Christopher Dylan Herbert's Voices in the Wilderness: Music of the Ephrata Cloister
Bright Shiny Things
Midwifed into being by musicologist and baritone Christopher Dylan Herbert, Music of the Ephrata Cloister is a noteworthy release for many reasons. Its a cappella hymns were composed by the residents of the Ephrata Cloister, an eighteenth-century celibate community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, which makes the recording itself a valuable contribution to the understanding and appreciation of Colonial American music. Adding to the special quality of the release is that its eleven settings (more than 1500 are in the Ephrata repertory) were recorded in the very setting where the music was originally heard; the release also documents the first time it has been performed by a professional ensemble, in this case four American singers, soprano Elizabeth Bates, alto Clifton Massey, tenor Nils Neubert, and bass Steven Hrycelak, under Herbert's direction.
He not only produced the album, he created modern transcriptions of the music after examining 126 music manuscripts in libraries, collections, and archives throughout the United States and United Kingdom. Certainly one of the more dramatic discoveries he made came about when his study of the Ephrata Codex, one of the largest Ephrata documents, revealed that some of its material had been written by Sisters Föben, Hanna, and Ketura, identifying them as three of the first known female composers in the colonies that would become the United States; two hymns by Föben (Christianna Lassle, 1717-1784) appear on the release. German-born Conrad Beissel (1691–1768), who founded the Ephrata Cloister in 1732 after emigrating to Pennsylvania a dozen years earlier, composed his portion of the community's musical material by using a compositional process involving “master notes” and “servant notes”; readers familiar with Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus might recall a passage in the novel that refers to Beissel and his system.
“Rose-Lilie-Blume Sequence” provides a bewitching opener. The sixteen-minute, multi-stanza motet alternates between monodic (solo melodic lines) phrases and lengthier homophonic (the same words sung at the same time) passages, the cumulative effect intensified by the singers' resonant voices. Bates' bright soprano soars unerringly, but all four distinguish themselves when their lustrous harmonies conjoin so precisely. The ten concise pieces that follow—hymns used in daily worship, apparently—are less epic than “Rose-Lilie-Blume Sequence” though no less satisfying; in their cases, the soprano first establishes the melody after which harmonies by the others follow. Vocal histrionics are absent, the execution instead controlled but not lacking in enthusiasm, and the tone of the material is peaceful, meditative, and even, at times, quietly rapturous. While the texts are sung in German, the booklet packaged with the CD release includes both German and English versions. A word of praise must go to Bright Shiny Things for presenting the project so strikingly, with woodcut-styled silhouette illustrations enhancing the impression.
Though the material was written two-and-a-half centuries ago, temporal distance is erased by the clarity of the production and the performances. Just as Herbert updated the original manuscripts to modern notation, so too do the vocalists reanimate the material. Abetting that, of course, is the fact that a cappella material sounds as pure when performed today as it would have in the 1700s. Close your eyes as the recording plays and you might well imagine yourself in the Meetinghouse as part of the audience hearing the hymns delivered by the Ephrata Cloister's singers themselves.December 2020