Those who, like me, hauled ourselves through college music courses will remember being told that the Byrd Mass for five voices is a masterpiece, a claim soon belied when we were played a performance by some desiccated, monochromatic chorus. Had a recording like the new one by The Gesualdo Six been played instead, we might have agreed more readily with the academic judgment.
Simply by singing firmly and attending to the texts, these six male singers transform the Mass, here interspersed with a selection of appropriate choral antiphons, into vibrant, communicative scores. They accomplish this without violating today’s norms of Renaissance style.
The use of just one voice on a part, which harks back to Joshua Rifkin’s pioneering practice in Bach choral works, could sound threadbare or even counterproductively economical. Not here, though: These singers’ solidly grounded voicings and impeccable intonation produce a full-bodied, organlike richness at the start of the Credo—a vital rendition, by the way, which eschews the conventional, dissociated “laundry list” approach—and amplify the power of the counterpoint in Tristitia et anxietas. Where two or more voices move together, as in the Ave Maria, the coordination is perfect. Throughout the program, precise tuning makes for especially satisfying final cadences. Only the countertenor’s occasionally wan, flutey pianos disappoint. At full volume, he matches everyone else.
In his note, Owain Park, the group’s founder-director, emphasizes urgency and directness of communication; here, that’s reflected in a singular attention to the meaning of the texts. (It’s easy to take them for granted when “the Ordinary of the Mass” is spoken or sung unchanged every week.) The group projects a number of passages with an appropriately reflective restraint. In the Gloria, “Domine Deus, Agnus Dei” becomes pensive; the second part of Tristitia et anxietas inhabits a consoling mood. In the Credo, the hush at “Qui propter nos homines” contemplates the entire mystery of the Incarnation, not just of the Nativity itself. (Note that Byrd reserves homophony to highlight, not “” but “” — not the birth but the death.) In , “” (“Because we have sinned against You”) is suitably humble.
