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American Record Guide: (07-08/2020) 
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Hyperion
CDA68285



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The monastic office of Compline is sung at the end of the day, just before retiring. This program of early and recent a cappella music takes Compline as a point of departure, moving outward to themes of sleep, penitence, old age, and death. As with many programs of this kind, we skip from the early 17th Century to the late 20th, with nothing in between. The program opens with the arrangement by Thomas Tallis of the Compline office hymn 'Te Lucis ante Terminum' from the Cantiones Sacrae of 1575. The outer stanzas are sung in plainsong and the middle one in Tallis's setting. It is followed by Gesualdo's five-part motet 'Illumina Faciem Tuam' on a text from Vulgate Psalm 30. 'Look Down, O Lord' by Jonathan Seers (b 1954) was written while the  composer was a student at St John's College, Cambridge. The English text is taken from the office of Compline. Downward moving motives illustrate the opening of the text in a work that involves triadic but highly colored harmony. Owain Park (b 1993), the director of the Gesualdo Six, contributes his setting of  the 3rd-Century evening hymn 'Phos Hilaron' in John Keble's translation ('Hail, Gladdening Light'). A countertenor solo that has almost the character of plainsong is projected over a hummed accompaniment. At this point in the program, the thematic net is cast wider. 'Fading' and 'Seeds in Flight' are two of four Arabesques written for the King's Singers in 2015 by Joanna Marsh (b 1970), who is currently composer in residence at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, though she has lived in Dubai since 2007. Her English texts are translations from contemporary Arab poets. Four Estonian Lullabies by Veljo Tormis (1930-2017) are unpretentious but far from simple arrangements of traditional melodies. 'My Heart Is Like a Singing Bird' is a setting by American composer Sarah Rimkus (b 1990) of a poem by Christina Rossetti. It was entered in Gesualdo's Six's first composition competition in 2016 and has been a favorite part of their repertory ever since. 'O Little Rose, O Dark Rose' is a wistful setting by Canadian composer Gerda Blok-Wilson (b 1955) of a poem by Canadian poet Charles Roberts (1860-1943), expressing in Owain Park's description "a mutual love that cannot be".

Other works by earlier composers include the penitential six-part motet 'Media ita' by Nicolas Gombert. 'Ad Te Clamamus' by Christopher Tye sets the middle section of the Marian antiphon Salve Regina, raising the question of whether it is the surviving fragment of a complete polyphonic setting. For this performance, the opening and closing sections of the antiphon are sung in plainsong. 'Versa Est in Luctum' by Alonso Lobo was written for the funeral of King Philip II of Spain in 1598. The madrigal 'Potro Viver io Piu se Senza Luce' by Luca Marenzio is a metaphysical contemplation of darkness and light. The earliest music here is the mystical 'O Ecclesia' by Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). The melody is sung over a vocal drone. The Gesualdo Six was formed in 2014 to perform that composer's six-part Tenebrae Responsories for Maundy Thursday in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge. They have gone on to become a highly effective vocal consort with performances around the UK and abroad. They also actively pursue an educational mission of workshops and composition competitions. On the evidence of this recording, their voices are almost perfectly matched for superbly disciplined one-ona-part singing.

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