Blue Heron returns to New York with fascinating Regis mass

Mon Feb 03, 2025 at 11:22 am
Blue Heron performed Johannes Regis’s Missa L’Homme armé/Dum sacrum mysterium Sunday at St. Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church. Photo: BH

The Boston-based vocal ensemble Blue Heron specializes in 15th-century Franco-Flemish polyphony—music of great historical importance, but rarely encountered in live performance. 

On Sunday afternoon at St. St. Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church, Blue Heron provided a fascinating insight into this era with “The Armed Archangel,” a recreation of a celebration of the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel.

The concert centered on Johannes Regis’s Missa L’Homme armé/Dum sacrum mysterium. Regis was an important musical figure who served as secretary to Guillaume Du Fay, considered the leading European composer of his time. The Missa L’Homme armé is the second mass setting Regis composed on the popular secular tune, “L’Homme armé,” or “The armed man,” but the only one to survive. 

The identity of the armed man in the song’s title remains uncertain, but research has established that in Regis’s Mass, he is Michael the Archangel due to its connection with a procession on the saint’s feast day at Cambrai Cathedral on September 29, 1462. The composer’s use of prayers appropriate to the saint’s day as cantus firmus texts bolsters the argument.

At such a celebration, which could be a day-long affair, the procession of clergy and choir would have winded through the cathedral with a station at the shrine of St. Michael, where Mass would be heard. While Blue Heron did not fully recreate the procession, it provided an approximation, with St. Ignatius of Antioch’s neo-Gothic interior supplying the appropriate ambiance. At the statue of Michael the Archangel next to the main altar, the choir performed the proper obeisance to the saint.

The program began with Blue Heron singing Philippe de Monte’s six-part Factum est silentium in coelo, a setting of a responsory for the feast of St. Michael, in the nave of the church. De Monte was a Flemish composer of the late Renaissance active across Europe. Blue Heron sang his complex polyphony with clarity and purity of tone, enhanced by musical detailing, including a vivid evocation of the dragon with which St. Michael did battle.

During the procession to and station at the statue of Michael the Archangel, Blue Heron chanted verses and prayers appropriate to the feast. As in the more complex polyphonic music heard throughout the concert, it was sung with particular attention to the text and sensitivity to the flow of the elaborate musical lines. This was followed by a robust and dramatic account of L’Homme armé, the tune that underpinned the entire performance. 

In his Mass, Regis employed intricate, intertwining musical styles. The L’Homme armé tune can be heard as a distinct musical statement or simultaneously in more than one vocal part. He provided additional musical interest through his setting of the text in various vocal combinations. Two of the most striking examples came in the Credo where he employed simple homophonic textures to create an intimate musical space to ensure comprehension of the text of “Et incarnatus ets,” and later setting the “Et resurrexit” as a duet to gain a sense immediacy to the miracle depicted. 

The singers have voices of remarkably individual timbres yet when performing chants or homophonic passages, they nonetheless achieve a perfect blend. As soloists, however, they are most effective in musical combat, where the unique qualities of their voices are employed to illuminate Regis’s imaginative settings of the cantus firmus. The results can be startling but musically and emotionally rewarding.

Blue Heron sang Jocatin’s motet Michael archangele paradisi praeposite at the offertory and Henricus Isaac’s six-part Angeli archangeli as the final antiphon. Nothing of Jocatin is known, but Isaac was an extremely prolific composer whose influence was pronounced and long-lasting in German-speaking countries. Anton Webern wrote his doctoral dissertation on Isaac’s Choralis Constantinus, a huge collection of motets that contains some of the finest extant examples of Renaissance polyphonic vocal music.

“The Armed Archangel” was equal parts fascinating musical archeological dig and sublime musical experience. Through musical curiosity and impeccable musicianship, Blue Heron has found its audience, as evidenced by a full house for this concert. It was a welcome return for this fine ensemble, which has been absent from New York for far too long. 

ARTEK performs “Musical Concerts at St. Ignatius of Antioch, 7 p.m., February 8. saintignatiusnyc.com


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