Ensemble Gombert takes more than a note from the past. The Australian chamber choir takes a page from the style guide to performance of 16th-century choral music.
The result is a sound unfamiliar to 21st-century ears. London audiences have an opportunity to hear that sound Friday at 12:30 in the Paul Davenport Theatre in Talbot College.
Director John O’Donnell takes his cue from Hermann Finck who wrote in the 16th century that the treble should be delicate and sonorous, while the bass should be harder and heavier in tone. All should be sung at the same dynamic level, “not too soft or too loud, but rather like a properly built organ. The higher a voice rises, the quieter and more gentle should be the tone; the lower it goes, the richer should be the sound, just as in a organ. ”
The second style point that makes this choir sound different is its use of pure intonation. For example, pure major thirds are much smaller than equal-tempered major thirds and major semitones are almost twice the distance of minor ones.
O’Donnell’s research led him to believe that composers of the High Renaissance were no more bound by so-called rules of composition than they are today. The music is full of taboos – false fifths and false unisons and octaves. Composer Nicholas Gombert, for whom the groups is named, was a master of the false relation.
The choir formed in 1989 and immediately became an outstanding chamber choir in Melbourne, Australia. It specializes in a capella performance of Franco-Flemish music of the High Renaissance.
O’Donnell is known around the globe as a keyboard artist, choral director and musicologist. He was the first person ever to perform Bach’s complete keyboard works in public.
The concert Friday is free and part of the popular 12:30 Fridays series presented by the Don Wright Faculty of Music.