CHANTICLEER SINGS

Chanticleer is a male a cappella ensemble from San Francisco that succeeded only partly in revealing the splendors of early Renaissance music Sunday in the marble halls of the City Council Chambers at City Hall.

The concert, part of the Chamber Music in Historic Sites series, was held in an appealingly resonant, dignified and spacious setting appropriate for music that often had been created for ceremonial state occasions. It showed the group’s merits to be focus, clear diction and secure pitch.

But, because four of its 12 members are countertenors, the ensemble produced a top-heavy rather than a well-blended tone, and suffered particularly from weak middle voices. Beyond that, its palette of timbres proved unevenly mixed: white and vibratoless in the heights; more urgent and expressive in the depths.

Most earthbound were Senfl’s “Ecce quam bonum,” Gibbons’ “Hosanna to the son of David” and Josquin’s “Cueurs desolez” and “Absalon fili mi.”

But the group sang impressively in one of the three Missae dominicalis by Senfl, particularly in tracing the austere mysticism of the Kyrie and the gently unfolding and falling lines of the Agnus Dei.

Chanticleer offered a spirited, bawdy love song--with side-drum accompaniment--by Heinrich Isaac as an encore to its enthusiastic audience.