Thomas TALLIS (c.1505-1585)
Salvator mundi, Domine [4:16]
Plainsong - Puer natus est nobis [4:22]
Missa Puer natus est nobis [24:57]
Quod chorus vatum [4:26]
Benedictus (Blessed be the Lord God of Israel) [6:01]
Magnificat a 4 [10:33]
Audivi vocem de cælo [3:44]
Videte miraculum [9:16]
The Cardinall’s Musick/Andrew Carwood
rec. Fitzalan Chapel, Arundel Castle, UK, February 2013. DDD
Booklet with texts and translations included
Reviewed as 24-bit download (CD, mp3 and 16-bit lossless also available)
HYPERION CDA68026 [67:35]
It’s a remarkable paradox that in an age of decreasing conventional
religious belief the polyphonic sacred choral music of the sixteenth
century should be the subject of so many recordings. Well-established
groups such as The Tallis Scholars and The Sixteen already have
an impressive discography of this music and more recently they have
been challenged by younger performers such as The Cardinall’s
Musick. The new recording rivals the best of those available: it’s
Hyperion’s Recording of the Month for March 2014 and
it’s mine, too. You can sample the Agnus Dei from the
Missa Puer Natus Est on Hyperion’s free sampler for
the month, HYP201403.
Andrew Carwood and his team have made eight recordings for Hyperion
to date, including the completion of their series of the music of
William Byrd, started for ASV and completed for Hyperion. Before
doing so, they had already also made two recordings of the music
of Byrd’s teacher and friend, Thomas Tallis:
- CDA67548 - Gaude gloriosa and other sacred music - review
and June
2011/1 DL Roundup
- CDA67994 - Salve intemerata and other sacred music - DL
News 2013/11
With this third volume they are almost a third of the way to equalling
the achievement of Chapelle du Roi and Alistair Dixon, whose 10-disc
set of all Tallis’s extant works has set a daunting standard.
Brilliant Classics 94268, with a 2-CD distillation on Regis RRC1394:
Bargain of the Month - review
of earlier release - and individual CDs still available from Signum.
The download of the whole set which I mentioned last year from AmazonUK
has now increased in price to £9.29, but that’s still
excellent value, so that you could afford to have that and pick
and choose supplementary recordings from The Cardinall’s Musick
and the other fine versions which I’ve listed for comparison.
Those Signum recordings are my benchmark for the new Hyperion CD,
together with those listed below.
| Missa puer natus est | The Tallis Scholars (Gimell CDGIM034, CDGIM202) The Sixteen/Harry Christophers (Coro COR16037) Stile Antico (Harmonia Mundi HMU807517) |
| audivi vocem | The Tallis Scholars (Gimell CDGIM034) Stile Antico (Harmonia Mundi HMU807517) Taverner Consort & Choir/Andrew Parrott (Erato 5622302) Westminster Abbey Choir/James O’Donnell (Hyperion CDA67044) |
| 4-part Magnificat | The Tallis Scholars (Gimell CDGIM034, CDGIM202) |
The opening work on the new recording, Salvator mundi, Domine,
from Compline, shows polyphony arising from the plainsong opening
like an organic growth. It’s important that the transition
should seem like moving from one world to another, yet appear to
be seamless, and this the Cardinall’s Musick achieve to perfection.
The scene is set for another CD to match the high quality of its
two predecessors.
The central work on the new CD, the Christmas-tide Mass, Puer
nobis natus est, has been more recorded than any Tallis composition
except the 40-part Spem in alium. Here, too, plainsong figures,
this time as the cantus firmus, the music on which the polyphonic
structure is founded. The music almost certainly dates from the
brief reign of Queen Mary; Andrew Carwood refuses to speculate further,
but it may well allude to one of the queen’s phantom pregnancies.
Though the cantus firmus comes from the Third Mass of Christmas,
its text - Unto us a boy is born - might well have been chosen as
an expression of hope that Mary would have an heir and thus assure
the continuation of England’s return to the papal fold with
the assurance that Tallis could continue to compose music for the
Roman liturgy. No-one was to know at the time that the accession
of the moderate Protestant Elizabeth would herald an equally golden
age for Tallis.
To help us to appreciate how Tallis builds the Mass on the plainsong,
The Cardinall’s Musick sing it first. Don’t worry if
you lose the thread - just enjoy the music for the wonder that it
is. In common with most Tudor settings, the Kyries are omitted
- they would have been sung in plainsong or to a separate setting
such as Taverner’s Kyrie Leroy - and only a fragment
of the Credo exists, omitted here, as it is on the other
recordings.
The Cardinall’s Musick take all sections of the Mass at a
fair pace - faster than The Sixteen, except in the Sanctus
- but so do Peter Phillips and The Tallis Scholars, whom I normally
credit with giving the music of this period time to breathe. Nowhere
did I get the impression that Carwood or Phillips was rushing the
music. Alistair Dixon on Signum also adopts fast tempi (SIGCD003
or complete set). By contrast Harry Christophers’ Gloria
is almost half as long again as Dixon’s but both extremes
of tempo, on Signum and Coro work well, proving yet again that speed
is far from the only issue.
Dixon places the Mass in a liturgical context by prefacing the Gloria
with the plainsong introit, as on the new recording, and a farced
or elaborated Kyrie, such as are found in the Sarum Missal,
and he places a plainsong Gradual, Alleluia and Sequence
between the Gloria and Sanctus. If you push me hard
I would have to state a preference for the Signum recording, largely
because of the way the music is this placed in context.
Audivi vocem, a respond for All Saints Day, and videte
miraculum, for Candlemas, have also been much recorded. Both
feature on a Decca twofer in elderly performances from Cambridge,
the former from King’s under David Willcocks, the latter from
St John’s, both well regarded in their time but the Willcocks
in particular sounds slow and dated now. More recent recordings
are broadly in agreement about a faster tempo for audivi vocem,
as on Volume 5 of the Signum set (SIGCD016) and Andrew Parrott.
The English setting of the Benedictus is a little masterpiece,
despite Tallis’s having to conform to the new simpler style
required for English settings. It provides quite a contrast with
the much earlier 4-part Magnificat, which alternates chant
and polyphony. As with audivi vocem, I’ve listed comparative
recordings for the latter by The Tallis Scholars and Chapelle du
Roi, both superb, but the new recording is their equal.
The recording, made as before in the appropriate acoustic of Arundel
Castle, is as good as on the earlier volumes, with individual strands
of polyphony well differentiated but integrated within the whole
sound-picture. I listened to the 24-bit download from Hyperion,
which is excellent, and sampled the mp3, which is also very good
of its kind. The CD and the CD-quality 16-bit downloads fall between
the two and should also give great pleasure.
The quality of the booklet can always be taken for granted with
Hyperion. Andrew Carwood’s notes set the background to Tallis’s
music in the confused religious context of the 1550s very well.
He fails to explain, however, just when the English setting of the
Benedictus was composed, assuming that it was to be sung
at ‘the Morning Office of Mattins in Cranmer’s new Prayer
Book’ without saying which version of that book. In fact it
must have been the first Prayer Book of 1549, as the text was changed
in 1552 and subsequent editions: the ‘horn of saluacyon’
of 1549 as in Tallis’s text had become ‘a mightie saluacioun’
by 1552, thus dating this setting with accuracy between those two
dates.
What Carwood does well is to show how Tallis achieved his task of
conforming to Archbishop Cranmer’s insistence on a plainer
style of music - as far as possible one note per syllable - and
yet produce a minor masterpiece. Tallis’s pupil, William Byrd,
would go on to do this even better in his Great Service,
but one wonders if he would have been able to do so without the
example of the older master.
Don’t overlook Hyperion’s other Tallis offerings. If
you are looking to hear Tallis’s music sung not by a modern
mixed-gender ensemble but by a cathedral choir, as it would originally
have been, there’s a very inexpensive recording of the Missa
Salve Intemerata by Winchester Cathedral Choir directed by David
Hill on budget-price Hyperion Helios CDH55400 - download for £4.99
or order the CD for £5.50 from Hyperion.
Neither that nor their earlier recording of Spem in alium
and other works (mid-price CDA30024) duplicates anything on the
new recording.
The first volume of this series ended briefly in Hyperion’s
‘please buy me’ bargain basement, having failed to sell
well. It didn’t deserve to be there and nor does this new
recording. There was quite a gap between The Cardinall’s Musick’s
first Tallis CD and the second but the third has followed hard on
the heels of the latter. I look forward to hearing their next instalment
with anticipation. Meanwhile snap up this new recording and its
two predecessors if you don’t already have them.
Brian Wilson
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