Recent Concert Reviews
May-June, 2008
HARVARD MAGAZINE
- Home of the Humanities
By ELIZABETH GUDRAIS
On one December evening, the concert [at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC] is by the vocal ensemble Pomerium. (Fittingly, its medieval Latin name translates as garden or orchard.) The ensemble sings in front of a Palladian arch; tapestries from the fifteenth century hang above the singers’ heads. The scene is framed by the floor of red Verona marble, the Italianate columns, the gilded bronze wall sconces—designed for candles but now electrified—and the massive silver-brass light fixtures, said to be from the cathedral of Segovia in Spain.
The program is songs of Christmas, but not those that would be familiar to modern ears. The ensemble sings in Latin, starting with a monophonic Gregorian chant version of each song—haunting in its sparsity—followed by its layered and textured polyphonic elaboration, like a stove with all its burners going at once, different dishes bubbling and boiling. Some listeners are undoubtedly considering this a commentary on stylistic change between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; others, just as certainly, are simply appreciating the lush sounds.
March 23, 2006
SOUTH BEND TRIBUNE
- Pomerium blends sacred and profane
By MICHAEL SNYDER
SOUTH BEND—Under the direction of Alexander Blachly, the New York City-based Pomerium gave a superb performance of a cappella Renaissance choral works on Tuesday night at the University of Notre Dame's DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts in a program titled “Masters of the Renaissance: Du Fay, Ockeghem, Josquin, Monteverdi, Gesualdo.”
The highlight of the first half of the program, which consisted of works by early Renaissance masters, was “Mass on L’homme armé,” by Johannes Ockeghem (d. 1497). The melodic material for the Mass, which was taken from the most famous melody of Renaissance Europe, “L’homme armé” (it also was used as thematic material for other pieces on the program), is woven into the fabric of all five movements. In this performance, a portion of the ensemble sang the French “L’homme armé” text beneath the Latin text, and both texts were clear and audible. The singers navigated through the composition’s musical architecture with complete ease and abandon.
The second half of the program, which featured music from the late Renaissance, consisted of four madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi (c. 1567-1643) and six motets and responsories by Carlo Gesualdo (c. 1561-1613).
The Monteverdi pieces are of particular interest: Conceived as love songs set to Italian poetry, they were later adapted to sacred texts in Latin; Pomerium sang the Latin texts. Gesualdo’s works, like those of Monteverdi, point toward a new sophistication, especially in his use of chromaticism. The singers were able to adjust their sound to the heavier, fuller lines of Monteverdi and Gesualdo, always maintaining a precise, clear tone that allowed them to sing perfect chromatic harmonies.
A professor of music at Notre Dame, Blachly, the founder and director of Pomerium, knows the Renaissance repertoire intimately and has an innate understanding of voices and how they work. As such, Pomerium performs not so much as a choral group but as an ensemble of solo singers who know how to work together without overshadowing one another. Because their voices are of a high caliber, the singers in Pomerium brought something to this performance that is often lacking in other ensembles’ performances of this repertoire: color and timbre.
March 1, 2006
CLASSICSTODAY.COM
- VOCAL ENSEMBLE POMERIUM CLOSES 2005-2006
By VICTOR CARR JR
Corpus Christi Church, New York; February 26, 2006
The final program in this season’s “Music Before 1800” series featured the Renaissance vocal ensemble Pomerium. Led by director Alexander Blachly, Pomerium, whose name translates as “garden,” is distinguished by its beauty and purity of sound, remarkable inner voice clarity, and always impeccable intonation—qualities which sounded forth perfectly in the splendid acoustic of Manhattan’s Corpus Christi Church.
Their program, entitled “Ockeghem and his Circle,” was a celebration of the fifteenth century composer, as well as those with whom he worked and whom he influenced. The opening Ave Maria made immediately clear why Ockeghem was so beloved by his contemporaries—it is a miracle of ever-expanding and interweaving polyphony captured in exquisite, immaculate timbres. Ockeghem’s Missa L’homme armé dominated the first half, and here Pomerium’s arresting qualities were at their most audible, as Blachly and his singers maintained a tonal variety that ever captivated the ear throughout five movements all in the same key.
But perhaps the most intriguing Ockeghem work appeared on the second half: the comparatively brief Mort, tu as navré (Lament on the death of Binchois) with its dual-layer construction in which the lower voices repeat the Requiem Mass while above the higher voices sing three strophes honoring the departed composer Gilles Binchois. Binchois himself was represented by a moving Kyrie “Angelorum” and Psalm 110 (sung in plainchant), as well as the endearing love ballade De plus en plus. This last was one of the pieces wherein Pomerium subdivided into smaller units (in this case a vocal trio); others included the humorous Filles a marier (Binchois) and the more serious Vergene bella (another trio) by Guillaume Du Fay, whose Il sera par vous combatu was featured as well.
Perhaps the most familiar name on the program was that of composer Josquin Desprez, whose haunting Ut Phebi radiis closed the first half. Desprez would have a similar honor at the program’s end, which offered the deeply felt Nymphes des bois (Lament on the death of Ockeghem). For this last work, Pomerium sounded just as fresh and captivating as it had in the beginning. The audience’s applause for this remarkable group was prolonged and appreciative.
September 19, 2005
THE COURIER-JOURNAL (LOUISVILLE)
- All hail vocal purity of tone and purpose
By ANDREW ADLER
Anyone declaring that 15th-century vocal polyphony is uniquely exquisite will get no argument from me. As yesterday's performances by the Pomerium ensemble testified with such articulate, sumptuous power, Ockeghem, Busnoys, Du Fay and their brethren composers defined an aesthetic undiminished by the next half-millennium of evolving styles.
Simply put, the unaccompanied vocal lines of these scores, combined in pure-toned textures, colors and trajectories, delight the ear in fabulous ways. The level of accomplishment needed to do full justice to this material, however, is seldom encountered. Too often a listener enters the concert hall full of hope and emerges grumbling in frustration.
Not with Pomerium. Director Alexander Blachly's eight singers came to the University of Louisville School of Music and displayed complete idiomatic mastery of their program. The 2005-06 Speed Endowed Concert Series is off to a superb start.
Dubbed "Music from the Burgundian Courts of Philip the Bold, John the Fearless and Philip the Good," Pomerium's lineup was broad and deep.
It was the last of this threesome, though, whose spirit hovered most over the afternoon's repertoire in Comstock Concert Hall. Philip the Good had the instinct, resources and practical sense to indulge in the good life, which included several leading composers of the day.
Their achievements astonished then and astonish now -- typified by works like Busnoys' "In hydraulis," Du Fay's "Il sera par vous conbatu/L'ome arme" and "Vergene bella," and above all yesterday, Ockeghem's deeply contemplative "Mort tu as navre," a memorial to his mentor Binchois.
Whether in full ensemble or through various sub-groupings, Pomerium's singers were technically fastidious without ever coming off as stylistic fussbudgets. We've come a long way from the days when historically informed performances tended to compromise expressive potency.
Groups like the Tallis Scholars and the Hilliard Ensemble put that to rest some time ago. Add Pomerium to those select and enlightened ranks.
March 25, 2005
THE NEW YORK TIMES
- POMERIUM
By ALLAN KOZINN
This most venerable of New York’s early-music vocal ensembles, founded in 1972 and led by Alexander Blachly, consistently presents programs that offer both beautiful singing and scholarly enlightenment. Its program at the Cloisters tomorrow is appropriately seasonal and includes chant for Easter, elaborations on chant melodies by Dufay and other composers and motets by Lassus, Monteverdi, Gesualdo and Byrd. Tomorrow at 1 and 3. The Cloisters, Fort Tryon Park (212) 650-2290. Tickets $35.
November 5, 2004
THE PLAIN DEALER (CLEVELAND)
- POMERIUM
Vocal program abounds with glorious delights of Burgundian period
By DONALD ROSENBERG
Arts patronage is not what it used to be. Not, for example, when you consider the impact the dukes of Burgundy had on creativity in the 14th and 15th centuries.
The Cleveland Museum of Art is illuminating the subject both in sight and sound these days. Its exhibition, "Dukes & Angels: Art From the Court of Burgundy (1364-1419)," amazes the eyes with all sorts of manuscripts, sculptures and paintings from the period.
Thank goodness the ears aren't being neglected. The early-music group Ciaramella explored instrumental works from the Burgundian courts to vibrant effect Sunday at Gartner Auditorium, and the vocal ensemble Pomerium took care of a cappella matters Wednesday.
New York-based Pomerium, whose name comes from the Latin for "garden," has been lavishing special gifts on Renaissance music since 1972. The vocal octet comprises sopranos, countertenor, tenors and basses who execute marvels of blend, interplay, clarity and enunciation under the subtle direction of founder Alexander Blachly.
But back to those arts patrons. Pomerium's program, "Music From the Burgundian Courts of Philip the Bold, John the Fearless and Philip the Good," reflected the wisdom and munificence that flourished in 15th-century France. The list of composers who received the artistic green light reads like a who's who of Renaissance masters. They include Guillaume de Machaut, Gilles Binchois and Johannes Ockeghem.
Pomerium presented a potpourri of selections, both of sacred and secular personality, and luxuriated in the music's contrapuntal ingenuity and plainchant radiance. Blachly asked the audience to withhold applause until the end of each half, a request that largely was granted.
To enumerate the glories of the 22 pieces Pomerium performed on this occasion would take several sections of the newspaper. But several works stood out for their magnificent ability to convey mystical wonder or earthly delight.
Certainly the works by Machaut captivated the senses in terms of unpredictable phrase shapes and jarring dissonances. Binchois' Kyrie "Angelorum" requires singers to weave lines with seamless urgency, which the Pomerium members achieved with exceptional purity of pitch and rhythmic assurance.
The playful side of Binchois emerges in his song "Filles a marier," which warns of short-termed martial bliss, while his antiphonal "Inter natos mulierum" is a glowing homage to the birth of John the Baptist.
The support network for composers evidently was strong in the Renaissance, at least as suggested in Ockeghem's "Mort tu as navre," in which polyphonic lines of transfixing allure pay tribute to the late Binchois.
Pomerium sang the night's repertoire in various vocal configurations, the level remaining lofty no matter how many voices were in inspired action.
October 7, 2004
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
- Pomerium
Corpus Christi Church
By HEIDI WALESON
The Sunday afternoon Pomerium concert was all about subtlety. Pomerium has a long history: Alexander Blachly founded the group in 1972 to sing the music of Renaissance chapel choirs. This program explored the musical relationship between the Burgundian and Spanish courts. Pomerium’s singers negotiated the intricate polyphony with uncanny precision and verve, handling everything from a spare 15th-century Mass setting by Johannes Ockeghem to the lush, intertwining textures of later motets by Thomas Luis de Victoria and some rollicking Christmas songs by Francisco Guerrero.
October 5, 2004
THE NEW YORK TIMES
- Pomerium
Corpus Christi Church
By ALLAN KOZINN
To open the Music Before 1800 series at Corpus Christi on Sunday, and as its contribution to the New York Early Music Celebration, the superb vocal ensemble Pomerium offered a program based on the musical ties between Spain and Burgundy during the 15th and 16th centuries.
Musical ties then were to some extent the product of political alliances, and those were often sealed in marriage. The political and marital focal point of Pomerium's program was the marriage of Philip the Fair, the Duke of Burgundy, and Princess Juana of Castile in 1496. Musically, this created a pipeline through which, over several generations, the music of the Flemish composers who were favored at the French court flowed into Spain and the works of Spanish composers made their way to Northern Europe.
Alexander Blachly, who founded Pomerium in 1972 and still directs it, opened the program with Ockeghem's Missa au Travail Suis, a work that apparently made its way to Spain during the reign of Philip's son, Charles V, who became king in 1516. Ockeghem had been dead for nearly 20 years by then, but the work survived in a cathedral manuscript in Barcelona. Slow-moving and spare in texture, this Mass nevertheless thrives on its deeply emotional text setting, and it showed the 13-voice Pomerium at its polished and beautifully blended best.
A second Flemish composer, Gombert, was represented by the Kyrie and Gloria from his Missa Sur Tous Regretz, a work composed around 1530 in what was already an immensely more sumptuous language than Ockeghem's.
Still, the real treats here were the Spanish works. A group of colorful villancicos on Nativity texts by Francisco Guerrero had the strongest Iberian melodic accent. But there were ample charms in the magnificently seamless sacred works of Andreas de Silva and Cristóbal de Morales, and a group of works by Tomás Luis de Victoria included a sweetly harmonized setting of verses from "Song of Songs."
October 31, 2003
THE NEW YORK TIMES
- Classical Music and Dance Guide
This ensemble, led by Alexander Blachly, has become the standard by which early music vocal groups are measured.
November 3, 2003
THE NEW YORKER
- Escaping the Museum
By ALEX ROSS
"Passion, not reverence, makes early music come alive."
[Essay begins with a discussion of Andrew Manze's concert at the Frick Museum]
A week after Manze visited the Frick, the Pomerium vocal ensemble gave a concert of fourteenth-century music at Cooper Union, in the East Village. Like the Frick, Cooper Union is routinely lit up by lively programs, which are in need of support. Pomerium's program centered on songs and sacred pieces of Guillaume de Machaut, one of the first composers in history to have put an unmistakable personal stamp on their music. He wrote partly in the wake of the Black Death, and his music is almost deliriously inventive, as if he were trying to forget the world around him by making a new one on paper.
Alexander Blachly, the leader of Pomerium, has been involved with early music for decades, and his thinking has evolved and matured along with the rest of the movement. He told me in a phone conversation that back in the sixties early-music specialists were obsessed with the ideal of "staying true to the work"; performances were correct, chilly, studiously inexpressive. "It all came out sounding like Hindemith training exercises," he confessed. Now Blachly aims for a more elastic approach, for more shapely and sensuous phrasing. His current ensembleon this evening, four women and seven men, with high voices dominatingeasily meets his demands. Plain lyric strains gave a human touch to even the most ornate, mathematical designs; vibrato-free, church-choir tones alternated with a more red-blooded, vernacular style. The singers delivered Machaut's great "Notre Dame Mass" with the same ardor that they applied to secular, love-drenched pieces such as "Dis et sept, cinq," "Je sui aussi," and "Quant Theseus."
As I listened, I got a sense of Machaut as a familiar intellectual typethe self-imprisoned man who hides his passion behind a panoply of masks. He wrote reams of poetry and music in praise of a young noblewoman named Peronelle d'Armentières, whom he seems to have romanced in his sixties. Peronelle, having thrown herself at Machaut out of adoration for his art, soon abandoned him for a man closer to her age and station. Somehow it's all too perfectly awful to be true. Like Beethoven in his "Immortal Beloved" period, like the Thomas Mann of "Death in Venice," Machaut may have locked his highest passion in a region of his mind. Performers must not only follow the notes but set the emotion free.
May 2, 2002
THE NEW YORK TIMES
- Deep Sorrow Chased by Joy
By PAUL GRIFFITHS
Since we know very little about the
great Renaissance composers, we have to find other contexts
in which to hear them. Alexander Blachly, in a concert on
Sunday afternoon with his small choir, Pomerium, usefully
suggested two.
In the first place, the program concentrated on music for
the few days from Holy Thursday to Easter, the time when
the church remembers Jesus' death and resurrection. Before
intermission were mostly works of sorrowing and sacrifice,
leaving sudden joy and revived spirits for the second half.
In each case, though, Mr. Blachly cannily interpolated an
opposite color. Victoria's six-part Easter motet "Surrexit
pastor bonus" bubbled along before Lassus's "Tristis est
anima mea" and the fiercely poignant harmonies of
Gesualdo's "Tenebrae factae sunt." Morales's quiet
"Circumdederunt me" preceded the brilliant, swinging "In
resurrectione tua" of William Byrd at the close.
The music was taken from all over the place, but it was
carefully organized by period. That was how Mr. Blachly
offered his second option, to hear the program as a
miniature survey of the musical Renaissance.
The whole story was told just in the first half, with six
composers filing past in almost precise chronological
order, from Dufay through Josquin, the comparatively
obscure Provençal composer Carpentras, then Victoria,
Lassus and Gesualdo. One could almost hear plainsong
receding, tonality becoming stronger, words fighting to the
front.
Pomerium's performances had wonderful harmonic solidity,
dynamic nuance and clarity of counterpoint, besides being
boldly in tune for the startling dissonances of Monteverdi
and Gesualdo.
This was the last event in the Music Before 1800 season.
Next year, happily, Pomerium will be back.
February 21, 2002
THE NEW YORK TIMES
- Mary Tudor's
Version Of Old-Time Religion
By PAUL GRIFFITHS
Not many people get to make history, but anyone can
have fun rewriting it. The history being rewritten now at
Columbia University, in a series of concerts, is that of
Mary I of England, long remembered by some as a
Catholic hiccup in the inevitable arrival of Anglicanism
and good sense. No, says George Steel, the organizer of
these programs. And no, agrees Alexander Blachly, who
on Saturday led his group Pomerium in a superb concert
of English sacred polyphony at St. Paul's Chapel on the
Columbia campus.
For them, Mary was a popular heroine and patron of the
arts. She let English folk return to the religion they loved,
and she encouraged composers to get back to their great
flamboyant tradition.
There are just two things wrong with this picture. One is
that Thomas Tallis, the pre-eminent composer of the
period, had a long life and almost none of his music can
be dated with certainty to the five years of Mary's reign.
The other is that Tallis's single work undoubtedly written
for Mary, his splendiferous "Puer Natus Est" Mass,
suggests not so much a reawakened English
medievalism as a grand swerve into the continental
Renaissance.
No matter. What was important here was the
magnificence of the music and of the singing. If Tallis did
indeed write from 1553 to 1558, all the pieces of his that
were presented on this occasion, he was a master of quite
diverse styles simultaneously, ranging from the majestic
chordal movement of the "Puer Natus Est" Mass, of
which the "Gloria" and "Agnus Dei" were sung, to the
labyrinth of the antiphon "Gaude Gloriosa Dei Mater."
This workmade of what Mr. Blachly, speaking
beforehand, aptly called "ribbons of melody"proved
far more varied in texture, and only predictable in its
harmonic direction at rare points of cadence. Different
again were the other two Tallis items: the hymn "Salvator
Mundi," keeping its beautiful plainsong melody
prominent on top, and the responsory "Loquebantur
Variis Linguis," where voices in imitation seemed to
represent the apostles at Pentecost speaking in tongues.
Works by Tallis's contemporary Christopher Tye offered
some severely strange harmonies ("Kyrie Orbis Factor")
and radiant chords followed by teasing rhythmic details
("Sanctus" of the "Euge Bone" Mass). Also represented
were two composers of the next generation, Robert
White and Robert Parsons, both of them as ready as
Tallis to join in with what was happening across the
English Channel.
Everything sounded marvelous under the chapel's dome:
sonorous with reverberation, but not to the detriment of
contrapuntal clarity. It helped of course that the voices
were so well focused, with sopranos of pure luster and
long phrasing, and a strong group of men heard alone in
a vigorous performance of White's "Regina Coeli."
April 17, 2001
THE NEW YORK TIMES
- Unadorned Voices
Peal Out In Bitterness and Sorrow
By ANNE MIDGETTE
It was Holy Saturday, and the 13th-century Fuentidueña
Chapel at the Cloisters in Upper Manhattan was filled
with the clean sound of unaccompanied voices ringing
off the old stone. Twice in one afternoon the a capella
ensemble Pomerium presented a seasonal concert of
Renaissance Passion motets that was as lovingly curated
and classily presented as any of the museum's other
displays.
During the fasting period of Lent, Glorias, Alleluias and
other musical expressions of joy were historically
prohibited from church services. Pomerium focused on
the 15th- and 16th-century lamentations and meditations
that were sung instead. A kind of bitterness, like tears,
underlies these works' polyphony, in the nakedness of
human voices expressing suffering, unmitigated by any
instrumental covering.
Within this repertory, Pomerium's knowledgeable
founder and director, Alexander Blachly, created a
program that traced both a historical trajectory, from the
15th century to the early 17th, and a coherent dramatic
line. The vocal writing moved from plainchant -- which
Guillaume Du Fay alternated, in his ''Vexilla regis
prodeunt,'' with verses written in shimmering harmony --
through to a more florid, more operatic expression of
emotion like Carlo Gesualdo's almost cinematic
evocation of the Crucifixion in ''Tenebrae factae sunt.''
The selections were also arranged so as to form a unified
story, moving from Du Fay's rather general meditation
on the mysteries of the cross to climax in specific
narratives of Christ's death and concluding with a
glimpse of joy after the resurrection in William Byrd's
''In resurrectione tua.''
Along the way there were wonderful surprises, like two
Monteverdi madrigals that a rhetorician named Aquilino
Coppini kitted out in the 17th century with sacred Latin
texts to make these popular secular works suitable fare
for singing nuns.
The ensemble sang beautifully with a care for period
style, banishing vibrato from their voices in the requisite
sexless manner of English choir boys. Giving two concerts
in a row of this kind of music is quite a strain on the voice,
and that this was sometimes audible in the second
concert was no reflection on the singers, nor any blemish
on the honor of this lovely program.
Monday, November 8, 1999
THE WASHINGTON POST
- Pomerium
By CECELIA PORTER
When Noah Greenberg created the New York Pro Musica in
1952, he pioneered the performance of medieval and Renaissance
music in this century. Early music, he noted, "must not be quaint."
One of many such ensembles sustaining Greenberg's legacy, the
12-member Pomerium, led by Alexander Blachly, appeared Saturday
at Dumbarton Methodist Church in a program of early 16th-century
sacred motets written for the Sistine Chapel during Michelangelo's era.
It takes consummate singers like these to navigate artfully through the
contrapuntal currents determining the shape and texture of works by
Josquin, de Silva, Festa, Carpentras, Mouton and Willaert. Without
instrumental support, the Pomerium surmounts the technical challenges
of this music with total control, impeccable intonation and perfect balance.
They convey the drama of key words and the interactions between ever-changing
voice groups. They complete phrase endings with tight finesse and slide into
prominent cadences with driving intensity. Through all this, they produce
a lustrous sonority, full-bodied yet never harsh or dry, and consistent tone
quality (despite the mixture of three sopranos against male countertenors,
tenors, and basses). The Pomerium, in short, re-created the beauties of a
repertoire that kept the papal chapel out front in the competition among
Renaissance courts to outdo each other—in the magnificence and monumental
dimensions of their music, painting and architecture.
Tuesday, November 8, 1999
THE NEW YORK TIMES
-
Beneath Cooper
Union, the a Cappella Sounds of the
Sistine Chapel
By BERNARD HOLLAND
Renaissance polyphony from our vantage point floats
freely in the air, describing an ethereal geometry of
shape and density. In its time, however, the music of
Josquin Desprez, Adrian Willaert and their colleagues
was just as much about the places in which it was
performed, the most familiar surviving example of this
being Gabrieli's antiphonal brass calling back and forth
across the interior of St. Mark's Church in Venice.
The Vatican's Sistine Chapel, more noted for other
things, was also a place for music, and as Pomerium's
concert at Cooper Union on Saturday night took pains to
show, the Masses, motets and magnificats sung there
were selected with an awareness of an enormous
competition going on for the senses of those present. If
Michelangelo's interiors were overpowering, it stood to
reason that music in the Sistine Chapel had to be the
same.
Alexander Blachly, director of this venerable 14-strong a
cappella group, chose his program from the Sistine's
choir books used during the first third of the 16th
century, when a succession of popes were showing
unusual generosity to the arts. Josquin is a frequent entry
and, indeed, was regarded by papal music critics of the
time as a Michelangelo in sound. In a program that
included music by Costanzo Festa, Andreas de Silva,
Elzéar Genet, Jean Mouton and Willaert, there were
items of more outward drama than Josquin's two entries
on Saturday. But the breadth and depth of his
interweaving voices dominated everything around them,
as they probably did almost 400 years ago. Not all
composers wait for posterity to be recognized.
If the first moments of this concert sounded
apprehensive, the rest was very well sung. Only experts
can sing difficult music like this, unsupported yet
maintaining unshakable pitch. More important was an
informed enthusiasm being shared among true
professionals. "Musica Vaticana" was the last of six
October events put on partly, I am sure, to promote
Cooper Union's basement auditorium as a concert
venue. Saturday's audience was big. The sound was fine,
though some patrons would be troubled by pillars'
interrupting sightlines around the hall. These are surely
structural and are going nowhere; music, on the other
hand, is for the ear, and it hears well here.
Robert Randolf Coleman's preconcert talk gave us
Goethe's take on music at the Vatican. The "Italian
Journey" is most vivid describing Rome's carnival
evenings, but Goethe also took time to inspect the Sistine
Chapel. Several times, in fact, with the first visits more or
less solitary and the last for a performance of music. "I
knew the chapel very well,'' he wrote, "and the frescoes
almost by heart, but when these form the surroundings
to the function for which the chapel was intended, they
look quite different, and I hardly recognized the place."
The eye and the ear are different kingdoms, but they use
adjectives like "grand" and "complex" in pretty much the
same way.
Wednesday, March 3, 1999
THE NEW YORK TIMES
- Gamesmanship and Polyphony in
Paradise
By ALLAN KOZINN
Pomerium's concerts of early choral music typically
address both the mind and the heart. In this
chamber choir's performances, an analytical
listener can focus on the details, innovations and
structural niceties of a composer's style, with ample
technical support from the program notes by
Alexander Blachly, the group's founder and
director. But the blend of these 14 singers is such
that however analytical one might want to be, it is
impossible not to be swept into the sound, or to
admire it for its sheer beauty and balance.
When the program is devoted fully to the music of
Josquin, as the group's Sunday afternoon concert in
the Music Before 1800 series at Corpus Christi
Church was, both these aspects are served
exceptionally well. Josquin, more than most of his
contemporaries and immediate successors (with
the possible exceptions of Lassus and Palestrina)
exerts a palpable presence for listeners with any
interest at all in pre-Classical works. His smoothly
unfolding and seemingly all-enveloping polyphony
seems to touch on the sublime, and strikes
20th-century ears as the zenith of sacred text
setting, more spiritual in its way than even Bach.
Yet as high as the music soars, it also embodies
entirely down-to-earth game playing, something
evident in several of the works Pomerium sang. In
Ut Phebi radiis, a motet in which naturalistic
imagery and biblical references are first used in
praise of Mary, and then in a more generalized
prayer, the text is constructed so that the start of
each line includes Latin words that can also be read
as the consecutive notes of a musical scale, with one
note added to the sequence in each line. Josquin
builds his motifs from these notes and treats them
canonically. Heard superficially—simply as a
sacred setting—the piece is irresistible. Heard with
an ear for its gamesmanship and technical finesse,
it is all the more astonishing.
Other Josquin innovations on the Pomerium
program were less virtuosic, perhaps, but were
enlightening in other ways. A setting of the Stabat
Mater, for example, weaves a verse from a French
love song by Binchois into a setting of the
traditional Latin text. The two disparate sources
work on each other in a fascinating way, providing a
perspective in which Mary's suffering—the subject
of the Stabat Mater—is put in the context of a
different sort of heartbreak.
The centerpiece of the program, the Missa
Hercules dux Ferrarie—a Mass Josquin composed
for his patron, Duke Ercole I of Ferrara—has a
gently undulating cantus firmus (a figure that is
repeated through the work, and around which the
other vocal lines are built) constructed of the
musical notes suggested by the vowels in Hercules'
name and title. Pomerium, following the suggestion
of the musicologist Lewis Lockwood, actually sang
the motto—Hercules dux Ferrarie—with the Mass
text swirling around it. In his notes Mr. Blachly
argues that such a practice would have suited
Ercole's vanity, but at times one senses a higher
purpose as well. Weaving Hercules' name into the
Benedictus ("blessed is he who comes in the name
of the Lord"), for example, can be seen as an
expression of piety by Josquin on his employer's
behalf.
Pomerium's performances were exquisite, and if
one is used to hearing this music in a room with
more revererant acoustics than those of Corpus
Christi, there is something to be said for a setting
that allows every line of the polyphony to be heard
clearly.
Tuesday, December 15, 1998
THE NEW YORK TIMES
- Pomerium: A Popular Spirit
of Christmas Past
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
A long line of people snaked around the lobby of
the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Sunday hoping
to get into the first of two performances that
evening by Pomerium, the estimable Renaissance
a cappella vocal ensemble, now in its 26th year.
Both concerts were sold out, and it's not hard to
understand why. Pomerium has won a loyal
audience for stylistically informed and vocally
lustrous performances under its founding director,
Alexander Blachly. Moreover, the setting for this
program of Renaissance music for the Christmas
season was ideal: the 13-member group performed
before the museum's celebrated Neapolitan
Christmas tree in the lovely sculpture garden.
The sound of the ensemble in this grand space was
hauntingly beautiful. The acoustics are reverberant
without being excessively so, as they are in many
churches. For people who wonder why the
Renaissance cultivated a vocal style that did not
favor thick vibrato, this concert offered an
explanation: the vocal music of the era was
conceived for spaces like this one, where clear,
focused voices create wondrously shimmering
sounds.
Without being didactic, the 60-minute program
also offered a mini-lesson in how Renaissance vocal
music was conceived. A series of plainchants were
performed, each one followed by a vocal work that
used the chant as a taking-off point for polyphonic
elaboration. That is, each single line of chant, after
being subjected to its own ornamentation and
rhythmic prolongation, becomes one voice in a
multilayered, complex, contrapuntal work.
In some compositions, the layering is lucid and
restrained, as in Guillaume Du Fay's moving "Alma
redemptoris mater." But other works, like Cipriano
de Rore's "Quem vidistis pastores," create a
glorious jumble of counterpoint.
This was an era when words and music were
inextricably linked, and it is always fascinating to
note the attitude composers took toward the texts
they set. For example, in "Preter rerum seriem,"
Josquin Desprez very seriously treats the text's
statement concerning the Mother of Christ,
namely, that "No man touched the Virgin," nor did
Joseph know the origin of the child. This phrase is
driven home with insistent monotone repetitions in
the bass voices, while agitated upper voices move
with strikingly staggered rhythms to suggest that
this event, as the text states, is "beyond the natural
order of things."
The Pomerium ensemble sang with its customary
sensitivity to text and warm, unforced sound. Works
by Byrd, Palestrina, Lassus and others were given
similarly fine performances. Pomerium could
probably present this program every night to
sold-out audiences during the Christmas season.
December 18, 1998
E-PULSE
- CONCERT OF THE WEEK
The 13-member early-music group known as
POMERIUM (medieval Latin for "garden" or
"orchard") always gives its listeners something to
ponder. At their recent (December 13th) concert at
New York's Metropolitan Musem of Art, they
offered a glorious program: Each Gregorian chant
they offered was followed by a polyphonic
elaboration by a Renaissance master. The evening's x
centerpiece was the plainchant "Preter rerum
serium" and its treatment by Josquin. This low-lying
work (so low, in fact, that the group's countertenor
was called in to work as a bass -- a job he filled
superbly) is divinely complex in contrast to its
plainchant precedent, with rapid coloratura from
the tenors and altos throughout the first half and
great exaltation when the mystery of the virgin birth
is revealed and Mary is hailed. The rest of
the program was equally ambitious and complex, from
Du Fay's "Alma redemptoris mater II," through
works by Costanzo Festa, de Rore, Palestrina (his
super "Dies sanctificatus"), Willaert, Byrd and
Lassus. Pomerium's built-in authority allowed the
group to enter in silence; they left with shouts of
approval.
—Robert Levine
June 1998
MITTELBAYERISCHE ZEITUNG
- A Breath of Divine Eternity: Pomerium Sings
Vatican Motets in Regensburg
Pomerium displayed the architecture of the music
in an irresistible manner and with a majestic sweep,
which, with intense listening, led to a trance-like
state of suspended animation.
—Gerhard Dietel
-
The Pomerium ensemble from New York in the
South Tyrol
A Musical Meditation
One of the best vocal ensembles of early
music—four women with slender, bright soprano
voices, and ten men—offered the highest vocal
artistry: a lightness in the high range, a profound
bass in the low range, with an overall transparency
of sound.
The small vocal group offered warm and heartfelt
singing. Its superb vocal artistry has an intense
inner life, like a musically inspired meditation. In
the gothic cathedral of Bozen, with its magnificent
acoustics, the music was overwhelming.
June 1998
MUSICA
- "Sacred" Pomerium
A finale at the highest level in Trent and Novacella
for the 1998 edition of the concert series.
Pomerium offered a precious concert. Their singing
style is solid but soft, granite-like but dynamic, of a
sonority almost organ-like in the tuttis.
-
Sacred Festival. Grand Finale in Trent with an
Ensemble from the USA
Music of the Popes
Pomerium and the charm of polyphony
TRENT - Pomerium's music for the mind drew from
the Renaissance taste for proportion, the
harmonious meeting of parts, the symbol of divine
perfection. Sound beyond the human, which the
extraordinary singers interpreted literally,
displaying an exceptional equilibrium, timbral
compactness, and excellent intonation.
Monday, November 24, 1997
THE CLEVELAND (OHIO) PLAIN
DEALER
-
A CAPPELLA ENSEMBLE IS SUBLIME
Under the authoritative leadership of
founder-director Alexander Blachly, the 13-voice a
cappella ensemble from New York approached
perfection. The ensemble sings with straight tone,
precise intonation, and flawless balance. The
singers' ability to produce pure thirds makes their
sonority as penetrating as the bright sound of a
mean-tone organ.
The singers also know how to orchestrate their
voices like an organist pulling stops, and they can
intensify their collective timbre to a reedy edge. But
the flow of vocal colors and dynamics they achieve
is subtler than any effects possible on a mechanical
instrument. Smooth rhythmic shifts and carefully
gauged Latin vowels and consonants also heighten
the sublime expressiveness of their performance.
Because of the religious nature of the repertoire,
applause between numbers seemed inappropriate,
and Blachly did not always acknowledge it. At the
end, however, the applause was so prolonged that
the ensemble came back for an extra bow and an
encore, a brief benediction by Du Fay.
—Wilma Salisbury
Saturday, November 22, 1997
THE COLUMBUS (OHIO) DISPATCH
13-VOICE POMERIUM RADIATES SPIRITUALITY
With remarkably secure intonation, the Pomerium
vocalists sang perfectly in tune. The effect was
magical. Blachly does not homogenize the sound of
his group. Individual timbres could be heard and
the overall sound was vital and exciting. The
imaginative vocal writing and daring harmonies of a
Josquin motet were stunningly projected in a
program filled with marvels.
—Ralph O'Dette
Reviews From the Past
THE NEW YORK
TIMES
One of the finest early-music ensembles in the
country, and perhaps the world.
—John Rockwell
-
Pomerium stresses clarity and intonation. The
timbres appear in primary colors.
—Bernard Holland
-
Pomerium's unisons are impeccable, the pacing
unmannered. . . . Josquin Desprez's Virgo salutiferi
sounded as dramatic as any Ride of the Valkyries.
—Will Crutchfield
-
Pomerium demonstrated that it is through its most
luminous presences that an era is judged. The
music's sinuous, melancholic and vigorous lines
were matched by the refined precision and grace of
the singers, who created lines that were both taut
and supple.
—Edward Rothstein
-
Best of all, Pomerium's singing was not simply
correct; it was musical, expressive and winning all
the way.
—Allen Hughes
-
Pomerium's lean, tightly-controlled choral texture
reproduces the almost Gothic austerity of the music
with extraordinary clarity and tonal beauty.
—Peter G. Davis
-
The purely sensuous beauty of this music on
Sunday made one forget about the church
altogether. . . . Pomerium sang Palestrina
beautifully.
—Bernard Holland
-
The early-music ensemble Pomerium, which
combines diligent scholarship with a spontaneous
joy in performance, sang with taste and
refinement.
—Tim Page
-
Pomerium, corporately and individually, sounded
superb, with fine cohesion, lovely tone, and
precisely shaded pitch.
—John Rockwell
-
The heavenly intertwining of their voices gave a
pleasure so keen as to make one wonder why music
ever went on changing after 1550 or so.
—Will Crutchfield
-
A superbly executed artistic experience, one in
which the exactitude of pitch and phrasing were
enlivened still further by a fine spirit and vivacity.
The audience seemed enraptured.
—John Rockwell
-
Schütz was represented by two early Italian
madrigals and three mature German motets,
beautifully sung by Pomerium. In Bach's motet
"Komm, Jesu, komm" (BWV 229) and the cantata <
"Lass, Fürstin, lass noch einen Strahl"
(BWV 198), Pomerium's contribution was exemplary, from the
double choruses of the motet to the unisons of
the cantata's finale.
—James R. Oestreich
-
The voices in Pomerium have been well chosen for
suitability of timbre, and each seemed to be backed
by keen musical intelligence and stylistic
awareness. Particularly enjoyable was the seeming
effortlessness of the singing. There was no sign of
straining for stylishness, sensitivity or vivacity,
which, in appropriate degrees, characterized
everything.
—Allen Hughes
THE NEW YORKER
Pomerium is a virtuoso Renaissance ensemble:
smooth, fluid, supple, exquisite but not arty in
timbre, surefooted in rhythm, treading one
rhythmic maze after another with the serene
swiftness or slowness of Balanchine dancers.
—Andrew Porter
-
The Pomerium singers were tuneful, supple, and
well balanced.
—Nicholas Kenyon
-
The performances by Pomerium gave a rare
pleasure. This small ensemble sings with absolute
clarity and with piercing directness of tone.
Pomerium is accomplished in technique and
individual in style.
—Nicholas Kenyon
-
The works were bravely and movingly turned into
living music by Mr. Blachly and Pomerium, a
virtuoso group of gifted individuals who together
make a wonderful sound. This was a concert of rare
merit: great music performed with care, devotion,
and uncommon accomplishment.
—Andrew Porter
-
The concert was memorable. Pomerium's sound is
very strong, exciting in timbre; the phrasing is crisp
and firm.
—Andrew Porter
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER MAGAZINE
Even if you don't like music written before Bach,
you'll love Pomerium, the 13-voice a cappella
ensemble founded in New York in 1972 by
Alexander Blachly, its director. Pomerium's
impeccable intonation never faltered. The sound
was nicely shaped and often heavenly. Each phrase,
too, reflected the meticulous preparation of a
virtuoso choir and director. Of course, St. Paul's
lively acoustics only enhanced the joyful sound.
Nevertheless, Pomerium would have done well in
any setting.
—Ken Keuffel, Jr.
E-PULSE
December 15th found Pomerium back at New
York's Metropolitan Museum of Art with a typically
thoughtful, and beautiful, concert of music by Byrd,
Du Fay, Josquin, Cipriano de Rore, Praetorius,
Orlande de Lassus, and Robert Ramsey. Before
each work by one of these composers, Pomerium
sang the Gregorian chant or monophonic
devotional song upon which the composer based
his adaptation—in other words, each selection was
first presented in its barest form and then in the
highly embellished, polyphonic, contrapuntal
treatment afforded it by the composer. The effect
was stunning: The audience was treated to the aural
equivalent of a black and white painting suddenly
turned to vivid color. The group's singing was
flawless: They breathe, feel and blend with one
another in a truly magical way.
—Robert Levine
THE MUSICAL TIMES
The Pomerium singers gave some of the finest
performances of Lassus, Monteverdi, Gesualdo,
Vecchi and Gastoldi that I have heard in the past 20
years.
—Denis Stevens
NRC HANDELSBLAD
(Netherlands)
The performance by Pomerium was light and
resilient, utterly transparent and translucent. The
music sounded like the stars shining in a clear sky:
mystical and from afar, but inescapable.
—Ernst Vermeulen
ALTE MUSIK AKTUELL
(Germany)
In Pomerium's recording of Du Fay's Missa Sancti
Anthonii de Padua, an "inner peace" radiates out,
made manifest in the deeply moving, gem-like
interpretation.
—Robert Strobl
MUSICA SACRA (Germany)
Pomerium's concert was the first, if not in fact the
highpoint of the Tage Alter Musik festival. How
finely Gesualdo's chromaticism and dramatic
declamation can be fashioned! This was the non
plus ultra of interpretation of Renaissance
polyphony.
—Franz A. Stein
MITTELBAYERISCHE
ZEITUNG
Such technical perfection, such rock-steady
intonation, such sophisticated articulation! The
interpretations were irreproachable: shining sound
in clear-flowing lines, and with such a
homogeneous blending of voices that the familiar
L'homme armé melody seemed almost to rise up
from the web of surrounding voices. The expressive
harmonies and sudden changes of effect, the dark,
shining colors, and the committed performace: all
these produced a direct thrill.
—Gerhard Dietel
DEGGENDORFER ZEITUNG
The absolute highpoint of the Regensburg "Tage
Alter Musik." One could follow the text without
effort, thanks to the exceptionally fine articulation.
The performance of the triads offered a seldom-heard purity.
—Stefan Rimek
KEYNOTE MAGAZINE
Such stylistic assurance, purity of intonation, and
sheer beauty of sound are unrivaled by any other
American group singing this repertoire.
GRAMOPHONE
(England)
Pomerium sings with superb lucidity, showing an
attractive, vibrant energy.
—David Fallows
-
Dufay's Missa Ecce ancilla Domini receives the
finest performance of any work by Dufay that I
have yet encountered on record. Every detail is
clear; the ebb and flow of the music are perfectly
judged.
—David Fallows
-
An astonishing year for Renaissance music on
record. In the place of honour is the splendid record
of Dufay's Mass Ecce ancilla Domini by Pomerium
under Alexander Blachly because it brings so much
musical insight to one of the leading masterpieces
of early Renaissance music.
—David Fallows
BBC THIRD PROGRAMME
Pomerium is an outstanding small vocal consort.
Their concert of English music from the Old Hall
Manuscript and earlier was, I think, one of the most
memorable I've heard in any field in New York.
Their style has no elements of self-advertisement or
triviality.
—Nicholas Kenyon
BOSTON EARLY MUSIC
NEWS
The sound is rich and almost organlike, with
finely-honed tuning. If only an organ could produce
such carefully modulated thirds at every turn!
—Frederick Jodry
THE NEWS AND COURIER
(Charleston, South Carolina)
When the whole group was singing with full volume
the sound seemed to rattle the rafters. Suffice it say
that their performance would be a major musical
moment in anyone's life.
—David Maves
CD REVIEW
Busnoys is lucky to have advocates and interpreters
such as the early music vocal ensemble Pomerium.
The group combines warm, perfectly balanced tone
with polished, effortless-sounding delivery — an
ensemble technique that would be the envy of any
group of singers.
—David Vernier
INTERNATIONAL MUSIC
GUIDE
The singing is outstandingly clear and tasteful.
The striking spontaneity of this most subtle composer's
(Ockeghem's) personality has never been so well
caught in recorded performance.
THE BOSTON GLOBE
Ravishingly beautiful singing — light but strong,
blended, clear, and totally winning.
—Richard Buell
THE BOSTON
PHOENIX
An exemplary early-music group. The singers all
have fine voices that blend seamlessly, clear
diction, intense concentration, and powerful
identification with the text.
STEREO REVIEW
The singers of Pomerium produce a clear sound
and sing with a rhythmic vitality that brings life to
each of the intricately wrought parts of the music.
A model of vocal chamber music.
—Stoddard Lincoln
EARLY MUSIC (England)
Pomerium gave exceptionally stylish performances.
Every melodic line was clean and buoyant, and the
singers seemed to sympathise with each other
admirably.
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