Tallis reviews

Those of a cynical disposition might be inclined to suspect that Alamire’s tribute to Thomas Tallis runs the risk of shortchanging its listeners: the epic Gaude gloriosa Dei mater is repeated at the end of the CD – albeit sporting the respray of freshly-conceived English words by Queen Katherine Parr – and nearly 17 minutes are given over to a Litany alternating chanted declamation with simple repeating refrains. Repetition, after all, accounts for more than a third of the disc. They couldn’t be more wrong.

'This is the seventh of nine projected discs in The Tallis Scholars' ongoing endeavour to record the complete Masses of Josquin des Prés. Using just nine singers gives an intimacy to these readings and ensures clear-cut words and sharply delineated vocal lines.

'The vocal balance is sensitively judged, and Gimell's recording - in the chapel of Merton College, Oxford. is lush without being overly splashy.'

Josquin des Prés

Missa Gaudeamus; Missa L'ami Baudichon

Tallis Scholars/Peter Phillips

Gimell CDGIM 050   66:48 mins

This is the second volume of motets to be reconstructed and recorded by Owen Rees and Contrapunctus from more than 170 works that the tenor John Baldwin copied between 1575 and 1581. Little is known about the man who preserved these jewels of pre-Reformation polyphony, copying them for money or perhaps for love. Baldwin was born sometime before 1560, served as a lay clerk at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, and as a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, and died in the summer of 1615.

The pinnacles of this glorious disc are Thomas Tallis’s vast canvas – 40 independent voices – of Spem in alium, and a later version to an English text, Sing and glorify. A visit to London by the Italian Alessandro Striggio, composer of several motets for multiple choral forces, resulting in rich tapestries of vocal counterpoint, probably created a challenge to his English contemporary to match their gargantuan scale. The outcome is one of English Tudor music’s greatest achievements.

This recording offers a cross-section of the output of Thomas Tallis (c1505-85), who served four monarchs: Henry VIII (from 1543), Edward VI (1547-53), Mary Stuart (1553-58) and Elizabeth I (from 1558). Each changed the rules about how sacred music ought to be composed. Director Andrew Carwood samples the composer’s responses to this challenge, creating a programme that makes up in contrasts for what it lacks in focus.

The Cardinall’s Musick is vastly experienced in English repertory of the 16th century, and this is its fourth disc devoted entirely to Thomas Tallis. With the inclusion of his Mass for four voices they have also completed their survey of his surviving masses.

Thomas Tallis’s Mass on Puer natus is stylistically odd. It is for seven voices, it is mostly in low register, it has no solo sections of reduced scoring, and it is in duple time throughout. Moreover only three of its movements survive (almost) complete. It was probably written for combined English and Spanish musicians when Philip I visited England to marry the Catholic Queen Mary in 1554. However, the motets on the disc more faithfully mirror the changing  liturgical styles of the turbulent 16th century.

This recording of Tallis’s Lamentations for Maundy Thursday is prefaced by various chants for Holy Week. Oddly, though, the chants are taken from the service of Compline which marks the end of the monastic working day, whereas the polyphonic Lamentations belong to Matins, so the polyphony is not embedded in a relevant complete service.

In this recording The Cardinall’s Musick contrasts pre- with post-Reformation compositions by Tallis. Ingenuity abounds, but is evidenced more consistently in the disc’s programming than in its performances. The centrepiece is the five-part Missa Salve intemerata, whose motifs Tallis took from his votive antiphon Salve intemerata virgo, which is also featured.

This recording showcases an excellent vintage of this celebrated choir in fine performances of some of Tallis’s finest works, including a sprightly reading of the breath-taking Spem in Alium. Barry Witherden

Lamentation verses nourished the imagination of English composers throughout the 16th and 17th century, evoking intense musical responses. This disc explores settings by composers known (Tallis, Byrd) and unknown, and includes premiere recordings of Lamentations by Alfonso Ferrabosco the Younger and John Mundy.

Can any single conductor ever be equally successful in unfolding such an utterly contrasting set of symphonies as the Vaughan Williams nine? The issue is complicated in the Naxos re-release by the division of the symphonies between two conductors; Kees Bakels in Nos 2, 3, 5-9; Paul Daniel in Nos 1 and 4. And while most of the Naxos set was recorded in the Poole Arts Centre and all but one of the Warner in St Augustine’s, Kilburn, neither acoustic sounds constant across their series, owing to changes of producers and recording engineers.