On the 10th anniversary of the death of Louis I. Botto,
Chanticleer's founder, the male vocal ensemble commissioned five composers to write a composite mass in honor of his life. The movements of the ordinary of the mass are interspersed with works by Gesualdo and Andrea Gabrieli, and the whole is bookended by the plainsong Da Pacem, Domine. The composers represent a variety of faith traditions, so this is not a traditional Roman Catholic mass; only Douglas J. Cuomo set the standard Latin text for his Kyrie.
Kamran Ince used a poem by Rumi for the Gloria, Shulamit Ran set texts from Maimonides and from the Jewish Liturgy for the Credo, Ivan Moody's Sanctus is from the Greek Orthodox service, and Michael McGlynn uses both Gaelic and Latin versions of the Agnus Dei.
Chanticleer's remarkable sound is immediately evident; Gabrieli's "Deus, Deus meus, respice in me" bursts out of the simplicity of the plainchant that precedes it in a blaze of antiphonal radiance. Cuomo's Kyrie is one of the most musically striking of the newly commissioned movements. His eclectic use of speech juxtaposed with tightly chromatic clusters is hugely effective musically, as well as awe-inspiring for the security with which
Chanticleer performs it. Moody's Sanctus is basically tonal, but its sparing use of grinding dissonance is a stark reminder of the otherness of the Holy. McGlynn's gorgeous setting of the Agnus Dei dramatically begins with a solo voice intoning a Celtic-inflected melody over a cluster of shifting drones before gradually morphing into a richly chromatic but more harmonically conventional Latin version, over which he floats a ravishingly simple repeating melody. Warner's sound is exemplary -- clear enough for the text to always be easily understood, but resonant and warm.