Tapestry, a four-woman singing group that sprang from Boston’s lively early-music scene in 1995, sang of heaven and its inhabitants, beauty and light — and darkness, too – at Elizabethtown College’s Leffler Chapel and Performance Center Sunday evening in a program titled “In the Company of Angels.” Soprano Cristi Catt and mezzo-sopranos Laurie Monahan, Daniela Tošić and Carolann Buff (who joined the group in 2001) wove a near-seamless bridge leaping from medieval plainchant to present-day interpretations of ancient musical practice. Singing in various configurations (accompanied by Monahan on a small harp in two selections), the four women brought the music to life. Catt occasionally soared into the stratosphere like a bird let loose, Tošić and Buff provided a rock-solid lower line and Monahan bringing a lyrical, rich tone to the performance, which ebbed and flowed, surging forward with energy, then pooling into unisons, the breathing in-breathing out rhythm of life.
They sang 13th century works, comprising two anonymous selections from the composers who were part of the creative flowering of polyphony at Notre Dame Cathedral and one from Pérotin, the Notre Dame school’s finest composer and one of only two whose name we know, and a single selection from the Las Huelgas Codex, associated with a community of nuns in Spain. Jumping back a century or so, they performed two works by Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th-century abbess whose plainsong compositions seem to leap up to heaven.
Serving as weft to the warp of these hundreds-of-years-old works were compositions by two women of the present day: Joan Szymko and Patricia Van Ness. Szymko, a conductor, composer, performer and educator based in the Pacific Northwest, was represented by “Nada te Turbe,” a setting of words by the 16th century St. Teresa of Avila, sung in Spanish and English. The work used a rich and contemporary harmonic language, echoing medieval practice in its use of lively repeated rhythmic cells.
The entire second half of the program was given over to sections of New England-based composer Van Ness’s “The Nine Orders of the Angels.” (Two of her shorter works were performed during the first part of the program, as well) Van Ness wrote the texts as well as composed the music, and her words invoke the mysteries of the unknown, sudden revelations and the intersection of the spiritual and the mundane, as when the Angel of the Thrones declares “My arms hold the knowledge of the/Material World …” She sees the Archangel Gabriel, messenger to Mary, (II) as a “bearer of divine secrets,” visiting the world at twilight: “In the sapphire night you whirl/ Dancing the great dance.” The Angels of Power bring creative energy, but can turn into angels of death “Like great cats with bloody fangs/ whose claws are filled with darkness.” To set these mystical words, Van Ness uses the techniques of the medieval composers, including organum: florid melodies sung above long-held notes. But the melodies blossom from the turmoil of the 20th century and bring hints of tumult and dissonance — in other words, it sounds ancient and modern all at once. A strong thread running through the performance was the contribution of women: Hildegard and Teresa, both of whom defied convention and opposition, and the contemporary composers, both female, both engaging with tradition in different but related ways.
In the interests of full disclosure, I must admit that I was late for the performance and missed the first two pieces on the program (well, I heard a tiny chunk of Van Ness’s “Ego sum custos angela”). A pity: one doesn’t want to miss any part of a program as good as this. I have one quibble, however. There were texts and performer biographies in the program, but no music notes, and no information on the composers. This was the second concert I went to in two days that didn’t have program notes. I hope this isn’t a trend.
The next Gretna Music concert is Guitarnival, coming up Nov. 21. More information is available here.
