"Sacred Music"

This is a kind of CD review, more about me than the music, I guess, but strongly commending of the 30-CD "Sacred Music" set from the Harmonia Mundi label, with a good price for the amount of music covering the earliest church music to the 20th century. (See http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=309387)

Having purchased the set a year or two ago, I had listened to some of the selections but not nearly all. At the end of August, my daughter and I moved her stuff back to her college 600 miles away. But what to listen to as we traveled? I always feel very sad at the end of our nice summers; certain kinds of music, which elicit nostalgic feelings, would make me feel worse. "Sacred Music" was a good choice: lots of music for a long drive, and helpful to put me (always a worrier) in a less anxious, more trustful spiritual mood for the upcoming academic year.

Sorting through the discs, I skipped some of the early chants and Gregorian chants, though I liked the polyphonic Renaissance music by de Machaut, Desprez, and Janequin. I also skipped some familiar pieces---Bach's Christmas Oratorio, Mozart's Requiem, Handel's Messiah, Brahms' Requiem---in favor of ones new to me. I most definitely skipped the requiems by Faure and Durufle, not because I don't love them but because Emily's choir performed them and, in my nostalgic mood, I was afraid of feeling even more sad and nostalgic about time's passage. I didn't listen to Bernstein's Mass, although I want to eventually. I loved the 1970s original, conducted by Bernstein himself, and the most recent version conducted by Marin Alsip. This version is directed by Kent Nagano, with Jerry Hadley as the celebrant. I did listen to Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, although I was familiar with it from an LP set conducted by Kurt Masur. But I hadn't heard it for a long time; this version is conducted by Philippe Herreweghe.

Looking through the CDs now, to refresh my memory about the trip, I realize I never got to Scarlatti's oratorio Cain, directed by Rene Jacobs, and some polyphonic masses by Byrd and Palestrina, which would be wonderful.

As the miles rolled along, I listened to interesting lamentations and tenebrae by Massaino, de Lassus, Charpentier, Couperin, and the 20th century Ernst Krenek; baroque vespers by Monteverdi (his Vespro della Peata Vergine) and Rovetta's Vespro Solennelle; Orthodox church music, including a vespers by Rachmaninoff; Reformed music by Tallis, Purcell, Schütz, Bruhns, and Bach; French motets by Dumon, Lully, Delalande, and Charpentier; and motets and psalms by Mendelssohn and Bruckner. The "Sacred Music" set includes Stabat Mater by Vivaldi, Pergolesi, Boccherini, and Rossini. I usually like Rossini but this piece was jarringly operatic compared to the others; his Petite Messe Solemnelle would've been another good choice.

Mendelssohn's symphonies already remind me of I-70 in Maryland, because I purchased some LPs of all five during a happy road trip in the 1980s. So Mendelssohn's Paulus, also directed by Herreweghe, was a wonderful discovery appropriately made on the same highway--possibly my favorite discovery among this whole set.

Thirty CDs barely scratch the surface of this kind of music. J.S. Bach’s alone requires dozens more CDs. After enjoying a majority the selections, I was still in the mood for religious music. I had Gounod's Requiem on my iPod but not yet listened to it; a reviewer in Gramophone magazine had called it a beautiful piece on its own and alongside Faure's and Durufle's. The reviewer was certainly correct. I also listened to Dvorak’s Requiem, which is longer than Brahms’ (George Bernard Shaw famously complained about the latter), but with a lovely “Agnus Dei.” I didn’t have time on the trip to re-play some of Bach’s cantatas on my iPod, or to play lots of other classical CDs…. A 1200-mile round trip barely gets you through the possibilities of wonderful music!