. The counter-tenor and tenor parts are all pretty much in the same range and the bass parts, for the most part, lie high. So instead of using 12 parts to cover a wide vocal range, Brumel uses 12 parts to create an amazing wodge of sound in the middle of the choral range.
Monday, 20 April 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Popular Posts this month
-
The young composer Alistair White is having a busy moment, his opera ROBE recently premiered at Tête à Tête [see my review ], and now hi...
-
Alastair White (Photo Gemma A. Williams) We caught the premiere of Alastair White 's opera ROBE at Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival in ...
-
Handel Suites de Pièces nos 1-4, 1720; Pierre Hantaï; Mirare Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 4 December 2020 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)...
-
Gimnazija Kranj Symphony Orchestra I get all sorts of mail, people sending my information on concerts and recordings. Everything gets gl...
-
Artist Impression of potentia -designs for Nevill Holt Opera 2021 Whilst the exact nature of live performance this Summer is still unclear, ...
-
Verdi: La traviata - Opera Holland Park 2018 (Photo Robert Workman) Socially distanced opera is expensive and very much about space, for th...
-
Shostakovich: Four Romances on Poems by Pushkin - Lada Valesova, James Platt - Oxford Lieder Festival (photo taken from live stream) Shos...
-
Vincent Larderet (Photo Karis Kennedy) The French pianist Vincent Larderet 's most recent discs have involved the music of his countryme...
-
Humperdinck: Hansel and Gretel - Nadine Benjamin - Scottish Opera (Photo James Glossop) This week there were a number of threads running th...
-
Inside the Longborough Festival Opera big top for Summer 2021 More imaginative solutions to the problem of performing opera in a socially ...

No comments:
Post a comment