Search - Palestrina, Turner, Pro Cantione Antiqua :: Canticum Canticorum

As deep and as wide as an ocean

Steven Guy | Croydon, South Australia | 11/17/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a great work. Perhaps it is one of the greatest musical masterpieces in human history? It is certainly "up there" with Machaut's 'Messe de Notre Dame', Ockeghem's 'Requiem', Brumel's 'Missa et ecce terræ motus', Lassus's 'Penitential Psalms', Monteverdi's 'Vespro della Beata Vergine' and 8th book of madrigals, Schütz' 'Psalmen Davids' & three 'Symphoniæ Sacræ', Biber's 'Mystery Sonatas', Corelli's 'Concerti Grossi', Bach's Passions & B Minor Mass, Mozart's da Ponte operas and Beethoven's symphonies.



This work is sung by a group of soloists - ten men - rather than a choir. The result is a very much more intimate "chamber" performance of this work. The singers are all very good, with countertenors James Bowman, Charles Brett and Robin Tyson, singing the highest cantus lines.



You need to spend time with this music. Not an hour here or there. You NEED to spend years with this music. It isn't music for immediate gratification or titillation. It is music of the most passionate, deep, thoughtful, beautiful and involved kind. Palestrina didn't write this music to "please the masses", he wrote it for the intellectual stimulation of the intellectuals and intellectual faithful of his time, or so it seems to me. The Canticum Canticorum is NOT for philistines, New Agers and people who want "classy Renaissance dinner party music" to impress their friends.



This is music which stands outside of time and space. You want a description of the music on this recording? I can't give one, nor will I try. This is, in many ways, what used to be known as "Absolute Music".



Wanna know what that is? Look it up!



A few final words: this recording is sublime, beautiful, passionate, deep and definitive.



There, I hope that is enough for you!



Now go out and goddam well buy this disc! Okay? >;-/"

Excellent, but Second Choice

Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 11/17/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Palestrina dedicated his Fourth Book of Motets, from which the Canticum Canticorum Salomonis is taken, to his patron, the reforming Pope Gregory XIII, who commissioned him to revise and reform the Roman chant books.

However, there's good reason to suppose these erotically spiritual motets, which are far too polyphonic and too artistic for use in the Pope's service, were in fact written to be sung in the devotional gatherings initiated by (Saint) Phlip Neri in Rome in the 1560s and 1570s. The singers would have been Palestrina's male colleagues from the Vatican choirs. Palestrina had an entrepreneurial side and issued these and other motets in printed form in 1584, for the use of confraternities of musical taste hither and yon. The texts in Latin, from the Song of Solomon, would have been comprehensible to such gentlemen singers, and would have required an allegorical interpretation.



Pro Cantione Antigua has staked a certain ownership to the works of Palestrina as their foremost repertoire. This is a richly-textured performance, and I feel guilty awarding it less than five stars. The performance of the same motets by the Hilliard Ensemble, however, is more to my taste. Pro Cantione has chosen to sing these intricate miniatures as a choir, two voices on a part; the result gets muddy at times and the flawless tuning of the Hilliards is not equaled by Pro Cantione. The tempi are somewhat too uniform and the dynamics tend to be limited to abrupt movements from mezzoforte to forte. On the plus side, the ten male singers match very nicely in vocal timbre, with individually luscious voices. Still, if you don't intend to own two CDs of these sumptuous devotional madrigals, the Hilliard Ensemble is the better choice.

"