Björn Schmelzer, Graindelavoix, Manuel Mota - Antoine Brumel: Earthquake Mass
(Glossa Records, 2024)
“This is classic Graindelavoix, for better or worse, but with its trademark mannerisms integrated in a project that contextualises the violence (in a post-structuralist sense) done to Brumel.”
Gramophone Magazine
To be sure, Graindelavoix is a divisive band of merry singers intent on upending the Renaissance vocal repertoire. The group, lead by the Svengali Björn Schmelzer, produced an exceptional (if only in some quarters) performance of Gesualdo’s Tenebrae. Graindelavoix provides a granular and emotive performance, with the lower registers slightly sandy and the higher ones bright and clear.
What Schmelzer and company bring to Antoine Brumel’s “Earthquake Mass" is a post-modern aesthetic that is as jarring as beautiful. Their approach is nothing new. Saxophonist Jan Garbarek teamed with The Hilliard Ensemble to make several recordings, mixing the ethereal voices with a liberated saxophone for ECM Records over the past 30 years. Schmelzer takes the approach a step further, creating a soundscape of beautiful desolation with guitarist and composer Manuel Mota.
For Easter day, the Feast of the Resurrection, Brumel created a staggering sonic soundscape using 12 voices, his Missa "Et Ecce Terrae Motus." The composition derives its name from its cantus firmus, an Antiphon for Easter morning Lauds. The text describes the moment of Christ's Resurrection: "And behold, there was a great earthquake, and the angel of the Lord descended from heaven (Matthew 28:2)."
During the composer's lifetime, people justifiably recognized the composition, and it remains one of the creative peaks of Renaissance choral writing, with its progressive scoring for 12 voices and its filigree-like melodic detailing pitted against long stretches of lingering blocks of harmony. Schmelzer, in company with Mota, turns this celebration of salvation on its ear, casting the sung sections among the droning winds of desolation made beautiful: the pinnacle of the Romantic ideal of “ruined beauty.” This recording will not be for everyone. But for those with open minds and restless spirits, it may speak legions.