Mary Gabriel

White’s Lamentations are not as famous as Tallis’s, but their plangent harmonies and clashing lines have an equal intensity. This impressive debut disc by Gallicantus (an all-male group from the Tenebrae choir) includes White’s motets and hymns, emphasising his response to the texts and his eloquent way with the single Hebrew letters that begin each Lamentation. The vocal balance is slightly bass-heavy, but the sound is beautifully recorded.

The feasts of Christmas were particularly rich in subject and imagery and gave rise to some of the most captivating music from medieval England, with joyous salutations to Mary and the Angel Gabriel, as well as more intimate songs of the nativity. The cult of Mary seems to have been as real as the courtly domna of the troubadours, and for English song-writers she stands supreme over the Christ-child and all the other figures of the Christmas story. The most detailed story-song in her honour is one of a group of songs celebrating Christmas feast days at Winchester College when, according to the College statutes, a fire would be lit in hall and the scholars and fellows would pass the evening with songs and other decent entertainments, with poems, chronicles of kings, and the marvels of this world. Lolay, lolay is the only monophonic song in the collection and is a lengthy lullaby in which the poet eavesdrops on a conversation between a young mother and her son. As it unfolds we realize their identities and hear about the mysteries of the Christmas story.

Aside from Henri Duparc's Romance de Mignon and the four Mignon Lieder of Franz Schubert, which are based on poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, soprano Mary Bevan's 2017 release on Signum Classics is mostly devoted to settings of poetry by Charles Baudelaire, by French composers who showed a deep affinity for his visionary writings. Duparc, Gabriel Fauré, Emmanuel Chabrier, Déodat de Séverac, Claude Debussy, and Maurice Rollinat contributed musical settings for some of Baudelaire's most beloved verses, including L'Invitation au voyage, Harmonie du soir, Chant d'Automn, Le jet d'eau, and other atmospheric poems that captured their imagination.