One of my very first articles for this magazine was about Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine. And long before that, at a time when CDs were not yet a given, I decided to record Monteverdi's complete oeuvre on cassette tapes for my own use. Let's just say I have had a soft spot for this maestro di cappella for many years. Perhaps more than a soft spot.
As a result, I am always especially curious when someone promises a new perspective on the Vespers. After all, that doesn't happen so often anymore. The work has by now become one of the most recorded scores of the early Baroque, and the catalogue is overflowing with excellent versions.
Yet Lambert Colson and his ensemble InAlto manage to do exactly that.
This recording has been sitting in my digital library for some time now. I deliberately let it mature. First listening. Then listening again. Then reading the extensive booklet. Then listening once more. Some recordings require some time, but they repay that investment many times over. This is one of them.
Not restoring but reconstructing
Colson starts from a simple question. What are we actually doing today when we perform "the Monteverdi Vespers"?
In his view, the performance practice of the past fifty years has become an accumulation of well-meant interpretations. Generations of conductors have adjusted the instrumentation, added or removed instruments, changed tempi, expanded continuo groups and placed dramatic accents. Always out of love for the music and always from a desire for authenticity. But what if all those successive adjustments have themselves become a tradition?
Using the famous paradox of the Ship of Theseus as a guiding thread, he asks whether we have not gradually been looking at a different ship than Monteverdi's own. That is why he deliberately chooses reconstruction rather than restoration. Not trying to return to an unreachable origin, but examining the circumstances under which this music acquired meaning.
I must admit: that starting point appealed to me immediately. I have always been fascinated by the context in which music arises. Sometimes you understand a work better by stepping outside the concert hall for a moment and asking why a composer made certain choices.
Back to Mantua in 1610
This reconstruction translates into a number of radical choices.
Colson does not attempt to perform the Vespers as an abstract masterpiece, but as a concrete vespers service for the Assumption of Mary in Mantua in 1610. For this, specific antiphons are selected from Mantuan sources and reinserted into the liturgical structure for which they were originally intended. The Gregorian chant is performed by the Cappella di San Petronio di Bologna under the direction of Michele Vannelli. Moreover, the recording took place in the Basilica di Santa Barbara in Mantua, where the historic Antegnati organ also plays a central role.
A discovery in the motets
Perhaps my greatest discovery was Colson's vision of the five concerti or motets.
I have heard the Vespers dozens of times without ever really pausing to consider their mutual coherence. Colson, inspired by the research of Jeffrey Kurtzman, reads these works as a deliberately constructed theological development. Nigra sum, Pulchra es, Duo Seraphim, Audi coelum and Sonata sopra Sancta Maria form a symmetrical arc of one, two, three, two and again one voice. The path runs, as it were, towards the centre, towards the revelation of the Trinity.
Small ensemble, great impact
The scoring fits this concept perfectly.
Where some performances aim for monumental choral sound, Colson opts for one singer per part. Only: it doesn't sound like that at all.
What struck me most while listening was how rich the whole remains. Transparent, yes. Clear, absolutely. But at the same time surprisingly full. There are moments when you would almost swear that a much larger ensemble lies hidden behind this recording.
Through this approach, the singers emerge in a very natural way. Not as soloists breaking away from the ensemble, but as musicians telling a story together. I use the word modest deliberately, and as a compliment. Nobody here tries to steal the show. Everything serves the music.
The Gregorian chant
The use of the Gregorian antiphons in this Vespers always moves me.
They remove the Vespers from the concert hall and place them once again in a living liturgical space. At certain moments I felt less like I was listening to a recording and more like I was witnessing a service slowly unfolding before my ears.
The antiphons are performed very slowly and sustained. That is never disturbing, quite the contrary. The quality of the singing by the Cappella di San Petronio di Bologna is impressive. But I would have liked to read a little more about the concrete performance practice behind this choice. Why precisely this tempo? Is it intended to create a stronger contrast with Monteverdi's virtuosic concertante style? Or is there a historical source underlying it?
Organ, chiavette and space
Nothing is left to chance in the instrumental realization either.
The historical organ registrations that Monteverdi notates, particularly in the Magnificat, are not treated here as performance details but as structural elements of the composition. The magnificent Antegnati organ in Santa Barbara thereby takes on a role that goes far beyond mere accompaniment.
Interesting is also Colson’s attention to the system of the chiavette. For the uninitiated reader: certain Renaissance notations were intended to be performed lower than they appear on paper. Often by roughly a fourth. This affects not only the range of the voices, but also the colour of the whole, the balance with the instruments and ultimately the entire sonic world of the performance.
Another detail that says a lot about his aesthetic: Colson explicitly mentions that the recording was made without a conductor in the traditional sense of the word. You may not hear this immediately, but you feel it. The music breathes as one body. Listening to each other is more important than giving commands.
More than a recording
After several listening sessions, I realised that the appeal of this double CD does not lie in spectacular effects.
You are not overwhelmed by massive choirs. There are no theatrical gestures clamouring for attention. What lingers is something much more subtle: the sense that someone has tried to understand why this music was ever written.
And that is the core of Colson’s project. Not so much reconstructing exactly how the Vespers sounded, something that ultimately remains impossible, but trying to understand how the whole functioned. Antiphons, modality, proportions, space, organ registrations, transposition and theology form one whole again. Not a reconstruction of a sound, but of an internal logic.
This recording has not taught me the Vespers anew, but it has taught me to listen to them anew. After decades, countless performances and a cupboard full of recordings, that is a rare achievement.
InAlto is currently touring with this programme. Should you get the chance to hear them live, do not hesitate. Some CDs document a performance. This one invites you to continue the journey.
