This Year’s Chanticleer Christmas Program

This year marked the first time I experienced A Chanticleer Christmas, the traditional seasonal program that Chanticleer performs across northern California with visits to (in order of performance) Oakland, Petaluma, San Francisco, Sacramento, Carmel, Santa Clara, and Berkeley. This all-male ensemble of countertenors, tenors, baritones, and basses, led by Music Director Tim Keeler, takes an inventive approach to seasonal programming. The most traditional offerings are given innovative arrangements, which are consistently engaging. This year the more familiar of those offerings were supplemented with two arrangements of traditional Catalan music, one prepared by Keeler and the other by Enrique Ribó.

Those inclined to “concert” offerings will probably be struck by the “bimodal distribution” of historical periods. Most of the works performed prior to the intermission date from the sixteenth century, intermingling Orlande de Lassus and Tomás Luis de Victoria with less familiar names such as Bartomeu Càrceres and Mateo Flecha, whose four-voice villancico “Ríu Ríu Chíu” is much better known than his name. Following the intermission, the program leapt into the twentieth century with Arvo Pärt’s “Bogoróditse Djévo” (rejoice, Virgin) and Franz Biebl’s “Ave Maria,” which sets not only the text of that prayer but also passages from the Angelus devotion.

There also was a significant element of “choreography,” particularly at the very beginning of the program. The opening selections were realized through a series of “stations,” beginning at the rear of the sanctuary in darkness, followed by a candlelight procession leading to the altar. While this made for a moving theatrical experience, it deprived the listener of consulting the program book to identify the first six selections! Nevertheless, this “theatrical” approach may well have been based on traditional liturgical practices in the sixteenth century; so there really was no need to quibble about listening to the music while putting off an opportunity to read the text until later!

At a time when the commercialization of Christmas is rearing its head again in a post-pandemic world, an evening of music with no market-based agenda was just what any attentively serious listener needed.