Music by Henrik Ødegaard

Vox Clamantis, Jaan-Eik Tulve

Released on 6/2/23 by ECM New Series
Main artists: Vox Clamantis Jaan Eik Tulve
Genre: Classical

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This is an unusual release, even by the high standards of the ECM label, in all respects except one: the sound is extraordinary. In this album of music modeled on Gregorian chant, the singing of the choir Vox Clamantis, recorded at the St. Nicholas Dome Church in the Estonian resort town of Haapsalu, is revealed in an almost tactile amount of detail. The music by composer Henrik Ødegaard is based on Gregorian chant, and there is a good deal of actual chant present on the program. The main attraction is a set of Meditations over St. Mary Magdalene's Feast in Nidaros (2017), which elaborates on a group of 13th century chants that have been imperfectly preserved. To quote annotator Kristina Kōrver, "It is as if the composer were literally sitting in front of a fragmentary manuscript, filling in the gaps and adding the missing lines, not as a scholar-restorer but as a poet, a co-creator." Of course, this would make a reasonably good description of the first centuries of polyphony, and Ødegaard notates his borrowed chant and his own additions differently, a device a medieval scribe might have been pleased to have hit on. Ødegaard elaborates the chant in various ways, and here he departs from pure medieval models. His music sounds on the surface like the medieval conductus (one example of which is included) and motet, but Ødegaard's language is ultimately his own. The Meditations are a set, not a group of individual pieces, and the texture thickens as they proceed, reaching a high point with the penultimate Magnificat antiphon. Call this neo-medieval, or call it what one will, but this is brilliantly original music, and there is unlikely to be a better-engineered album in 2023. The album hit classical best-seller charts in the summer of 2023.
© James Manheim /TiVo

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Music by Henrik Ødegaard

Vox Clamantis

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Jesu, dulcis memoria