Bella Voce closes season with Spanish colonial rarities
Each installment of Bella Voce’s “Expanding the Canon” series, beginning in 2024, has brought audiences closer to a cappella choral works of historical and musical importance that nonetheless are woefully under-represented in the active repertory.
The Chicago choral ensemble presented the third such installment of that valuable exploration as the finale of its 43d season Saturday at St. Chrysostom’s Episcopal Church on the city’s Near North Side.
This time around, artistic director Andrew Lewis and his 18-voice choir focused on sacred polyphony from the late 16th century by Spanish composers, familiar and lesser-known, who figured prominently in Marian worship services at the Cathedral of Santiago de Guatemala, the colonial seat of ecclesiastical government.
The manuscripts found in the Guatemalan archive suggest the high level of music-making that must have prevailed there, as well as in Roman Catholic institutions far from Spain where this Latin devotional music also was an integral part of liturgical practice.
As much could be said about the technical and musical expertise behind Saturday’s performances, which were enhanced by the clarity and intimacy of the church acoustic.
Lewis’ program drew on two related strains of Marian sacred music preserved in the choir books of the Guatemalan cathedral.
Sections of Tomas Luis de Victoria’s so-called paraphrase Mass on the Marian hymn Ave maris stella framed motet settings of the Salve Regina by fellow Spaniards Francisco Guerrero, Hernando Franco and Pedro Bermudez. The latter two composers, we learned, actually lived and worked in Guatemala as chapelmasters.
Surrounding these works were three anonymous villancicos from colonial Guatemala, music derived from Iberian medieval sources that brought the lively impulses of vernacular song and dance into the sacred confines of the New World. (Bella Voce based its performances of these on a new scholarly edition by musicologist Paul Feller-Simmons, to be published later this year.)
Each setting of the Salve Regina revealed a composer with a distinctive voice, and each proved an absorbing discovery. Here, as well as in the remaining works, purity of tone, precision of intonation and security of blend combined to ethereal effect, under Lewis’ subtly detailed direction.
The contributions to the Spanish colonial liturgy by Franco and Bermudez, with their alternating chant and polyphony, underscore the differences between local compositional practice and the inherited contributions of Guerrero.
Bermudez, who followed Franco by a generation, was a particularly fascinating figure, to judge from his Salve Regina. The Bella Voce singers did a fine job shaping the long spans of harmonic tension and release, the sopranos coping as easily with the high tessitura of their part as the full ensemble negotiated the low-lying lines of Franco’s moteton the same text.
In the pure polyphony of Guerrero’s setting, presented in its original version, Lewis saw to it that each stage of the antiphon was subtly contrasted from the last.
Every part of the Victoria Mass emerged as a kind of aural station of the cross, its austere solemnity complementing the devotional fervor of the other Marian repertory.
Completing the cohesive program was an anonymous motet setting of Ave sanctissima Maria, as crisply sung as the high-spirited villancicos.
It’s good news that Lewis and friends plan to carry their “Expanding the Canon” initiative into the Baroque era in coming seasons.
Bella Voce will repeat the program 4 p.m. Sunday at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, 939 Hinman Ave., Evanston. bellavoce.org
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