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Recording

Tallis: Gentleman of the Chapel Royal

Dark green flowers

The Gentlemen of HM Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace, Carl Jackson
68:22
resonus RES10229

The Enigma Theme in Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations remains an enigma because Elgar never divulged what the theme was (if indeed there ever really was one) although he used to taunt his friends about how obvious it is. Innumerable solutions have been put forward, and in the April 2013 number of the Elgar Society Journal Martin Gough proposed that the theme is Tallis’s Canon, aka the Eighth Tune which Tallis provided for Archbishop Parker’s Psalter of 1567. It is interesting that these two composers are associated in this (albeit improbable) way as, above all other composers, they are hailed as possessing a peculiar but indefinable Englishness. Yet both were heavily influenced by their European predecessors: Gombert amongst others upon Tallis, Wagner, Dvorak and others upon Elgar. In this spirit of Englishness, it can be comforting to listen to one of Tallis’s most Continental works, his majestic Missa Puer natus est nobis a7 sung by the Gentlemen of Her Majesty’s Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace, an ensemble equivalent to one, with Tallis among them, that would have sung this very piece during the reign of Queen Mary I. But even in such circumstantial decorum there is no certainty that such an appropriate choir would nowadays perform Tallis’s music to a standard that would transcend such comfortable Englishness. In this instance such concerns can be discarded. The Gentlemen of Hampton Court give excellent performances of every piece on this disc. Another concern might be about how clearly adult male voices in seven parts would project Tallis’s intense music in the Chapel at Hampton Court Palace, the acoustic of which might not be the most resonant. Again there is, in the words of a famous blues song, “no need to worry”. Each line, with two voices to a part, is audible, clear, and well blended with its fellows. Besides the singers themselves – the six regular Gentlemen and the full complement of eight supernumaries – credit must go to Carl Jackson for his judicious tempi, occasioned by his extensive familiarity with every aspect of the recording location.

What of the music itself? Even without the Credo, most of which has been lost, the Missa Puer natus est nobis for seven voices is Tallis’s grandest work, apart from the small matter of Spem in alium in forty. The booklet’s notes by Christian Goursaud, one of the six Gentlemen, competently sets out the competing ideas concerning the circumstances of the work’s composition. It is not only, as he so rightly says, majestic, but it is also seminal, providing in the second Agnus a prominent theme for Byrd’s second consort In nomine a4 besides, at “[Patris] miserere nobis“ in the Gloria, pre-echoes of passages such  as “everlasting“ in Tomkins’ Turn unto the Lord and “auxiliare nos“ as late as Blow’s Salvator mundi; both composers knew Tallis’s music and, while this is not necessarily to say that they deliberately or consciously borrowed this passage or aspects of it, nevertheless it is interesting that Tallis’s plangency was being replicated over a century later. No less musically rewarding is the differently plangent Mass for Four Voices, and it is of further interest because, as Stefan Scot discovered, and has noted in his erudite booklet notes for Priory PRCD 1081 (volume 1 of The Collected Vernacular Works of John Sheppard, sung by The Academia Musica Choir), the Credo is identical, with a few adjustments and details, to the Creed of Sheppard’s First Service.  Stefan will discuss this further in his forthcoming edition of Sheppard’s Anglican music for Early English Church Music.

Exploiting the presence of the supernumaries, the disc begins and ends with motets also in seven parts. Suscipe quaeso starts proceedings in the best possible way, the choir setting out its stall for the rest of the disc with excellent blend and a wonderful fullness of sound, while Loquebantur variis linguis brings it to a jubilant close as Tallis lets his hair down for once. Exquisite performances of the smaller In pace and Miserere nostri separate the two masses.

This disc captures Tallis’s elusive Englishness, being sung by a choir to which he once belonged, in the same way as the recording of his earliest Latin music by The Choir of Canterbury Cathedral (Metronome MET CD 1014), another in which he is known to have sung. All other recordings of Missa Puer natus est nobis have been by adult chamber choirs, such as the self-recommending Stile Antico (Harmonia Mundi HMU807517), but the best of those and the most intriguing version might be the very first, by The Clerkes of Oxenford (Calliope CAL 6623) which, besides seeming to penetrate to the soul of Tallis’s inspiration, also includes what can be retrieved and reconstructed of Tallis’s Credo, which is omitted from all other recordings. The current version of the Missa Puer natus est nobis by the Gentlemen of Hampton Court is unique in being sung by a liturgical choir which has the Mass in its repertory, and it is also superb in every detail: one of the great recordings of music by Tallis.

Richard Turbet

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Recording

Haydn: String Quartets op. 64

Pink chrysanthemum

The London String Quartet
145:21 (2 CDs in a single jewel case)
hyperion CDA68221

This is the seventh in a series that on completion will be a complete cycle of the Haydn string quartets played by the London Haydn Quartet (Catherine Manson and Michael Gurevich [violins], John Crockatt [viola] and Jonathan Manson [cello]). The second of two sets originally issued with a dedication to the Esterháza violinist Johann Tost, the six quartets of opus 64 were composed in 1790, being the last Haydn produced before the first of his London visits. To the great Haydn scholar H C Robbins Landon they represent the composers’ ‘greatest single achievement’ of the period, being ‘six flawless masterpieces’ and I for one am not inclined to disagree. Like the previous set composed for Tost (op 54 and 55) they are characterised by the prominence of the first violin part, and in particular the frequent examples of high lying writing, for the playing of which Tost was apparently especially noted. The famous example here is of course the imitation of the song of the lark in the opening movement of the eponymous D-major quartet (no. 5). It is therefore odd to find Richard Wigmore’s note asserting that there is no evidence to suggest that the first violin part was designed with Tost in mind.

There are, however, many more equally remarkable features in these wonderful quartets. The invention throughout maintains a remarkably high level, suggesting that even as he approached high maturity as a composer Haydn was still probing and experimenting with new ideas. One notes for example the extensive use of chromaticism, not infrequently combined with contrapuntal writing, or the greater freedom of continuing to develop themes in the recapitulation of sonata form movements – a characteristic more usually associated with Mozart than Haydn – as in the opening Allego con brio of the G-major quartet (no. 4), where the further variation of the opening motif is actually more interesting than the development itself. Equally noteworthy are the sublime cantabile movements of the same quartet and the ‘Lark’, the first a hymn-like tune later lovingly embellished, the latter another ineffably lovely movement that moves from its opening serenity to explore darker regions.

That movement, played and phrased with quite exquisite sensitivity, is one of the highpoints of a set of performance notable above all for their consistent musicality, a musicality that throughout eschews extremes of dynamics and tempo. They are indeed performances that stand at the opposite pole to such as those of the Chiaroscuro Quartet, to whose attention-grabbing and excitingly insightful Haydn I have devoted several reviews on this site. That is certainly not intended as criticism of the London Haydn Quartet, though there are occasions when they might have made rather more of the composer’s dynamic contrasts. But there is certainly no lack of character, as the witty, fleet playing the Presto finale of the E-flat quartet (no. 6) or the Mendelssohnian lightness of touch and precise articulation of the final Vivace of the ‘Lark’ convincingly demonstrate.

The use of a set of parts from an 18th century edition by the London publisher Forster is curious, not least because the notes tell us nothing about it, not even its date. It is not among editions mentioned by Robbins Landon, who lists as an ‘authentic British edition’ only a publication of the quartets published by Bland in 1791. Obviously I have no means of comparing it with my version of the quartets (Dover). I did however note several instances where second half repeat indications of sonata form movements vary, for example in the Quartet in C (no. 1), where no repeat is called for at the end of the opening movement, but given here, while the final movement does call for one in the Dover score, but it is not given here.

Ultimately, of course, such things are of little concern, particularly in the face of such quietly rewarding performances, recorded with the same refreshing lack of ostentation that is a principal feature of the playing.

Brian Robins

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Sheet music

Zelenka: Six Settings of “Ave regina coelorum” (ZWV 128)

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Edited by Frederic Kiernan
Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era, 204
xvii+2+64pp
ISBN 978-1-9872-0053-9
A-R Editions, Inc. $120.00

This small volume is an excellent guide to how differently a single composer can treat exactly the same text; even the two settings with matching scoring are quite different – while one is in common time, the other is in triple time. Zelenka’s church music is becoming better known through editions and recordings and I hope fans of his music with perhaps more modest forces at their disposal than some of the concerted masses require will explore Kiernan’s editions of these Marian antiphon settings.

That said, the book could have been even shorter, had all the written-out colla parte instruments been left out. Kiernan opts to drop the oboes out in solo passages in the second setting, yet has the very short five-bar trio section in the first doubled by strings. We are told that the viola part for no. 2 is extracted from the bass line, and yet the music in the first bar is not the same (the viola actually doubles the violins). The added basso ripieno part in nos. 2 and 5 (essentially so that the cello does not play along with the solo passages, some of which are in treble clef anyway) could surely just have been marked “[senza basso]”, and the quaver in bar 10 of no. 2 is too prescriptive – the voices above hold the same note for a full crotchet. In fact, that is probably my overriding impression of the edition as a whole – it is great to have the music available in modern notation, but it could have been done in a simpler fashion without detriment.

Brian Clark

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Sheet music

John Eccles: The Judgment of Paris

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Edited by Eric J. Harbeson
Recent Research in the Music of the Baroque Era, 203
xvii+4+126pp
ISBN 978-1-9872-0016-4
A-R Editions, Inc. $165.00

This is the fourth volume in A-R Editions’ series devoted to the music of little-known English composer, John Eccles. I say “little-known” because, although his name will be familiar to anyone with an interest in English baroque music, few can have had many opportunities to hear any of it in live performance. Along with the two other surviving settings of Congreve’s masque (Gottfried Finger’s setting – which came fourth in the contest for which they were written – has vanished, leaving others by John Weldon (the winner) and Daniel Purcell), it was heard at the BBC Proms in 1989 and I am unaware of any other performance in the UK since then.

Eric J. Harbeson’s meticulous edition should help remedy that. It seems that all possible sources have been checked against one another, despite which the critical commentary fits a mere four pages. The text is scrutinized against the printed libretto. The already quite full figured bass is augmented by additional symbols to help inexperienced players. With a mere five soloists and (apart from the inclusion of no fewer than four trumpets!) a fairly modest band, Eccle’s Judgment of Paris should appeal to smaller opera companies – the whole aim of the contest was to stimulate increased interest in English language musical theatre, after all!

Brian Clark

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Sheet music

The Hymn Cycle of Vienna 16197

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Late Sixteenth-Century Polyphonic Vesper Hymn Settings from the Habsburg Homelands
Edited by Lilian P. Pruett
Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance, 169
xxxii+7+209pp
ISBN 978-1-9872-0010-2
A-R Editions, Inc. $260.00

Dating from the second half of the 16th century, Vienna 16197 is a large choir-book format volume containing 27 alternatim hymn settings scored for either four or five voices (mostly adding another voice for the final verse(s)). They are (unusually for such volumes, according to the editor) arranged in the order of the church calendar, with the plainchant required for the odd verses supplied by Pruett from Cantorinus ad eorum instructionem (Venice, 1550). I was puzzled that this was transcribed in bass clef with ledger lines, given that most of the chant is given in tenor clef.

No-one has identified the composer(s) of the music; one of the two non-hymns included (a largely homophonic four-voice setting of the text Fit porta Christi pervia) survives in other sources but its composer has never been established. Pruett presents most of it in four-minim bars. As with other A-R Editions, the music is presented in modern clefs for standard choir, irrespective of the original clef combinations. This approach, together with minimal musica ficta, allows performers access to the music in a non-prescriptive way, allowing them to choose their own pitch and to spice up the harmony, should they so wish.

Anonymous music is too often overlooked by musicians. I hope Pruett’s excellent edition will encourage choirs to explore this interesting repertoire – after all her effort, it deserves to be heard!

Brian Clark

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Sheet music

Canzoni francese libro primo

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Ottaviano Scotto’s 1535 Collection of Twenty-Three Chansons for Four Voices
Edited by Paul Walker
Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance, 170
xxiii+109pp.
ISBN 978-1-9872-0018-8
A-R Editions, Inc. $200.00

Paul Walker’s edition of Scotto’s collection of Parisian chansons presents the music at the printed pitch for a regular four-voice choir. Nine of them have a baritone clef for the lowest voice (of which six also have the modern treble clef for the uppermost), while another has tenor on the bottom and treble on the top, and the penultimate piece is for C1, C2, C3 and C4 – there must be some reason for these different combinations, but perhaps Walker is right to present the music thus and leave it to performers to make their own decisions about what pitch they will sing the music at.

Eight of the 23 pages of introduction are devoted to presenting the texts as poetry along with translations, variant textual readings, and notes on the contents of the texts. Walker explains the background to the print (for which there is no surviving soprano part, obliging him to use that from a reprint of 1536), and expresses surprise at Scotto’s seemingly random choices and omissions – not all of the works have been identified, and some of Scotto’s attributions have been shown to be inaccurate.

Walker’s edition is exemplary; prefatory clefs and ranges allow performers to see at a glance whether a particular song will fit their group. Each song begins on a new page and is laid out generously without being overly spacious. There is little in the way of ficta, and none of that is controversial. I did find the use of bold brackets and bars full of triplets a little over-kill to represent coloration, but that is an editorial choice that we all have to make. All in all, this is probably one of the most user-friendly volume I’ve reviewed recently from this publisher – and I hope that will encourage vocal groups to explore the repertoire contained within it.

Brian Clark

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Sheet music

William McGibbon: Complete Sonatas

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Edited by Elizabeth C. Ford
Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era, 205
xvi+3+186pp
ISBN 978-1-9872-0057-7
A-R Editions, Inc. $180.00

This volume contains two sets of Six Sonatas for Two German Flutes, or Two Violins and a Bass (1729 & 1734), the sole surviving Traverso Primo of third set (1745), as well as Six Sonatas or Solos for a German Flute or Violin and a Bass (1740) and Six Sonatas for Two German Flutes (1748), arranged (apart from the fragment, which is consigned to an appendix) in chronological order.

As one would expect with music designed for the flute, sharp keys predominate; G minor appears twice and C minor only once. The sonatas have either three movements (a slower movement followed by two quicker ones) or four (broadly in the da chiesa form, though with some stylised dance movements thrown in for variety).

Ford’s introduction features a nice biography of the composer then deals with his music in general before discussing each of the original prints in turn. The edition is clean and clear; as usual with this series, the focus is on the music, not the presentation – a single system of a movement is printed after a page turn; a movement that would fit on two pages spreads over three (despite the fact that there is space on the last page) meaning anyone playing continuo has unnecessary turns. It puzzles me why, when these volumes can scarcely be called cheap, more care is not given to the aesthetics and practicality of actually performing the music. Surely a major reason for producing modern editions in the first place (in an age where more and more people are downloading facsimiles from free sites) is to make it accessible?

Brian Clark

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Sheet music

English Keyboard music 1650-1695: Perspectives on Purcell

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Purcell Society Edition, volume 6 PC6
Edited by Andrew Woolley
xlii+190pp, linen bound. £85
Stainer & Bell ISBN 979 0 2202 2345 7; ISMN 978 0 85249 930 6

This volume will be welcomed by anyone interested in 17th-century English keyboard music. With typical Purcell Society thoroughness and equally typical Stainer & Bell beautiful book publishing, it comprises 32 pages of introduction and facsimiles, then 126 movements (plus variants), divided into sections:

  • Organ music from Restoration Oxford (six works, mostly anonymous)
  • John Cobb (including two dubious and four anonyma)
  • Commonwealth and early Restoration suites (Mell, Locke, two dubious, two anonyma)
  • Pieces by or associated with Frnacis Forcer (including Blow, Farmer and Lully)
  • John Blow and his milieu (three dubious, seven anonyma, Lully & Lebègue)
  • Pieces collected by Charles Babel
  • Giovanni Battista Draghi (four suites)

There follow two appendices, the first an Almain in D minor by John Cobb, the second a suite in F by Davis Mell, then a thoroughly detailed Textual Commentary giving all the variants of the multiplicity of sources. Just this description of the layout of the contents gives some impression of just what a massive undertaking the project was, and what an achievement its realisation is. Woolley and co. (and Stainer & Bell!) have produced a book that is both unparalleled in its informative value and inclusive scope, and in the presentation of that which is most important, i. e., the music itself, in a performable format. Where variants are too complicated to describe in detail (or are, perhaps, deemed of equal value?), third and (especially in the music by Draghi) fourth staves are very cleverly added to allow musicians to have both versions available in a single score.

I did find it rather tiresome to see the editor credited on every page of music, likewise the Purcell Society Trust asserting their copyright similarly but in this age of digital reproduction it is quite right of them to ensure that everyone knows who has invested so much time, effort and money into producing such a monumental and excellent contribution to our understanding and appreciation of this repertoire.

Brian Clark

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Recording

Schütz: Madrigale & Hochzeitsmusiekn

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Dorothee Mields, Isabel Schicketanz, David Erler, Georg Poplutz, Tobias Mäthger, Feliz Schwandtke SSATTB, Dresdner Kammerchor, Hans-Christoph Rademann
78:42
Carus 83.277

Volume 19 of Carus’s complete recording of Schütz’s music is an absolute cracker! From the cover, I had expected to hear the set of Italian madrigals that resulted after his first visit to Venice; instead, I got 15 German-language pieces ranging from two duets for alto and tenor with continuo, to more lavishly scored pieces like the glorious Ich beschwöre euch for SSSSATB and continuo, or Haus und Güter erbet man von Eltern which contrasts a group of SSB with three trombones and a tenor with three cornetti, and another tenor with TBB chorus! The disc opens with the composer’s contribution to his brother Georg’s wedding in 1619, Siehe, wie fein und lieblich ist’s, which must have pleased everyone concerned; scored for SSATB, violin, cornetto muto and dulcian, it was reworked for inclusion in the third volume of Symphoniae Sacrae of 1650 (with very good reason!) This is the first volume of this series I have reviewed in a long time, and I must say that the standard is incredibly high; Rademann has gathered a group of singers and instrumentalists who make every work stand out. The recording is crisp and bright, like the execution of the music – everything about this disc is excellent!

Brian Clark

Categories
Recording

The Trio Sonata through Two Centuries

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London Baroque
568:25 (8 CDs in a box)
BIS-9050

This boxed set of 8 CDs is so much more than the sum of its parts. Over forty years, London Baroque has accrued experience at playing Baroque trio sonatas which is probably without parallel. This set could so easily have been a celebration of this substantial back catalogue, incorporating their greatest hits, but it isn’t. It is something much more ambitious and much more important. By the careful choice of recordings, pairs of CDs chart the history and development of the Trio Sonata in England, France, Germany and Italy. As far as possible, the tracks on each CD, recorded during the decade between 2002 and 2012, are arranged chronologically by date of composition so the process of evolution is plainly audible, and the comprehensive nature of London Baroque recordings and the sheer authority and musicality of their playing makes this set seem satisfyingly definitive. The English CDs start in the fascinating world of Lawes, Jenkins, Coprario, Locke, Simpson, Blow, and Purcell when the concept of the Trio Sonata was still emerging from the viol consort and bring us gradually step by step through the music of Ravenscroft, Handel, Avison, Boyce, Arne and Abel to a Trio Sonata by Thomas Erskine, Earl of Kelly (actually a Scot) in which the very concept of the Trio Sonata teeters on the edge of string quartet. It is fascinating to listen to the broad arc of development demonstrated here from the quintessential ‘English’ sound, quirkily traditional in the manner Playford’s Dancing Master tunes and reaching back to the Elizabethan era, through the arrival of influences from Europe, chiefly Italy and arriving at the Germanic pre-classical idiom demonstrated by the Stamitz-trained Kelly. Similar journeys of discovery await in the other three pairs of CDs, which also draw in composers whose music is hardly familiar, but who play a vital role in the development of this genre. The playing of London Baroque is wonderfully expressive throughout, capturing perfectly every nuance of the gradually evolving musical styles, while forty years of rapport is apparent in their perfect coordination. Ornamentation, dynamic variation and subtleties of tempo are thoroughly organic, and the rich, full sound of the ensemble is vividly captured by the BIS engineers. This boxed set is an absolute delight – buy it and indulge!

D. James Ross