Tag: Tallis Scholars

CD Review, early music, File Under?

2021 – the Josquin Year (CD Review)

Josquin: Missa Hercules Dux Ferrarie – Missa D’ung aultre amer – Missa Faysant regretz

Tallis Scholars

Gimell Records

 

Josquin Motets and Mass Movements

Brabant Ensemble

Hyperion Records

 

The Golden Renaissance: Josquin des Prez

Stile Antico

Decca Classics

 

While scholarly consensus on Josquin’s birthdate has moved around over time (current estimates are around 1450), his death was in 1521, five hundred years ago. To mark this anniversary, three of the best ensembles singing early music have released recordings devoted to the composer’s works. 

 

The Tallis Scholars began their Josquin masses recording project decades ago, and this program of Missa Hercules Dux Ferrarie, Missa D’ung aultre amer, and Missa Faysant regretz completes their cycle of these totemic works with a ninth recording (on a previous CD, they even included a mass that may be by Bauldewyn or Josquin, just to be safe). They have saved some of the best works for last. Missa Hercules Dux Ferrari is the first known soggetto cavato mass, mapping syllables of the name of its dedicatee, Duke Ercole I D’este of Ferrara, onto solfege syllables. The motive is repeated a number of times, often in the texturally prominent tenor voice, commemorating the dedicatee resplendently and demonstrating a technique that would be taken up by a number of composers. Missa D’ung aultre amer is an earlier and relatively compact work, with more syllabic and homophonic writing than one often finds in Josquin. It uses a rondeau quatrain by Johannes Ockeghem as its principal building blocks. Unusual yes, but also fascinating and fetching. Missa Faysant regretz is based on a three-part rondeau that is either by Gille Binchois or Walter Frye. The mass is saturated with a four-note motive that appears more than 200 times; it is divided up among all of the voices and appears in various rhythmic guises. Faysant regretz rivals Missa Hercules in compositional virtuosity. While retaining a number of longtime personnel, the Tallis Scholars sound vivacious and well-balanced from sonorous basses to shimmering upper sopranos. They keep a crisp pacing throughout, and the rhythmic verve they demonstrate serves to clearly delineate the counterpoint in all three masses.

 

A collection of motets and mass movements are featured on the Brabant Ensemble’s recording. Ricocheting entrances contrast sumptuous, widely spaced verticals in O Bone et dulcissime Jesu. Pungent dissonances and imitative counterpoint enliven a setting of the Stabat Mater. The included mass movements, rather than being part of an Ordinary cycle, are freestanding. The Gloria de beata virgine and the Sanctus and Benedictus de Passione are easily as musically substantial as sections of complete mass settings and serve as a reminder that, irrespective of the way in which Renaissance music is often presented in concert and on disc, service music in practice was far from a tradition of monolithic cycles. The Brabant Ensemble and Stile Antico share some personnel, notably Helen, Kate, and Emma Ashby in the soprano and alto sections. The singers in both groups create a warm and impressively blended sound.

 

Stile Antico’s first Decca CD features a premiere recording of the beautiful chanson Vivrai je toujours. The rest of their selections include some “greatest hits” – Ave Maria Virgo Serena, Inviolate, integra, et casta es, Salve Regina, and a charming but slightly incongruous inclusion of El Grillo. The centerpiece is Missa Pange Lingua, a paraphrase mass from late in Josquin’s career that employs one of the central hymns of the Catholic liturgy. Stile Antico takes a spacious approach to the mass, with relaxed tempos and impressive delineation of the pervasive appearances of the hymn that define much of the mass. Two laments on the death of Josquin, Dum vastos Adriae fluctus by Jacquet De Mantua and O mors inevitabilis by Hieronymus Vinders, provide a fitting and stirring conclusion to this compelling recording. If asked to choose I would say: get all three. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Choral Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Tallis Scholars: New CD, Concerts in Princeton and New York this Weekend

Now in their forty-sixth year of singing, the Tallis Scholars, directed by Peter Phillips, have long made an annual December concert at Church of St. Mary the Virgin in midtown Manhattan a stop on their winter tour. Part of Miller Theatre’s Early Music Series, these concerts have focused on Renaissance polyphony, but there have also been some noteworthy new works on the programs. They frequently program the music of Arvo Pärt. Last year’s concert featured the premiere of a piece for the Tallis Scholars written by Nico Muhly.

However, this year an imaginative program, titled “Reflections” is on offer that interweaves selections based on different liturgical sections, bringing together composers from England and on the Continent active throughout the Renaissance as well as twentieth century French composers Francis Poulenc and Olivier Messiaen.

The group is nearing the completion of its edition of Josquin’s Masses. Their latest recording of Missa Mater Patris and Missa Da Pacem (Gimell CD, 2019), presents pieces whose attribution has been the matter of some controversy. The former mass is based on music by Brumel, which would be the only such borrowing by Josquin, contains some uncharacteristic blocks of homophony at strategic places and fewer of the composer’s signature imitative duos. So, is it a misattribution? Without stating anything categorically, in his characteristically erudite liner notes Phillips suggests the Brumel connection might place the mass in 1512 or 1513, shortly after Brumel’s death as an homage to a composer friend; this would make it one of the last two mass settings we have by Josquin. The source material might help to account for the different approach.

Whether Josquin wrote it or someone else, Missa Mater Patris contains some much fine music that is superlatively sung on the Gimmell CD. The Hosanna sections of the Sanctus and Benedictus, borrowing cascades in thirds from the Brumel motet, is both fleet and exuberant. The Agnus Dei III is another section where the contributions of Brumel are expertly integrated.

Phillips relates that, from the nineteenth century to relatively recently, Missa Da Pacem was held up as an example of the Josquinian style. Recent discoveries have suggested another author, Noel Bauldeweyn (Beauty Farm recently released a fine disc of this lesser known composer’s masses). Phillips is not entirely willing to concede that Da Pacem isn’t Josquin’s, he instead mentions passages that seem to point to one and then the other author and leaves the listener a chance to judge – and savor – for themselves.

CONCERT DETAILS

PROGRAM

Salve Regina

Chant: Salve Regina

Padilla: Salve Regina

Poulenc: Salve Regina

Cornysh: Salve Regina

Ave Maria

Chant: Ave Maria

Cornysh: Ave Maria

Poulenc: Ave Maria a10 (arr. Jeremy White)

Miserere

Allegri: Miserere

Croce: Miserere Mei

O sacrum convivium

Tallis: O sacrum convivium

Messiaen: O sacrum convivium

Magnificat

Byrd: Magnificat from Short Service

Victoria: Magnificat Primi Toni 

Princeton, New Jersey, USA

McCarter Theatre

December 13, 2019, 8 PM

Church of St. Mary the Virgin, New York, USA

December 14, 2019, 8 PM

by Christian Carey
Choral Music, Commissions, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, early music, File Under?, New York

Tallis Scholars Premiere Nico Muhly in Midtown

Tallis Scholars. Photo: Nick Rutter.

Tallis Scholars: A Renaissance Christmas

Miller Theatre Early Music Series

Church of St. Mary the Virgin

December 1, 2018

Published on Sequenza 21

By Christian Carey

 

NEW YORK – The Tallis Scholars, directed by Peter Phillips, made their annual appearance in New York as part of Miller Theatre’s Early Music series at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Midtown. The program was billed as a dual celebration — the 45th anniversary of the Tallis Scholars and Miller Theatre’s 30th anniversary season.

 

In honor of the occasion, Miller Theatre commissioned a new piece for the Tallis Scholars by composer Nico Muhly. Muhly has, of late, garnered a great deal of attention for two Metropolitan Opera commissions  — Two Boys and Marnie — but he often talks about his first love being choral music (he began his musical career as a chorister). Muhly’s choral works are exquisitely crafted and texturally luminous. Rough Notes (2018), his new piece for the concert at St. Mary’s, took its texts from two diary entries by Robert Falcon Scott, written near the end of his ill-fated voyage to Antarctica. The first excerpt describes the aurora australis, providing words such as “arches, bands, and curtains”  that are ripe for colorful musical setting. The second was Scott’s stoic expression of confidence in his team’s ability to accept their impending deaths with dignity. Muhly’s use of lush cluster chords in the first section gave way to more sharply etched, but still glinting, harmonies in the second, as well as poignantly arcing melodies. The divided choir of ten voices was skilfully overlapped to sound like many times that number. It is always fascinating to hear the Tallis Scholars switch centuries, and thus style, to perform contemporary repertoire; for instance, their CD of Arvo Pärt’s music is a treasure. One hopes that they might collaborate on a recording with Muhly in the future.

 

The rest of the program was of considerably earlier music, but ranged widely in chronology. The earliest piece was an elegant and under-heralded Magnificat setting by John Nesbett from the late Fifteenth century that is found in the Eton Choirbook. Chant passages give way to various fragments of the ensemble that pit low register vs. high for much of the piece. It culminates by finally bringing all the voices together in a rousing climax. The Tallis Scholars has, of yet, not recorded Nesbett, but Peter Phillips has committed the Magnificat to disc in an inspired performance with the Choir of Merton College, Oxford (The Marian Collection, Delphian, 2014).  

 

Palestrina’s motet Hodie Christus natus est, and the eponymous parody mass which uses this as its source material, were the centerpiece of the concert. The motet was performed jubilantly and with abundant clarity. The mass is one of Palestrina’s finest. He took the natural zest of its source material, added plenty of contrapuntal elaborations, and made subtle shifts to supply a thoughtful rendition of the text. Although we are, in terms of the liturgical calendar, in the midst of the reflective period of Advent, being propelled forward to the midst of some of the most ebullient yet substantial Christmas music of the Renaissance was a welcome inauguration of the season.

 

The two works that concluded the concert dealt with different aspects of the Christmas story. William Byrd’s Lullaby is actually quite an unsettling piece; its text deals with the Slaughter of the Innocents as ordered by Herod. One is left to imagine the infant Jesus being consoled by Mary and Joseph in the midst of their flight from persecution. Byrd composed it in the Sixteenth century (it was published in 1588), but Lullaby was the piece on the concert most tailored to this moment, evoking concerns of our time: the plight of refugees, the slaughter of innocent bystanders by acts of senseless aggression: particularly the vulnerability of children to indiscriminate bombing abroad and the epidemic of gun violence in our own country.

 

The last piece returned to a festive spirit and brought the Tallis Scholars to the cusp of the Baroque with Hieronymus Praetorius’s Magnificat V with interpolations of two carols: Joseph lieber, Joseph mein and In dulci jubilo. During the Christmas season, interspersing carols and sections of the Magnificat was a standard practice in Baroque-era Lutheran churches; J.S. Bach might even have done so in the services he led at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. Praetorius plus two carols gave the Tallis Scholars an opportunity to share three of their most-performed Christmas pieces. From seemingly effortless floating high notes to sonorous bass singing, with tons of deftly rendered imitative passages in the inner voices, the group made a glorious sound. One eagerly awaits their return to New York during their 46th season.

 

by Christian Carey
Choral Music, Concert review, File Under?, New York

Tallis Scholars at St. Mary’s (Concert Review)

em_tallisscholars_matthewmurphy_12-10-11-2

Tallis Scholars at St. Mary’s: Bass Hit

Sequenza 21

By Christian Carey

 

NEW YORK – On December 10th, the Tallis Scholars found themselves in a bit of a quandary. Scheduled to give their annual Renaissance Christmas concert as part of Miller Theatre’s Early Music Series at Church of St. Mary the Virgin, the ten-voice ensemble was decimated to nine. Long-time member bass Robert Macdonald was ill and had been rendered voiceless. Peter Phillips, the Tallis Scholars’ director, quipped from onstage that unless he sang, which the rest of the singers “felt unwise,” the group’s other bass, Tim Whiteley, would have to go it alone. MacDonald did not appear to be the only member suffering. During the course of the concert, there were several sniffles onstage and far more water being chugged than is the group’s usual practice. Gamely they had decided to appear regardless.

 

There was yet another wrinkle to the story. During the first half of the concert the Tallis Scholars had planned to feature Cipriano de Rore’s Missa Praeter rerum seriem, a composition that includes many divisi, including a number of passages where each bass has his own part. A substitution was in order, and the solution was a welcome one: Giovanni Perluigi da Palestrina’s Missa Assumpta est Maria. One of the composer’s last works, it demonstrates his movement from a more modal to a quasi-tonal harmonic method of organization. Although outnumbered, Whiteley never seemed vocally outgunned. Indeed, the Tallis Scholars’ long association helped them to rebalance their forces in seemingly effortless fashion. The clarity of lines and fine-tuned chords which resulted were truly remarkable sounding.

em_tallisscholars_matthewmurphy_12-10-11

Although the audience had been deprived of De Rore on the first half, the second provided some compensation with a sprightly, joyous rendition of his Hodie Christus natus est setting. Magnificat Primi Toni, by Tomás Luis de Victoria, features antiphonal division of the choir into two four-part units. Fortunately for this occasion it doesn’t include bass divisi, but there are some stellar passages for high sopranos that arched angelically upward, as well as sturdy tutti declamation.

 

Victoria, Palestrina, and even de Rore are familiar composers to many Renaissance listeners, but the next two selections on the program, both Salve Regina settings, were composed by figures who aren’t yet “household names.” Based on the quality of these works alone, they should be. Claudin de Sermisy’s Salve Regina was filled with imitative counterpoint, including four-voice canons and fetching duets, which were delivered with abundant precision by the Tallis Scholars. Hernando de Franco, a Spanish composer who resided in Mexico, must have enjoyed setting the Salve Regina text – or at the very least been frequently requested to do so – there are five of them attributed to him. Here, chant was weaved into the fabric of the piece, interspersing thick-voiced passages of contrapuntal activity.

 

The concert concluded with O Splendor Gloriae, a composition that appears to have been a collaboration between John Taverner and Christopher Tye. The piece never feels like a ragtag assemblage, but there are significant differences among its various sections. O Splendor has a long-ish text, describing the Creation story from the Fall to Christ’s Resurrection and Ascension. Even after such a taxing program, and under harried circumstances, the Tallis Scholars brought a warm sound to bear here. This is no mean feat, as the work contains a number of high-lying lines. In addition to the sopranos who sustained these, Whiteley must be commended for his efforts. The bass brought sonorous support to the work’s chordal passages and hardy declamation during sections for subsets of the ensemble. It was a testament to the Tallis Scholars’ consummate professionalism that, despite challenging circumstances,  they made such stirring music.  

by Christian Carey