Track Listing

1. Da pacem Dominae
2. Deus, Deus meus, respice in me -- Andrea Gabrieli
3. Da pacem Domine -- Carlo Gesualdo
4. Kyrie -- Douglas J. Cuomo
5. Gloria (Everywhere) -- Kamran Ince
6. vos omnes -- Carlo Gesualdo
7. Aestimatus sum cum descendentibus -- Carlo Gesualdo
8. Credo/Ani Ma'amin -- Shulamit Ran
9. Peccantem me quotidian -- Carlo Gesualdo
10. Ravenna Sanctus -- Ivan Moody
11. salutaris hostia -- Andrea Gabrieli
12. Agnus Dei -- Michael McGlynn
13. Da pacem Domine
14. Da pacem Domine -- Giles Binchois
15. Da pacem Domine -- Arvo Part

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17256 in Music
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2007-05-08
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .22 pounds

Album Description
With its seamless blend of twelve male voices, ranging from countertenor to bass, the San Francisco-based ensemble Chanticleer, celebrates the life of their foudner Louis I. Botto on the 10th anniversary of his death. Five composers create a mass that evolves organically, as if written by one hand and the ensemble brings it to life.

Amazon.com
This mass, commissioned and performed by the superb 12-man American group Chanticleer, begins and ends with Plainsong, and is comprised of five movements by five different composers interspersed with shorter pieces by Carlo and Andrea Gabrieli and Carlo Gesualdo. Douglas J. Cuomo's Kyrie features the extreme ends of the men's vocal ranges and plays plainsong against tonal clusters; the Turkish composer Kamran Ince's Gloria is sung to a Sufi text and radiates peace; Shulamit Ran's Credo, in her native Hebrew and English, begins in a stunning martial outburst about the belief in one God and uses texts that relate to the Holocaust (occasionally spoken) to make her dramatic points; London-born Ivan Moody contributes a ravishing, medieval-tinged Sanctus, as ethereally lovely – and at points as stunningly wild - as his compositions for Trio Mediaeval; and the Irish composer Michael McGlynn's Agnus Dei begins as a solo in Gaelic, which is then underpinned with a drone in the darker voices and it ends, with grace, at a whisper. Perhaps the boldest music here is the Gesualdo, whose bizarre harmonies and discordances still can shock and awe, but the Chanticleer Mass, while not an overwhelming new work, is nonetheless, fascinating, and, as one might imagine, beautifully performed. --Robert Levine

Customer Reviews

Powerful, ecumenical, moving.
After reading a positive article in the Wall Street Journal in May 2007 I was particularly interested in hearing this Mass, and didn't know Chanticleer had recorded it until a friend offered to lend me her brand-new copy after a three-for-two spending spree at the local brick&mortar bookstore.

This is an awesome recording, and I use this adjective without hesitation even though it's over-used and teen-speak. I'm surprised at the number of used copies available - perhaps buyers think that this is a warm & meditative piece and reject it when they discover it's not. It is most definitely not meditative - but it is instead a powerful discourse with God from Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions. The liturgical setting unites it with traditional Mass settings and the music and text raise 21st-century - but also eternal - questions of faith, doubts - and hope. Five stars - no hesitation.

Sound Invention
As always, Chanticleer are the best mens chorus around today. They seem to be spending much of their time on experimenting with sound and doing it very well. This recording is more of that experimentation, so if you are looking for the usual gregorian chant, this is not what you want, but it is Chanticleer at their experimental best.

Why I bought this.
The summer after I graduated form high school, I got my wisdom teeth removed. It was hell. It was three weeks of delirium residing on a couch. It was yoghurt and yoghurt some more. It was having a neck swell up like a bullfrog and thus your dad laughing at you. Needless to say, rough times.

Well into the third week, I was feeling a little better. It was around 9 am in the morning, and although it was June, it was raining lightly. The windows were open, and the smell of a freshly rained on yard was wafting into my devastated face. NPR was turned up in the other room, and I suddenly heard the track called Agnus Dei start to play. At that moment I knew that I was near the end of my horrendous suffering. The song is pure magic. I had to have it.

****

The other songs are OK, but I don't have any connection to them. I suggest listening to them elsewhere before you decide, then again you can get this for like $2.00 on here so why not.