Guillaume Dufay:
Sacred music from Bologna Q15

The Clerks' Group
directed by Edward Wickham

Sunday Times 27th October 2002

Stephen Pettitt

Early Music

****

The Bologna Manuscript Q15 is one of the most important primary sources of 15th century music. An anthology of pieces assembled over 15 years in Northern Italy, it ranges right across the genres of the time, with a special emphasis on sacred polyphonic works. Guillaume Dufay is featured prominently, and Edward Wickham and the Clerks' Group have a selection of his works that not only reflect the formal diversity of the manuscript itself, but also gives prominence to early pieces by Dufay that are often neglected in favour of his later masterpieces. There are isorhythmic motets here, celebratory anthems, movements from the mass, and a wonderful range of compositional techniques on display. It is an absorbing and revealing collection, and everything is delivered with tonal beauty and scholarly stylishness.

Andrew Clements

Early Music Review

This is the Clerks' Group's third CD for the Signum label, and as before they focus on one manuscript, and in this case on the work of one composer therein. Choosing to make the source the unifying device for a programme permits enormous stylistic variety within the programme, and this is certainly the case here. We hear Dufay at his most conservative cheek by jowl with with some of his most daring experiments, and all of it beautifully sung by the Clerks. The Floating Earth engineers allow the group slightly more bloom than they are normally afforded on ASV, and the results are pleasing allowing Dufay's melodic lines to soar and float as intended. In addition to a bewildering variety of motets, we have two pairs of Mass movements, while the Kyrie Fons bonitatis is sung with appropriate plainchant, restoring the intended nine-part structure. The Clerks' Group are now so familiar with this sort of repertoire that their technical assurance and interpretative confidence are unparalleled.

D. James Ross

Music Web

Despite the fact that Dufay left behind something approaching 100 secular songs, assuming the attributions are correct (all recorded by the Medieval Ensemble of London on L’Oiseau Lyre 452 557-2) he should be seen first and foremost as a church musician. His music for the Mass fills up six volumes of the complete edition. This CD attempts to look at Dufay from the point of view of just one (vast) manuscript, known rather unromantically as Q15 and compiled over something like a fifteen-year period, in Bologna.

Dufay's church career can be laid out simply. In 1420 he worked in Paris as a post-student as it were. In 1427 he left his much-favoured homeland (see the chanson ‘Adieu ces bon vins de Lonnoys’- Gothic Voices Hyperion CDA66144) for Bologna. He stayed for only two years leaving for Léon Cathedral in 1429. He must have made an impression in Bologna as his early works are mostly found there alongside others written after he had left the city.

In 1434 he worked at the Savoy Chapel and from 1436 at Cambrai Cathedral (sadly destroyed in 1789) mostly for the rest of his life. He was not only a singer and composer but also a gifted administrator.

Four of these pieces ‘Vasilissa, ergo gaude’, ‘O gemma, lux’ ‘O, sancte Sebastiane’, and ‘Supremum est mortalibus’ are isorhythmic motets (a complex technique which I will not go into now) and can, unusually, be fairly precisely dated.

The first may well be Dufay’s earliest known composition. It is short, lively and definitely young man’s music being dated to 1420. ‘O Sancte Sebastiane’ was probably composed during a plague epidemic c.1424. ‘O gemma lux’ is a little more difficult to pin down but c.1434 is possible. ‘Supremum est mortalibus’ is dated by Paul van Neval on his CD of the isorhythmic motets (Harmonia Mundi 901700) to 1433. These then are early works. David Fallows in the book on Dufay (The Master Musicians, Dent, revised 1987) gives slightly different dates. But if the manuscript was compiled say from between c.1422-1437 all of these works would fit, particularly as Van Neval dates the second one as late as 1437.

Many other composers are represented in the manuscript but Dufay stands out in quantity and quality.

The ‘Clerk’s Group’ consist on this CD of four men and two women with no sopranos; they perform these motets, indeed the entire CD, a capella. Van Neval opts for some instrumental participation. Both approaches work and are impressive in their own ways. Unaccompanied ‘Vasilissa ergo’ sounds bright and young and joyous. With sackbuts playing the men’s parts it has nobility and a sense of occasion.

The rest of this CD is worth investigation and is always beautifully done. In fact I think that in the three discs ‘The Clerk’s Group’ have made for Signum they are at their most consistently good. (I could heartily recommend their disc of Machaut isorhythmic motets on Signum D011) The balance of light and dark in this music is important. A light touch in the top part as the lyrical lines weave and echo across the text and a creamy dark quality to the sustained lines in the tenors and basses. These are carried off with character and understanding.

At the top of this review I mention paired Mass movements. The 1420s and 1430s were not quite yet a time when composers produced complete Mass cycles, although Machaut had done just that in the 1360s. Generally a Gloria and Credo would go together for example each with a similar head motif or opening melody or harmonic pattern. The booklet notes by Edward Wickham, which are too general, and comment only on some of the pieces do not mention this. Even a moment’s hearing of the opening of these movements will quickly give the listener an understanding of this technique. The Sanctus and Agnus are similarly linked.

Of the other works ‘Inclita stella maris’ is an oddity. Its lower parts are untexted and apparently one is not even necessary, some groups would perform them instrumentally. Wickham has them sung to an unobtrusive vowel sound - a technique also employed by Gothic Voices. The text is passed between to top two lines in mensural canon, the effect of which is that neither part has the same rhythm but both have the same melody. The ‘Gloria Spiritus et alme’ is a Pentecostal troped text. The music seems to stretch back to an earlier generation and to me does not seem to sound like Dufay. There is also another work to ‘St.Sebastiane’ that is the free and flowing three-part motet ‘O beate Sebastiane’, which seems to be more like a song than a motet.

The variety in the work of any great composer is always a surprise. This CD brings us such surprises. If you have recordings of Dufay’s late, great Masses (for example ‘Ecce ancilla Domini’ on Virgin Veritas with the Ensemble Gilles Binchois 5 45050 2) then these young motets will appear to lack sobriety and decorum. But personally I prefer them to the more inward looking late Masses. On this CD they are given every chance to be appreciated as they were written on the original page.

Gary Higginson

ClassicsToday.com
Artistic quality 9, Sound quality 9

Although the music of Dufay is no stranger to CD--groups such as Pomerium, the Binchois Consort, Gothic Voices, and Orlando Consort all have devoted discs to his masses and motets--this offering by The Clerk's Group, featuring selections from an important Italian manuscript known as Bologna Q15, provides a fascinating overview of both early and later works from this illustrious 15th century French composer. The hour-long program focuses on motets and mass movements that reveal a progression in Dufay's compositional style, from the rather square motet Vasilissa, ergo gaude (the composer's "earliest datable work") to the complex rhythms and free ornamentation of O gemma, lux et speculum and the sophisticated structure and highly developed melodic/harmonic relationships of the Credo (manuscript No. 108).

If you're an early music fan, you'll be right at home with this mostly male ensemble's finely focused, reedy sound (there's one woman among the group's six members, veteran alto Lucy Ballard), and there's no letting down of energy or concentration throughout the longest phrases within individual motets or across the more extended mass movements. The closely recorded voices and overall bright sonic quality wears a bit after 15 or 20 minutes, but you can't fault the singing, which brings a vibrant, assured presence to these ancient works; and if you're looking for fine, clearly sung, stylistically conscientious performances, you really can't go wrong here.

David Vernier