Chanticleer: Orlando di Lasso’s ‘Optics’

C   ultural acts, the construction, apprehension, and utilization of symbolic forms, are social events like any other; they are as public as a marriage and as observable as agriculture.”
  —  Clifford Geertz, Religion as a Cultural System, p. 87.

T he program notes for last night’s chamber performance by Chanticleer of works by Orlando di Lasso mention the paintings of Hans Mielich, including the one above from about 1570 which depicts Lasso leading an ensemble of chamber singers and other musicians.

• Psalmus Poenitentialis ‘Miserere mei Deus’ LV 727, Ps. 51
  
• Laudate Dominum de caelis LV 954, Ps. 148
  
• Laudate Dominum in Sacris ejus LV 953, Ps. 150
  
• Missa ‘Tous les regretz’ LV 626

E ach beautiful and each iconographically very different, all of these seem intended to assert specific assets of the singers and of the composer and the patrons: good will, generosity, purity of intention, piety, and nobility.

A ccretions from centuries of use and custom must have constrained the mass; here in this missa and laudates and other pieces, Orlando di Lasso’s flowing vocal arcs are freed-up, liberated like sunbeams, spreading light and exposing minute details... inviting the Divine to examine in detail the hearts of those who are offering these sounds. The shiftings from major to minor and back again, again and again—these evoke an ‘optical’ quality not unlike 16th Century Flemish and French and Venetian paintings or even German art like Dürer’s. Individual voices are drawn with truth and utter simplicity. Chanticleer members’ voices ascend in the spiral sanctuary, permeating it, inhabiting it by dint of truth and simplicity.

A  Jan van Eyck painting from the same period shows Canon van der Paele, canon of the Church of St. Donatian in Bruges, Belgium (not far from where Lasso was born) kneeling before the Virgin and Child, next to St. George and St. Donatian. They are in the dark interior of the Bruges cathedral, illuminated by a light source coming from the upper left.

T he canon’s manuscript and eyeglasses—a narrative indication that van der Paele has quit reading from his book and turns his attention to Virgin and Child. The canon’s illuminated manuscript and eyeglasses parallel the props held by Christ and His mother—a bouquet and a parrot. To 15th Century viewers these must’ve been symbolic. But it is clear the props are also incidental; transitory; ‘of this world’. The singing of Chanticleer is ‘of this world’ as well, but it propels our minds and hearts beyond it.

T he interweaving voices activate colors and tones—the counter-tenors pick up the gold threads of St. Donatian’s brocade; the tenors catch glints from St. George’s shining armor; the baritones and basses reveal the draping and textures of the rich fabrics—as they are reflected, re-reflected, and refracted from different surfaces... In the painting, just so with the sound in this peculiar architecture.

T he frames of van der Paele’s eyeglasses cast shadows onto the book. The refraction of the lenses distorts the text underneath. Chanticleer 4-, 5-, and 6-part harmony... parts refracting against each other, at times shadowing or occluding each other; with beat-frequencies among the pitches and re-reflections and meta-refractions against the texts.

T he visual intentions of the painting and its descriptive language control or inform our interpretation of symbolic meaning. The sonic intentions of these pieces and their descriptive language similarly control or inform how we parse their symbolic meanings. Minimalist/literalist interpretations hold that, when normative explanation for an object is sufficient to explain its presence, symbolic meaning is both unnecessary and improbable—an application of Ockham’s Razor. But hearing these tunes and reading these eyeglasses in a literal, nonsymbolic way runs counter to the way in which this painting and these Orlando di Lasso compositions encourage us to recognize far more fluid relationships between objects of this world and symbolic, transcendent ideas. This was a winter evening to remember... really wonderful.

• Chanticleer website
  
• OrlandoDiLasso.org
  
• Armstrong M. The Politics of Piety: Franciscan Preachers During the Wars of Religion, 1560-1600. Univ Rochester, 2004.
  
• Berquist P, ed. Orlando di Lasso Studies. Cambridge Univ, 2006.
  
• Freedman R. The Chansons of Orlando Di Lasso and Their Protestant Listeners : Music, Piety, and Print in Sixteenth-Century France. Univ Rochester / Eastman, 2001.
  
• Geertz C. The Interpretation Of Cultures. Basic, 1977. [Religion as a Cultural System, Ch. 4]
  
• McDonald T. Chanticleer at Community of Christ Temple. Kansas City Star, 06-FEB-2011.
  
• Mormando F, Worcester T, eds. Piety and Plague: From Byzantium to the Baroque. Truman State Univ, 2007.
  
• Raquin V, ed. Art, Piety and Destruction in the Christian West, 1500-1700. Ashgate, 2010.