Egidius Quartet came, saw and conquered

Utrecht, 22-12-2013 - After the final notes of Pierre de Machicourt's motet Reges Terrae, the audience stood in Vredenburg Leeuwenbergh as one man on to the Egidius Quartet rewarding them with a well-deserved ovation.

The ensemble, expanded to six men/women for the occasion, performed a dazzling concert around the celebration of Christmas in Leiden's Pieterskerk in the 16th century. Red thread in the programme was the Missa pastores loquebantur by Cornelius Canis (c. 1515-1562), for many years Charles V's court composer.

The four mass movements by Canis were interspersed with motets by composers such as Ioannis Lupi, Clemens non Papa and Thomas Crecquillon, all of which were written for the Pieterskerk's 'tide collection'. These were recorded in eight choir books, six of which have been preserved - unique in the Netherlands, as most choir books have disappeared. In 2010, the Egidius Quartet began the time-consuming task of estimating the musical value of the total of 350 chants and masses and recording them on CD. Three double CDs with selections from the first three books have since been released; the remaining three will be recorded in the coming years.

Goetze replaced a sick Michaela Riener at the very last minute. A bit hesitant at first, the soprano managed to blend better and better with the voices of her male colleagues, creating a nice homogeneous sound. An impressive feat, as the often complicated melody lines are by no means simple sing-alongs.

Also special were the declaimed texts in Middle Dutch, by Hadewych and Liesbet Goeyvaerts, among others, reflecting on the birth of Jesus. In passing, this gave us a nice picture of the mindset in which the composers lived and worked. That it was not all so holy and solemn was shown by the fact that there was often something to laugh about. Not only because of the sometimes snappy texts, but also because of the entertaining readings of the singers.

Already during my introduction, alto Peter de Groot had recalled, to the audience's hilarity, how the singers at the time stood shivering on stoves in an ice-cold Pieterskerk, by now thinking of the hot soup that awaited them afterwards. However, he also cracked a critical note about the closing down of our cultural heritage institutes such as Muziekcentrum Nederland and the Netherlands Music Institute.

Just as almost all choir books from the 16th century have disappeared, a cargo of Dutch music composed in later centuries is now lost. A sad note to an otherwise festive concert. Too bad our patriotic politicians were once again conspicuous by their absence....