In The Midst Of Life : Music from the Baldwin Partbooks
I
William BYRD (1539/40-1623) Circumdederunt me dolores mortis
[5:04]
Robert PARSONS (c.1535-1572) Libera me Domine [7:29]
William BYRD Audivi vocem de cælo a5 [4:15]
William MUNDY (c.1529-1591) Sive vigilem [3:31]
Robert PARSONS Peccantem me quotidie [6:08]
John TAVERNER (c.1490-1545) Quemadmodum [6:30]
Thomas TALLIS (c.1505-1585) Nunc dimittis [3:14]
Derick GERARDE (1485-1580) Sive vigilem [6:13]
Robert PARSONS Credo quod redemptor meus vivit [2:44]
John SHEPPARD (c.1515-1558) Media vita [23:09]
Contrapunctus/Owen Rees
rec. Church of St Michael and All Angels, Oxford, 18-20 January 2014.
DDD
Texts and translations included
SIGNUM SIGCD408 [68:17]
Reviewed as 24-bit lossless download from hyperion-records.co.uk
(also available in mp3 and 16-bit lossless, all with pdf booklet, and
from dealers on CD).
This is the first volume of a planned series of recordings of music
from the huge collection known as the Baldwin Partbooks, a set of six,
of which one is missing. The Partbooks were made in about 1580 by John
Baldwin, a lay clerk at St George’s Windsor and later a gentleman of
Queen Elizabeth’s Chapel Royal. As places where Latin was ‘understanded
of the people’, as allowed in the Book of Common Prayer, these Latin
motets would have been sung in both establishments, provided that nothing
in them impinged on reformed beliefs. Thus there’s no mention in these
works of prayers to the Virgin Mary or the saints, whose role since
the 1549 Prayer Book had been as examples to honour and try to follow.
On an earlier release by Contrapunctus, The Cry of the Oppressed
(SIGCD338 – review)
Owen Rees put together a series of settings by the English Catholic
composers Tallis and Byrd. He was not the first to interpret these as
a sectarian lament for the oppression of their faith, coupling them
with texts by Portuguese composers which he regards as a similar complaint
against Spanish oppression. It’s a feasible theory: it even seems likely
that Byrd’s compositions in this form were ‘answered’ by continental
composers in paired motets, as illustrated on an EMI Classics recording
from King’s College Cambridge, apparently no longer available, even
as a download. More to the point, that first Signum recording – downloaded
in 24-bit sound from hyperion-records.co.uk,
with pdf booklet – got Contrapunctus off to an excellent start from
which the new release builds.
The motets on the theme of mortality on the new CD also fit the post-Reformation
bill in that they avoid all mention of purgatory, dismissed in the Thirty-nine
Articles as ‘a fond (foolish) thing vainly invented’, though they include
the medieval text ‘In the midst of life we are in death’, included in
the English funeral service though rejected from the Roman rite at the
Council of Trent on the grounds that it had been used superstitiously.
John Sheppard’s setting of that text, Media vita, the longest
work here and the final item, is uniquely preserved in the Baldwin book.
It’s actually slightly misleading to give it that title: it’s really
a setting of the Nunc dimittis, the canticle prescribed for Evensong
and Compline, with the antiphon sung with it during the latter part
of Lent. As Sheppard and Taverner are the only composers here who did
not survive into the reign of Elizabeth I, the setting predates the
Tridentine proscription.
It’s a wonderful piece with, hardly surprisingly, eight current recordings
to its name, though three are by The Tallis Scholars in different collections
(Gimell) and two by The Sixteen (Coro). Apart from those two distinguished
groups, it’s available in recordings by Stile Antico (Harmonia Mundi)
and the Gabrieli Consort (DG, download only).
I’ve sung the praises of the Scholars and Sixteen often enough for me
not to need to repeat myself, and Stile Antico also offer very distinguished
performances of an all-Sheppard programme entitled Media Vita
(HMU807509 – DL
Roundup April 2010). Stile Antico take the music very slowly –
25:32 overall – which is justifiable in view of its penitential/funereal
nature, but at 23:09 the new recording is more in line with, if still
slightly slower than, the tempo chosen by The Tallis Scholars.
The Tallis Scholars are not known as speed merchants, so you might expect
anything even marginally slower than their performance to be too slow
but there are more important factors at play than just speed and all
these recordings, not least the new one, work very well.
Byrd’s Audivi vocem is a setting of an anthem sung before the
Reformation at Vespers for the dead and at Mass of the Virgin Mary in
Advent, so at first it looks like an exception to the rule that everything
here could have been sung at Windsor or in the Chapel Royal when Baldwin
sang in those institutions. The text, however, comes straight from
the Bible, an unimpeachable source even for puritans, and was included,
in English, in the
1559 Anglican funeral service: “Then shalbe sayde, or songe:
I HEARDE a voyce from heaven saiyng unto me, wryte from hencefurth,
blessed are the dead whiche dye in the Lorde.”
Surprisingly I can find only one other recording of this piece, from
The Cardinall’s Musick directed by Andrew Carwood on the first volume
in their complete excursus of Byrd’s Latin music (ASV CDGAU170, download
only: sample/stream from Qobuz).
It really is time that Universal either reissued those recordings or
reassigned them to someone who would: the series was completed by Hyperion.
The Cardinall’s Musick adopt a slightly faster tempo (3:41 against 4:14)
but there’s otherwise little to choose between them and Contrapunctus:
both are excellent. Having listened to the ASV recording of Audivi
vocem, I hadn’t the heart to cut off the following works.
There is considerable doubt about the date of Tallis’s 5-part Nunc
Dimittis. It seems to form a pair with the 5-part Magnificat,
which suggests post-1549 composition for the English Prayer Book, where
both canticles are sung at Evensong; before then they would have been
sung separately at Vespers and Compline. An Elizabethan date is suggested
by the pairing and by the fact that Latin texts were permissible in
the Chapel Royal and elsewhere where the 1560 Latin version of the Prayer
Book was in use. Nevertheless, there is some evidence that composers
paired the two works before the Reformation. Whatever their date, my
only reservation about the new recording is that the two canticles are
paired on Volume 2 of the complete recordings by Chapelle du Roi and
Alistair Dixon (SIGCD002) and by The Cardinall’s Musick and Andrew Carwood
on a collection of Tallis works, the first of several fine recordings
which they have made for Hyperion (CDA67548
– review)
and the two make sense together.
I took the opportunity of downloading the Chapelle du Roi recording
from Hyperion,
complete with pdf booklet, to replace the low-bit-rate version which
I had; the lossless sound is significantly better and £7.99 a small
price to replace the mp3. I’ve already mentioned in Download
News 2015/4 that this is a convenient way to plug any gaps which
you may have in this fine series.
I’ve picked just three items from this very fine collection for comparison.
Any one of the fine recordings which I’ve mentioned will do very nicely.
That’s equally true of the other items on the new Signum recording:
if the coupling appeals there’s no need to look any further, but the
quality of the music, performances, recording and notes is likely to
set you on a search for more of the kind. Meanwhile this is another
example of the very high quality of current performances of renaissance
music. If you want anything better, you may have to wait like Sullivan
in The Lost Chord: It may be that death’s bright angel / will
speak in that chord again. / It may be that only in Heaven / I shall
hear that grand Amen.
Brian Wilson
