Search - Anton Brumel :: Brumel: Missa de Beata Virgine

Fire Your Sound Editor, Speculum Dudes!

Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 07/13/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"How can four guys with reasonably good voices sound like a glee club or a choir of sixteen? And why would they want to? But that's what you'll hear on this disappointing CD, the only performance available of the Missa de Beata Virgine by Antoine Brumel (1460-1515): a recording made at the Hermitage of Ronzano in Bologna, Italy. Either the acoustic of the chapel was dreadfully reverberant or ales muddy resonance has been added in the studio. The result is a one-on-a-part ensemble sounding murky in its phrasing and tripping over itself rhythmically. I don't think it had to be this way! True, the ensemble gravitates toward implausibly slow tempi, and the four singers, all Italian young men, may not have the strongest voices on the market, but their tuning is good and they plainly worship the music they're singing. Could it be that they were attempting to sound "spiritual"?



Antoine Brumel was one of the boldest and biggest-thinking composers of the so-called "Franco-Flemish" Renaissance. His 12-voice "Earthquake Mass" is justly famous and oft-recorded in our times. All of his music is typified by bold rhythmic clashes and asymmetries, based on the mathematics of 'prolation', and therefore hard to sing cleanly. Speculum Ensemble comes close but not consistently. Given how few recordings there are of Brumel, and how few of those are even this good, I have to say that this CD deserves to be heard. The best CD of Brumel is by The Clerks' Group, singing two Requiem masses by Brumel and Pierre de la Rue."