Chanticleer's polyphonic Christmas presents

The men of Chanticleer

An entire week has gone by since Chanticleer visited Celebrity Series, but I've been too distracted by shows with short runs to get around to throwing a few critical bouquets their way.

Of course critiquing Chanticleer is a bit oxymoronic - there's not much to critique; since the group's founding in San Francisco some thirty-five (!) years ago, it has slowly taken the world by storm, and now all but rules the male-chorus roost.  And for once, the mainstream take on the group has been accurate: it is an "orchestra of voices" - for Chanticleer's greatest achievement is its consistently gorgeous (and startlingly accurate) vocal polyphony.

What's polyphony?  It's a style of choral writing in which independent melodic lines weave against one another to form a ravishingly rich musical texture (polyphony reached its greatest pitch in the sacred music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, which together form the core of Chanticleer's repertoire).  A polyphonic work should open as slowly and hypnotically as a flower  - and needless to say, a truly radiant bloom requires every petal be perfectly placed (a highly daunting vocal task).  And this is where Chanticleer is pretty much peerless.  The timbres of its members's voices are not only exquisitely matched to this material, but also to each other, and their intonation is stunningly secure, particularly given that in some of the works sung Friday night, just about every single member was carrying his own vocal line a cappella.  (Although it's when they swoop from soprano to bass lines and back that your jaw really drops.)

Actually, maybe there was a wobble or two in the opening plainsong (done beneath atmospheric lighting that briefly transformed Jordan Hall into the nave of a cathedral).  But once Chanticleer reached the familiar Veni, veni, Emmanuel, their singing had coalesced into a transporting, multi-foliate vocal rose. I confess I often felt leaps of emotion throughout the first half of the program, thanks to the intensity of its musical and spiritual rapture.  Certainly highlights were gorgeous renderings of Gabrieli's polychoral (that's when two mini-choruses face off) Angelus pastores ait, and Cristóbal de Morales' Pastores dicite, for which the group was arranged in a kind of Christmas star (Chanticleer's blocking is always intriguing, and sometimes - particularly when they move contrapuntally, while singing - produces startling sonic effects).

The group also excels at musical scholarship - this concert amounted to a fascinating tour of the length and  breadth of sacred vocal music, extending from perhaps 800 A.D. to the twentieth century, and covering more than one Christian church (there are a couple of them, you know).  We heard a thrilling version of Poulenc's ecstatic O magnum mysterium, for instance - and in an intriguing thematic gambit, the singers segued from Arvo Pärt's "O Adonai" from Sieben Magnificat Antiphonen to the 14th-century O Virgo splendens, effectively shifting from a masculine conception of the divine to a feminine one.

Should I bring up the group's apparent sexual orientation now?  I think I should. Of course I doubt everyone in this chorus is gay, but clearly that's their core identity.  Are you shocked?  You shouldn't be - honey, gay men have always run sacred music; the only question is whether they're in the closet or not. Being 'out,' of course, isn't perhaps an entirely unalloyed advantage - Chanticleer does sometimes beam with an amusing gay vanity that isn't quite what Christ had in mind, whatever Andrew Sullivan may think (but of course only because vanity itself isn't what Christ had in mind).

In other ways, however, questions of sexual identity do lead to intriguing juxtapositions in the group's repertoire, like the one cited above.  In brief, when Chanticleer shifts on a dime from "O Adonai" ("O, Father") to "O Virgo splendens" (basically, "O, Mother"), they are making a rather poignant statement that resonates, I think, from the Vatican to the Castro.  Not that they don't cover much of the rest of the globe (and many of its languages) in their selections.  I'd never heard any of Alexander Gretchaninoff's work from the Russian Orthodox tradition, but the throaty Svéte tihiy made me hungry for more.  There was also a lovely sampling from the English hymnal in the sweetly lilting Allelulya: A nyewe work.  And of course the Germans held their own, with gorgeous renderings of Prateorius and others; a suite of versions of In dulci jubilo (you may know it as "Good Christian Men, Rejoice") proved a swift, entertaining history lesson which concluded with a complex setting from Bach himself.

As you can tell, there were almost too many riches to catalogue in the concert's stunning first half.  Alas, after intermission the group turned to more popular carols, many of which date from after the nineteenth century, when Christmas music basically fell off a cliff (sorry, there's really nothing you can do with the likes of "Silent Night," not that Chanticleer didn't try).  Still, even here there were a few gems: "A Christmas Carol" from Charles Ives proved touchingly direct (and very un-Ives-like), and the traditional French carol, Il est né le divin enfant, made a lovely impression.  And you know, after so much transcendent musicianship, I was happy to sit through "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" and a "Star of Wonder" medley.  After all - it's Christmas.

In time of Chanticleer

Chanticleer in flight.

We have a vibrant choral music scene here in Boston. Very vibrant. I've heard wonderful performances from the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, Boston Baroque, and the Handel and Haydn Society in just the past few weeks alone.

But we don't have anything like Chanticleer. No, my friends, we don't.

I confess I was kind of speechless after "In Time Of . . .," their Celebrity Series performance last Sunday at Jordan Hall. Actually, scratch that - you know me - I couldn't stop talking.

Because I had never encountered a vocal group with this level of technique - that is, the very highest level of technique - with an adventurous sense of programming to match it. In musical (and intellectual) terms, Chanticleer reminded me a bit of Jane Ring Frank's late, lamented Boston Secession; they have the same smarts, and the same sense of fun. But even Frank's group, wonderful as it was, couldn't quite match the Chanticleer sound, which, if you care at all about choral singing - or just about the human voice and what it can do - you simply must hear before you die.

For the 12 men of Chanticleer probably come closer to encapsulating the full range of that collective voice than any group I know of. Its membership includes an almost hilariously deep bass, as well as a veritable posse of countertenor altos and sopranos, and just about every timbre and range in between. The quality of the voices is superb, but what's most striking is that under the music direction of Matthew Oltman, the ensemble's clarity and sense of interlocking pitch are utterly sure, and remarkable (if you're one of those few with perfect pitch, or one of the many more who claim it, these are your boys).

But wait, there's more: Chanticleer is also fascinated by the spatial aspect of choral singing; they're constantly breaking up into separate units, and fanning across the stage only to re-coalesce in some new configuration, which creates mysterious dynamics in their sound. A holy grail of choral singing is the creation of a kind of surround-sound, a sonority that simply seems to exist, hanging (or even moving) in space independently of its singers. This is one of those effects that require live presence; you can't ape it with microphones and speakers (or perhaps you can, but of course it wouldn't be the same - it wouldn't mean the same). And I actually lost count of how many times Chanticleer pulled off this deeply-moving miracle.

And then, as I mentioned before, there's their programming, which, to put it bluntly, was kind of mind-boggling in the consistency of its quality. The group was originally formed to sing neglected Renaissance and medieval choral music, for which they popularized a pure-tone approach which has become the de facto standard for period performance. They're a bit less rigorous about that method these days - a slight vibrato crept into even some of the Renaissance pieces - but perhaps that's partly because their repertoire has expanded from Gregorian chant all the way to the current noodlings of millennial DJ Mason Bates. I was actually slightly disappointed in the work from Bates, but Chanticleer's choices from the modern and postmodern periods were almost uniformly stunning. Chen Yi's exquisite Spring Dreams, Steven Sametz's in time of (a hypnotic rendering of the ee cummings text posted below), and Carmen Cavallaro's ravishing El Grito were all simply wonderful, in startlingly various modes. In one amazing sequence, the group pulled together selections from three centuries - the seventh (Gregorian chant), sixteenth (Palestrina) and twentieth (Jean Yves Daniel-Lesur) - to create a kind of biography of sacred feeling through a thousand years of musical thought. And then there was the stark emotional contrast between the rollicking Agincourt Carol (a happy hymn to war) and Dufay's Lamentatio sanctae matris ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae (a piercing lament for its forgotten victims).

Add to that rich renditions of works from Gibbons and Calvisius, and an encore of favorites like “Shenandoah," Gershwin's “Summertime" (with an unbelievable performance from countertenor Cortez Mitchell), the spirituals “Sit Down Servant,” and “Plenty Good Room,” and the gospel number "Straight Street" (featuring some delicious low notes from bass Eric Alatorre), and you have a concert that I think very few in attendance will ever forget. Certainly I never will.