BRATTLEBORO — A celebrated early music vocal ensemble from Great Britain is coming to Southern Vermont with a new slant on some very old music.
On Wednesday, April 13, at the the First Baptist Church on 190 Main St., Stile Antico will perform Sacred or Profane: Exploring Sensual Music Made Spiritual During the Renaissance.
In this provocative program, the acclaimed Renaissance choral group will trace the blurred boundary between sacred and secular music in the Renaissance.
Risqué, racy chansons were transformed by Lassus, Morales, and Victoria into devout Masses and Magnificats, and ribald folk songs worked into prayerful polyphony by Dufay and Taverner.
Most shockingly of all, and over the Church’s disapproval, it was none other than the Cardinal of Milan who commissioned sacred texts to be fitted to some of Monteverdi’s most frankly erotic madrigal.
Stile Antico is one of the world’s most vibrant and expressive vocal ensembles, whose Renaissance music specialization has given its wide repertory new meaning and resonance. Leading critics are united in their praise of the 12-person ensemble that was formed when a number of the singers found each other and began performing during their years of study at Cambridge University.
New Yorker critic Alex Ross called his experience of a Stile Antico concert “perhaps the most ravishing sound I heard this year.” Steve Smith of The New York Times concurred, calling Stile “an ensemble of breathtaking freshness, vitality, and balance.”
Based in London, Stile Antico works without a conductor, primarily performing works of Renaissance polyphony. Its bestselling recordings on the Harmonia Mundi label have earned accolades such as the Gramophone Award for Early Music, the Diapason d’or de l’année, the Edison Klassiek Award, and the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, and have twice received Grammy nominations.
This week marked 10 years since Stile Antico’s first session for its first recording, Music for Compline, for Harmonia Mundi. The recording company is also set to release a compilation of the group’s work to commemorate this anniversary.
“We do about one CD a year since our inception 10 years ago,” a member of Stile Antico, Will Dawes, told The Commons in a telephone interview from Great Britain, where Stile Antico is finishing recording their latest CD and was preparing to leave for its American tour. Stops are planned for Seattle, Berkeley, Concord, N.H., Brattleboro, and elsewhere.
“Our new disc will be entirely devoted to the amazing music of Giaches de Wert,” says Dawes. “He was a Flemish composer who moved to Northern Italy where he became an important influence on Monteverdi.”
Dawes is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied choral conducting and singing. He is chorus master for Ludus Baroque, conducts choral groups across the South of England, and sings with groups such as Polyphony and Collegium Vocale Gent.
“We are 12 singers, six boys and six girls,” says Dawes about Stile Antico.
Six members of the original 12 are still with Stile Antico after all these years. Dawes joined the group nine years ago when one of its baritones quit.
“For its first few years, the group was non-professional, and when Stile did turn professional, which brought with it new responsibilities and headaches, some left,” says Dawes. “We perform a lot, about 40 concerts a year, which means so far we have given over 300 concerts.”
This is especially impressive since no one in the group works for Stile Antico full time.
“We also have to hold down other jobs, usually in the field of music,” Dawes adds.
While the majority of its repertoire comes from the Renaissance, with a few forays into the baroque, the group has also performed some modern pieces written for them by such prestigious contemporary composers as Nico Muhly and John McCabe.
“Stile Antico rarely sings with any accompaniment, although we have for instance included a lute, and once we performed with the early music ensemble B’Rock Orchestra,” says Dawes.
One thing that makes Stile Antico unusual is that it has no conductor.
Dawes elaborates: “That idea is an extension of polyphony itself, where no one part is stronger than another. Everyone has one’s tune that is equal in interpretation. The responsibility of the group rests squarely on everyone’s shoulders. This is democratic playing of democratic music.”
Dawes concedes that, with no conductor, Stile Antico ends up having to have more rehearsals than similar groups tend to have.
“But it comes with its musical rewards,” he says. “We function rather like a chamber music ensemble in which we are breathing and singing in harmony. I think audiences like it. With no conductor’s back facing the audience there seems to be a more direct access of the audience to the music playing on stage.”
Everyone in the group has an active role in administration. “For instance, one person takes care of personnel, another booking, a third money, and so forth,” Dawes explains.
“I am very excited to be part of a group in which everyone is equally involved in making great music.”