19 Sep 2007
Music for Compline
The liturgy of Compline marks the end of the monastic day, as the community seeks peaceful repose for the night ahead.
Subscribe to
Opera Today
Receive articles and news via RSS feeds or email subscription.
Recently in Recordings
Italian Opera at the Liceu
The Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, after suffering a calamitous fire in the early 1990s, reopened in 1999, lovingly restored. TDK has released a series of DVDs from the Liceu since that date, providing ample evidence of the world...
MAHLER: Das Lied von der Erde
Premiered posthumously, the symphonic song-cycle Das Lied von der Erde by Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) remains one of his defining works because of its synthesis of song and symphony, two genres he pursued throughout his career.
J. S. Bach, arr. Robert Schumann. Johannes Passion.
In 1851 during his first season as music director in Düsseldorf, Robert Schumann presented a performance of Bach’s St. John Passion, and unsurprisingly adapted the score both to nineteenth-century taste and nineteenth-century practicalities.
DE LALANDE: Les Folies de Cardenio.
The centrality of dance at the French court helped bring grace, order, and political allegory into the characteristic prominence they enjoyed during the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV; theatre presentations of all stripes were infused with choreographic diversions.
SIBELIUS: Symphonies 1-7
In tandem with the recently released set of Sir Simon Rattle’s recordings of Mahler’s symphonies on EMI Classics, the set of the complete symphonies by Jean Sibelius merits attention.
Wagner: Orchestral Hightlights from the Operas
As much as Richard Wagner espoused opera reform in his theoretical writings by bringing to his works for the stage a closer unity between music and text, his actual means of doing so at times involved the use of orchestral forces that sometimes overwhelmed the sung word.
Italian opera on Gala
The budget label Gala purveys live performances both historic and relatively recent; of the three discussed here, the La Scala Fedora dates back to 1931, while the Attila comes from a 1987 La Fenice performance.
Echo de Paris: Parisian Love Songs 1610-1660
National styles of music in the seventeenth century were often distinctive, and in the case of French and Italian music, famously so.
MAHLER: Symphonies 1-10
With its recent release of Mahler’s symphonies conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, EMI Classics makes available in a single place an outstanding contribution to the composer’s discography.
WAGNER: Parsifal
This DVD records and commemorates a 1981 production of Parsifal in its Bayreuth lair, and the singers of 1981 are as fine as recollection might paint them.
Historic opera performances in Russian on Gala
Once the custom of the world's opera houses was to translate great operas into the language of each respective country.
Deutsche Grammophon budget opera sets
Repackaging older recordings having become the primary focus of a classical recording company's business, Deutsche Grammophon budgeted some funds for art direction for its budget series called "Opera House" (although that appellation only appears in a link found on the back inside cover of the sets' booklets).
STRAUSS: Der Rosenkavalier
Of Rosenkavaliers on DVD, the classics tend to be lovingly detailed productions, going back to the film of Herbert von Karajan leading an exemplary cast, with Elizabeth Schwarzkopf's iconic Marschallin.
Lamentazioni per la Settimana Santa
Despite an unsurprising degree of conservatism in liturgical music, devotional life in Rome often found ways of taking advantage of modern musical style.
Castradiva
“Her fioritura is priceless, breathtaking, and effortless.”
“One Foot in Eden Still, I Stand”: Choral Music by Nicholas Maw.
The English composer Nicholas Maw has been a major voice since the 1960's, with a wide range of works that include the 2002 opera, "Sophie’s Choice," a violin concerto for Joshua Bell (1993), and the monumentally-scaled orchestral work, "Odyssey" (1972-87).
MOZART: Requiem (Neukomm ed.)
As is often the case, last works that remain incomplete at the time of a composer’s death, are quick to invoke controversy and conspiracy theories.
ROUSSEAU: Le Devin du Village
This is a valuable new recording of a work that is only rarely heard, but was widely influential and wildly popular during the eighteenth century. Philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote both the libretto and the music, with mixed success.
Les Élémens
This disc is well worth the price for the first track alone: the opening measures of Jean-Féry Rebel’s “Cahos,” (Chaos), written in 1737 or 1738, may cause you to wonder if you accidentally left a Stockhausen or Ligeti disc in the changer.
Jan Neckers on Recently Reissued Historicals: December 2007
This recording made half a century ago will not be anyone’s first choice unless one is a die-hard fan of one of the principal singers; neither of them belonging to the absolute top in their profession.
OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »
Recordings
While the monastic context may be generally unfamiliar, bits of Compline material resurface in Anglican evensong (the canticle Nunc dimittis, for instance) and the liturgy of Compline itself has taken on considerable popularity in some modern circles. St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle, for example, has offered Compline on Sunday nights since 1954, and attracts huge crowds both in the Cathedral and on radio.
On this present disc, the marvelous English vocal ensemble, Stile Antico, performs sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century music for this rite by Tudor composers, both well-known (Tallis, Byrd, and Sheppard) and less familiar (Robert Whyte and Hugh Aston). The singing is simply extraordinary. Mindful of the intimate and reflective nature of the rite, Stile Antico allows phrases to unfold in an unhurried manner, and when soft, as in the opening salve nos of Sheppard’s “Libera nos” or the beginning of Tallis’s “Miserere nostri” the effect is exquisite and sublime. The soft is never an “undersung” volume, but full of presence. Heard here, this expressive dynamic begins to do for the sound what candlelight does for the sight, enveloping things with an aura of intimacy. And this is very compelling.
Much here is tinged with serenity. Even with contrapuntal complexity, such as in Tallis’s canonic “Miserere nostri,” the affective context of words and liturgy alike combine to keep things focused on repose. In this case, sweetly so. The final antiphon, Hugh Aston’s “Gaude virgo mater Christi,” is of a different stripe. Chronologically Aston is of an earlier generation, born twenty years before Tallis and over fifty years before Byrd. His musical language in the antiphon is sinuously melismatic with sensuous ascents of the trebles, in the echo at least of the decorated style early in the century. This, the large scale of the antiphon, and its extra-liturgical nature—Marian antiphons were often sung at the close of the evening office—set the antiphon apart from the rest of the program. But if occasionally more splendid, it nevertheless seems also within the “aura,” as well, as much a blossoming of that which has preceded as a contrast to it.
This is surely one of the best early music recordings of the year. It will certainly have pride of place on many a shelf.
Steven Plank