FACES
& PLACES
THE ARTS SEPTEMBER 2006
 Cordus
Mundi
by Caroline Dechert
“How rare
is it,” Rick Rosen asks me “that fourteen
guys agree on something?”
The fourteen guys are Cordus
Mundi, the male a cappella group founded by Rosen,
and what they agree on is that they want the group
to be as good as it can possibly be, which is turning
out to be very, very good indeed.
Rosen has actually founded
Cordus Mundi twice, first in San Francisco in 2002,
and then in Bucks County in 2005, following his move
back to New Hope. While Rosen is the founder of the
group and one of its conductors, he’s quick to
point out that he’s not its director. The group
operates in a democratic fashion, with every member
having a say in its creative process and development.
If, like me, you’re already
completely distracted from the main subject of this
article by an obsessive need to scour what’s
left of your high school Latin to translate the name,
stop now. Mundi may be a real Latin word (meaning “of
the world”) but Cordus is all made up. Let it
suggest what it will.
I confess, I ought to have
heard this group long before I did. Rick came into
the library back in the fall of 2005 with a poster
for an upcoming performance, and I really meant to
go. I also really meant to go after he came in with
a second poster for a second concert…well, you
get the idea. I finally managed to get my act together
to hear Cordus Mundi this June, at Trinity Episcopal
Church. After kicking myself repeatedly for missing
those earlier concerts, I realized I wanted to write
about this group, even though I know I find writing
about music very nearly impossible. That made it all
the more necessary – one of the few things as
remarkable as fourteen guys agreeing on something is
fourteen total strangers who inspire you to try the
impossible.
So when I had the chance to
hear the group again, at an opening at New Hope Sidetracks
Gallery, I took some time to try to see why their music
stayed with me, why it moved me so much.
Cordus Mundi adheres to a high
musical standard. The singers, many of whom also perform
with the Bucks County Choral Society and other groups,
rehearse weekly, and have also brought in outside clinicians
to help them with specific aspects of their work, allowing
them to step up to new levels of excellence. As Rosen
says, “we still don’t know what our ceiling
is.”
What they do know is what their
style is. Cordus Mundi concerts are relaxed, informal,
and comfortable for the audience. There’s no
daunting formal hush, no solemn filing onto the stage,
nothing to intimidate a novice in the audience. There’s
no unnatural barrier between those who sing and those
whose listen. The repertoire ranges widely, from Monteverdi
through Billy Joel via Ralph Vaughn Williams and traditional
spirituals. The music, like the singers, is accessible.
The goal is “to expand the audience for classical
music without dumbing it down.”
It works.
There’s great beauty,
passion, and compassion in this music. If you can hear
it unmoved, frankly, I’m not sure I want to know
you. Cordus Mundi achieves the proper magic of music,
bringing the audience together not just to be present
and polite and listen and clap nicely, but to resonate
with the performers, to be carried with the music to
a shared place.
I’m fascinated by this
power of music, by these special shared spaces where
the particularness of our unique personal experiences
drops away; where, by meeting in a common ground of
evoked emotion and sensibility, we share purely the
universality of our experience. Sometimes we can get
there in other ways, but it has always seemed to me
that music best carries along the full complexity and
richness of experience. That’s why I find it
impossible to write about. By its nature, it partakes
of what author Russell Hoban calls “the unwordable.”
Rosen explains it this way: “We
love what we do so much that we want to get some of
that across, and get into people’s lives.” Not
everyone will be moved by the same piece of music,
but there’s such richness in this repertoire
that everyone is sure to find something that speaks
to them. Listen to this. Feel this. Share this.
Your next chance to hear Cordus
Mundi is Saturday, November 18, at The Anchor Presbyterian
Church in Wrightstown. They will also appear Sunday,
March 18, 2007 in Doylestown; Saturday, May 12 in Gwynedd
(in a special collaboration with the Bel Canto Children’s
Choir); and Saturday, June 10 at Trinity Episcopal
Church in Solebury.
For further information, contact
Cordus Mundi at 215-862-3982 or at cordusmundi@comcast.net.
Cordus Mundi is:
Tenor I – Tony Fazey, Jim Peters, Tim Vogel
Tenor II – Chris Detweiler, John Leslie, Christopher Whitney
Bass I – David Fryling, Eric Muth, Peter Scarpato, Bill Stefanowicz
Bass II – Mike Acocella, Steve Mallon, Rick Rosen, Dennis Walsh
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