I quit my job a couple of days ago and, to celebrate, went to a performance
by the Dutch vocal quintet Quink.  I love a cappella singing, probably more
than any other musical genre, and I've actually done a lot of it myself,
which may be the reason I like it so much.  Anyway, I'd never been all that
impressed by the group's recordings (I went because every other group in
New Orleans is worse, and you takes what you gets), but the concert last
night forced me to re-evaluate.

The program consisted of part-songs and folk-song arrangements by Vaughan
Williams, Britten's Sacred and Profane and his Five Flower Songs, Matyas
Seiber's 3 Nonsense Songs and 4 Yugoslavian Folk Songs, various "close
harmony" arrangements of pop tunes, and Arthur Sullivan's "The Long Day
Closes" as an encore.

Despite a first-rate tenor (Harry van Berne, the evening's compere) and
alto (Corrie Pronk), the group's sopranos have always sounded small and
constricted and the bass serviceable and thus have lost out in beauty of
tone to other similar groups.  Still, it doesn't seem to matter.  The
intonation is ravishing, and the blend works nevertheless.  Furthermore,
every single one of them are superb chamber musicians who can handle the
densest polyphonic writing - up to five voices, of course - with ease
and great clarity.  If I had any complaint, it's their smoothing over of
consonants, which may be due to English not being their first language,
but it doesn't affect their attack or rhythm.  What struck me most this
time around, however, was their line - smooth, flexible, and seemingly
endless.  Just by listening, I really couldn't tell most of the time
when they breathed - no mean feat for only five singers!

The Vaughan Williams came from all over his career - from the 1890s to
"Silence and Music" of the 1950s.  The pieces vary tremendously.  "Fain
would I change that note" could have been written by any solidly-trained
Victorian/Edwardian composer - from de Pearsall to Parry to Stanford.
With "Linden Lea" (in an arrangement by Sommervell), we start to hear
the composer we know - an incredible melodist, whether simple (as here)
or complex, with a distinctive personality, if not sound.  The part-song
"Rest" (1902, to words by Christina Rosetti) already shows Vaughan Williams
more "unsettled," searching (as he put it) "to find myself." What it shows
is a highly dramatic composer - one who wants his music both to express a
text and "get inside" a listener and raise pathos within.  The composer, as
we know, found one route to himself through folksong, and Quink included
the gorgeous "Alister McAlpine's Lament" (not often heard) and "The
Dark-Eyed Sailor" (first collected by VW in 1903) from 5 English Folksongs
(1912).  In "Silence and Music," the composer is still searching.  The
music is unsettled again in its style and, in its searching, reminds me
a lot of Vaughan Williams's Ninth.  It sounds like nothing that VW wrote
before.  Those who complain that all VW sounds the same don't listen hard
enough.

I never could find a settled style in Britten either, and the late works,
less so.  Five Flower Songs of the 1940s have become choral classics.
The music fits the words like Spandex.  The choral writing is clean and
uncluttered, even when the composer indulges in jaw-dropping contrapuntal
feats, as in "The Succession of the Four Sweet Months," an exercise in
freely-related simultaneous musical conversation.  Quink's performance
of these was probably the high point of the evening for me.  Sacred and
Profane, Britten's last a cappella work, is much more direct in expression
- less fussy, if you will - but full of surprises.  Like Ceremony of
Carols, it sets medieval poetry, but this time the landscape is less
"poetic" and more harsh.  The finale, an hilariously macabre poem on what
happens to you when you die (the medieval equivalent of "If you should see
a hearse go by"), is matched by brilliantly simple declamation - and
bizarre chords.

The Hungarian-British Matyas Seiber I first met through a Louisville
recording of his Clarinet Concertino. He was a very sophisticated
musician, very much involved in most musical trends of his day (Ligeti
dedicated Atmospheres to Seiber), even though his own idiom was
conservative.  He also was a great student (and teacher) of jazz, although
jazz doesn't inform his music.  The main feature of his music is clarity
and directness.  It's a style cruel to a composer, because the composer
can't hide behind a lot of notes.  Seiber's music is absolutely assured,
technically brilliant, but although I greatly enjoy everything I've heard,
I've not encountered any work of his that moved me deeply.  On the other
hand, I haven't heard a lot.  These pieces were charming, particularly the
Nonsense Songs to limericks by Edward Lear.  We heard about the lady from
France who tried to teach ducks how to dance, the person from Cromer who
stood on one leg to read Homer, and the brute of a bee.

The "close-harmony" stuff runs the same road as the King's Singers, which
in turn always reminds me of the Modernaires.  All the arrangements were
first-rate.  Quink did best in ballads, the peak for me being Rodgers and
Hart's "My Romance." Great, beautiful lines.  They ended with Waller and
Razaf's "Ain't Misbehavin'." Here, I kept thinking that they just didn't
know how to swing.  The rhythms were stiff as bat-wing collars.  Marvelous
enthusiasm, however.

Steve Schwartz