- Composer: Manuel Cardoso
- Period: Baroque (1600-1749)
Review
Huelgas Ensemble released a disc, called Tears of Lisbon, in order to illustrate what they perceive as a pervasive melancholy in Portuguese music. Appropriately for a requiem, Cardoso fulfils that characterization in a music that is yet aware of blissful states beyond earthly concern. The style of his music draws largely on Palestrina, but is more eloquent in its articulation of subtle, complex emotions. While not exhibiting the same eccentricity of gesture, he achieves a individuality and harmonic richness at least as impressive as Gesualdo's. The Introitus begins with a clear signal that this is not the neatly pious world of Palestrina: the soprano sings an augmented third against the tenor. An almost suffocating richness dominates the entire piece, that, despite the rhythmic plainness of the parts, suggests emotional realms beyond the music's capacity to express. What makes it more striking is how tightly, and securely on this side of that perceived realm it remains. Cardoso is no sufi, but he seems to know what they're going through. For the modern listener, he provides armchair mysticism at its best.He relishes high suspensions and keeps sending the sopranos, who sound like angelic children, straight back to the top part of their range, where they hang on to wonderfully long notes while the harmonies beneath them shift. He's already expanded the choir to S.S.A.A.T.B., so that mid- and high-range writing predominate throughout. Perhaps he likes the upward pull, the sense that he may thereby draw thoughts heavenward. The effect, when he leaves a high A hanging there, is like watching the changing sunlight through stained glass. If the technique is common to this type of music, Cardoso's harmonic language heightens the brilliance of it immeasurably. Listen, for example, to the outrageous chords near the end of the first section of the Kyrie.
In other places, for example Agnus Dei III, he indulges the ear with chorale-like writing, in big, uniform movements of chords, hinged by short melodic motifs. To contrast this, the Communio:Lux Aeterna which follows is the most adventurously composed polyphony of the whole Requiem. Sometimes he writes in unexpected rests, briefly halting the forward flow of the music in a way that leaves one breathless. The final Responsorium: Libera me strips the choir back down to a normal S.A.T.B. Although the style remains perfectly consistent, a sudden reduction like this reiterates the basic solemnity of the occasion the requiem was composed for. One's attention, which may have gone entirely to the composer, as this writer's did, would, in the right setting, be drawn back towards Christ, just as any devout Frei would've wished. Anticlimax, as a technique for concluding a piece, has modern adherents (Messiaen among them), for good reason: it gives the spirit time to become calm again and to better absorb the spiritual message of the music.
~ All Music Guide
Albums with Complete Performances of the Work
| Title | Date |
| Frei Manuel Cardoso: Requiem | 1990 |
| Manuel Cardoso Requiem | 2001 |
| Requiem | 2005 |
Albums with Excerpt Performances of the Work
| Title | Date |
| Magnum Mysterium II |
