“To edit it is to receive the kiss of death as a scholar. To perform it is to court disaster. To write about it is to alienate some of one’s best friends” was the 20th-century musicologist Denis Arnold’s pithy summary of the myriad questions surrounding Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers …” Gwilym Bowen

I took this photo of the Chorus before the concert.

Last night we attended the Three Choirs Festival performance of the Monteverdi Vespers. I have heard at least half a dozen live performances of this work, and every single one has been different. For example, I remember one performance we heard which set the stage with loud, celebratory drumming at the beginning.

My late husband Carl tackled this challenging work over the course of only 5 months in 2010—from conception to final cutoff. (I can’t believe this was eight years ago!) Our performances were more like a religious experience, spiritual events—because each of the movements was preceded by the appropriate plainchant, setting a solemn, monastic tone. We also exploited the spaciousness and reverberant acoustics of St. Theresa’s and St. Andrew’s Cathedral by stationing small vocal and instrumental groups around the buildings to enhance the echo and antiphonal effects.

Hearing early music in a large space as Hereford Cathedral is a little bit of an oxymoron—early music is by its nature more intimate if you consider gut strings on stringed instruments, and the softer timbres of early wind and brass instruments.

So—having to perform the Monteverdi Vespers for a thousand people last night necessitated soloists with larger, more operatic voices to carry in a larger space. By the way, there were three people with a surname of Bowen: the conductor, Geraint Bowen, and two tenor soloists, Ruairi Bowen and Gwilym Bowen. By some introductory remarks the Dean made, I am assuming they were all related!

Also because this was a Three Cathedral Choirs event, it meant that there were at least fifty people in the Chorus, as compared to the smaller ensembles I’ve been used to up to now, maybe a maximum of 20 singers.

There was a period orchestra, called Brecon Baroque, but no description available in the program as to the instrumentation and I was too far away to see what the instruments were. In general I think their delicate timbres were overpowered by the big chorus and strong soloists.

Therefore I would classify this performance as a “heroic” or “operatic” Monteverdi Vespers. I am glad that this great work was exposed to a great number of people, but somehow it just didn’t “fit.” Not bad, just different from what I have heard from other performances of this work.

I couldn’t help but remember our groundbreaking performances eight years ago. I do remember having to play 140 pages of figured bass! John Renke called Carl “the bravest man in Honolulu!” for taking on this project, including flying in The Whole Noyse early brass ensemble from San Francisco, as well as the three tenor soloists. The 16-voice chorus had only three rehearsals with orchestra, and yet the performance went more than extremely well.

And do you remember that it was such a rainy and humid night that the bridge broke on the theorbo before the concert began and couldn’t be played on the first half? I ended up playing a couple of solo accompaniments which I hadn’t rehearsed while John Renke used the lute stop on the harpsichord on certain tenor solos which originally were to be accompanied by the theorbo, which was fixed with super glue by the second half.

Go back and read my post: Broken Theorbo for the whole story.

But a miracle happened, the music came together and people were weeping and moved by the 400 year old music brought to life by our fearless leader.