Texte paru dans: / Appeared in: Obsidian |
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Reviewer: Barry
Brenesal
An historical discovery
informs this release, though it’s musical value is slight. In 1978, three
mid-16th-century manuscript fragments were discovered concealed behind the
plasterwork in Fraenkel Room, a meeting space at Corpus Christi College,
Oxford. (They’d apparently been employed as filler at some earlier point in
time in one of the surviving early walls.) Special lighting revealed they
were drawn from a second contratenor part that proved a near match to
Tallis’s magnificent votive antiphon Gaude gloriosa dei mater. The words,
however, were in English, and couldn’t be identified, so the matter was
relegated to the status of those many minor mysteries of musical history,
such as whatever became of Jacob Clemens non Papa, who wrote the Sinfonia
Concertante ascribed to Mozart, and why Webern composed the way he did. At least, that was the case until 2015, when David Skinner traced the text to the Ninth Psalm of Katherine Parr’s Psalmes or Prayers, a 1544 translation of John Fisher’s 1525 Psalmi seu precationes. Tallis’s new musical setting was issued as part of an elaborate, brilliantly devised propaganda campaign to motivate both devotion to the English throne and support for Henry VIII’s second, ill-advised and thoroughly botched invasion of France. (Let’s take a moment to relish a fine point of irony here, as Fisher had been executed in 1535 for refusing to accept Henry VIII as head of the Church of England.)
Newly minted as Se lord and
behold, Fisher/Parr’s Ninth Psalm offered up such sentiments as “Let the
wicked sinners retorne in to hell and let them fall and be taken in the
first pit wiche they have diggede.” (This grants us a second point of irony:
that the text to the reverent, Marian Gaude gloriosa was sea-changed into a
piece of bellicose political agitprop.) Such dissimilarities as exist
between the two pieces, Skinner argues, are because Se lord and behold is
based upon an earlier version of Gaude gloriosa than the one we’re familiar
with. Another possible reason is the conversion of a melismatic antiphon
into Fisher’s very text-heavy, syllabic psalm. In any case, as Skinner
notes, those musical differences are minor between the two works. Tallis’s setting of the Litany is also to be found on this release, in a new edition by Andrew Johnstone. The rest of the album is taken up with several of Tallis’s anthems, and four selections for viol consort. In the latter group, both When Jesus went and Fantasia are reconstructions by John Milsom of pieces which were likely composed for viols, then recast as Latin motets. Libera nos probably pursued an opposing trajectory, beginning life as a (lost) Marian antiphon before becoming an instrumental work; while Solfaing Song presumably was intended as a solemnization exercise.
Alamire consists of 14 singers
(SATBB) on this album. They are exceptionally well-balanced between the
sections, as well as featuring soloists in the Gaude gloriosa and Se lord
and behold who are exemplary in tone and evenness. Skinner easily manages
Tallis’s golden weave of six parts in the antiphon and its contrafactum,
while the anthems are phrased lovingly. Fretwork’s dark, rich textures
provide an excellent complement to the vocal works. The sound is well balanced, both for the choir and the viol consort. Timings are excellent, even if one allows for the nearly identical Se lord and behold. In short, recommended with pleasure.
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