Christmas to Candlemas

Ensemble Gombert is one of Australia’s finest choral groups. Directed by John O’Donnell – organist, harpsichordist and highly respected academic – the ensemble is known for historically informed performances of Renaissance and later choral repertoire.

John O'Donnell director
Ensemble Gombert ensemble

Jean Mouton composer
Josquin des Prez composer
Andreas de Silva composer
Nicolas Gombert composer
Clemens non Papa composer
Thomas Tallis composer
Tomás Luis de Victoria composer
Roland de Lassus composer
John Sheppard composer
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina composer

Under his direction this group of singers gives historically informed performances of choral music through the centuries, from Josquin to Arvo Pärt. Ensemble Gombert, heard frequently on ABC-FM, sings regularly in its home city, Melbourne.

Christmas to Candlemas names the forty-day span from 25 December, the Feast of the Nativity, to 2 February, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. This is not yet another disc of Christmas music. It is a wide-ranging programme celebrating that season. The works were drawn from the Christmas to Candlemas programmes Ensemble Gombert had been performing annually since 1994, often billed as Melbourne’s carol-free Christmas concert: motets and a Mass setting from the High and Late Renaissance.

Gorgeously in-tune performances and a sumptuously resonant recording made in Xavier College Chapel, Melbourne, make this a must for lovers of choral music.

Reviews

While there may not be a word for it, there can be no doubt that there is a condition – particularly suffered by church musicians – of carol allergy. At this time of year we are regaled by countless performances – many of them atrocious – of those traditional hymns pertaining to the Christmas season. Ensemble Gombert has tried to alleviate the condition over many years by presenting ‘Melbourne’s carol-free Christmas concert’ regularly since 1994.

This CD is a compilation of some of the pieces from those concerts. If you are looking for anything like the usual seasonal offerings, forget it. This is a serious, even erudite, exploration of some of the music written for the forty days between December 25 and February 2, the feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple (otherwise known as Candlemas).

The repertoire comes almost exclusively from the 16th century. As one would expect, there are pieces by Palestrina, Victoria, Tallis, Lassus, and the eponymous Nicholas Gombert, but also gems from the lesser-known Jean Mouton, Andreas de Silva, Clemens (both father and non Papa), John Sheppard and Josquin. While there is a good deal of stylistic similarity, the differences one observes when hearing these composers side by side are fascinating.

The individual vocal characteristics of the singers add to the fascination: the voices are matched, but not blanded (sic), and this enriches the polyphonic textures, clearly differentiating the interweaving lines. The helpful, but not obscuring, acoustic of the Xavier College Chapel, one of the ensemble’s favourite haunts, delivers a range of colour that enhances the experience.

Director John O’Donnell has a wonderful ear for pitch and, apart from a few places at entries, his singers demonstrate habits of intonation that are quite exemplary. Particularly interesting – and well executed – are the characteristic pitch clashes of the works by Desprez and his ilk.

Rhythmically, I wished for more precision. This music abounds in rhythmical subtlety, even ambiguity. But the performances are less exciting than they could have been, especially at moments of transition between duple and triple metre. And what should surely be joyful ejaculations – Alleluia and Noe – are often plain dull.

This is not a CD for the newcomer to choral music, but it is an interesting and valuable addition to the available recordings of music from this period and a relaxing relief from the prevailing fare of Christmas carols.

— Noel Ancell, Music Forum

Artists

John O'Donnell

John O’Donnell, Director of Ensemble Gombert, studied at the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music in Sydney and at the University of Durham. After performing Bach’s complete organ works in 1974, he built an international reputation as an organist and harpsichordist.

Ensemble Gombert

Ensemble Gombert is Melbourne’s outstanding chamber choir, noted for its pure intonation and historic approach to choral sound and style. Named after Nicolas Gombert (c. 1495–1560), it specialises in a cappella Franco-Flemish music of the High Renaissance.

Tracks

Nesciens mater a 8 Jean Mouton 4:08
Praeter rerum seriem a 6 Josquin des Prez 6:12
Puer natus est nobis a 5 Andreas de Silva 7:25
Hodie nobis caelorum rex a 5 Nicolas Gombert 6:29
O magnum mysterium a 6 Clemens non Papa 8:22
Missa Puer natus est nobis Gloria in excelsis Deo a 7 Thomas Tallis 9:31
Quem vidistis, pastores? a 6 Tomás Luis de Victoria 5:41
Vox in Rama a 4 Clemens non Papa 3:09
Omnes de Saba venient a 8 Roland de Lassus 2:46
Reges Tharsis et insulae a 6 John Sheppard 5:31
Senex puerum portabat a 5 Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina 7:52
Nunc dimittis a 12 Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina 3:25

Performers

John O'Donnell · director
Ensemble Gombert · ensemble

Composers

Josquin des Prez

Josquin des Prez shaped Renaissance vocal polyphony into something keenly expressive: independent voices that imitate, answer and lock around the text. Masses, motets and chansons still sound alive in the throat.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Palestrina's sacred polyphony balances proportion and serenity with crystalline text. His masses and motets move in smooth, carefully controlled lines where dissonance yields to consonance and every voice serves the liturgy.

Nicolas Gombert

Nicolas Gombert wrote dense, closely imitative sacred polyphony at the height of the Franco-Flemish style: masses, motets and Magnificat settings in continuous textures that favour lower voices and bold cross-relations.

Roland de Lassus

Jean Mouton

Jean Mouton's early sixteenth-century motets and masses unfold in supple, equal-voiced polyphony, often built on canons. The writing keeps every line singing, with continuous melodic flow rather than sharp textural contrast.

Clemens non Papa

Clemens non Papa’s motets are high Renaissance polyphony at full stretch: Marian devotion in O Maria, vernans rosa, Christmas wonder in the six-voice O magnum mysterium, and the stark grief of Vox in Rama.

John Sheppard

Andreas de Silva

Thomas Tallis

Thomas Tallis wrote the sacred vocal music that still defines English Renaissance polyphony: dense, luminous counterpoint that can turn from spare Anglican clarity to seven-voice splendour and the famous forty-part Spem in alium.

Tomás Luis de Victoria

Tomás Luis de Victoria wrote almost exclusively sacred polyphonic music to Latin texts: motets, Marian antiphons and Holy Week offices whose intensity and direct emotional line set him among the principal voices of the late Renaissance.

Contributors

Cover photo and design

Belinda Webster

Belinda Webster is the founder of Tall Poppies Records and a leading Australian producer and recording engineer whose work has documented classical, contemporary and jazz performance across decades of catalogue releases.

Liner Notes

John O'Donnell

Where to listen

Christmas to Candlemas is available for streaming through Apple Music. It can also be purchased through the iTunes Music Store.

Christmas to Candlemas is available as a CD. It can be purchased online through Buywell Music or the Australian Music Centre which both offer online ordering.