Vocal ensemble is transcendent

In December 2011, courtesy of Early Music Vancouver, a new vocal outfit came into my life: Stile Antico, a collection of young British singers who met at university and decided to make a go of it by devoting themselves to the music of the Renaissance. That concert was a revelation: this conductorless ensemble wasn’t merely good, it was an object lesson in the differences between “good” and “great.” Like many others in the audience, I left the Chan Centre thinking I’d just heard the most exciting new group in the world.

Stile Antico’s hosts certainly wasted no time in issuing a return invitation: Stile Antico will revisit the Chan April 12 in a program of masterworks from English, Flemish, and Spanish Renaissance masters. The last few weeks in Vancouver have been a vocal banquet crammed full of music of all persuasions, but my advice is to make room for yet another rich helping of music from such stellar composers as Orlando Gibbon, Luis de Victoria, William Byrd, and Thomas Tallis.

Matthew White, Early Music Vancouver’s associate artistic director, is himself a countertenor who grew up in the Anglican tradition and feels an immediate kinship with these young Oxbridge singers. I asked if he could try to explain exactly why Stile Antico is so very impressive.

First of all, White explained, singers brought up in the English manner are exceedingly well trained from a very young age: they study keyboard and melody as well as singing. “They can read music the way most people read texts, and quickly get used to performing six or seven times a week.” By their mid- teens they are seasoned musicians.

Yet there’s more. “The North American choral tradition has many positive attributes, including an obsession with healthy vocal production, but direct comparison with the British choral system isn’t really fair. The English sing three hours a day, learning and performing new music daily under what many might consider an oppressive discipline; the level of immersion and commitment required is total. Subsequently, the system develops singing musicians who are capable of learning music extremely quickly and getting it up to an acceptable performance standard on one read- through when necessary. This is sadly where many English choirs stop working. This is why people often associate the English choral tradition with a cold and unemotional technical perfection that, while impressive, is rarely moving. Stile Antico does not fit this mould. In addition to being great musicians, they have made a point of getting to know their repertoire intimately. The results are hard to deny.”

This is the common denominator between Stile Antico and many other great British vocal enterprises past and present, but there remain a few elements unique to this particular group. In my 2011 review did my best to articulate exactly what I had heard: “Though intrinsically steeped in specifically British traditions of vocal music making, they create a new and identifiable sound. Their Latin diction is precise and consistent; sopranos sing with the utmost purity but embrace the sound of female singers, not boys; lower voices add richness and warmth. There is a passionate frankness to the singing but little fuss or faddishness. Line is everything.”

There is, of course, the obvious youth of the singers to consider, but there is also how its complement of singers affects its timbre. Says White, “There are some specific things: not using countertenors changes the sound, it’s warmed up in a way. The altos are all women, and they have a very silky smooth sound, less idiosyncratic, but it blends beautifully.”

It’s this last point that could, for some old- school listeners, be the most contentious, because women, of course, were not allowed to sing Latin church music publicly during the Renaissance. Obviously the sounds of boy sopranos, male altos, and/ or counter- tenors are very specific and evocative. But for White ( and for me, too) this doesn’t matter at all: here is a young ensemble of contemporary singers, dealing with some of the most beautiful and powerful vocal repertoire in a respectful and effective way that simply obliterates any niggling about historical accuracy.

As White puts it, “I find myself less and less dogmatic about authenticity and performance practice. Boys can sing beautifully, but the idea of denying women the opportunity to sing this glorious music is absurd. These women are fully developed musicians with flexible, colourful voices, deeply sensitive to the use of vibrato and harmony: adult musicians who have trained at the highest level.”

No wonder Stile Antico’s results are so transcendent.

Stile Antico: The Passion of the Renaissance

Presented by Early Music Vancouver

April 12, 8 p. m. | Chan Centre

Tickets: from $ 32 to $ 63