Brigitte Lesne’s all-female team, inspired by Marie-Noel Colette’s exceptional musicological insights, has put together a delightful recital of chant and early polyphony. The theme of ‘Jerusalem’ opened up for them a Pandora’s casket of treasures, a wealth of (mainly) biblical texts that have inspired original musical settings of quite extraordinary beauty and value.
But apart from the undoubted value of the music itself, I am impressed by the way they interpret the early chant neume notation, particularly in the case of numerous Proper Mass settings from the traditional so-called Gregorian repertoire: the Offertory Super flumina Babilonis, the Communion antiphon Hierusalem surge, the Tract Qui confidunt, the Alleluia and the Gradual Letatus sum – which both make use of verses from Psalm 121 – and the Introit Letare Ierusalem. They have carefully researched the early signs in the Laon Gradual (Bibliotheque Municipale MS 239) in conjunction with a Gradual from Gaillac (MS Albi, Paris BN Lat 3719) and have sought out painstakingly, but with enormous confidence, the manner of performing them.
The result is a cluster of pieces that are utterly convincing, suggesting what may well have been not far from the sound of the chant when it was still a living oral tradition, in the ninth century, just before the advent of musical notation. What one finds is that these pieces sound properly focused, so that the underlying shape of the melody is apparent, moving from one structural note to another, with fluid ornamentation the natural link, not a superimposition. Their interpretation of specific signs – quilisma, salicus, liquescent, as well as of other indications such as coupure, or repercussion, for example, – sound much more natural than any attempts of most other choral groups I have heard. And the result is marvellously clear and easeful – indeed, one might describe it as high art. Of course, unless I am mistaken, such an achievement could only be possible for a solo cantor (chantress), not for an entire schola. Yet here we have singers who have managed, each one individually, to master the technique. My warmest congratulations.'