To accompany the exhibition “The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini,” the early music ensemble TENET held court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a lovely concert of musical portraits from the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Quite literally, the performance was held beneath the marble arches of the Vélez Blanco Patio, a sixteenth-century Spanish courtyard rebuilt in the museum. While the setting could not have been more evocative, the high ceilings and hard surfaces created an acoustic that blended the sound a bit more than was desirable.
Fortunately, we were in good hands, as TENET features ensemble singers who are equally comfortable as soloists, and could carry their lines through the wash. The program, assembled by guest music director Scott Metcalfe, found inspiration in the idea of portraits with vocal selections that portray noblemen, lovers, marriage, and some picaresque characters. The opening piece, by medieval composer Johannes Ciconia, was the oldest work on the program, and demonstrated the instrumental style of vocal writing that would persist throughout the early Renaissance: fleet lines, long, sometimes jumpy melismas, and unexpected cadences.
Renaissance composers treated the voice like an instrument, with vocal lines traversing a range as large as the vielle, the medieval fiddle played by Metcalfe. With key signatures yet to be invented, the lines meander in surprising ways. The voices weave over, under, and through each other, sometimes pushing the limits of what we think of today as tonality. TENET’s singers expertly navigated these complexities, emphasizing important words in the text and shaping phrases along their natural contours. The six vocalists appeared in various configurations, accompanied by instruments familiar to early music enthusiasts: a twangy medieval harp, recorders, lute, and a douçaine, a reedy ancestor to the oboe. Composers often left no indications of instrumentation; Metcalfe and the ensemble carefully chose instruments and voice parts to create a program of varied textures and colors.
Among the highlights were several works by Guillaume Dufay, perhaps the most admired composer on the program. Two of his pieces contained acrostics in the first letters of each line of text, spelling the names of the noblewomen to whom they were dedicated. Mon cuer me fait tous dis penser (“My heart makes me think always of you”) was especially gorgeous, with “blue notes” throughout the embroidered phrases, giving real sensuality to lines such as “a rose sweet-smelling as cardamom.”