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Read about Cappella Romana in recent press.
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Capella Romana - Mt. Sinai: Frontier of Byzantium
Lingering, lyrical chants transport listeners to medieval Europe
Eyes closed, with the music of Cappella Romana filling a Greek-columned church with an orchestra of sound, it’s easy to imagine you are in medieval times. The nine members of Cappella Romana performed at the stained glass-fi lled Holy Rosary Church on Jan. 13, bringing the evocative chants of the ancient Mediterranean to Seattle.
A combination of traditional hymn and the mysticism of the Byzantine Empire, Cappella Romana has presented its program, Mt Sinai: Frontier of Byzantium, to sold out audiences in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Using authentic manuscripts from St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, Egypt, this a cappella group brings emotion to sixth-century Greek chants that haven’t been heard for more than 500 years.
The bold combinations of voices form perfect harmonies, the chants infused with dramatic overtones of melancholy. Unlike the monotone one expects of chanting, Cappella Romana presents its repertoire with spirited and fluctuating melodies, capturing the emotions of love, pain, longing and reverence. The rich, mythical chords could easily form the soundtrack to movies like Gladiator or Lord of the Rings.
The chants of Cappella Romana are laced with powerful silences, as the imposing volume occasionally, suddenly decrescendos to one lingering voice, then quiet. Unlike the insignificant silences between CD track changes, the sudden, momentary absence of sound becomes part of the music; the flicker of silence leaving the audience tense, expectant, and utterly captivated.
Continually touring, Cappella Romana will return to Seattle on April 22 to perform similar music in its program, Radiant Cloud: Choral Music in the Byzantine Tradition. With eight CDs already released, established fans — or those intrigued by a dramatic rebirth of traditional chants — can purchase their compilations at cappellaromana.org. Applauded with a standing ovation, members of Cappella Romana filed out of the church still singing, their voices naturally fading, the echoing chords lingering and mingling with fervent clapping.
— Michelle Hope Anderson
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MUSIC REVIEW
Cappella Romana calls out to a higher power
By Chris Pasles Times Staff Writer
December 12, 2006
Cappella Romana's concert Sunday afternoon at the Getty Center was sold out. That's an encouraging sign but also a bewildering one.
What can this austere, text-based, Eastern Orthodox Church music, dating from the late 13th to the late 15th century, mean to the listener today, even when sung with such strength and commitment as it was by this Portland, Ore.-based seven-member a cappella male ensemble led by Alexander Lingas?
Imagine being transported back to the first performance of a Bach cantata. The music was not meant for entertainment but for involving the congregation in a service. Later generations have divorced the music from that source. The cantatas live that way, but they're different.
The music of the Cappella program, taken from manuscripts in the Holy Monastery of St. Catherine at the foot of Mt. Sinai and meant to complement the museum's "Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons From Sinai" exhibition, remains more closely tied to the source.
However much it offered in the way of beautiful singing or sensuous appeal, its intention was to inform and establish a relationship between the listener and the faith of the church. From that point of view, criticism of performance is irrelevant.
Perhaps to create the ambience of a church in the dry acoustics of the Harold M. Williams Auditorium, the singers were amplified. The music consisted of straightforward chant (alone and layered above a bass drone), melismatic extensions and more virtuosic and complex dramatic segments. Meaning was enhanced in small ways: — a series of Alleluias on a rising, stepwise sequence, a surge on a single word, the fanning out in color and dynamic on a phrase, a cadence on a unison.
The post-intermission "Service of the Furnace" used all three kinds of singing to tell the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego cast into a fiery furnace because they refused to worship a golden idol set up by King Nebuchadnezzar. In this text, the three children have no names because their names are not significant; only their relationship to God is.
When, in an interpolated section, Nebuchadnezzar sees an angel preserving the children, his vocal line pushes into stratospheric heights to express his astonishment. But the music soon dampens down, returning to its true purpose, worship of God.
Here we have the answer to what this music can mean to us today. We may still seek relationship with something higher.
Chris Pasles
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