Current listening
What's the most popular playlist on the Rainy Day iPod these days? The serene Missa pro defunctis by the 16th-century Italian composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, would you believe? For a bit of variety, the works are sung by a San-Francisco based "orchestra of voices" named after the "clear-singing cock" in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Chanticleer. Is there a double entendre in there? Anyway, if you live in the Bay Area, you should try to catch one of the performances in their 26-concert season.
Palestrina was the greatest composer of liturgical music of all time and his Missa pro defunctis represents the high point of Renaissance polyphony. What makes the Chanticleer recording so interesting is that the Requiem Mass, Missa pro defunctis, is followed by the composer's voluptuous "Song of Songs", Canticum canticorum. This juxtaposition, says Chanticleer, "reminds us of an age-old connection between death and sensual love." And music, as Orpheus, the Sirens and Liberace showed.
Comments
I saw these guys in Stanford University a few years back. There is a beautiful church on campus with amazing acoustics. Chanticleer were incredible. Some of these guys sing in a range that most sopranos would be worried about hitting. While the castrati come to mind, they explained to the audience that not body parts were harmed in order to hit the high notes, apparently there is a technique :)
Posted by: John Mc | August 25, 2005 8:06 PM