The latest CD from the Gabrieli Consort offers a reconstruction of a Requiem Mass as might have been held in Toledo Cathedral in honour of Philip II who died four centuries ago this year. Fans of the group will already be familiar with the mix of chant and polyphony of various kinds, although, given the nature of the “momentous ceremonial event” being re-created in “form and ambience”, the performance is more restrained in the forces used: the only minstrel on this disc is William Lyons on the muted bajon, the Spanish dulcian which was commonly used in cathedral choirs throughout the peninsula from about the mid-sixteenth century onwards. Even muted, the instrument can be clearly heard adding depth and sonority to the bass-line. As usual, Paul McCreesh has drawn on scholarly expertise in order to establish as closely as possible the liturgical practice of the time, with appropriate chant and other aspects of the liturgy, many of which were peculiar to Spain, even after the Council of Trent. From this point of view alone, it is fascinating to experience the larger-scale structures that result from the reconstruction of, for example, the invitatory Circumdederunt me with its mix of polyphony, chant (performed here in octaves) and falsobordone, the quasi-improvised choral rendition of the chant.
I am not 100 per cent convinced that the Morales Requiem would have been the one performed in Toledo Cathedral in September 1598: true, it is uniquely preserved in that cathedral’s archive, but the music library also holds the print of Guerrero’s setting. It is also true that Morales served at this, the most prestigious of Castilian cathedrals, but that was some 50 years before Philip’s death. Still, it is not impossible that the Morales was heard: polyphonic repertory, especially for solemn occasions such as these, sometimes appears to have been recycled over many years, even to the extent of forming a more or less inviolable tradition. The music written for such events was also distinctive in musical style: here again is the restrained, almost austere chordal writing that has so long been associated with Spanish mystical fervour.
McCreesh takes much of the Mass slowly, some of it very slowly, which must have called for a certain amount of bravery on his part. The result, in the resonant acoustic of Brinkburn Priory, is impressively ceremonial, a wash of sound (that sometimes, I felt, verges on becoming a wall of sound) out of which it is mostly impossible to discern the texts being sung. (The acoustic situation in the relatively small royal chapel in Philip’s palace in Madrid – where recent research has suggested that it may have been a Richafort Mass that was performed at the king’s funeral – would have been quite different.) Generally, the amount of reverberation, and the overall smoothed-out effect achieved on the recording, tends to dissipate any intensity (though there’s a good moment at the end of the second “Hosanna” after the “Benedictus”) or drama: this may well be to the liking of many – I can even imagine it attracting a cult following as music to relax to – or maybe as the background to the meanderings of a saxophonist? The disc ends with a true masterpiece that was written for Philip’s exequies: Alonso Lobo’s Versa est in luctum. Here the falsettists are put to the test, but they cope well.
Comparison with the Hesperion XX version under Jordi Savall is difficult because the aims of the two recordings are quite different. It is interesting that Savall’s historical peg is the ceremonies held in memory of Charles V in Mexico in 1556 at which it would seem that Morales’s music was heard, but he does not attempt a full-blown reconstruction. Also, the male voices of the Capella Reial are accompanied by more than a solitary bajon: namely, a consort of viols. There is little or no historical evidence for this – although we know so little as yet about performance practice in the New World, where enough good voices was generally a problem, although perhaps not on an occasion such as this – that it is not impossible. Such scholarly arguments aside, Hesperion XX’s reading is as intense as anyone could wish for, and I would say that in capturing the spirit of the music it succeeds better than this new CD from the Gabrieli Consort.'