Maltese sacred music at St John's

APS Bank's four-year cultural project related to Maltese music is now in its second year and on Tuesday the bank presented a concert of Maltese sacred music of the 19th century at St John's Co-Cathedral.

Conducted by Fr John Galea, it saw the participation of an orchestra and a male choir: going under the name of the Jubal orchestra and choir (any connection with the Jubal ensemble?), a small group of sopranos, and a trio of soloists made up of tenor Elia Cassar, baritone Alfred Camilleri and bass Anthony Montebello.

So far musicologists in Malta have tended to focus their attention mainly on the rich archives at the Cathedral Museum, but there is also a wealth of other music in other archives spread all over the island as evidenced by this concert, which acknowledged the provenance of the various pieces from the Archives of the Commissariat of the Holy Land and of the Augustinian Fathers in Valletta and those of the Dominican Fathers in Sliema, besides the better known ones in Mdina.

This was a time when music in Maltese churches passed from the hands of foreign maestri di cappella into those of local musicians, and from the hands of churchmen to those of the laity (only one composer featured on Tuesday was a cleric) who often went abroad, mostly to Naples, for their training.

The kind of music prevalent in Italy throughout the century was opera, practically to the total exclusion of other forms of music. Rossini and Verdi even introduced their operatic style of writing into the church - a move that led Pope Pius X in 1903 to publish his Motu Proprio which expressly forbade music written in an operatic style to be performed in churches.

Maltese sacred music throughout the century became increasingly dramatic and operatic, always very romantic, and certainly not meant to inspire a prayerful mood. It was an expression of the Church Triumphant that steered clear of the developments taking place in countries like Germany. Dance rhythms abounded and often there appeared to be little relation between the music and the words.

It was a populist kind of music that was meant to see the congregation through long church ceremonies - music in which phrases/stanzas were often repeated a number of times and music which is still heard in some church circles today particularly infesta time. The development of the festa antiphon, especially, was meant to rouse the enthusiasm of the parishioners as it still does.

The works tend to be in the same vein and many of them will probably survive more for their musicological interest than for their intrinsic artistic creative value. The works are all excellently crafted: orchestration and orchestral colour became increasingly important even in vocal works and the interest of the music was often shared between the orchestra and the voice.

The programme included three generations of Bugejas and two generations of Nanis besides works by Francesco Decesare, Giuseppe Vella and Giuseppe Spiteri Fremond.

Bugeja's Nelle trame deluse and Spiteri Fremond's Sinfonia n. 3 a grande orchestra were the two purely orchestral works included in the programme.

After a shaky beginning in the first piece the orchestra warmed to give a steady and lively, often even exciting performance throughout the evening. The rhymes were crisp and the melodies often lyrical. The former work was characterised by some excellent dynamic effects, particularly the crescendo that introduced the second subject of the first movement. On the other hand the work could have done with a stronger contrast of tempo between the various movements.

These contrasts of tempo, even within the movements themselves, were more effective in the Spiteri Fremond Sinfonia.

Three antiphons, Oppresset me dolor and Vade Anania by Vincenzo Bugeja and Beata Mater by Paolo Nani were sung by the all-male choir. This choir sounded better when singing in the lower dynamic range and in parts as in the third reprise of Oppresset or in Anton Nani's O salutaris hostia. It tended to become careless about tone quality and production when singing in unison and fortissimo as in the first part of Oppresset.

The beginning of the first reprise in the second Bugeja antiphon was marked by some effective staccato effects. I found Nani's O salutaris hostia, with its fortissimo climax in the penultimate reprise of the first two verses and the interesting writing for the tenors and the basses, with its answering phrases the most prayerful part of the evening.

A small group of sopranos joined the choir and the tenor and baritone soloists for Anton Nani's setting of Psalm 112, Lau- date Pueri. Although these introduced a contrasting colour to the work, their voices were no substitute for the children's voices for whom the piece was probably originally written. This work started at a leisurely pace giving ample scope to the rich harmonies of the first movement.

Tenor Elias Cassar has a fine forceful voice that sounds best in its middle register, while it tends to sound rather strained at the top. His performance of Salve Regina by Francesco Decesare showed a good sense of dynamics. With the tenor and the bass he made a good trio for Vella's Qui tollis, which has an interesting vocal line for the three soloists with its overlapping and answering phrases.

Baritone Alfred Camilleri's pleasant voice sounded suitably dignified in the Qui tollis and sparkling in Nani's Beata Mater. Anton Nani's Veritas Mea, written for orchestra and bass, is a complex work with elaborate orchestration. The writing for both voice and orchestra becomes more operatic in the reprise while the first verse is characterised by an interesting combination of the vocal melody over a motif of ascending and descending scales on the strings.

The work was sung with feeling by bass Anthony Montebello who was also the protagonist of Paolo Nani's Lamentazione: incipit oratio in which the writing for the voice was rather more florid than in the other pieces.