iuchair Ensemble
Govan Old Parish Church - 20/07/23
The late 19th-century Gothic Revival Govan Old Church, built on a site that has been a place of worship since the mid-to-late 5th century, now housing a collection of 10th-century Strathclyde Viking sculpture recovered from the site, called the Govan Stones, was the awe-inspiring venue for a performance of 15th-century liturgical and ecclesiastical music by the iuchair Ensemble. The one-hour programme of song, tantalisingly on the cusp between medieval tonality and Renaissancepolyphony, featured Missa Spiritus Almus, a mass by Franco-Flemish composer Petrus de Domarto, a contemporary of Ockeghem, interspersed with motets by other composers of the period, his compatriots Johannes Touront and Guillaume du Fay, and Englishman Leonel Power.
The iuchair Ensemble (iuchair is Scots Gaelic for ‘key’ – eochair is the Irish spelling) comprises three tenors and a bass (all with flexible extended tonal range), plus a bodhrán player. They specialise in the idiomatic performance of medieval and Renaissance vocal music, informed by the most current academic thinking. In my youth, ‘academic’ in relation to early music almost invariably meant ‘dry’. Not so with iuchair. For them, ‘historically-informed performance’ merits an emphasis on ‘performance’, making the music sound up-to-date and indeed as avant-garde as it undoubtedly did in its own time (much to the disapproval of the orthodoxy of the day, incidentally). Not an anorak in sight.
The programme began with two Touront pieces, sung by the vocalists at the back of the altar space, a nicely polyphonic motet ‘O Florens Rosa’ (O flowering rose) followed by a plainchant liturgical Introit, ‘Gaudens gaudebo’ (I shall continuously rejoice), in a somewhat muted acoustic. They then advanced to where the four music stands were ranged at the front of the altar space, and were joined by the seated bodhrán player, for a liturgical Kyrie and Gradual. Benedicta es tu (Blessed art thou) by Petrus. These sounded quite medieval, with some plainchant elements and some very stylish hocketing. Du Fay’s motet, Ave regina caelorum (Hail, Queen of the Heavens) followed, with a teasing metaphor for the development of polyphony as first one tenor, then two and then three enter until a full polyphonic sound is established. As an amateur choral performer myself, I am aware of and sympathetic to the vocal performer’s phobia of dropping pitch and the resultant self-exhortation to ‘think up’, occasionally resulting in a line sounding sharp. This happened briefly in the Du Fay and, I must add, only stood out because the intonation was otherwise perfect throughout the performance.
The Gloria and Credo from the Petrus Missa were performed next, separated by his mostly plainchant Alleluia: Tota pulchra es (You are all things beautiful). The Gloria is a gem, with shifting moods, moments of prominence for the bass line, the bodhrán joining in at ‘qui tollis peccata mundi’ (who takest away the sins of the world) – and, sure, wouldn’t you have a spring in your step with that burden removed? – and a dramatic crescendo at the end. The bodhrán, used sparingly throughout the concert, endowed the music with a pulse and a vitality, but was never obtrusive, despite the meaning of the Irish word: little deafener. The Credo is just as good with equal variety of scoring and moods, particularly dark at ‘crucifixus (crucified)’ and magical at ‘et in Spiritum Sanctum (and in the Holy Spirit)’. The custodians of the meaning of liturgy and scripture must have been enraged at a mere musician being so audaciously interpretative! A short and sweet motet by Petrus’ influential English predecessor, Leonel Power, ‘Ave maris stella’ (Hail, star of the sea) acted as a triple-time tension-relieving interlude.
Then it was back to Petrus for the Sanctus & Benedictus, an incantation (not remotely suggestive of choirs of angels) followed by long ornate polyphonic lines on each of ‘pleni sunt’, ‘caeli’ and ‘et terra’ and a big glorious sound on ‘gloria tua’ (ah, there they are!) – Heaven and Earth are full of your glory. The Benedictus featured some new material, but the same devotional mood. The Communio, ‘Gloriosa dicta sunt de te (Glorious things have been said about you)’, plainchant morphing, via hocketing, into full-blown polyphony, segued directly into the Agnus Dei, a big bass solo, joined by tenor ornamentation, a stylish tenor line with some swooping portamento, and some canonical writing on the ‘Dona nobis pacem (Grant us peace) brought the Missa and the concert to a close.
In surroundings that evoke antiquity and in the performance of ancient music, iuchair make it strikingly immediate, modern and involving. I am definitely a fan and can conclude:
Gloriosa dictabiles sunt de eis.
Cover Photo: Rae Phillips-Smith