I CARE IF YOU LISTEN: Editor’s Picks: 2020 Contemporary Classical Albums
I CARE IF YOU LISTEN: Editor’s Picks: 2020 Contemporary Classical Albums
BY AMANDA COOK
“In any normal year, we would probably still be talking about the massive Australian bushfires that devastated millions of acres of land and displaced or killed billions of animals. Lest we forget the dire ongoing environmental crisis, Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered (New Amsterdam Records) is a requiem for our planet that “embodies a prayer for endangered animals and the imperiled environments in which they live.”
Though the hallmark piercing countertenor of Medieval and Renaissance polyphony is prominent throughout, Snider’s Mass benefits from the inclusion of women’s voices that expand the range of the ensemble (the exceptional Gallicantus conducted by Gabriel Crouch). Moving through the libretto by poet/writer Nathaniel Bellows that combines the traditional Latin texts with new material, harmonies tinged with dissonance turn celebratory, while reverent prayers break down into fraught, desperate pleading. The unifying thread is Snider’s radiant, consonant, beautiful writing, which serves as a reaffirmation that musical characteristics typically defined as ‘feminine’ are not a sign of weakness in composition.”