In Paradisum: Music of Victoria & Palestrina
Assuming his patronage has not yet been assigned, St. Gerold should be considered the patron saint of echo. The Monastery of St. Gerold, in which this collection was recorded, adds a solid second of sonic life--and, as a result, extended reflection--to everything sung by the members of the esteemedHilliard Ensemble. When the quartet of male vocalists join in unison on a brief "Kyrie," the sanctum's heavenly reverberation mirrors their vocal line like a geometrically precise hall of mirrors. And when the group's members (countertenor, two tenors, and baritone) move into the tentative intricacies of early polyphonic composition, light is shed on the venture's complexity. Not only must the singers balance each other's tone and timing, they must take into consideration the amplification and delay of the music's traditional performance space. The Hilliards have recorded several discs ofPalestrina and music of this period(early 16th century). This one has in its favor the presence of settings of related texts by another composer,Tomás Luis de Victoria(two decades Palestrina's junior).  Comparing the two helps in the familiarization of music the quiet beauty of which can be mistaken for homogeneity only by a casual listener. The selections--drawn from each composer's respective settings of the Requiem or parts of the Office for the Dead--are interspersed with plainsong chants from the Graduale Romanum, through which the disc attempts to reconstruct the original context in which these pieces by Palestrina and Victoria would have been heard.--Marc Weidenbaum