The eclectic and electrifying early-music ensemble ACRONYM released in July a new album of never-recorded discoveries from the centuries-old archives of Royal Swedish court music (currently held in the Uppsala University Library). In this summer of turbulence and anxiety, whether your antidote of choice is escapism, sympathy, schadenfreude, or humor, this musical time-capsule offers enough resplendence to transport anyone.
An elite 12-piece string ensemble of the younger talent animating the best early-music institutions in North America, ACRONYM’s members regularly appear in the Handel + Haydn Society and Boston Early Music Festival orchestras. They debuted in Boston under the ACRONYM banner only last year (first at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, then at BEMF’s summer festival). It’s worth noting that the “backronym” stylings of their name change with every project, in this instance: “Archive Crawlers; Researchers Of Niche Yellowed Manuscripts.”
Since their founding in 2012, the group has released no less than 10 recordings of typically offbeat, obscure repertoire, likely never heard since the composers’ deaths. The latest album, “Cantica Obsoleta,” draws 12 gems from the 2,300-plus pieces in Sweden’s Düben Collection, an archive of music manuscripts compiled across three generations by the eponymous kapellmeister (or chapel master) family who served Stockholm’s Royal court.
Those who have followed ACRONYM’s adventures will rejoice to see the likes of Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (1620-80) and Samuel Capricornus (1628-65) in the mix. The former died of the plague. The latter engaged in a protracted public feud with a rival musician (think: 17th-century Twitter battle). In the past, both have enjoyed full-album turns in ACRONYM’s spotlight.
In addition, Johann Philipp Krieger (1649–1725) and Daniel Eberlin (1647–c.1715) join the festive fray with, among others, Giacomo Carissimi (c.1605-74), lone woman Caterina Giani (fl. 1650-73), and Christian Geist (c.1650-1711, yet another plague victim).
Much of this CD’s program struck modern ears for the first time last October in Manhattan’s Corpus Christi Church under the auspices of Music Before 1800 (back when a bus trip to New York just to hear a beloved ensemble was not an entirely outrageous concept). Two pieces were cut for time then and are happily restored here for posterity.
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A generously well-balanced quartet of singers joined ACRONYM in this foray: soprano Hélène Brunet, countertenor Reginald Mobley, tenor Brian Giebler, and bass Jonathan Woody.
It’s become cliché to note how recordings fall flat in comparison to live performance. But it is neither exaggeration nor denigration to observe that, more than any other ensemble I’ve attended, ACRONYM’s live-to-disc quality gap yawns the widest, only because their live performances can be that much more viscerally stunning. The recordings are always beautiful — often breathtakingly so — but live, the crackle of inspiration that ignites from one virtuosic player to the next can reach otherworldly heights. You see, hear, and feel them grin and wink as they surprise even each other with improvisation.
Talking over Zoom in July, ACRONYM founder Kivie Cahn-Lipman admitted, “In concerts, we tend to take a lot of risks. Some of them pay off, and some of them are hilariously disastrous.” (Personally, I’ve witnessed the payoff and occasional hilarity, but never a disaster.) The recording process, too, abounds with “a constantly morphing improvisation,” he said.
Boston’s star countertenor Mobley can certainly be heard indulging his jazzier impulses. “There were so many times when I would try something new in the moment, and [New England native and H+H regular] Adriane Post, who was often echoing me — you’d see the smile at the corner of her mouth, and the next thing you know, she’s copying me note for note,” he recalled in the same Zoom call.
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“The challenge with early music,” Mobley added, “is that we don’t have the modern paint-by-numbers luxury of dynamics and tempo markings and all the things that say, ‘You sing this way here, you do this here.’ Composers then weren’t these god-artists who suffered and cried and had as many spots of ink as dried tears. They were craftsmen [who] lived and breathed in their art. They understood and respected their artists to put themselves in the work in the same way.”
One of the album’s highlights is Mobley’s solo “Inter brachia salvatoris mei (In the arms of my Saviour).” It embraces the listener as a downy comfort blanket, at once absorbing and warding off the worries of the world. The piece was originally designated for soprano, but once heard, it’s difficult to imagine any other interpretation half as perfectly intimate and apropos of the moment.
CANTICA OBSOLETA
Available now via www.acronymensemble.com