Bitter Disappointment
I found this DVD in the bargain bin of a bookstore in Santiago, Chile. Don't think I didn't snatch it! Ockeghem is semi-divine in my mind. His Requiem - the first polyphonic requiem ever - is the ultimate integration of mind and spirit, complex beyond analysis and yet sensually emotive. I realize that calling something "the most perfect" is a logical quirk, but here I go: Ockeghem's Requiem is the most perfect expression of consolation in the history of music. The Hilliard Ensemble - various guys at various times - have never done their best singing in performances of "Franco-Flemish" polyphony. They sing it too piously, and their mellow blend of choir-boy voices treats the Latin texts as pure vowels without consonants. Make no mistake! They are very, very good even when not at their best, but stage presence is not their forte. Putting them on video exaggerates their stiffness, so that they look like six owls on a rafter when you open the barn door to daylight. But it's the music we're eager for, right? Well, whoever produced this travesty didn't respect the music at all. Everything possible is done to distract the listener from the spacious complexity of Ockeghem's flowing lines. First the acoustic: The performance was recorded in a bare stone church in Switzerland, with a reverberation time of about six seconds. Even at deplorably slow tempi, the Hilliards can't drag their phrases out of the way of their own echoes. Perhaps the producers thought sonic muddlement would equate with mysticism, but it doesn't. Contrary to some popular images, early Renaissance polyphony wasn't meant to be sung in reverberant caverns or from the high altars of bare cathedrals. It was sung in chapels, and the walls were hung with tapestries, ex votos, reliquaries, etc., which sucked up all that "wet" acoustic rumble. As if six stunned choir-boys struggling to sing in Chauvet Cave weren't affront enough, after the first kyrie the camera pans back from the ensemble to reveal that they are standing in a ruined clerestory above a burial vault with a massive stone sarcophagus. Groveling around the sarcophagus - which by the way means corpse-eater etymologically - are six sylphs clad in paprika-red leotards with matching stoles. Are they supposed to be angels? Resurrected souls? Soon enough they begin to writhe and flap around the sarcophagus, seemingly wafting something with their hands. The camera close-ups of their flittering fingers reveal that at least two of them are compulsive nail-biters. These sylphs surely aren't trained dancers, judging by their awkward gyrations. Perhaps they're just the pretty young wives of the choir-boys. Let's hope so, for everyone's sake. It's all very embarrassing, really, and calculated to make the sublime Ockeghem sound like music for an Easter pageant in an Ursuline high school. Yuck! I didn't even listen to the Lassus Lagrime di San Pietro. I wouldn't bother to review this catastrophe except to warn any of my amazon friends who might stumble upon another copy of it in a bargain bin somewhere. There are at least two superb CDs of the Requiem, by The Clerks' Group and by Ensemble Organum. Believe me, you can do a better job of visualizing the music inside your head than has been done on this DVD. Read more
