Peter
Philips was brought up by Sebastian Westcote, the catholic
layman who from 1547 was master of the choristers at St.
Paul’s and who, apart from his musical duties, organised
the performance of plays at court by the ‘Children of Paul’s’ from
1557 until his death in 1582. Perhaps the young Philips acted
in some of these plays – plays which were important in the
evolution of Elizabethan drama? Several future composers
were youthful choristers under Westcote’s tuition – their
number included Robert Knight and William Fox, Thomas Morley,
William Byrd – and Peter Philips. Perhaps it was also from
Westcote that Philips learned his Catholicism? Certainly
he was a beneficiary of Westcote’s death in 1582. It was
surely not coincidental that it was in that same year that
Philips left England for good; he was in Rome by October
of 1582. He was admitted to the English Jesuit College and
also entered the service of Cardinal Farnese.
He spent three
years in Rome – at a time when great composers such as Palestrina,
Marenzio and Victoria were at work in the city. The influence
of Palestrina and Victoria (and Lassus) is audible in Philips’s
choral works and that of Marenzio in his madrigals; nor need
we be surprised that he chose to transcribe madrigals by
Marenzio for the keyboard. Philips worked as organist at
the English College, before meeting the English catholic
Thomas Paget, third Baron Paget, and entering his service
as a musician. He travelled with Paget to Spain and to Paris.
On Paget’s death in 1590, Philips moved to Antwerp, where
he made his living as a music teacher and as a music editor
for the publisher Pierre Phalèse. Most of his works for harpsichord – which
seem more ‘English’ and less ‘Italian’ in style than his
vocal works, both sacred and secular – probably belong to
the first part of his career.
While
still in London in 1580 he wrote a Pavan in G major, recorded
here, which became popular both in England and in Europe,
though it was never published in his lifetime. It is an attractive
piece, played here with dignified grace by Elizabeth Farr
on a fine instrument. It was built in Rome in 1658, probably
by Jerome de Zentis, and recently restored by Keith Hill
- see
a fascinating account of the instrument and its restoration.
It exudes both charm and dignity, as played by Elizabeth
Farr and proves eminently suitable for the music of Philips,
with a rich bass and a sweet, clear upper register.
Elizabeth
Farr plays – and plays very well – a bout half of Philips’s
surviving keyboard works on this CD; one only regrets that
we don’t have a second CD on which the rest might have appeared.
She makes a very good case for Philips’s intabulations of
vocal works, bringing out the powerfully expressive nature
of much of Philips’s writing, without ever going ‘over the
top’, as it were. Her booklet notes confirm her perceptiveness,
being full of brief but suggestive observations on the music,
especially on the elements of word-painting in these intabulations – such
as those in “Le rossignol” and Striggio’s “Chi farà fed’al
cielo”.
Every single one of the works recorded here is of interest
and all are intelligently (and adroitly) performed. The skillful
variations in the Passamezzo Pavan and Galliard, or the poignancy
of the Paget Pavan and Galliard in C minor (surely written
on the occasion of Paget’s death, as Elizabeth Farr suggests)
would each be sufficient on their own to make a case for
Philips. And that case has a persuasive advocate in the well
judged playing of Elizabeth Farr. I particularly like her
refusal to rush, allowing Philips’s expressive writing full
scope. There are other recordings of Philips’s work for harpsichord,
such as those by Anneke Uittenbosch (Etcetera 1022), Emer
Buckley (Harmonia Mundi HMC901263), Colin Booth (Soundboard
SBCD 992 - see review) and Paul Nicholson (Hyperion CDA
66734). Elizabeth Farr’s recording is on a par with the best
of them and, in any case, this isn’t music of which a single
recording can ever be ‘definitive’ to the exclusion of other
recordings, if only because of the great variety of possibilities,
of
different perspectives on the music, created by the use of
different instruments.
A lovely instrument, well-played, at the service of music which should
be far better known than it is.
Glyn Pursglove
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Elizabeth
Farr (harpsichord) 
