A Trace of Grace
Starting in high school and into college, I was always a fan of the NBC hit series Seinfeld. One of my favorite lines comes from an encounter with Elaine Benice in a publisher's office, amid a discussion of Jackie Onassis.
The woman behind the desk tells Elaine that Jackie had grace. Elaine concurs, suggesting she too has grace. "Maybe just a little grace," she admits. The woman comes back with the punchline. "Either you have grace or you don't." We watch Elaine squirm, admitting that maybe she doesn't posess any grace.
How I came upon this album isn't important; it fits that crossover space that wouldn't be far from the likes of Christina Pluhar and her L'Arpeggiata. In this case, Michel Godard is the visonary, himself a tuba player and specialist on the serpect, a medieval instrument that makes its sound with a mouthpiece.
The album starts with a duet from Monteverdi: Pur ti miro, which of course comes from his last opera, the Incoronation of Poppea. In this case, the singer mates with a violin for the duet, which comes across well.
The second track features a throat-singing inspired voice which I find wholly unlikable, as many times as I've listened to this album. I'm not sure where the aesthetic fits into Monteverdi's sound world or even our own; it's an otherwordly sound, for sure, and upon repeated listens, I move onto the set of genius tracks that include Soyeusement, the album's title song, A trace of grace, and Monteverdi's famous duet, Zefiro Torna.
The first of these is an ostinato which you might think is a string bass, but to anyone's baroque ears, is clearly a theorbo. A guitar sings on top of the bass until the serpent comes to ride on top of the piece. It's an otherworldly sound, like that voice, but far more welcome to my ears. The music in a dry acoustic might have diminished the simple structure of the unfolding piece, but fear not: the whole album is captured in pristine, close detail, with very sympathetic reverb. By the time the violin enters I can't help but think you'll be pulled fully into this odd sound world that, well, to my ears, works so well: instruments, environment, and affect all together. When the serpent disappears and the saxophone takes over, you hardly notice.
It's far from spilling over into some kind of remake of ECM's albums with Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble. This group, despite their instrumentation, more fully absorbs a baroque vibe, despite the album's inspiration being Monteverdi, who so eloquently takes us from the Renaissance into the dawn of a new musical era.
Soyeusement has a real arc and shape to the music's form; it dovetails into the next piece, A trace of grace, which is an acoustic masterpiece. The music is quite simple, actually; but the sensitivity with which it's played, the fidelity with which it is captured, and the musical results come together to express something profound. I've listened to this track now almost a hundred times, finding it oddly soothing, like warm flannel sheets in the winter. No matter that it too follows a pattern. Monteverdi adopted patterns. The bass line of Zerfiro Torna is itself a famous ostinato.
Monteverdi's most famous piece, perhaps, is the single aria from the lost opera, L'Arianna. We get the religious re-write by Monteverdi, which he calls the Pianto de la madonna. The original, of course, is the lament of a woman stranded on a rock in the ocean. One of my recordings of this was recorded by the same vocalist, Guillemette Laurens with Skip Sempé's ensemble; that recording always bothered me for being recorded impromperly, with Laurens' voice going off the charts at one point, sadly the stain on the album of shoddy engineering. Laurens here, with a voice that's even darker, perhaps more colored by time, is satisfyingly in tune and affective, given the text.
It's followed by a quite modern piece, entitled Doppo il lamento, i.e., following the lament, which combines together the ostinato theme we've already heard, with voice, and violin, until a quasi-improvisation on the serpent reveals the extraordinary atmosphere of the ensemble with its resonance and the recording's air.
Another treat is the track entitled Roma that features Gavino Murgia on saxophone.
This album is an odd bird, for sure. But don't let the oddity of it hold you back; if you're a fan of Monteverdi, or early baroque idioms, this album takes us clearly into the modern age, but does so with no disrespect to the past.
My only regret is that throat-singing voice that appears a few times too often. The instrumentalists, for sure, are the real talent here. Laurens does an admirable job, as well.
I want to underscore too, that this is an audiophile recording for me. The detail and realism is very palpable; while the album does well with headphones, it is simply magical on my 2-channel speaker setup.
Very likely this album, released originally in 2011, could be a favorite of mine this year. I think the title of the album betrays the abundance of impact these musicians bring to the ghost of Monteverdi, the luxurious sound world of their instruments, and the life they poured into an acoustically-reflective stone abbey. This is the kind of album that sticks with you. And invites you to explore more of Godard's work.
