If only those early choirmasters who castrated young boys to keep their high voiced singing abilities had known what some singers know today: that with training men can access their high boys’ voices with facility and finesse while still being able to sing and speak in a normal tenor or baritone, how many lives would have been changed for the better!
Hearing the renowned men’s choir, Chanticleer, performing at Nordstrom Recital Hall last Saturday night, one can recognize how far this skill has come in the past few decades.
Only with England’s Alfred Deller in the 1940s did the falsetto voice become used in concerts, and then almost entirely in the madrigal and similar repertoire. Then it began to be used as it was in Handel operas and those of his contemporaries, when male leads often were written for a high voice. Now it is a recognized voice form, and we can hear extraordinary male singers with the agility and range of soprano, mezzo, and alto voices.
Chanticleer is a case in point. Presented as the opening concert in the Early Music Guild’s 40th anniversary season, the group of twelve men sang mostly religious settings from the Renaissance and arrangements of traditional folk and gospel songs, loosely gathering their program under the title “Washing of the Water.”
While the choir comprised three tenors and three baritones/basses, it had six men sharing the soprano and alto roles. Nothing appeared arranged specifically for men’s voices; they sang the original notation including what might be considered impossibly high notes for falsettos.
And the quality of the voices! These high voices sounded like the angelic choirboys we hear on recordings from Kings College Chapel, but boys’ sound in men’s bodies, with men’s larger volume. It was extraordinary to hear. This also made a fine balance between the different ranges, so that harmonies were never overweighed one side or another.
The program matched sentiments across the centuries. Thus, a lilting arrangement by William Fred Scott of Robert Lowry’s “Shall We Gather at the River,” was followed by the hypnotically lovely singing of Palestrina’s “Sicut cervus” (“As the deer longs for the flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God”). Several choices were appropriate this week of Hurricane Matthew, such as Tesfa Wondemagegnehu’s arrangement of the old spiritual “I Been in the Storm so Long” (which he wrote after Katrina) while Orlando di Lasso’s sorrowful lament of dislocation, “Super flumina Babylonis” (“By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept”), sounded all too relevant today.
Songs of longing like “Shenandoah,” to the narrative of “Suzanne” to the combination arrangement by Brian Hinman of Paul Simon’s “Bridge over Troubled Waters” and Clara Ward’s “How I Got Over,” with its rollicking chorus and finally Peterson’s arrangement of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” made for a splendidly varied concert, with different numbers of singers participating from as few as four to the full group.
Chanticleer’s pitch sense is a marvel to hear. Always unaccompanied, often with unusual harmonies where singers would have to find an unexpected pitch, the men sang with unerring arrival on the right note and ending with a perfect chord. Words, too, were always audible, but that is usual in the small venue of Nordstrom’s somewhat dry acoustics, which favors word clarity. There were many brief solos, each one beautifully done, by different choir members who then melted back into the choral blend of the group.
It’s been a long time since Chanticleer was last here. Let’s hope they don’t leave so long before returning.
