Gesualdo Six
My heart sank slightly when I read the blurb about the Gesualdo Six, a vocal group formed in Cambridge in 2014, originally to perform Gesualdo’s ‘Tenebrae Responsories’. A few member changes later, they are performing two concerts at the Lammermuir Festival in St Mary’s Parish Church in Haddington. Yet another worthy group of Oxbridge graduates following in the tradition of the King’s Singers long ago, trying to get into the market for clever posh boys singing a capella, I thought. Indeed, at first sight, and first read of their CVs, they are guilty as charged, but it took all of 20 seconds of their first concert last night (11th September 2021) for me to realise that we were in the presence of supreme quality. Their homogeneity of sound is miraculous, with a clear sweep from creamy countertenor to deep fruity bass, and their ability to listen to each other to achieve the perfect blend is always apparent. With a basic combination of countertenor, two tenors, a baritone and two basses, they change around the line-up continually to caress the listener’s ear. It is invidious, with a group of only six voices, to single out individuals, but I must praise, in particular, the two outer voices (Guy James, Countertenor and Owain Park, Bass), who give the group its special quality. I must here declare an interest, as for many years, I sang with the world-famous Hilliard Ensemble, as they travelled the world singing Arvo Pärt’s sublime ‘Passio’. I sang the role of Jesus, who always sings solo, accompanied by organ, and was able at close quarters, to listen to that vocal group’s magical chemistry, built around the ethereal countertenor of David James. With an even smaller core group of four (ATTBar), the Hilliards swept all before them, until they retired a couple of years ago, after 40 years of performing. I can categorically declare that the Gesualdo Six, although in no way replicating the Hilliard Ensemble, seem to me to stand on the brink of a career as illustrious as my old friends. My only caveat would be their name, as looking at various programmes and clips on YouTube, they often appear as the Gesualdo 7 or other random numbers of Gesualdos. I would have thought that they are setting themselves up for trouble by using a specific number. I know the Sixteen are often an ensemble of different numbers, but that’s not a great precedent either, to be honest.
Anyway, let’s return to the concert, and the programme entitled Josquin’s Legacy. Josquin Desprez (other spellings are available, but I’ll use this one today) was born sometime around 1450-55, somewhere in the area of the modern French/Belgian border, ruled in those days by the Duke of Burgundy, whose court was in Dijon. As part of my History degree, back in the prehistoric 1970s, I wrote a dissertation about the rule of the late mediaeval Dukes of Burgundy, and I have always been fascinated by this period, both politically and culturally. That there was a wonderful flowering of musical genius in the Flemish lands of the Burgundian dukes is as true as it is unexplained.
Josquin appears to have been a choirboy at the Basilica of Saint-Quentin, along with his friend and later composer colleague, Jean Mouton, and it seems that his voice was exceptional, as he then turns up as a singer at the court of Duke René of Anjou in Aix-en-Provence (where I have also sung, over 500 hundred years later!) in 1477. He appears to have stayed with the southern court for some time, probably moving to Paris in 1481 with the Duke. By 1483, he was in the service of the Sforza family in Milan, and then turns up in the Papal Choir in the Sistine Chapel in Rome from 1489 to 1495, where, it is believed, he wrote his name on the chapel wall, a common custom of the time. All this time, he was writing music and developing his style, as he adjusted to the various changes in musical thought both national and intellectual.
The change from the contrapuntal style of the earlier Flemish and English masters, of which Ockeghem was one of the most notable examples, to the more homophonic style, with a much closer attention to word setting, coming partially from the Italian tradition of secular songs, which developed into the high Renaissance style of Palestrina and Victoria, was one of the greatest achievements of Josquin. It is therefore not surprising to find him in the court of the Dukes of Este in Ferrara, as Maestro di Capella in 1503. He only stayed a year and returned north again as the plague swept through southern Europe. He was indeed fortunate to leave, as his illustrious compatriot Jacob Obrecht, died in Ferrara of plague in 1505! Several other Flemish composers found themselves at the Este court in Ferrara, following the example of Josquin, and these Oltramontani (people from beyond the Alps) featured strongly throughout the concert, as they built on the legacy established by Josquin. Their names are less familiar to us now, but the likes of Jean Mouton, Antonius Divitis, Antoine Brumel and Pierre de la Rue all continued the tradition and style introduced by their more famous compatriot. We heard a motet, ‘Quis dabit oculis’, by the only Italian in the programme, Constanzo Festa, a magnificent lament for Anne, Duchess of Brittany and Queen Consort of France. A great defender of the independence of Brittany from France, she was notable for marrying two French kings, Charles VIII and Louis XII, bearing multiple children, most of whom died, and keeping a marvellously cultural court, primarily at Blois, employing many of tonight’s composers, as well as Ockeghem himself. Some of the great Loire Châteaux were built on her orders, and so her death in 1514 inspired multiple Regretz Chansons and Déplorations from many of her composers, lamenting the passing of such a tragic figure.
The Gesualdo Six gave us a concert of great variety, employing the superb acoustics of St Mary’s, Haddington, to fine effect. The six singers, all individual of voice and superbly musical, formed various combinations to give the audience a mixture of sonorities which brought out the beauty of much of the programme. It was introduced in a chatty but informative manner, with just enough information to assist us in understanding what we were hearing. The ongoing problems with Covid meant that there were no programmes on the night, although notes, texts and translations were available to download before the concert. I would suggest that the Festival might have made this clearer to people when they were buying their tickets, as it was evident that I was in a very small minority in the audience with reading material. This is a perennial problem even without Covid. I was aware in my concert during the Edinburgh Festival (reviewed by Hugh Kerr in EMR) that, despite the happy faces gazing up at me from the audience, virtually no-one there had a clue what I was singing about in German. I actually, on that occasion, stopped and asked the audience to refer to their programmes in order better to understand the music, but it is often a lost cause. Why intelligent people want to listen to songs and operas of which they understand nothing, is a mystery to me. They are literally missing half the point! There seems to be some sort of reverse intellectual snobbery at work here which suggests that audience members are too proud to admit that they cannot understand the words and compensate by trying to convince themselves that they don’t matter anyway. Wrong!! Particularly if you go to a song recital, remember that a) we have spent a lot of effort trying to be as clear and articulate as possible because the words are worth hearing and b) much of the poetry of classical songs is superb and merits study and attention. You wouldn’t go to a poetry reading, only to listen to the mellifluous sound of the words! Rant over.
The concert interspersed laments with motets to the Virgin Mary, and, although low on the humour register, it rated highly on the scale of emotional profundity. As a confirmed atheist nurtured in the bosom of a Church of Scotland Presbyterian family, hymns to the Virgin Mary still lie at the extremity of my understanding, and reading some of the translations supplied, the mind boggles at quite what the early church was trying to say in establishing the cult of the Virgin, but there is no doubt that it inspired some beautiful music. Josquin’s less familiar contemporaries, whose works we heard at the concert, rose marvellously to the challenge of both extreme praise for the Virgin and extreme sadness at the deaths of Ockeghem and Anne of Brittany. Undoubtedly, though, it was in the works of Josquin Desprez himself that we heard the finest music, notably the fabulous ‘Nymphes des Bois’ and the final motet ‘O Virgo Prudentissima’. I especially appreciated the dynamic range of the Gesualdo Six, as they are so well matched that they can sing with full voice and make a grand noise, while also being able to scale down to the finest of pianissimi. Speaking of pianissimi, they produced magical sounds in their encore, the wondrous ‘O Nata Lux’, by Tallis.
I have already mentioned the splendid countertenor, Guy James, who combines beauty of sound with a clear grasp of emotional engagement. The two tenors, Joseph Wicks and Josh Cooter, are well-matched, Joseph lighter and more haute-contre and Josh more mellifluous and firm-grained, while the baritone of Michael Craddock, heard to fine effect wandering about the church singing plainsong versions of the Lamentations of Jeremiah while his colleagues sang various Regretz Chansons, brought a nice warm quality to the mix. As a bass myself, I have spent the past 40 years being described by reviewers as “sonorous”, so it is with no fear whatsoever that I can report that the two basses, Sam Mitchell and Owain Park, are “sonorous”! They provide a very solid and profound bass to the group’s sound, often a problem with young ensembles who naturally lack the gravitas of more mature singers. This is why I think that the Gesualdo Six are particularly effective as an ensemble, as their sound, still relatively fresh and clear with no wobbly older voices, has a depth which is quite special, combined with a very beautiful top voice, seemingly easily capable of refined high singing. Memories of the original King’s Singers come flooding back, although the sounds of the two groups are quite different.
Suffice it to say that, if you get a chance, go to hear the Gesualdo Six (despite the name!), and find their recordings. The presentation by the Lammermuir Festival was excellent, and St Mary’s Parish Church in Haddington is a splendid venue.
