mothra3's Full Review: Renaissance - Music for Inner Peace
If THE SIXTEEN is supposed to be one of the world’s greatest choral ensembles, why is it that I can’t bear to listen to them??? The Tallis Scholars could beat them up and take their lunch money any day, and twice on Sundays. OK, that’s probably a little too harsh, because each of them probably sings in their respective church choirs on Sunday, and the other members think they’re sooo great! OK, that’s a little too harsh, too, because most church choirs aren’t good enough to even be recorded, no matter how good they think they sound. And would I ever make the cut to be one of The Magnificent Seven—I mean—Sixteen? No. So that just goes to prove that it’s a lot easier to be a critic than an artist.
But I do have classical training in the arts, and I know enough to know when I don’t like listening to something. And I don’t like listening to these guys. They don’t make my ears bleed, but just listening to this CD enough times to write this review was like clipping your fingernails too short. Ack! Somewhere along the line, while these guys were busy thinking about how great they are, they dropped the ability to be subtle in the mud and lost it, never to be found again. Their sound is as subtle as a freight train. Everything is nearly the same dynamic quality, with just a tiny hush here and there, and a little extra volume thrown in on the high notes, since as we all know, you have to get loud on the high notes, right? But other than that, everything’s a flat forte with these guys. As Eliza Doolittle often said, “Guuuhh.”
So why do I hate this CD so much? Let me count the ways:
If it’s called “Renaissance Music for Inner Peace,” wouldn’cha think it’d be Renaissance Music?
Apparently not. You see, they thought they’d be clever and try to pass off modern compositions as Renaissance Music, mixed in with the real thing. I mean, if you’ve got Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere as your first track, you must be the real thing, right? BUZZZ. Sorry, wrong answer. They seem to be trying desperately to show that the work of some modern composers can reflect the art of the Renaissance. Sorry kids. See, Samuel Barber’s Agnus Dei, composed in 1967 from his earlier Adagioalmost comes close, but the minimalist The Lamb by Tavener (1982) is not merely minimalist but discordant; the Totus Tuus of Gorecki, composed in 1987 for Pope John Paul II is tedious at best, but breathtakingly banal at worst. (Apparently no one told him that repeating ‘Maria, Maria’ is not effective as music; fans at a football stadium can do as much.) From the liner notes, it would appear that according to director Harry Christophers, simplicity is the necessary characteristic to make modern music “Renaissance-like”—you know, just like simplicity is the necessary characteristic in trying to make Mies van der Rohe’s steel and glass buildings sound like the Medici Palace. Is Renaissance music simple? Well, it depends on what you’re comparing it to…certainly Baroque, Rococo and later styles became more…complicated? Complex? Ultimately “busy”? But if you try to describe Tallis’ Spem in Alium as simple, you’ll need to have your head examined.
The Symphony of Harmony and Invention
Sorry, what was that? Are we supposed to take this name seriously—especially when it’s paired with the words “Early Music”? The instruments this group plays as listed in the liner notes are: The Dulcian, Sackbutts, Org and Tbo. Uh…I’ve heard of a dulcimer…and as for Sackbutts, I’m not sure I want to know. (OK, I looked, and these are apparently real names for early instruments. That doesn’t necessarily make them good, or we would more likely have heard of them.) Org may simply be short for organ (?), but Tbo sounds like an African folk instrument. I mean, we’ve already demonstrated that the name “The Sixteen” is exquisitely dumb, so why should we be surprised? (I keep picturing Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall singing with them.)
Tone, tone, tone…the three words in vocal music.
“Harry Christophers brings fresh insights to music…” claims The Sixteen’s website. Hmm, yes, fresh…Massengill fresh. Did you ever hear the one about Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli—it said to Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices, “Do you ever get that not-so-fresh feeling?” Well, thank you Harry! No longer does our Renaissance music lack freshness. It’s bright and shiny now—so bright it’s almost tinny. The overall brightness of the music is its downfall, as its lack of anything else makes it utterly bland. Sometimes in pursuing purity of tone, the Brunhilda Sopranos who never learned to do anything but belt have to try and restrain the vibrato, and this is the tone you get. Not as bad as screeching, but all resonance is lost. You cannot, cannot sacrifice resonance for pure tone. Get some different sopranos. On Barber’s Adagio, the creeping subtlety leading to the great crescendo near the end was utterly lost, and was only slightly less painful than fingernails on a chalkboard. Then they make it worse by holding that high note without changing the dynamics at all. (No, you don’t have to crescendo, but if the dynamics are totally static, you’ve missed the definition of dynamic, haven’t you?) But the most unforgivable thing of all was the soprano who scoops up to her high note in that piece and in Allegri’s Miserere. I guess she was just trying to be like her idol, Renee Fleming of Scoopsville, USA. Yeeeesh.
So what makes The Sixteen so great?
If someone could please answer this for me, I’d be much obliged. Perhaps I should subject myself to listening to more of their music before passing such harsh judgement, but after having to sit through this one, I don’t care to take that chance. I mean, if you can’t tell the difference between Polyphony and telephone, then I’d have to imagine these guys would be regular swells to you. But when I read fluffy liner notes like this one from Palestrina’s Kyrie, I get the willies: “Strangely enough, if you perform this work badly you can’t hear the words! But the way Palestrina has set it means that if you breathe and feel the music together, it comes alive.” Apparently this is something the monastic choirs either missed or were more into than we’d like to imagine…
The bottom line is that the actual Renaissance music in this album is very worth hearing. However, you may want to avoid this incarnation of it if you happen to have ears.
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