Review: IL POVERELLO: The Life & Deeds of St. Francis of Assisi
Gramophone | April 2010
The purity of the vocal performances make this an audiophile's dream
As always, the Saint Paul-based Rose Ensemble brings the light of authentic religious devotion to their recorded work. This time, it’s a concert inspired by the teachings and service of St. Francis of Assisi. Selected from more than 300 years of chant and the Italian non-liturgical religious vocals called laude, spiced up with the kind of catchy instrumental music that uses pipes, drums, early shawms and things, “Il Poverello” is more than just another monotonous succession of monodies.
The programme, which took three years of research, took for its scholarly inspiration a rare manuscript collection of laude discovered in the hill town of Cortona in 1876. The music it contains has the powerful, wild imagination of composers who would have known that Francis had preached in Cortona a mere century or two before, in 1210. The idea of the crumbling old manuscript itself is just the thing to fire the musical dreams of current Harry Potter types, maybe even to playing the music themselves, like in a garage, man.
The fine recording was made at St. Bridget’s Catholic Church in a rural bedroom community of Iowa City. The singing is dominated by its blending of The Rose Ensemble’s clarity, pure intonation and seamless phrasing within the sheer naturalness of the acoustic space. For the audiophile, this represents digital art at its highest level since the last, heady days of vinyl 30 years ago.
An elegant booklet essay by Jordan Sramek, consisting of an introduction and illuminating essays on Costanzo Porta, Ciconia and the “haunting Stabat mater,” rounds off the fun.
-Laurence Vittes