Chicago Classical Review

Bella Voce began its 42^nd season over the weekend with an unusual and fascinating exploration—the journey of Spanish Renaissance choral polyphony from the Iberian Peninsula to the New World, and back.

The program, presented Saturday at St. Chrysostom’s Episcopal Church on Chicago’s Near North Side, brought together 16^th and early 17^th century composers from Spain who settled in colonial areas of what is today Mexico and Guatemala. Their sacred works greatly influenced composition for use in the Roman Catholic church services of New Spain, blending Old World religious traditions with a changing indigenous culture.

In so doing, artistic director Andrew Lewis continued the musical and scholarly exploration of cross-fertilization that had begun with the a cappella vocal group’s “Expanding the Choral Canon” program last spring. Together, these programs are planned as the first two installments of a five-year series devoted to music of the Americas for small vocal ensemble.

That’s an exciting prospect, given the high quality of Saturday’s performances.

It was balm to the ears and soul to encounter largely unknown sacred pieces that are very seldom performed or recorded, especially with the dedicated musicianship and musicological care that the 20-voice ensemble has made its shining trademark over the decades.

The sustained solemnity that gives Hispanic polyphony of this period its austere and mournful mood is not an easy quality to bring off successfully. But Lewis knows the style inside and out and, with help from the reverberant chapel acoustic, he and his excellent singers delivered the nine unaccompanied pieces with a fervent serenity that belied their technical and musical rigor. 

One came away with a vivid sense of the deeply devotional choral polyphony that upheld the authority of the Catholic Church and social hierarchy as it resonated in the grand, gilded cathedrals of New Spain.

Maintaining clarity, balance, accuracy, flow and coherence of voicings is paramount when performing part-song of such intricately interlaced lines. The Bella Voce singers managed this with typical finesse, allowing the listener to focus on the expressive intensity of the interpretations rather than on how it was achieved.

One indication of how much scholarly care Lewis lavished on the preparation was his enforcing Spanish enunciation of the Latin texts—a subtle detail, perhaps, but niceties of this sort can, and did, make a big difference on how this unfamiliar music is perceived.  

Choral polyphony in the best Spanish tradition was practiced early in Mexico, at first in the form of villancicos, psalms and motets, later in the settings of the Mass and Magnificat. Works by the polyphonists Cristobal de Morales, Francisco Guerrero and others were sent to the Americas following publication. But—as the Chicago scholar Paul G. Feller-Simmons reminded us in his informative program notes—such music was not merely transplanted, but, rather, adapted to suit the social and cultural dynamics of colonial life, where diverse cultures coexisted.

Motets by Hernando Franco and an indigenous student of his given the pseudonym “Hernando Don Franco” showed the high standard of liturgical music that existed at the Mexico City Cathedral, where the former served as chapelmaster until his death in 1585. His Salve Regina for five voices is a prime example of the traditional Spanish antiphon in honor of the Virgin Mary, a tradition that found fusion with local musical and cultural impulses. The acolyte’s piece, a skillful imitation of the master’s style, was sung in the Aztec language Nahuatl.   

A Magnificat setting and the motet In horrore visionis nocturnae of Francisco Lopez Capillas introduced the audience to one of the earliest composers born in New Spain who gained fame across the Atlantic. The harmonic clashes produced by the intense chromaticism of the six-voice motet fell pungently on the ear, as well befits a text that speaks of disquieting dreams that shake the sleeper to his bones.

The Bella Voce singers also sharply defined the antiphonal effects in Exsultate, Iusti, in Domino, a double-choir motet by Juan Gutierrez de Padilla tailored to the grand interior and ceremonial functions of the cathedral in Puebla, Mexico.

More familiar canonical pieces occupied the second half of the program.

Particularly striking was the solemn Graduale: Requiem aeternam, from Morales’ Missa pro defunctis, likely sung in Mexico City in 1559 as part of a ceremony commemorating the death of the Spanish emperor Charles V; also Guerrero’s motet Surge propera, for which the choir produced a rich harmonic cushion on which to rest the themes of divine love and spiritual awakening.

Lewis and friends closed with two intricately crafted motets by Vicente Lusitano, a Portuguese of African descent who is thought to be the first published black composer. The slow, relatively static harmonic movement of the eight-voice Inviolata, integra et casta es stood in sharp relief paired with the urgent praise of Lusitano’s antiphon setting Regina caeli laetare.  

The program will be repeated 4 p.m. Sunday at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Evanston. Bella Voce’s 2024-25 season continues with Handel’s Messiah November 17 at St. Luke’s church. bellavoce.org

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