Tag: Choral music

Hercules Dux Ferrarie, D’ung altre amer, Faysant regretz
The Tallis Scholars, Peter Phillips
71:40
Gimell CDGIM 051

October 2020!
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This is the final disc in The Tallis Scholars’ complete recording of Josquin des Pres’s masses. Perhaps it is just as well, because this reviewer is running out of superlatives for the music itself and for this choir’s performances of it. Peter Phillips makes substantial claims for these works in his accompanying notes, and it could indeed be said that, so varied is Josquin’s treatment of the Mass text throughout the entire series, many of the eighteen works could almost seem to have been composed by different composers. (Indeed, the Josquin canon has come under intense musicological scrutiny in recent decades, and Missa Da pacem, included in the series, is more likely to have been composed by Bauldeweyn, notwithstanding conflicting attributions to Josquin. This is clearly stated in the recording’s booklet.) This final disc provides some of the knottiest music in the series, and some of the most challenging for the listener. Much of it is music of obsession, with Josquin’s repeated use of one particular motif of four notes in Missa Faysant regretz set beside the egomania of Ercole I d’Este of Ferrera, dedicatee of Missa Hercules Dux Ferrarie. To illustrate this one can do no better than to quote Peter Phillips’s note in the accompanying booklet: “To understand how this Mass is constructed it is necessary only to remember that Duke Ercole liked to hear his name sung obviously and often. To this end Josquin took his name and title, HERCULES DUX FERRARIE, and turned their vowels into music by way of the solmisation syllables of the Guidonian hexachord, giving a very neat little melody: … re ut re ut re fa mi re … He then writes these eight notes to be sung 47 times …” The remaining piece Missa D’ung aultre amer is the antithesis of such constructions, being an essay in brevity and simplicity based upon one of Ockeghem’s finest chansons, no doubt as an act of homage by Josquin to the man who might have been his teacher.

A digression. Having seen the British gentleman I am about to mention with his wife at a concert of music by Byrd in the Wigmore Hall, London, a few years ago, I will of course no longer hear a word said against him, but I cannot resist mentioning the resemblance of Ercole, whose portrait is reproduced on the front of the accompanying booklet, to the prominent politician Lord Heseltine. I draw no conclusion other than that they share an ability to appreciate great Renaissance composers.

And as Byrd said of his own music in 1611, “a song that is well and artificially made cannot be well perceived nor understood at the first hearing, but the oftner you shall heare it, the better cause of liking you will discover.” Repeated hearings of the music on this disc keep revealing its felicitous qualities. The obsessive aspects of the music become part of a bigger, broader musical picture as Josquin manipulates them to support the overall construction and rhetoric of his masses. As Peter Phillips notes in his booklet, approaching the point from a slightly different direction, this is strikingly illustrated in the third Agnus of Missa Faysant regretz where, for the only time in the work, Josquin has the sopranos sing the complete superius line from the rondeau by Walter Frye (one source has Binchois) on which the mass is based, over the intricate counterpoint in the three lower parts. Missa D’ung aultre amer is eccentric. A remarkably brief Gloria clocks in at below two minutes, with a motet Tu solus qui facis mirabilia replacing the Benedictus, the final section of which, “Audi nostra suspiria”, begins with a striking passage in the style of mediaeval faburden, comparable with a similar briefer moment at “qui locutus est” in the Credo of the Missa Hercules Dux Ferrarie, and the entire mass concludes with an exquisite cadence.

For all Ercole’s entitled narcissism, it is mountainously to the credit of Josquin that his mass can be appreciated on its own terms as a piece of music without an awareness – or at least without taking any notice – of the repetitions of the autarchic Ercole’s name, no more than one needs to focus upon the plainsong while listening to an In nomine. In the accompanying booklet, Peter Phillips notes favourite passages in this and the other masses. These are the insights of someone who has conducted and indeed lived these eighteen works, experiencing them profoundly from the inside. From the humble outside, I would particularly mention the many wonderful passages in two parts in this mass, particularly “pleni sunt caeli” from the Sanctus, and all the duets in the first Agnus. Overall it is one of the major masses in this remarkable series.

The series began with what was even then almost frighteningly fine performances of the Missae Pange lingua and La sol fa mi re. The former gained all the attention, but for this listener it was the latter which left me even more astonished at both the music and the performance: I expected Pange lingua to be great, but was taken aback at the quality of a work more from the margins of Josquin’s output, its qualities laid bare by the forensically beautiful singing of The Tallis Scholars under Peter Phillips. And here they still are, 34 years later, doing a major work full justice and laying bare the glories of two more of those marginal masses.

Richard Turbet

Alamire, David Skinner
16:30
Inventa INV1003

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“Beyond glorious … monumental”. These words are used by David Skinner, director of Alamire, in his notes accompanying this recording, to describe – without one atom of exaggeration – the music of John Sheppard in general and his antiphon Media vita in morte sumus in particular. Another word, sublime, has been worked near to death (sic) in recent decades, but in its essential meaning it too applies to this work. Indeed, no praise can be too high for this musical creation. It is one of those few works that one feels could almost represent Creation itself. It has been recorded a number of times over recent decades by a variety of distinguished ensembles, and here, another of the finest choirs in the realm performs this incomparable masterpiece, but in a new version never before recorded. At just over sixteen measured but purposeful minutes it is about half the length of the longest rendition of the hitherto accepted format, a riveting tour de force by the Choir of Westminster Cathedral (Hyperion CDA68187). And this is the point: between themselves, as David explains in his excellent notes, he and two other distinguished musicologists, Jason Smart and John Harper, have arrived at the conclusion that Sheppard’s musical volcano should consist of fewer repetitions than the version hitherto accepted and recorded, not shedding any of the actual music and retaining much of the chant, simply ordered differently. The recording itself dates from 2012, when Alamire was involved in a project for BBC television which featured an eminent historian who, in the current cultural climate, cannot be named (clue: he is No Relation of The Beatles’ drummer) but a commercial recording was not released at the time. It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and reworking of the audio files, from what was the previously accepted version, “happened during the Covid-19 lockdown” resulting in this premiere of what could well be the version of his masterwork that Sheppard might have expected to hear. Notwithstanding the evidence imparted by David, it is perhaps not impossible that there will be those who maintain the integrity of the previously accepted format. Pace David’s surprising defensiveness about “maintaining balance and interest [reviewer’s italics] in modern performance” – surely this is music of the spheres, that should be continuous and without end – this new dispensation deprives the listener of some repetitions of Sheppard’s heavenly polyphony, but then again one can always repeat the new version! Indeed, the revised format might make the work more accessible to choirs cautious about programming a single work from the 16thcentury that usually lasts 20-30 minutes. Alamire’s performance is excellent; for a choir which, as its director observes, “tend[s] to lean towards those darker sonorities” there could have been more pneumatic drill from the basses, but given the dimensions of the choir and the acoustic in which they were recorded, the pacing and blend are fine. In terms of the value of the music and the quality of the performance, not to mention the considerable amount of research behind it, this recording is a snip. It is recommended without hesitation. Don’t even wait just a minute – buy it now.

Richard Turbet

Music in praise of St Catharine
The Choirs of St Catharine’s College Cambridge, Edward Wickham
72:02
resonus RES10246
Music by Fawkyner, Frye, Gombert, Jacquet of Mantua, Mouton, Palestrina, Regnart, Senfl, Vermont, Willaert, anon + sarum chant

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The combined forces of St Catharine’s College and Girls’ Choirs are directed by Edward Wickham in this recital of hymns, motets and chants devoted to the martyr St Catharine, after whom both the Catherine Wheel and the Cambridge College are named. The elaborate and gruesome means of Catharine’s martyrdom captured the Medieval imagination, and Renaissance and Medieval settings of texts relating to the saint abound. The choirs sing relevant plainchant and polyphony by Regnart, Senfl, Willaert, Mouton, Frye, Gombert and Palestrina as well as by the less familiar Pierre Vermont, Jacquet de Mantua and Richard Fawkyner. The singing is generally nice and expressive, although there is a slight ‘herd ethic’ resulting perhaps from the combination of the two choirs. The particular demands of Walter Frye’s Kyrie ‘Deus Creator omnium’ and the Eton Choirbook intricacy of Fawkyner’s ‘Gaude rosa sine spinas’ (a 15-minute choral tour de force) inspire some of the finest singing on the CD. The Girls’ Choir also makes some lovely contributions on their own, while the combined voices generally produce a consistently full expressive sound. Edward Wickham’s intelligent direction brings out the full nuances of this largely unfamiliar music, while his wonderfully knowledgeable programme note both entertains and informs.

D. James Ross