Magnificat - Thomas Tallis: Spem in Alium - Lamentations - Mass & Motets Studio Master

"In Queene Elizabeths time there was a songe sent into England of 30 parts (whence the Italians obteyned the name to be called the Apices of the world) which beeinge songe mad[e] a heavenly Harmony. The Duke of ______ bearing a great love to Musicke asked whether none of our English men could sett as good a songe, & Tallice beinge very skillfull was felt to try whether he would undertake the Matter, which he did and mad[e] one of 40 p[ar]ts which was songe in the longe gallery at Arundell house which so farre surpassed the other th[a]t the Duke hearinge of the songe tooke his chayne of gold from of his necke & putt yt about Tallice his necke & gave yt him."
Anon.

So goes the story of the composition of Spem in alium, Tallis's great motet for 40 voices, recorded here, in the round, by Magnificat.

Although Thomas Tallis is often (rightly) decsribed as the father of English church music - that is, music to English texts, written for the Reformed rite - his early career of course took place in Catholic establishments, and he never lost his taste for Latin music,as the contents of this disc demonstrate very clearly. Although there are good grounds for thinking that the four-part mass may date from the reign of Queen mary tudor (1553 - 8), when the Catholic rite was revived, the Lamentations and the other motets are certainly later, and therefore for different performance circumstances. Indeed, it is quite likely that Tallis did not merely have a taste for Latin music, but that he also had recusant sympathies (recusants were Catholics who refused to attend church in Elizabethan England)......

Certainly his life and music show a very clear involvement with the Catholic party, which, incidentally, was remarkably ubiquitous during Elizabeth's reign, with very large numbers of the nobility retaining their old religious affiliation. We first see this in Tallis's links with the Ropers, a strongly recusant Kentish family, who were clearly his patrons. Tallis's role as a protector of his pupil William Byrd should not be underplayed, for it was through the good offices of the Roper family that Byrd found somehere to live in the 1580s. It seems to have been through Tallis's influence that Byrd gained access to this circle, thus allowing Byrd's much more open recusancy to find its expression.

Having explained Tallis's recusant links, we have less difficulty in explaining the Latin music he wrote after about 1560, when there could have been little if any opportunity for performance as part of the English liturgy. Wherever else her religious and political sympathies (or duties) lay, Elizabeth clearly enjoyed and supported the music of both Byrd and Tallis: in 1575, Elizabeth issued letters-patent, granting them an exclusive licence to print and publich music. Later that year they jointly issued what was the first collection fo Latin motets ever published in England, the Cantiones quae ab argumento Sacrae vocantur. Each composer included seventeen motets (no doubt a tribute to this the seventeenth year of Elizabeth's reign). The motets on this recording all come from this publication.

01 May 2000
Gramophone

This is quite the best performance of Tallis's 40-part Spem in alium that I have heard. Sung by a constellation of singers, many of them familiar names from other well-established choral groups, it is a gripping realisation. The effect of the slowly moving harmonies is enhanced by a well-conceived and very positive use of dynamics. Precise entries, gently undulating rhythms that are wonderfully supple, and then those firm antiphonal phrases - one group of choirs answered by another at 'Creator coeli et terra' - raise the tension, until we twice almost miss a heart-beat at the well-placed rest before 'Respice ...'. Philip Cave's note on Tallis's recusancy background, his coded use of numbers and his acquaintance with influential members of the Catholic nobility (in particular the Duke of Norfolk, soon to be executed), gives the listener valuable insights into the whole corpus of Tallis's Latin compositions, particularly those of a penitential nature like the Lamentations or the Lenten responsory In jejunio et fletu, and further heightens their poignancy.

That great motet, so central to the whole prgramme, is well supported by the four-part Mass and the delightful group of other pieces for various combinations of voices. The hymn Te lucis with its alternating chant strophes sounding so very English (I don't want to say precious, but almost too perfect for what was, after all, just run-of-the-mill everyday chant!) has the tempo relationship of the chant to the polyphony just right, which is a tremendous plus, rarely achieved.


07 May 2000
Independent on Sunday

So many groups now specialising in polyphony have been contracting in size, their sound getting leaner and leaner. Philip Cave has gone in the other direction with his Oxford-based ensemble, and even when they sing one to a part the sound is thick and rich. This disc isn't without problems, but if the Spem in Alium is oddly balanced, the chiaroscuro performances of the other motets compensate. Led by the dark and feminine tones of Patrick Craig, the ensemble give a sombre cloak of sound to the Lamentations, painting the destruction of Jerusalem in vivid, broad strokes.


01 May 2001
Audiophile Audition
Tom Gibb

My wife is my biggest critic, and over the twenty-plus years we've known each other, she's developed this almost folklore with regards to me that she delights in sharing with just about everybody. It concerns (in her eyes) my greatest talent, which is my ability to assign blame, or re-assign it; in any case, I'll almost surely succeed in deflecting any responsibility from myself for the consequences of any actions on my part. Let's face it - nobody likes being wrong, or being told they're wrong - sometimes, however, we just have to face the facts.

Which makes this whole sequence of events even more painful for me, because I've always prided myself on my ever-increasing knowledge of music - especially, recorded music - and (what I regard as) a singular ability to recognize a well-done, idiomatic performance, and to easily discern the sonic merits that lift a particular recording above the pack. And God knows, there are plenty of contenders for the enviable position of being considered a "reference" recording.

So when Caroline Dooley from Linn Records contacted me recently regarding my impressions on the surround content of the Tallis disc in question, I was a bit taken aback. She informed me that Linn has been recording in surround sound for quite a while, it seems, and only recently - with the advent of the SACD medium - could these recordings be presented in their original multichannel format. She also offered to have original session producer Philip Hobbs contact me with additional technical information about the sessions. I assured her that I was reasonably certain that my original review was correct, but I also offered to spend more time with the disc.

Which makes this even more embarrassing for me, because I generally have a really great reviewing ethic, and spend a considerable (usually scattered across several weeks) amount of time with each disc I have for review. Nothing that I listen to gets really short shrift, unless it's just unbearably God-awful, right-out-of-the-gate. And I feel that my system is of sufficiently good resolving power to allow me to experience the subtleties and nuances of any good recording. That makes this situation even more perplexing to me - how could I have dropped the ball so obviously here? Please forgive me if I seem to stammer a bit - it's probably because I'm choking on the rather large crow I'm currently chewing, while also trying to explain away my shortcomings.

There's no way I can escape this - I was dead wrong about the Tallis disc. Immediately upon replaying the disc, it was perfectly obvious to me from the first few notes of the opening track "Te lucis ante terminum," what a huge mistake I'd made. The surround soundfield was impressive, fully centering me within the group of vocalists. The same is true for all the works here that were recorded at St. Jude's on the Hill (an oft-used classical recording venue near London), and especially striking in its effect on the title selection "Spem in alium." The eight individual choirs begin singing at prescribed intervals throughout the work; each choir successively joins from across and around the soundstage, then join their voices for the final chorus - the power and majesty are both overwhelming and breathtakingly beautiful at the same time, and the dynamics will challenge any system.

The disc utilizes only four channels - the center channel is excluded from the mix, but the recording is offered an exceptionally seamless presentation. And although an "in the round" setting such as this is not typical for a choral recording, it's a very natural-sounding and wholly enjoyable effect.

The remaining two works, the "Mass for 4 Voices" and "Lamentations" only incorporate four and five voices respectively, and are from a different recording venue and in a more traditional acoustic setting. The recording preserves an excellent representation of the performance soundspace; the perspective is up-close, but the vocalists are bathed in the ambience of the recorded acoustic.

All being said, I've revised my rating to Five Stars, and give this disc my whole-hearted, highest recommendation. This disc will provide an ample test to the ability of your system to resolve massed voices; most people scoff at the SACD standard which calls for full-range speakers all-around, but with as much information as is presented on this disc, smallish surround speakers may run out of gas trying to keep up! And the performances are both idiomatic and excellent. I do, again, apologize for the circuitous manner in which this review has evolved, and offer the following advice to anyone so inclined: listen well, and know what the heck you're talking about

01 - Te lucis ante terminum.flac
02 - Salvator mundi.flac
03 - Spem in alium.flac
04 - In iejunio et fletu.flac
05 - O Salutaris hostia.flac
06 - Lamentations I.flac
07 - Lamentations II.flac
08 - Miserere.flac
09 - Mass for 4 voices Gloria.flac
10 - Credo.flac
11 - Sanctus.flac
12 - Benedictus.flac
13 - Agnus Dei.flac

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