Miami vocal ensemble Seraphic Fire has released Ave Maria, a new album, under it’s in-house SFM label — with a completely misleading subtitle that suggests this is all Gregorian chant. It is much more, and very appealingly so.
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Seraphic Fire’s founder and artistic director, Patrick Dupré Quigley has put together a masterful track list that pairs sacred Marian texts in plainsong with later settings (from the early and late Renaissance) for mixed voices. Quigley has even had a hand in several of the performance editions used on the album.
The choir is constituted from a stable of four-dozen professional singers, including both male and female altos. For this album, recorded at All Saints Episcopal Church in Ft Lauderdale, there were 13 singers. Their overall sound is perfectly balanced and impeccably articulated. It also tends toward the muscular rather than merely pretty.
In short, it’s hard to imagine the music sounding any better than on this 55-minute collection of 18 chants, hymns and motets.
The chants come from a variety of anonymous sources. The polyphonic settings are from a who’s who of European masters, including Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Tomás Luis de Victoria and Francisco Guerrero. There are slightly earlier motets by Josquin des Prez, John Dunstaple and Leonel Power.
This album is a treat from beginning to end, and a gorgeous introduction to the very different seductive powers of plainchant and polyphony.
You’ll find our more about Seraphic Fire and their recordings here.
Here is a sample from the album — Victoria’s eight-part setting of Regina Caeli:
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
