How much fun can you have listening to a recording? Well, this new release from The Harp Consort on Harmonia Mundi will strenuously test the limits of that question. There is so much musical variety and there are so many sonic delights here that you can’t possibly take it all in on a first (or second) listen. Centered around a parody mass by 17th-century Spanish composer Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla–a musician of impressive skill who spent nearly 40 years as maestro de capilla at the Mexican cathedral at Puebla de los Angeles–this engaging program offers a taste of the unusually lively liturgical music scene that thrived in the New World during the 17th century.
If you can imagine popular dances occupying an important part of the church service–sandwiched between the mass movements were all manner of highly rhythmic and often textually suggestive, “worldly” songs–then you can begin to appreciate the incredibly colorful, atmospheric, and sonically alluring qualities of the villancicos, xácaras, marizápalos, and other idiomatic music offered here, in performances that never fail to hold our attention or keep us happily awaiting the next surprising sound or song. Just try to resist the seductive Madrid street song “Jácaras de la costa”, or the “Cumbées”, whose roots are so strongly African that you don’t even have to wonder as to its origin. There are not only harps, but loads of guitars (six specially constructed, matched Veracruz baroque guitars), along with theorbo, gamba, organ, bajón, sackbut, shawm, and various percussion (and even a conch shell). There are singers–among them some of today’s most experienced early music specialists–who really love to sing these sensual, expressive songs, and the instrumental work is unfailingly tasteful and stylish. The sound is ideal. Don’t miss this very special, incomparable release, one of the outstanding discs of the year. [9/28/2002]
