Cantates pour voix seule: Manuscrits d’Uppsala. Music by Buxtehude, Schütz, Geist, and others; Maïlys de Villoutreys (soprano), and La Rêveuse; Benjamin Perrot and Florence Bolton, co-directors. Mirare MIR442. Total time: 65:18.
Juan Manuel de la Puente: Music at the Cathedral of Jaén. Orquesta Barocca de Sevilla and Vandalia Choir; Enrico Onofri, conductor. Passacaille PAS1037. Total time: 55:58.
DIGITAL REVIEW – While it might be argued that the most important musical innovations during the Baroque period involved secular instrumental genres, there was also plenty of great sacred vocal music being composed. And happily, there always seems to be more of it to discover, as two recent recordings – one containing music of Germany, the other of Spain – demonstrate.
Cantates pour voix seule: Manuscrits d’Uppsala is a project by the ensemble La Rêveuse, under the co-direction of Benjamin Perrot and Florence Bolton. While the album focuses on the music of Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707), it also includes pieces by Franz Tunder (1614-1667), Johann Philipp Förtsch (1652-1732), Gabriel Schütz (1633-1710/11, no relation to the more famous Heinrich Schütz of the previous generation), and Christian Geist (c. 1650-1711). Between the church cantatas for solo voice (Maïlys de Villoutreys, soprano) and instrumental accompaniment are some sonatas for instruments alone.
What binds these pieces together is that most can be found among the manuscripts comprising the Düben Collection in Uppsala, Sweden. Although Buxtehude spent most of his career in Lübeck, Germany, he was revered throughout Europe and had correspondences with many fans and fellow musicians. One of those was Gustav Düben, kapellmeister at the court of Stockholm, who collected scores by Buxtehude and other Northern composers. His personal library is now a researcher’s treasure trove.
Probably the best-known work on this recording is Buxtehude’s setting of Psalm 110, “Dixit Dominus.” De Villoutreys sings the Latin text with clarity and buoyancy, her voice nicely nestled into the higher frequencies of baroque violin, theorbo, and harpsichord. She loses no power in the very low pitches in the second half of the Psalm. The recording’s rich, lifelike sound production is especially flattering to the wooden instruments.
Of course, Buxtehude, like Bach after him, is best known for his Lutheran chorale settings in German. Yet only one of those is represented here, the delicate “Herr, wenn ich nur dich hab,” in which violin lines swirl around de Villoutreys’ vocal part.
The lesser-known composers are worthwhile discoveries. Tunder’s setting of the text “Ach Herr, lass deine lieben Engelein” opens with a homorhythmic playing of the chorale by the ensemble. The long chords are pulled just enough by the bowed strings under Bolton’s guidance to add an understated passion to this devotional music. The aria-like “Resurrexi adhuc tecum sum” by Geist (whom Bolton describes as “perhaps the most Italian of the Northern composers”) is uplifting, grounded by Perrot on an expressive theorbo line. Gabriel Schütz’s Sonata for Two Violas da gamba is played with elegance by Sylvia Abramowicz and Emily Audouin.
Meanwhile, down south in Spain, Juan Manuel de la Puente (1692-1753) was taking a more Catholic approach to sacred vocal music. This priest was maestro de capilla at the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin in Jaén, Andalusia, where he spent most of his career. The recording Juan Manuel de la Puente: Music at the Cathedral of Jaén, by Orquesta Barocca de Sevilla under the direction of Enrico Onofri, shines a light on de la Puente’s significant gifts as a composer.
Although the cathedral in Jaén still stands, this album was recorded at Iglesia del Santuario Nuestra Señora de Loreto in Seville. That church’s magisterial acoustics are skillfully captured by the sound editing and mastering of Jean-Daniel Noir.
The centerpiece of this CD is the 20-movement motet Miserere mei, Deus, subtitled “Psalm for 18 Voices in 7 Choirs.” That level of polychoral layering harkens back to the late 16th and early 17th centuries, when composers such as Thomas Tallis and the Gabrielis relished the challenge of stacking many voices like blocks in a Jenga tower.
De la Puente was clearly an apt student during his musical studies while growing up in Toledo, Spain. The motet demonstrates de la Puente’s command of a wide range of techniques, from organ accompanying complex choral polyphony in the opening movements to the rhythmically aggressive string obbligato in the fifth section, “Tibi soli peccati.” Some movements are choral, while others assign one singer to a part.
Baritone Jesús García Aréjula does particularly beautiful work in the ninth movement, paired against the reedy sound of a dulcian (an early bassoon). His duet with tenor Francisco Fernandez is also noteworthy. Soprano María Espada seems to glory in the instrumental ornamentation fluttering around her between choral responses to her solo lines in the 19th movement.
The Vandalia Choir, prepared by Lluís Vilamájo, has a consistently powerful sound that is never muddy. Onofri maintains fine control while keeping a sense of forward motion no matter how dense the texture becomes.
The second half of the album consists of shorter works by de la Puente, including a couple of three-movement sacred cantatas. These are well-constructed pieces, granting the orchestra passages as expressive as those for the singer while also showing off the composer’s knack for writing Italianate decorative vocal lines. Hopefully, this recording will draw deserved attention to de la Puente’s oeuvre.
Anne E. Johnson is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. Her arts journalism has appeared in The New York Times, Classical Voice North America, Chicago On the Aisle, and Copper: The Journal of Music and Audio. For many years she taught music history and theory in the Extension Division of Mannes School of Music.
