CHANTICLEER: S.F. MALE CHOIR HAS PAID ITS DUES

A typically American dichotomy marks the eight-year career of Chanticleer, the 12-member male vocal choir from San Francisco.

On one side, Chanticleer, founded in 1978 by Louis Botto, has earned the approbation of serious musicians through its precise performances--now totaling more than 500 concerts in the past half-decade--of mostly Renaissance and contemporary repertory, a specialization in the music of Josquin, three successful European tours and a handful of record albums of literature that might be considered esoteric.

On the other, the ensemble’s daily bread has been won, in the past five years, through regular touring on the Community Concerts circuit, a branch of the group’s agent, Columbia Artists Management Inc. In other words, Josquin may have made Chanticleer’s reputation, but cowboy songs have kept it alive.

“Yes, we’ve paid our dues,” acknowledged founder Botto, on the phone from Chanticleer’s home base in the Bay City.

“But we’ve also held to our standards. Our participation in a Josquin symposium five years ago, for instance, led to our getting our first European management. That, in turn, has given us a visibility many other vocal groups would have to envy. Over there, we’re known as ‘the American King’s Singers.’ ”

The reference to the British a-cappella male vocal ensemble puts Chanticleer in a rarefied musical atmosphere, Botto admits. But not, he points out, into an area beyond its musical grasp.

“Our sounds are different. As everything they do, they do in a British way, so our ways are American. They always make the same kind of sound--that is their aesthetic. Our sound changes from piece to piece, and with the wide variety of musical styles we sing in. We have been called ‘an orchestra of voices,’ and that’s what we are.”

Saturday, at the North Orange County Community College in Yorba Linda, Chanticleer gives an eclectic program offering, after the expected Renaissance music, spirituals, gospel songs and American popular music of the 1930s.

Next Sunday afternoon, as part of the Chamber Music in Historic Sites series, the group sings at the Los Angeles City Council chambers at 2:30 p.m. Its program contains, as Botto points out, “appropriate Renaissance state music, music from the court of Maximilian, by Heinrich Isaac and Ludwig Senfl, on the first half.” In the second, the ensemble will present music by John Bennet, Michael East, William Byrd, Josquin, Dufay and Gibbons.

LISZT: In a two-day minifestival of music by Ferenc Liszt, another installment in the worldwide celebration of the centennial of the Hungarian composer’s death, Julien Musafia and the Collegium Musicum of Cal State Long Beach offer familiar and unfamiliar works by the man Musafia calls “the central figure in 19th-Century music.”

Saturday and next Sunday, Musafia, with his colleagues and students and an orchestra conducted by J. Larry Granger, will survey some of Liszt’s prodigious output.

“Scholars now agree,” Musafia says, “Liszt may just be the most prolific composer in all musical history. More important, the quality of the music is now acknowledged of a superiority past generations have not realized.”

Saturday night, in the Gerald R. Daniel Recital Hall at CSLB, pianist Musafia will give a recital of Liszt works, including esoterica such as “Nuages Gris” (1881), “R.W.--Venezia” (1883, written on the death of Wagner) and the Nocturne, “En Reve,” as well as more familiar items, such as excerpts from “Annees des Pelerinage” and the Tenth Hungarian Rhapsody. This recital will be preceded by a short lecture on Liszt by Robin Wallace of the CSLB faculty.

Next Sunday, from 2 to 6 p.m., also in the Daniel Recital Hall, the program will include the “Concerto Pathetique,” the Spanish Rhapsody and the First Piano Concerto, as well as a selection of songs and piano pieces. To begin this event, Frederick Swensen, chair of the French and Italian department at CSLB, will give a lecture on “Liszt, the Transcendent Romantic.”

AND OTHER COMPOSERS: Gyorgy Ligeti, 62, is the 1986 winner of the $150,000 Grawemeyer Award for music composition given annually by the University of Louisville (Ky.). Ligeti’s winning composition is “Etudes,” a collection of six piano pieces characterized by multilayered rhythms; “Etudes” received first performances between April and November, 1985, in Zagreb, Warsaw and Hamburg. . . . Henri Lazarof is hearing premieres of his works this spring. In mid-March, the UCLA professor, 54, attended the first performance of his “Poema,” as given by the Seattle Symphony conducted by Gerard Schwarz. Last week in Texas, Lazarof’s Second Concerto for Orchestra, commissioned by the Houston Symphony, received its premiere. And on May 25, Lazarof’s Serenade for string sextet will be introduced at the Los Angeles Festival of Chamber Music at Japan America Theatre. Next season, the Chamber Symphony of San Francisco will give the world premiere of Lazarof’s Violin Concerto on Feb. 4. . . . John Cage will receive an honorary doctor’s degree at the CalArts graduation May 9 in Valencia.