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Editorial Reviews

Not too many sequels to successful classical albums actually manage to exceed or outstrip their predecessors. In the case of Chanticleer's Jerusalem: Matins for the Virgin of Guadalupe, the preceding album was Mexican Baroque, a best seller and for many listeners the first inkling they ever had that there was Baroque music in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Mexico. Such music was overwhelmingly sacred, and wherever there was a decent-sized Spanish mission in the Americas there was a library consisting of both highly facilitated European music and homegrown compositions designed for use in service. In this instance, Chanticleer is able to pull together a relatively complete and consistent matins service, including a nine-part "Te Deum" setting, by one composer, Ignacio de Jerusalem, with some stunning insertions by Manuel de Zumaya, a composer who is believed to have been a Native American who nevertheless learned the ins and outs of the Spanish Baroque style. Chanticleer and its attendant sinfonia never sounded better than here, and the spicy syncopations in this highly secularized Baroque sacred music are simply irresistible.

This is a reissue in Das Alte Werk's "50 Years" series; the original disc only came out in 1998, so this falls rather hard on its heels. The original front cover featured a period icon of a Madonna and child that was perfectly suited to the disc's content; here, it has been replaced with a detail from an upended banquet scene, the finery of which doesn't suggest anything that could conceivably be seen, or had, in eighteenth century Mexico. At least the booklet still contains the necessary texts and translations, and when it comes to an item as fantastic as Chanticleer's Jerusalem: Matins for the Virgin of Guadalupe happens to be, then we'll take it. Uncle Dave Lewis, All Music Guide

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