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
|
Support us financially by purchasing
this from
|
|
 |
 |
|
|