More Christmas Delights Part 2

Another new album that found a home in my collection this year is called A Wondrous Mystery.  The music on this CD comes mainly from the German-speaking part of Europe in the 1400s and 1500s, and is all music for the season of Christmas.  It's expertly and lovingly performed a cappella by the twelve voices of the ensemble Stile Antico and is released on the Harmonia Mundi label.

 

At a quick glance, it's obvious that the biggest work on the disc is the Missa Pastores quidnam vidistis by the Flemish composer Jacobus Clemens (yes, that's the composer who was jokingly nicknamed Clemens non Papa, supposedly to distinguish him from his contemporary, Pope Clement VII ("Clemens Papa" in Latin).

 

The Missa takes its title from Clemens' own five-voice motet on the Christmas text which asks, "Shepherds, what have you seen?" (also included in the disc).  The mass is a lovely, serene work of typical Renaissance polyphony of its time (the 1500s).  The disc is organized so that the different sections of this mass setting are interspersed with works by other and later composers. 

 

These other works include both Latin and German texts.  There are settings of Lutheran chorales and settings of German folk carols.  And in the middle of it all is the piece that really caught my attention, and caught it in the most enchanting way.

 

The title is Magnificat quinti toni and it was composed by Hieronymus Praetorius (no relation of the much better-known Michael Praetorius).  This man composed settings of the Magnificat based on each of the eight tones of traditional chant, but then added this ninth setting, specifically intended for Christmas use.  It's a work which bridges the gap between the stile antico of the Renaissance and the new stile moderno of what we now see as the early Baroque era in music.  He published it alongside two ravishingly beautiful settings of two of the German Christmas carols, with instructions that the carol arrangements should be sung between verses of the Magnificat.  The performers here have followed that direction.  The result fuses chant, polyphony, and harmonized chordal singing of the folk melodies into a thing of utter beauty.

 

The simple key to this loveliness is the use of double choirs throughout the composed sections of the Magnificat and the carol settings.  In the two carols, the melody is entrusted to one of the inner parts and the sopranos instead receive a soaring harmony line of the type that English choirs call a "descant".  It's these descant parts that lift the music out of the ordinary and give it wings.  The two carols used are Joseph lieber, Joseph mein (known in English as The Song of the Crib) and In dulci jubilo.  What fuses all these disparate elements together is the simple rising triad which opens the fifth tone chant, a figure which also occurs in the melodies of both carols. 

 

So while all the music on this disc is very beautiful and aptly suited to an evening's listening before the Christmas tree, it's the Praetorius Magnificat that always prompts me to hit the "repeat" button.