Year: 1996

Tuesday 17 December 1996 at 8pm
Xavier College Chapel Barkers Rd, Kew

Subscription series concert 5

PROGRAM

Nicolas Gombert  Hodie nobis caelorum Rex
Clemens non Papa  O magnum mysterium
Heinrich Isaac  Puer natus est nobis
Josquin Desprez   O admirabile commercium
Jacob Handl  Mirabile miraculum
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina    Hodie Christus natus est
Orlande de Lassus Omnes de Saba venient
Tomas Luis de Victoria   Senex puerum portabat
Gregorian chant (Sarum version) Puer natus est nobis
Thomas Tallis   Missa Puer natus est nobis
Gloria – Sanctus – Agnus Dei

REVIEWS

Friday, 20 December 1996, The Age [Melbourne], page 4.
Ensemble takes the pre-Christmas honors
Clive O’Connell

BRINGING up the tail-end of serious Christmas music concerts, the Ensemble Gombert, under John
O’Donnell, presented the most scholarly and far-ranging of the year’s seasonal crop, featuring music for the
feastday – and night – as well as motets written for the following celebrations of the Circumcision, Epiphany
and the Purification or Candlemas (at the start of February).
In their night’s substantial first half, the Gombert group sang extracts from the massive repertoire of Middle
and High Renaissance works, beginning with their patron’s Hodie nobis caelorum, and taking in works from
before and after Gombert’s productive years: Clemens non Papa, Isaac (the era’s inspired
mathematician-in-music), Josquin’s five-verse O admirabile commercium and a dissonance-rich Mirabile
mysterium by Jacob Handl. Then pieces by the mellifluous and most well-known composers appeared:
Palestrina’s Noel motet Hodie Christus natus est, Omnes de Saba venient by Lassus, and Victoria’s lustrous
musical depiction of the child Jesus in Simeon’s arms, Senex puerum portabat.
This weighty set of eight motets saw the number of lines move from eight to the more comfortable four and
also emphasised the ensemble’s strong points. Even with only three basses – Adrian Phillips, Andrew Fysh
and Jerzy Koslowski – the underpinning for the group’s texture is its strength, generating an accurate and
polished sound even when the line is divided.
The altos also impress for their assured and capable penetration of the texture, each one a solid contributor to
the mix. What the soprano section has lost in power over the past year or so, it has gained in stark
incisiveness. The current four voices do not have the top line’s former dominance and overpowering
brilliance, but they are precise, disembodied in character, present, but not throwing their ensemble peers into
the shade (except in a piece such as the Victoria, where the sopranos are deliberately exposed).
It was not until the night’s second half, the Tallis fragment-Mass Puer natus est nobis (complete, except for
the Credo), that the usual problem attracted attention. The four tenors can manage the notes, even the often
wrenchingly high ones that the English composer requires, but their vocal color, the quality of the sound they
produced, was occasionally at odds with the cool, elegantly articulated work of the other three voice-types.
I suppose it comes down to a rasping sense of striving, of effort to get the music out that was not present in
this stratum of the ensemble two years ago. Not that the problem became prominent at every turn of the page;
phrase after phrase in the Mass captivated the listener through that combination of the ecstatic and the
dispassionate that is one of the Tudor school’s hallmarks.
But where you used to leave a Gombert night believing that the composers themselves would have cheered
their own music because of the group’s strikingly persuasive performances, this work impressed as a fabric in
which the weave occasionally showed seam flaws.
Nevertheless, the Gomberts produced the finest and most informed choral singing I heard over the
pre-Christmas period and their recital brought the year’s musical activity to a gratifying conclusion.
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age

Wednesday, 25 December 1996, The Herald Sun [Melbourne], page 43.
A feast from Gombert
Keith Field

A CAPACITY audience assembled at Xavier College Chapel to hear Ensemble Gombert’s music for Christ’s
Mass.
The program was wonderfully imaginative in conception and delivered in exemplary style, again showing
Gombert to be pre-eminent in unaccompanied singing and 16th-Century repertoire.
Eight renaissance motets illustrated the traditional Church feast of 40 days embracing the nativity (December
25), circumcision on the eighth day, the manifestation of Christ’s divinity (Epiphany, January 6) and
purification of the Virgin (Candlemass, February 2).
Directing the choir, John O’Donnell retained total control while reflecting expressively on each text and
recreating the personality of each composer with unerring conviction.
Gombert’s rich harmonies and profound counterpoint depicted the army of angels rejoicing in the birth of the
King of Heaven. In simpler rhythm and textures, Clemens non Papa evoked the mystery of reincarnation.
Phrases of nasal plainsong alternated with austere points of imitation in Heinrich Isaac’s Unto us a Child is
Born, and Josquin surprised with moments of glittering movement, unexpected spacing and sweet, spiritual
harmonies.
This Day a Wonderful Mystery is Revealed inspired Jacob Handl to extraordinary harmonic shifts.
Clashes and microtones were nerve-tingling in a remarkable performance.
Palestrina savored the word, “Noel”, in a rich and ecstatic work for double chorus, while Lassus celebrated
the epiphany, expressing adoration of the Wise Men, gold and incense in tight knots of counterpoint and
faster harmonies.
Tomas Luis de Victoria’s ardent Spanish temperament and expressive clarity brought color to an antiphon for
Candlemass.
English composition was represented by the mass, Unto us a Child is Born by Thomas Tallis, reconstructed
in the 1960s from newly discovered voice parts. Its reserved dignity, technical perfection and sensitive
diction expressed spiritual beauty, concluding Gombert’s memorable season and promising rich variety next
year.

Tuesday 27 August 1996 at 8pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew

Subscription Concert 3

PROGRAM

Nicolas Gombert  Regina caeli laetare a 12
Nicolas Gombert O beata Maria a 5
Nicolas Gombert  Magnificat octavi toni a 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8
Nicolas Gombert Credo a 8
Nicolas Gombert Mort et fortune a 4
Orlande de Lassus  Magnificat tertii toni a 5 super Mort et fortune
Nicolas Gombert  In illo tempore a 6
Claudio Monteverdi  Missa da Capella a sei voci, fatta sopra il motetto In illo tempore del Gomberti

REVIEWS

Thursday 29 August 1996, The Age [Melbourne], p.4
Ensemble a soaring success
Stephen Ingham

“MEDIA vita in morte sumus.” Thus begins an anonymous 11th century text: “in the midst of life we are in
death.” In an era of plagues, wars and famines, these words had a special resonance for composers and their
audiences. Tuesday’s concert in Xavier College by the Ensemble Gombert under the direction of John
O’Donnell brought together three contrasting settings of the Media vita, each one for six unaccompanied
choral parts, and all composed in the 16th century.
The plain white interior and spacious architecture of Xavier College’s Chapel proved an excellent venue, both
aesthetically and acoustically, for the 16 well-matched voices.
By paying careful attention to intonation (their aim is to preserve the purity of certain musical intervals, a
purity severely compromised by modern approaches to tuning) and developing a single, monolithic tone
quality with a uniform dynamic, the Gomberts have carved themselves a niche alongside Australia’s foremost
exponents of high-Renaissance vocal repertoire.
John Sheppard, an English composer of the Tudor period, is not generally well known but, judging by the
evidence of his Media vita setting, is unquestionably one of the finest of his day. Anyone wishing to be
initiated into the remote and exquisite world of Tudor church music need look no further than the Tallis
Scholars’ excellent recording of this astonishing piece.
O’Donnell’s singers coped well with the soaring upper parts and the grinding dissonances caused by clashing
major and minor modes, the so-called “false relations” that composers such as Purcell went on to exploit in
later years.
Nicholas Gombert’s setting was less spectacular, but equally plangent in its expressive handling of
dissonance, whereas Orlando Lassus’s treatment is much more consistently euphonious.
Another Gombert work, a five-part mass setting occupied the second half.
This is a longish work, demanding considerable stamina from the singers, who appeared to flag a little
towards the end.
The top end of the tenor range was also prone to come unstuck in intonation from time to time but, carping
aside, this was one of the better choral concerts I’ve attended in quite a while.
Stephen Ingham/Courtesy of The Age

Friday 30 August 1996, The Herald Sun [Melbourne], p.84
Choir earns fair hearing
Keith Field

AUSTRALIA’S foremost choir of unaccompanied singers, Ensemble Gombert, celebrated the waning solstice
with four masterpieces.
Appropriately, all of them were based on the wintry plainchant melody, Media Vita – “In the midst of life we
are in death “.
John O’Donnell drew gleeful attention to the “crunching dissonances” in Nicholas Gombert’s mass, Missa de
Media Vita.
He applied 16th-century chromatic practices to “bend” pitches, intensifying individual lines of melody and so
clashing voice against voice.
But the proof of O’Donnell’s daring speculations was in the hearing.
Ensemble Gombert achieved compelling unity of style, precluding vibrato, theatrical surges of
loud-and-soft and the vocal effects associated with later operatic mannerisms.
Supported by easy, natural and flexible pulsing, phrases overlapped in timeless, flowing motion to create a
mood of intensely felt spiritual introspection.
Gombert’s six-part motet, Media Vita, illustrated the composer’s consummate technical mastery as well as
emphasising his innovative spirit of discovery, continually re-arranging voices to evoke novel sonorities of
remarkable individuality.
The same text found sure response in the temperament of Roland de Lassus, whose tendency towards
melancholy and genius for strong personal expression was exemplified in a six-part motet, beautifully poised
over firm bass singing.
John Sheppard, a neglected composer of Tudor England, integrated verses of “In the midst of life . . .” with
the Nunc Dimittis – “now let thy servant depart in peace “, sung at every Anglican evensong.
Sheppard’s slender and euphonious textures, performed with confident precision, highlighted the informed
and innovative scholarship which establishes Australia’s Ensemble Gombert at high levels of excellence.

Tuesday 21 May 1996, 8pm
Xavier College Chapel, Kew

Subscription series concert 2

PROGRAM

Nicolas Gombert Regina caeli laetare a 12
Nicolas Gombert O beata Maria a 5
Nicolas Gombert Magnificat octavi toni a 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8
Nicolas Gombert Credo a 8
Nicolas Gombert Mort et fortune a 4
Orlande de Lassus Magnificat tertii toni a 5 super Mort et fortune
Nicolas Gombert In illo tempore a 6
Claudio Monteverdi Missa da Capella a sei voci, fatta sopra il motetto In illo tempore del Gomberti

–
REVIEWS

Thursday, 23 May 1996, The Age [Melbourne], page 17.
Second round of suave elegance
Clive O’Connell

[…] IN A TYPICALLY taut and uncompromising program, the Ensemble Gombert under John O’Donnell paid
substantial tribute to its namesake with a concert of religious music, slightly leavened by a brief Gombert
chanson, Mort et fortune. The night’s most substantial segment came with Monteverdi’s Missa da Capella for
six parts.
As usual, the ensemble impressed with its assured attack, showing an uncompromising self-confidence that
rarely failed.
In music that moved from a simple four lines to 12, these singers relentlessly forged a massive web of choral
sound; if the fabric occasionally showed some rough patches, these were soon compensated for in
tapestry-thick polyphony, the like of which is rarely heard in this city.The ensemble’s number is back to 16, the tenors at full complement once more. Versatile bass Adrian Phillips
still helps them out when the upper male voices split into two sections.
But, in spite of some changes in personnel over the last year, O’Donnell still produces a rich spread of
registers from his forces.
The Ensemble Gombert’s music is complex in construction, peppered with harmonic clashes, rigorous in its
vocal discipline – and its colors shift subtly, not sharply.
The Gomberts sing with a confidence and purity that take their listeners back 400 years to an age of
astonishing musical craft and intellectual vision.
Clive O’Connell/ Courtesy of The Age

Monday, 27 May 1996 , The Herald Sun [Melbourne], page 79.
Vocal banquet whets appetite
Keith Field

GLORIOUS, unaccompanied singing brought many of Melbourne’s choral gourmets to Xavier College
Chapel in “Hommage To Gombert “, a banquet of vocal items by the consummate Renaissance master,
Nicholas Gombert.
John O’Donnell’s Gombert Singers may well claim to be the finest a capella ensemble working in Australia.
Their 16 voices are finely matched, trained to hold pitch with pinpoint accuracy and magnificently
disciplined in precise interplay.
Four solo singers sang Gombert’s Death and Fortune, a fluent chanson which provided melodic fragments for
a five-part Magnificat by Lassus, his great Flemish compatriot.
Monteverdi chose phrases from Gombert’s six-part motet, At That Time, as basis for a Mass, written to
satisfy conservative Roman expectations.
Other Gombert compositions for combinations between two and 12 parts demonstrated his skill, keen ear for
euphony and fervent emotional expression.
O’Donnell’s championship of authentic performance practice was especially fascinating.

Tuesday, 26 March 1996
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Rd, Kew

Subscription series concert 1

PROGRAM

Orlande de Lassus (1532-1594) Hymnus: Vexilla regis a 6
Nicolas Gombert (c.1495-c.1560) Super flumina Babylonis a 4
Josquin Desprez (c.1440-1521) Huc me sydereo descendere iussit Olympo a 5
Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585)  Incipit lamentatio a 5
Thomas Tallis De lamentatione a 5
Carlo Gesualdo (c.1561-1613)  Responsoria: Sabbato Sancto a 6
In I. Noct.
1. Sicut ovis ad occisionem ductus est
2. Ierusalem, surge
3. Plange quasi virgo, plebs mea
In ij. Noct.
4. Recessit pastor noster, fons aquae vivae
5. O vos omnes
6. Ecce quomodo moritur iustus
In iij. Noct.
7. Astiterunt reges terrae
8. Aestimatus sum descendentibus in lacum
9. Sepulto Domino

SINGERS

REVIEW
Thursday, 28 March 1996, The Age [Melbourne], page 21.
A bit too much of a very good thing
Michael Easton

A LIFE IN exile spent in the galleys on the high seas for performing unmentionable acts against one’s charges
is not the sort of thing one associates with composers of ecclesiastical music, but this is what happened,
apparently, to Nicolas Gombert from whom this ensemble gets its name.
Ensemble Gombert has received glowing reviews for its authentic performances of choral music from the
High Renaissance period.
The director, John O’Donnell, has a wide-ranging reputation for his extensive research into this music and, in
the introduction to the program, he outlines the manner of the ensemble’s performance.
Basically, he attempts to echo the practices of Hermann Finck who insisted upon an unchanging dynamic
level throughout a piece, coupled with a light soprano tone but a more dominant bass sound. The tuning, too,
differs from the “modern” compromise of equal temperament.
Historically, this is fascinating and aurally rewarding but, alas, when served in such generous portions as at
this concert the effect is diminished as the hours tick by. The music is full of dissonance, angular lines and
dense webs of counterpoint. All of this was handled well by the ensemble, which consists of 15 fine singers
who perform unaccompanied for the entire evening; no small feat. The four basses, Adrian Phillips, Grantley
McDonald, Andrew Fysh and Jerzy Kozlowki, are each very secure and blended immaculately. Much the
same may be said of the tenors, Timothy O’Connor, Matthew Flood and Peter Neustupny, although here the
sound was less coherent.
The alto voices of Helen Simpson, Margaret Arnold, Jennifer Mathers and Lynette Richardson, provide a
rhythmically secure line but with occasional and, in this music, noticeable, pitch problems – especially at
difficult entry points, but there is little to fault in the pure soprano lines of Deborah Summerbell, Sophie
Clapperton, Lisette Wesseling and Fiona Seers.
The music consisted of settings of texts relating to Passiontide and two works by Tallis, Incipit Lamentatio
and De lamentatione, proved what a great composer he was. Indeed the first half contained much beautiful
music, but the restrained manner of performance tended to create a mood of sameness.
The second half was devoted entirely to the music of one composer, Gesualdo, his settings of responses. Here
the effect of too much of the same really told and there were several audience members who, embraced by
the warmth of the music, slipped into a light sleep.
In the middle of this set of nine pieces the intonation and ensemble became ragged, but the singers, who must
have been drained by then, rallied well for the final group.