Henrik Ødegaard, Vox Clamantis

On Music by Henrik Ødegaard the Estonian choir Vox Clamantis and its conductor Jaan-Eik Tulve turn to the liturgical choral music of Henrik Ødegaard, born in Oslo in 1955. Ødegaard writes from inside Gregorian chant, with traces of Norwegian folk song, adding his own polyphonic layers around the old melodies. The heart of the programme is his eight-part Meditations over St. Mary Magdalene's Feast in Nidaros (2017), built on antiphons from a fragmentary 13th-century Scandinavian manuscript.

Ødegaard studied trombone, church music, composition and Gregorian chant, and from 1982 to 2006 he was organist and choir conductor in Sauherad, Telemark. He met Tulve about thirty years ago, when the conductor was teaching Gregorian chant courses in Norway. Tulve founded Vox Clamantis in Tallinn in 1996, and the group has recorded Arvo Pärt, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Helena Tulve and Cyrillus Kreek for ECM. This album was made in March 2021 at the St. Nicholas Dome Church in Haapsalu, with Margo Kõlar as engineer, Helena Tulve supervising the recording and Manfred Eicher as executive producer.

The first five tracks alternate Ødegaard's settings with chant sung as it was found. Jesu, dulcis memoria (2014/15) keeps the title of the Gregorian hymn and lays shifting chords over a held drone. O filii et filiæ grows from a 15th-century paschal hymn, with the men's and women's voices joining and parting. The Meditations were written for Vox Clamantis and the Norwegian women's ensemble Schola Sanctæ Sunnivæ, drawing on manuscripts from Trondheim Cathedral (Nidaros is the city's old name). In her liner notes Kristina Kõrver describes the composer filling the gaps of the source as a poet and co-creator rather than a restorer.

James Manheim wrote at AllMusic that the texture of the Meditations thickens as they proceed, reaching a high point in the penultimate Magnificat antiphon. He called it "brilliantly original music" and singled out the engineering of the recording. In Limelight Alexandra Coghlan heard chant that "flows with organic ease and only the gentlest of inflections". For Rick Anderson of CD Hotlist, some pieces are hard to tell from Gregorian chant, while others open into complex harmony.

This is the CD edition, ECM New Series 2767, released in June 2023, with a 28-page booklet of notes in English and German.