They’re even better than I remembered them from 6 years ago. One friend said he thought they have more energy in live performance than comes across in their CD’s. Of course, I know a lot more about the music than I did then. And I think Jordan Hall might be a slightly better acoustic for them than Emmanuel Church; I’ll be able to tell you more about that after tomorrow’s 11 PM concert.
The “staging” of the concert was really nice; instead of cowering behind music stands or notebooks, they sat around a table littered with papers. They new the music well enough that they only needed to glance down now and then, and their faces were free to connect with the audience and their hands were free (in the director’s case, to keep the tactus with a green pencil).
The subtitle of the concert was “A palindromic banquet of Franco-Flemish music”. A woman in the ladies room wanted to know what a palindrome was; the two examples we were able to come up with were “Madam I’m Adam” and “A man, a plan, a canal: Panama”. I liked the program’s structure:
* A Prelude introducing the subject
* A grace before the meal
* Songs (and one lute solo dance) about the hunt (for women as well as beasts)
* A lament
* Intermission
* Another lament
* more songs about food, drink, and women
* Prayer after the meal
They used either the lute, the small organ, or both to accompany most of what they did. Obviously they’re capable of singing without it, and it wasn’t making a very large contribution to the sound of the group as heard by the audience, but it gave a sense of security that was among the many things that allowed the connection with the audience to be as good as it was.
As I remember it, 6 years ago Dominique Visse, the director, beat the tactus less than half the time; this time he was doing it all the time. I’m sure that was part of the amazing rhythmic flexibility they acheived, but I did find it a little bit distracting sometimes.
h3. Audience
It wasn’t the solid, whole audience rising as one, standing ovation I’ve experienced on a couple of occasions, but well over half the audience (including this reviewer) were standing at the final ovation. And the comments I overheard on my way out seemed to include a lot of words like “marvelous” and “fantastic”.
For reasons that are entirely obscure to me, Jordan Hall was half full or maybe even less. One recorder player I talked to hadn’t been coming to BEMF 6 years ago when they were here last, and I guess neither of those concerts then was particularly full, either. But it’s a shame they aren’t better known.
h3. You too can play the music.
This is a repertoire “my group”:http://www.laymusic.org/windband.html really enjoys, but hasn’t yet done as much of as will probably will soon.
But one of our members has requested that we sing “La Deploration de la morte de Johannes Ockeghem”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/pieces/189.html at her funeral. We joke that that is one of many reasons we hope that event will be far in the future — it’s going to take a long time to learn that one. We also have it in a “transposed version”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/pieces/118.html, for groups with good low basses and no sopranos.
LayMusic.org 
Cl̩ment Jannequin РI volunteered and distributed programs, then went in to hear. Sat first in the balcony, in a box, then downstairs in the 5th or 6th row.
Upstairs Visse’ voice was intolerably harsh, downstairs it was somewhat mitigated by the ensemble, but still tended to grate, especially at the highest end.
I also got really tired of the sophomoric scatological themes – they really don’t wear well for an entire evening. Finally, palindrome motif notwithstanding, one hunt song is plenty per evening.
If the repertoire represented the sense of humor of the age, it was pretty limited to the coarse and obvious!
I ran into other people who found Dominique Visse’s voice grating, and everyone noticed that it dominated the group sound more than a good close harmony male group would have allowed.
I personally have always disliked the groups that try to play Renaissance music as if it were close harmony. I found that (at least in Jordan Hall; less so in Emmanuel Church), I had no trouble picking any line and following it and enjoying it as a solo, which is my test for a good renaissance group.
However, I should mention that I really enjoyed the piece on the Thursday 11 PM concert that used only the low voices in the group. Maybe they should do more of that for the people with lower tolerance of the high voices.
As far as the humor of the age, the age we’re talking about is the contemporaries or fairly immediate predecessors of Shakespeare, so while I don’t know about limited, there was certainly lots of coarse and obvious.