The Fredösphere

This CD, A Hilliard Songbook, had been on my wish list for a while.  I vetted it carefully, listening to the bits that Amazon offers.  It's a small, elite ensemble singing all new music.  This should have been a slam dunk for me.  A harmonic convergence.  A perfect storm of ensemble, style, and time period.  It proved to be a perfect snore.

Okay, austere stuff like this needs some time to settle into the ear, but right now I'm struggling to find one track I can like.  Consider Kullervo's Message by Veljo Tormis.  This piece is similar to Piispa ja pakana (The Bishop and the Pagan) by the same composer, performed by the King's Singers on this album (check out the sound file).  The sound, the subject matter, the ensemble are all similar--but the King's Singers' performance has a edge and an energy that I just don't hear in the Hilliard Ensemble.  The Piispa ought to be more off-putting; it includes more whispering/stammering/spitting effects, but there it seems like dramatic flourishes rather than weird-for-the-sake-of-weird modernist tics.  If I must be spat at, let it be the King's Singers doing the spitting!

Like I said, sometimes this kind of music needs time settle into the ear.  If I change my mind, I'll let you know.  Right now, however, the verdict is:  dull, dull, dull.

When I was a voice student at the University of Michigan, I took a composition class taught by the big boys.  It was a nice opportunity for anyone (even non-music-majors) to rub shoulders with composers like William Bolcom or Leslie Basset.  I took the class twice, and in the semester taught by Bolcom, all my projects were sacred music for voices (with some instruments thrown in).  In the end he told me I should try writing something secular and instrumental, which would goose up my approach to sacred work.  (Those may not have been his exact words.)  It's taken me years, but now I think I understand what good advice that was.  I wonder if the Hilliard ensemble have spent too much time in a very serious environment, breathing the rarefied air of the high-brow, the accademic, and the tastefully refined.  Maybe someone should inject some N₂O in there.