The Hilliard Ensemble
Perotin

When I discovered Roland de Lassus (Orlando di Lasso: 1532-1594) about twenty years ago, I believed I had found the pinnacle of polyphonic vocal music, not only of the Renaissance but of all time. Listening to the Psalmi Davidis Poenitentiales still evokes admiration and emotion in me for the purity and audacity of the contrapuntal choices and the beauty of the composition, and up until a few months ago, I didn't foresee having to revise my personal preference rankings. I didn't even feel like embarking on a long philological quest to search for the roots of polyphonic vocal music, only to arrive eventually at Ligeti's 'Lux Aeterna' and Nono's 'Quando Stanno Morendo', because I don't think I have the depth or capability, just the taste, the pleasure of listening, and thus I had settled on Orlando di Lasso, electing him as my favorite, and as far as vocal music was concerned, I thought I was more or less set.

Then, some time ago, I stumbled upon a recording by the Hilliard Ensemble that had eluded me, a 1989 vinyl (and CD) obviously labeled ECM and dedicated to the works of Perotin (Perotinus), who lived and composed in Paris between 1160 and 1230, which is about a hundred years after Guido d'Arezzo's seven-note musical revolution ('UT queant laxis / REsonare fibris / MIra gestorum...'). I impulsively decided to trust the Hilliard Ensemble, a group of supreme interpretive capability capable of bold and non-canonical choices (above all, the collaboration with Jan Garbarek), but I thought I would be listening to at most a fine version of monophonic Gregorian chant - as it fits the period - never having heard of this Perotin. I told myself, what a drag, I don't like Gregorian chant, but if I really want a piece of it in my discography, it should be ECM, and it should be them singing.

Well, I invite you to listen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI6e4Q11NeM and be astonished, as I was astonished in the rare quiet of my little house.

I am quite used to reading, listening to, and discussing techniques of phasing, microtonal dissonances, cyclical music, but I am used to doing so with reference to Steve Reich, John Adams, Philip Glass, not to music from the 1100s. I couldn't believe my ears, and I wanted to document myself a bit, even though I was aware of the Ensemble's well-known philological rigor. Nothing doing: all true, all original, no reinterpretation or arrangement.

'Viderunt Omnes' is the initial track and the best among those chosen for this stunning homage to a composer whom, frankly, I am ashamed to have never even heard mentioned before (and what the heck, even that hapless Salieri is respected and recorded, and this Perotinus a couple of times and almost by chance?). The sound waves chase each other and the dissonances follow each other, and the voices gain increasing depth and the strength of multiplication and natural reverb, and it must be taken into account that this man could not have known polyphony, because it didn't exist. There was diaphony, the practice of parallel organum, which began to gain ground from the year 1000 (a very simple thing) but three-, four-, or five-voice polyphony, that was invented by Perotinus himself by developing some timid insights from his master Leonin, who, however, had not theorized and had not composed anything and therefore doesn't count.

The effect of these compositions, once you overcome the nearly nine-hundred-year gap (!) that separates us from the musical sensibilités of that era, is truly astonishing and modern, and you will forgive me if I confess the irrepressible tear of someone discovering a truth, of someone perceiving an ancestral world, of someone who, for a few minutes, feels part of a beauty that hasn't died even after a thousand years. I experienced an undoubtedly spiritual experience, I, who am a materialist atheist, but also cultural and intellectual wonder (what's wrong with that?) of someone placing an unprecedented piece, of someone learning a wonderful thing, and I participated in the reverential rite of the Hilliard Ensemble as they explain to the world what, inexplicably, only a few know.

The recording is very long, 67 minutes recorded on a single high-quality vinyl (as is ECM's custom) seems an impossible feat, but Manfred Eicher has accustomed us to the best. The CD version is perfect, a supernatural sound rendering for an absolutely must-have album, if one is even remotely interested in understanding, perceiving the moment when our way of understanding the relationships between voices and various instruments was born. Every piece is a discovery, every piece has its own different personality and characteristic, and this too is an unusual, happy discovery among discoveries, because the music of those periods often tends to be all the same (which is why the already mentioned Gregorian chant drives almost everyone up the wall after five minutes).

As for musical harmony - that which we DeBaser reviewers love and respect, even if only to deny it - this is truly the moment of creation: a few decades earlier, the Gregorian Alleluia of the Catholic Mass, and excuse me if I digress; from here on out, counterpoints, staggered starts, and then everything that will come (the Baroque, the English composers, Romanticism, contemporary music) all the way up to the pop melodies of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. Everyone owes everything to this Mr. Perotinus, who in his time was called the Great, and of whom only (apparently) a single painted image and a few musical manuscripts full of many flyspecks have been found, those would be the notes as they were written then.

I see for myself that most of the listens featured on DeBaser belong to quite different genres, despite the constant supremacy of very remarkable works each in its own field, but I invite those willing to add to their musical experience a listen that is both beautiful and revealing, food for the heart and food for the mind: the source of all the harmonizations our heroes gift us with on their respective instruments, the first time a composer decided to separate the singing lines and developed them independently.