Mynstrelles with Straunge Sounds: The Earliest Consort Music
for Viols
Details after review
Clare Wilkinson (mezzo)
Rose Consort of Viols
rec. Great Hall, Forde Abbey, Somerset, 26-28 November 2014. DDD.
Texts and translations included
DELPHIAN DCD34169 [67:20]
Loquebantur: Music from the Baldwin Partbooks
Details after review
The Marian Consort/Rory McCleery
Rose Consort of Viols
rec. Merton College, Oxford, 8-11 January 2015. DDD
Texts and translations included
DELPHIAN DCD34160 [66:12]
We seem to have received two copies of DCD34169: Gary Higginson
has already reviewed
it in some detail. I enjoyed it as much as he did, so I need add only
a few comments.
As he writes, the music is mostly sophisticated in nature, some of it which
Catherine of Aragon may have brought with her from Spain, though the opening
And I were a maiden is a little more rough and ready. The point is
that the lady in question is a maiden no longer and it receives an appropriately
earthy rendition, with Clare Wilkinson adopting almost a folksy tone, though
without overdoing it. It serves as a reminder that the music associated with
the court of Henry VIII, himself represented by the more refined Helas
madame (track 4), was often jolly and even bawdy. For more examples of
the raunchier style check out the inexpensive Decca Eloquence reissue of The
Tudors: Courtly Pastimes which also includes And I were a maiden
and which I reviewed
recently (4804865: St George’s Canzona/John Sothcott).
Henry VIII’s wives seem to have been good influences musically: a recent recording
is devoted to music from a book which may have belonged to spouse No.2: Anne
Boleyn’s Songbook, Obsidian CD715 – Download
News 2015/10.
For the more refined music, both sacred and secular, which forms the bulk
of the collection the Rose Consort offer performances as good as you are likely
to hear from a viol consort and Clare Wilkinson puts aside her Mummerset opening
mode to excellent effect in the vocal items. An all-viol programme might
have been a little too much of a good thing; as it is, the balance is just
right. With good recording and very helpful notes, this is a first-class
album.
***
On DCD34160 the Rose Consort, who acquit themselves so well
on the first album, assist the Marian Consort, whose recordings have also
been well received by colleagues and myself:
— Christmas with the Shepherds, DCD34145 –
review – review
– DL
News 2015/1
— O Virgo Benedicta, DCD34086 – review
I missed their earlier release of music from the Dow Partbooks but I listened
to and enjoyed that recording from Qobuz – subscribers stream
here; download here
– but the lack of the booklet is a very serious handicap, as Qobuz don’t even
indicate the composers’ names. (An Emerald in a Work of Gold, DCD34115
– review).
If Naxos
Music Library can offer the booklet, why do others not do so? As on the
new release, some of the items in that collection of Renaissance music, assembled
by Robert Dow, a fellow of All Souls, Oxford, are performed by the highly
accomplished Rose Consort of Viols, mostly on separate instrumental tracks
but occasionally accompanying the singers.
On the new release the Rose Consort don’t accompany the vocal items but they
top and tail the collection with instrumental works and intersperse others.
Some of these offer unfamiliar takes on popular tunes of the time, as in Elway
Bevin’s Browning (track 8) where the familiar tune, also known as
The Leaves be green, as set by Byrd – Recording
of the Month – DL
Roundup May 2011/2 – lies tantalisingly just under the surface.
The bulk of the new CD contains music from the Baldwin Partbooks, a collection
made by John Baldwin, a lay clerk at St George’s, Windsor, and later a gentleman
of the Chapel Royal. Now housed at Christ Church, Oxford, like the Dow collection,
they contain the compiler’s own choice of music, some of which might otherwise
have been lost to us with the destruction of music for the Latin rite. Fortunately
Queen Elizabeth, whose inclinations were certainly not towards the extreme
Protestant manifestations of the Reformation, approved of vestments and ceremonial
and of such music being sung in her Chapel Royal.
The Baldwin Partbooks have come down to us incomplete, with the tenor part
needing to be reconstructed from other sources or from scholarly conjecture.
Various editors are credited in the booklet and the results are fully convincing.
There is another very fine collection of music from these partbooks, around
the theme of mortality, from Contrapunctus on Signum, recently released on
SIGCD408 – review
– review.
Fortunately there is only one items of overlap between that and the new Delphian,
the Gerarde Sive vigilem, but Contrapunctus have expressed the intent
to make a number of further releases from this collection and that’s my only,
small, reservation in recommending the new CD.
In keeping with their theme, In the Midst of Life (we are in Death), Contrapunctus
take that piece more slowly than on the new Delphian CD. It didn’t occur
to me at the time when I reviewed it that the music could be taken any other
way, especially as the words relate to the sound of the trumpet heralding
the Last Judgement, but the Marian Consort, in this the only other available
recording, make an equally strong case for pacing it a little faster without
seeming at all irreverent. That isn’t due to any general tendency on their
part to take the music here faster than on other recordings: in some cases,
as we see below, the opposite is true.
The work which lends its name to the whole collection, Tallis’s Loquebantus
variis linguis, might well have been sung in the Chapel Royal after Evensong
on Whit Sunday: the text is taken from the reading from Acts of the Apostles
prescribed for the Epistle on that day, describing the apostles speaking with
‘tongues’ after the descent of the Holy Spirit. It was not until 1662 that
the Book of Common Prayer prescribed the singing of an anthem at the end of
Evensong1 with the quaint expression ‘in quires and places where
they sing’, but that rubric describes a practice which dated from the old
Latin rite, had already been established in Elizabeth’s reign and which prevails
to this day in cathedrals and many Oxford and Cambridge colleges.
Baldwin bound the Byrd and Tallis 1575 printed collection of Cantiones
Sacræ into his partbooks, so no reconstruction was needed for this work,
though he also seems to have copied Tallis’s Loquebantur variis linguis
by hand – presumably that is it in MS form on the cover of the CD. There
are many other very fine recordings, notably from The Tallis Scholars (Gimell
CDGIM203, a two-for-one collection), Stile Antico (Harmonia Mundi HMU807595)
and The Taverner Consort and Choir (a 2-CD super-budget release, Virgin 5622302).
The Gimell and Virgin albums come with other music by Tallis.
The Marian Consort pace the work slightly more slowly than The Tallis Scholars.
I was surprised to see that The Taverner Consort take even longer – a whole
minute more – over their performance. Chapelle du Roi, whose very distinguished
Signum recordings of the complete works have been gathered together by Brilliant
Classics and are offered at almost give-away price2, fall somewhere
in the middle, though closer to The Scholars and the Marian Consort. Even
more surprisingly, though I should remember by now that paper timings often
mean very little, there’s no sense that The Taverner Consort sound dilatory
or that the others are unduly hurried. Most importantly, the Marian Consort’s
version on the new Delphian recording yields little if anything in any of
those comparisons.
In such pieces where comparison is possible, it may be possible to prefer
a greater degree of expressiveness in other performances, where the Marian
Consort’s chief appeal is in their tonal beauty. Many will feel this to be
the case with the works duplicated on The Tudors at Prayer, a Linn
recording on which Magnificat perform the two Mundy pieces and Tallis’s Suscipe,
quæso Domine with perhaps a little more feeling (CKD447 – review
– review
– Download
News 2014/7).
Some of the music, however, is not otherwise available on CD. Such a work
is Ferrabosco the Elder’s Da pacem Domine, a beautiful setting, beautifully
sung, of words familiar from the Prayer Book service of Mattins: ‘Give peace
in our time, O Lord: for there is none other that fighteth for us but only
Thou, O God.’ Unless and until Contrapunctus include this and Hollander’s3
Dum transisset sabbatum (track 11) in a forthcoming release, the Delphian
recording will be worth having for these alone.
These, then, are two very successful releases from Delphian, well performed
and recorded and with very useful notes, which specialists in the music of
the period will wish to own. Those discovering the rich treasury of sacred
music of the period might be better to start with one of the collections of
Tallis’s music which I have mentioned but both albums should also appeal to
beginners.
1 The Elizabethan Prayer Book prescribes for Evensong on Whit Sunday
a reading from Acts 19 which describes another occasion when a group of converts
received the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues.
2 The 10-CD + CD-Rom set can be found for around £26. The whole
11-hour set can be downloaded from Qobuz
for £10.79 but without the all-important booklet. Hyperion
and classicsonlinehd.com offer downloads of the original single- or 2-CD releases:
more expensive at £7.99 each, but they come with the all-important booklets
of notes, texts and translations.
3 His name oddly transmogrified into ‘Mr Orlandus’ in the manuscript.
Brian Wilson
DCD34169 Details:
Anon: And I were a maiden* [2:16]
De tous biens plaine [2:48]
Fortuna desperata [1:14]
HENRY VIII (1491-1547) Helas madame * [1:44]
Hayne van GHIZEGHEM (c.1445-before 1497) De tous biens plaine
* [6:09]
Josquin dez PREZ (c.1450-1521) De tous biens plaine [1:25]
Antoine BUSNOYS (c.1430-1492) (attrib.) Fortune esperée* [1:39]
Josquin dez PREZ Fortuna desperata [1:20]
Francisco da PENALOSA (c.1470-1528) Vita dulcedo / Agnus
Dei II* [1:40]
Alexander AGRICOLA (1445/6-1506) Cecus non iudicat de coloribus
[5:21]
Juan del ENCINA (1468-1529/30) Triste España * [2:46]
Johannes MARTINI (c.1430/40-1497) Des biens amors [2:07]
La martinella [2:15]
Josquin dez PREZ In te Domine speravi * [4:20]
Anon. In te Domine sperabo [2:05]
La quercia [2:09]
Biblis [2:12]
Juan del ENCINA Fata la parte * [1:53]
Anon. La Spagna [1:37]
Juan PONCE (c.1476-after 1520) La mi sola Laureola * [1:48]
William CORNYSH (d.1523) Fa la so [5:52]
Juan de ANCHIETA (1462-1523) Con amores, la mi madre * [3:05]
Heinrich ISAAC (c.1450-1517) Agnus Dei II [1:38]
Josquin dez PREZ Adieu mes amours * [7:42]
* with Clare Wilkinson (mezzo)
DCD34160 Details:
Robert PARSONS (c.1636-c.1572) The Song Called Trumpets [2:11]
Thomas TALLIS (c.1505-1585) Loquebantur variis linguis [3:59]
William MUNDY (c.1528-1591) Adolescentulus sum ego [5:12]
William BYRD (1539/40-1623) Canon Six in One [1:37]
O salutaris hostia [2:30]
Hugh ASTON (c.1485-1558) Hugh Aston’s Maske [4:23]
Derrick GERARDE (fl. c.1540-1580) Sive vigilem [5:17]
Elway BEVIN (c.1564-1632) Browning [3:11]
Alfonso FERRABOSCO I (1543-1588) Da pacem Domine [3:59]
Orlande de LASSUS (1530/2-1594) Ubi est Abel [2:43]
Christian HOLLANDER (c.1510-1568/9) Dum transisset Sabbatum
[3:43]
Thomas TALLIS Suscipe quæso Domine [7:54]
John TAVERNER (c.1490-1545) Quemadmodum [4:13]
William MUNDY Adhæsit pavimento [7:09]
John BALDWIN (c.1560-1615) Coockow as I me walked [2:11]
John SHEPPARD (c.1515-1558) Ave maris stella [5:52]
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