Page 247 - FINAL_The Sixteen Coverage Book 40th Anniversary Year

He summoned up atmospheres with string legerdemain, the stuff which Bach would
have used. Exaggerated low bow pressure to summon up the atmosphere, pizzicati
bounding off the fingerboard for woes, glistening furious playing across the strings
with and without vibrato. And tender, never mawkish pleas from violin, cello and viola
solos.

Yet it was The Sixteen who transformed the words into belief. He might start with the
full choral forces and strings, announcing the setting (“The sad mother was standing,
weeping...”) . Yet almost immediately, Mr. MacMillan allowed the women to
encapsulate the part of Mary. Their singing, in slow canonic form, with simple
harmonies, was urging, tender...

The composer was unafraid to bring in complex harmonies when needed. But at
another point, the entire choir sung in the most conventional four-part harmony, until
going back to the massed voices, the female choir and a few solos.

By the end, the supplication, for the narrator to escape torments and torture, one
expected a more heavenly glory. Instead, Mr. MacMillan ended with whispered
repetitions of “Amen”...”Amen”... As if supplication wasn’t enough, offerings were
insufficient. One could only speak with a rustling, semi-silent invocation.

Missing here was the Messiaen (and Bach) change of moods, of arias, of triumphs. Yet
they weren’t missed at all. This was Mr. MacMillan’s understanding, his own fidelity.

The composer’s closeness to The Sixteen is a natural one, since this ensemble is at
home with Renaissance motets as 21st Century music. In the Stabat Mater, one feels
that a Machaut or Ockeghem would have brought their own beliefs to this music, with
the same effect.

A shorter a capella work, Miserere, dedicated to The Sixteen, was no less complex, no
less personal. Starting with the men chanting, rising to the full choir, the setting of
Psalm 51 had the rich polyphony and surprises which even an Okeghem would admire.

One recognizes that this season will be inundated with innumerable examples of that
old-time religious singing: Messiah, a Passion or two, and being bewitched, bothered
and B Minor’ed. With Mr. MacMillan we felt something else. A tribute to music and
musicians, of course. Equally, though, we felt the songs of human lon ging and,
inevitably, even consciously through the Medieval and Biblical words, we heard songs
of the earth.

Harry Rolnick

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