From Gabrieli To Grandi (with Charles Daniels)

The first time I heard the music of Giovanni Gabrieli, it sounded something like this:

One of these massed U.S. brass section tapes sat in my overworked Walkman for months, providing the soundtrack to my journey to and from school. A few years later, as a trombonist in a city full of trombonists, I had the opportunity to play some of this music. Our more sober performances were closer in style to those by the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble or the London Symphony Brass: without tubas, horns or the often present organist, E. Power Biggs. A few years later, I picked up A Venetian Coronation 1595, the debut record by the Gabrieli Consort & Players, directed by Paul McCreesh. This revelatory disc was my introduction to the sonatas and canzonas played on (wooden) cornetts and (trombone forerunner) sackbuts (sample that special sound here). It was also my first encounter with the vocal music of Gabrieli and his uncle Andrea.

For Venetian Coronation, McCreesh put together a speculative reconstruction of a Doge’s coronation, interspersing the Gabrielis’ music with bells, fanfares and the appropriate plainchant, in an attempt to transport the listener to St. Mark’s, Venice (it was actually recorded in Brinkburn Priory, Northumberland). This disc had a profound effect on my developing musical tastes, partly because it prompted an exploration of the many riches of the pre-Baroque repertoire. Perhaps even more importantly, it was the first time I had truly enjoyed listening to classical solo voices. In those days, I preferred orchestral and choral blockbusters - the big, vibrato-laden voices of Romantic opera still seemed to belong to a distant musical world. The opening of the first Kyrie on Venetian Coronation was another matter, though. Here, I first heard the ‘cleaner,’ firmer voice of Charles Daniels, blending beautifully with the less brassy, more vocal period trombones. Poring over the liner notes of my then modest collection of early music CDs, I started to see the same names cropping up repeatedly, and made a point of searching for discs featuring my favourites.

McCreesh’s next reconstruction imagined a Venetian Vespers service, "as it might have been celebrated on Friday 24th March 1643." By 1643, Claudio Monteverdi was in charge of music at St. Mark’s* (he died the same year). The set includes a handful of pieces by him, including an ingenious Laetatus Sum, but most of the music is by his younger colleagues, including Alessandro Grandi, who was made Monteverdi’s deputy in 1620. By this time, Venetian church music had changed. Composers had dispensed with the large choirs of cornetts and sackbuts, writing more often for solo voices with smaller accompanying groups of instruments. Several of the singers I had got to know on Coronation returned for Vespers, including Charles Daniels, whose performance of Grandi’s marvellous O Intemerata remains a great favourite.

Alessandro GRANDI (?1586-1630) - O Intemerata (from ‘Motetti A Voce Sola’) - Charles Daniels (tenor); Paula Chateauneuf (chitarrone); Timothy Roberts (organ)

This virtuosic Marian motet packs an awful lot into its four and a bit minutes; Grandi’s music moves easily between moments of great tenderness and surprisingly unchecked abandon. Looking back, I know I rarely used to consider the meaning of the text when I was younger. I was more taken by the beautiful sound of the words, as well as the performance itself, in which Daniels pushes his voice towards its limits - the ecstatic final repeats of "et virgo gloriosa" still astonish.

* In 1595, Baldassare Donato was maestro di cappella.