What Medieval Christmas Sounded Like

By ALLAN KOZINN
Published: December 23, 2009
Lionheart, the early-music vocal sextet, has assembled several medieval Christmas programs over the years, each focusing on the hymns, motets and carols of a particular country. Last year its holiday concert in the Medieval Sculpture Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art explored Italian music. When the singers returned to the space this year, they brought an old favorite among their seasonal offerings, “Tydings Trew: Feasts of Christmas in Medieval England,” a program they have also recorded (for Koch International Classics).

The medieval hall is a perfect setting for this music. Its architecture and the statuary it holds are of the right period, and its resonant acoustics flatter the ensemble’s already rich sound. And the museum’s huge Christmas tree and a Neapolitan Baroque crèche are the visual centerpiece of the room. Lionheart uses this space to fine effect. The opening hymn, “A solis ortus cardine,” and the “Nunc dimittis” setting that closed the Tuesday program are performed as the group enters and leaves the hall, and though this may seem a cliché, the gradual shift in vocal perspective as the singers move toward or away from the audience is striking.

Spatial perspective is considered elsewhere too. In the “Benedicite omnia opera domini domino” setting (all these works are anonymous), a solo performer to the left sang each verse, and a chorus of five, on the right, repeated it. For the hymn “Sancte dei preciose” they broke into two triangular groups of three, and in the carol “Seynt Thomas Honour We,” the singers were at the front and sides of the audience. The program was organized as a chronological tour of the 12 days of Christmas, with works suited to the various feasts and commemorations that occur between Christmas and the Feast of the Epiphany on Jan. 6. So carols celebrating the Annunciation (the richly textured “Nowell, Nowell”) and the Nativity (the rhythmically lively, almost folksy “As I Outrode This Endres Night”) were followed by pieces for St. Stephen’s Day (Saturday) and the Feasts of the Holy Innocents (Monday) and of St. Thomas of Canterbury (commemorating his murder by knights of King Henry II on Dec. 29, 1170).

Lionheart’s sound has always been polished, and these days it is also flexible and nuanced. In chanted Antiphons and in pieces like the solidly chordal motet “Venter tuus,” the group is unified and precise. Where the polyphony is more involved, as in “A, My Dere, A, My Dere Son,” the individual voices are heard more distinctly, and the singers’ fine gradations of texture and dynamics give the music an unusual clarity and depth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/arts/music/24lion.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss