Saturday, December 8, 2012  Chanticleer's polyphonic Christmas
presents  The men of Chanticleer  An entire week has gone by
since Chanticleer visited Celebrity Series, but I've been too
distracted by shows with short runs to get around to throwing a
few critical bouquets their way.  Of course critiquing
Chanticleer is a bit oxymoronic - there's not much to critique;
since the group's founding in San Francisco some thirty-five (!)
years ago, it has slowly taken the world by storm, and now all
but rules the male-chorus roost.  And for once, the mainstream
take on the group has been accurate: it is an "orchestra of
voices" - for Chanticleer's greatest achievement is its
consistently gorgeous (and startlingly accurate) vocal
polyphony.  What's polyphony?  It's a style of choral writing in
which independent melodic lines weave against one another to
form a ravishingly rich musical texture (polyphony reached its
greatest pitch in the sacred music of the Middle Ages and
Renaissance, which together form the core of C