Vespro della Beata VergineGreen Mountain Project & TENET Vocal Artists

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) was not only an exceptional musician; he was great because of the power of meditation and poetical concentration, the seriousness and perseverance which he applied in the pursuit of his ideals. He was the first artist to revive the spirit of antique tragedy and create a music drama which was classical and modern at the same time. He was the creative musical genius whose aim was not the realization of the ideals of the distant past but the expression of the life and ardor that was in him. His grandiose imagination, his colorfulness, the never-abating richness of his musical invention, his tragic rhythm and astounding force of dramatic expression could not find an adequate field in the musical forms of his time. When the greatest musical genius of the early baroque speaks of a "seconda prattica musicale", he announced to the world that an entirely new musical style had been born, and that he was embarking on a "second", that is, new, musical practice." {Paul Henry Lang - Music in Western Civilization - 1941}

As I had mentioned before in a previous review, Claudio Monteverdi lived during a crucial period of profound change in music. The shift from late Renaissance to early Baroque, when composers were becoming more concerned with the meaning and feeling behind the words they set to music. Henceforth vocal music was supposed to derive the rules of its development more from the words than from the cantus firmus. The number of excellent madrigal composers at that time was large, and Monteverdi was one of the best at capturing the impetus and momentum of this new free and passionate art. The work in question here, the Vespro della Beata Vergine, was apparently not conceived as a whole, but was constructed out of various songs and madrigals written at different times, that came together to form one of the most ambitious sacred works of that period.

In this recording captured live at the Church of St. Jean Baptiste, New York City, in January 2020, the Tenet Vocal Artists along with the Dark Horse Consort, as part of their Green Mountain Project (appropriately named since Monteverdi is Italian for Green Mountain), provide a performance that well underpins the music's revitalized spirit. Not surprising when you consider that they set this project in motion with a 400th anniversary performance of this work in January of 2010, and have presented it in many cities, including Venice, ever since. With a single voice to each part and a small ensemble of cornetts, sackbuts, theorbos, organ and strings, the sound is clear and powerful without being opaque. The audio recording also well captures and projects the building's open acoustics, which augments the scope and size of the ensemble. Sit back and listen, and your favorite chair may well become a time-travel machine that takes you back 400 years.

— Jean-Yves Duperron, 9.01.2020

Taken out of historical context, the Green Mountain Project’s final January 2020 concert performance of the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 – streaming at Bandcamp – is epically electrifying. Considering the hideous events of the past nine months, it’s absolutely heartbreaking. Outside of Sweden, Nicaragua, Moscow and a few (slowly growing) parts of the world, it is illegal to either perform, or invite audiences to attend. How fortuitous it was that the ensemble decided to go out when they did – with a bang. This is a particularly high-voltage performance.

Choir directors Jolle Greenleaf and Scott Metcalfe first staged the iconic Renaissance choral work at St. Mary’s Church in midtown Manhattan in January of 2010. It became an annual tradition, finally winding up a year ago, the impassioned voices joined by strings, the period brass of the Dark Horse Consort, and organist Jeffrey Grossman. This massive double live album isn’t quite the complete show: brief, more mundane moments of call-and-response have been omitted. The group sing it at a slightly elevated Venetian pitch, as choirs where the composer was employed four centuries ago would have. Another fascinating accession to tradition is that most of the mass is sung one voice to a particular part, and every one of the soloists rises to the occasion.

Maybe because this is a concert recording, there are places where the instruments are as loud as the voices, occasionally even more so, everyone benefiting from the space’s immense amounts of natural reverb. The choir and instrumentalists handle Monteverdi’s intertwining counterpoint effortlessly and seem to relish hitting the big swells. Angels duel in strong, elegant, melismatic vocalese. Women soar over the men’s steady river of lows and the lustrously balanced orchestration: the wordless sonata that opens the second disc is a lush, majestic highlight.

Another welcome feature that older listeners typically take for granted is that this recording is divided up into a mere 24 tracks, a handful of which go on for almost ten minutes at a time. It’s not quite the equivalent of a vinyl record, but happily this album eschews the recent and incredibly annoying tendency for record labels to slice classical pieces up into dozens of fragments, presumably to maximize Spotify nanopayments.

— Delarue, 1.09.2021

The Vespers was sung at a concert in a New York church a year ago, using one voice to a part with the seven-voice Magnificat. Chant antiphons (first Vespers of the Purification, February 2) were also included at the concert, but they were edited out of the recording. There is a pre-history of the Green Mountain Project dating back exactly 10 years to a 400th anniversary performance of the same work, followed by annual concerts of Baroque music with the ensemble.

This is a fine performance of the music comparable to John Butt (Fanfare 41:3) and Rinaldo Alessandrini (28:4), who likewise use one voice to a part. All have about the same number of singers and players, but only Alessandrini adds the second Magnificat. Grossman and Butt both use the higher pitch, a’=466, and all three transpose the two chiavette movements down by a fourth. Each has three tenors who can sing Duo seraphim to fine effect. Grossman’s singers and players are second to none in this music.

There are other choices among recordings of this music. For a larger number of singers, Jörg Breiding (35:6) has 45 singers and inserts chant antiphons, as so many do. Harry Christophers (38:4) has 22 singers and renders the two chiavette movements twice, first as written, then repeated at the end at the transposed pitch. Masaaki Suzuki (25:2) also has 22 singers with 24 players, adding the second Magnificat and the Missa In illo tempore to deliver a complete recording of the 1610 publication. The last two do not add any chant. A liturgical reconstruction is a more extreme approach, such as Paul McCreesh’s (30:5), which involves rearranging the order of movements, adding instrumental works by other composers, and filling in the bits of liturgical chant that belong to Vespers; unlike others who took this approach, however, McCreesh uses only solo singers.

The 16-page booklet includes a three-page note, texts with English translation, and three color photos of the ensemble. The 10 singers and 16 players are named. Scott Metcalfs’s name occurs prominently in connection with this recording for his “inspiring leadership” of the project and his booklet notes. The discography of this work, over 70 recordings during nearly the same number of years, is a testament to the evolving performance practice of Baroque music. It is remarkable that Grossman can give us a superb performance that offers no surprises, for its excellence would not have been taken almost for granted in the past. Recommended to anyone who does not have one of several similar performances.

— J.F. Weber, 1.28.2021