CHARPENTIER Méditations pour le Carême, H 380-389. O dulce, o ineffabile convivium, H 270. Verbum caro, H 267. O Amor, o bonitas, H 253. Prose pour le jour de Pâques, H 13 • & Frédéric Desenclos (org), dir; Ens Pierre Robert • ALPHA 91 (60:10 &)

& GRIGNY Pange lingua en taille. Fugue à 5. Récit du chant. LEBÈGUE Elévation pour la voix humaine

The 10 petits motets of Charpentier that form the Méditations pour la Caréme belong to the deeply introspective genre of Lenten music so ingrained in 17th-century French musical culture. The work owes its survival to a copy made by that remarkable collector Sébastien de Brossard, the lack of an autograph score or other documentation responsible for the fact that we know neither the purpose for which it was written, nor a date of composition. However, most scholars are of the view that there are connections with the Jesuits, for whom Charpentier wrote much during the 1680s, and the probable purpose was to serve as interludes during the famous Lenten sermons, when people would go from one church to another to hear the most renowned orators.

In that sense, these Latin-texted motets bear a relationship with the Roman oratorios that Charpentier heard during his stay in the Eternal City, a link underscored by the dramatization of several of the motets: the scene in which Judas betrays Jesus (No. 4); the betrayal by Peter (No. 5, a shortened version of Le reniement de St. Pierre, H 424); Jesus before Pilate (No. 6); and the Crucifixion (No. 7). The first three Méditations, on the other hand, are profoundly personal penitential utterances, while No. 8 is a setting of the opening verses of Stabat mater, and No. 9 is concerned with the words of the sorrowing Mary Magdelene. The final motet returns to dramatization, but this time the Old Testament story of Abraham and Isaac, the analogy between the father’s slaying of an innocent son and Christ’s Passion clearly drawn by stopping the story short of its happy denouement at the climatic words “and stretched forth his hand and took his knife to slay his son.”

Méditations is scored for three male voices (high tenor, tenor, and bass), with continuo accompaniment; in the case of this new recording: gamba, theorbo, bassoon, and organ. Charpentier’s supreme achievement here is the economy of means he employs to make often-powerful statements. His word-setting is clear and direct, with little repetition. The message is everything, and it is conveyed with all the skill of a born dramatist, the emotional intensification and release always controlled, yet compellingly effective in its employment of such devices of dissonant harmony. The pull is nearly always to the final climax, the most striking example being the devastating conclusion of No. 5 with its last line: “and he [Peter] went out and wept bitterly,” which surely owes a debt to the famous final chorus of Carissimi’s oratorio Jephte, a work with which Charpentier must have been familiar. There is a single exception. The final line of “Tenebrae facta sunt” (No. 7), “And having said thus, He gave up the ghost” is delivered with the greatest simplicity, almost as an anti-climax. The effect is quite as overpowering as that of Peter’s remorse. No. 7 opens with another of the miraculous features that abound in the Méditations—Charpentier’s ability to create a sense of mood. Here the sinister darkness of the ninth hour is conjured up before us in graphic, quasi-madrigalian terms, while the beginning of No. 9 evokes the desolation of Mary Magdalene in similarly vivid fashion.

This is music that makes strong rhetorical demands on the singers, demands triumphantly met here by Marcel Beekman, Robert Getchell, and Robbert Muuse, whose performances are even more outstanding than they were on the disc of music by Danielis I praised so highly in Fanfare 30:2. Not only are all three voices technically superb, and of fine quality in themselves (there is none of the slight graininess I noted in Muuse’s singing on the Danielis), but they blend exceptionally well. William Christie’s 1986 recording is now totally outclassed, not only vocally, but also because for some strange reason Christie chose to double up on the voices in tutti passages, thus obscuring both text and counterpoint. His use of harpsichord, rather than organ continuo was also obviously incorrect in this music.

I fear I’ve left little space in which to discuss the substantial filler, which intelligently alternates organ and vocal élévations in the manner typical in 17th-century France. The organ pieces are played on the splendid instrument of the military chapel of Saint-Louis in La Flèche, where the whole of this immensely atmospheric recording was made, while the vocal settings (also for the three male voices) explore the mystical, at times sensual aspects of one of the most transcendent moments of the Eucharist. To conclude with the unusually florid Prose was also a felicitous touch that finally transports the listener from the bleakness of the Passion to the dazzling brightness of Easter Day. On every count this is an exceptional disc, one that I would fervently urge everyone even remotely interested in the repertoire to buy, beg, or borrow (having traversed so much holy ground, I’d better leave out steal).

FANFARE: Brian Robins