Agony and Ecstasy: Music of the Song of Solomon & The Sibylline Prophecies
VOICES
Tutor: Alistair Dixon
Location: University of Cumbria Chapel, Lancaster
Reviewer: Ann Bond
About 30 singers gathered at the University of Cumbria Chapel in Lancaster, for a day of Renaissance vocal music by Gesualdo, Lassus and others. At least that was what we expected, but Gesualdo was regrettably missing. However, the chromaticism in Lassus’s settings of Sybilline poems gave us a comparable experience of the ‘agony’ expressed in some of this music. Actually, the chromaticism for which Gesualdo is famous (or infamous) is not, as many assume, discordant. This music has remarkably few suspended dissonances, except at its fairly orthodox cadences; instead it revels in the startling juxtaposition of unrelated root-position chords – Fmajor or Dmajor, or (more extremely) Eminor and Cminor – linked by one note in common. Once they had adjusted to the discipline of singing accurate tones and semitones, our group of singers achieved some commendably good intonation.
‘Ecstasy’ is more easily understood, in the settings of the Song of Songs and Marian antiphons by Palestrina, Vittoria and Guerrero. In particular, the melting textures and cascading scale passages of Vittoria’s Vidi speciosam could bring all heaven before our ears. The Latin of this group was much easier to sing than the very obscure texts of the Sibylline utterances (my Latin dictionary has given up on me here). Some help as to the meaning might have been welcome. And in general, a good deal more could have been said about the background of this remarkable music, certain turns of phrase or harmony perhaps highlighted. However, Alastair was not in the best of health, and can probably be forgiven in any case for declining to tangle with the ‘bizarrre mixture of pagan hysteria and Christian epigram’ which Lassus set. It probably defies rendering into English.
Altogether, this was a valuable and worthwhile day. Alistair’s unfussed direction and innovative ways of placing the singers were specially enjoyable.
Ann Bond
First published in April 2017 Newsletter
