Missa Corona Spinea - Taverner/Tallis Scholars

[ardcarp]

This was played at the end of today's CD Review. Absolutely fantastic.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06l1b84

[decantor]

Wasn't it just wonderful? I was due to go out - noon at the latest - but couldn't drag myself away. How come I've never heard it before?

[ardcarp]

Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas (6 voices) (This mass was probably composed for Trinity Sunday. The original manuscript of this work—in the form of partbooks—contains facial portraits of Taverner. The portraits are in the initial letters of these partbooks. The above portrait is one of them.)
Missa Corona Spinea (6 voices)
Missa O Michael (6 voices)
Missa Sancti Wilhelmi (5 voices), sometimes called Small Devotion (possibly a corruption of inscription "S Will Devotio" found in two sources)
Missa Mater Christi (5 voices)
The Mean Mass (5 voices)
The Plainsong Mass (4 voices)
The Western Wynde Mass

Well, those are just the ones we know about. I was fascinated by everything pre-Reformation as a student, and a group of us used to poke about in the Music Library, grab a dusty tome (often in weird clefs) and sing from it in the Gents toilets (best acoustics) including the sopranos. Very, very little had been recorded in those days, so I reckon our efforts were...pioneering if nothing else. I think it is only recently, for instance, that the whole content of the Eton Choir Book has been done. Music from that era from England is unique in its sound and its textures. Nothing quite like it found elsewhere in Europe.

[DracoM]

And a good deal recorded IMO brilliantly by CCC Oxford / Darlington.

There is of course the dreaded 'pitch' debate. Any help on the Tallis CD from experts?

[Vox Humana]

Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas (6 voices) ... The original manuscript of this work—in the form of partbooks—contains facial portraits of Taverner. The portraits are in the initial letters of these partbooks. The above portrait is one of them.

Ah, well... These may or may not be portraits of Taverner. The faces do all bear a certain resemblance and scrolls issuing from the mouths bear Taverner's name, but they could be, say, self portraits of the (unidentified) scribe - or anyone else - proclaiming the authorship of the first mass in the books.

Missa Sancti Wilhelmi (5 voices), sometimes called Small Devotion (possibly a corruption of inscription "S Will Devotio" found in two sources)

Actually it's the other way around. The only title found in the early sources is "Small Devotion", for which there is no obvious explanation. The mass is based on Taverner's votive antiphon Christe Jesu, pastor bone. There is reason to believe that the text of this antiphon is an adaptation of one originally in favour of St William of York (a favourite saint of Cardinal Wolsey's - an antiphon to St William was sung daily at Cardinal College, Oxford), so Frank Llewellyn Harrison speculated that perhaps "Small Devotion" was a corruption of an abbreviated form of Sancti Wilhelmi Devotio: "S Will Devotio". Ingenious, but unconvincing IMO: I've never seen any remotely similar titles amongst other Tudor masses.

There is of course the dreaded 'pitch' debate. Any help on the Tallis CD from experts?

It's really too complex to do it justice here, but, pending a reply from an expert, I'll try a summary! I doubt anyone today (with the likely exception of David Wulstan and maybe one or two followers) still believes in the high pitch theory. From what I have read, even Peter Philips doesn't any more, but adheres to it simply because he likes the sound (which is fair enough). The high pitch theory, which assumes a general pitch standard a minor third higher than A=440, was debunked by Roger Bowers firstly in his PhD thesis of 1975 and subsequently in greater detail in various articles: Bowers considers Tudor pitch to be, utterly coincidentally, the same as ours. Andrew Parrott measured the two (?) surviving, sounding Tudor organ pipes at Stanford-upon-Avon and found them to be just over a semitone sharp. In 2000-2001 the organ builders Goetze & Gwynn drew together what could be divined about Tudor organs (including the Stanford-upon-Avon pipes) in the reconstruction of two such organs, which were then put to practical use in exploring those Tudor compositions in which an organ alternates with voices (e.g. hymn settings). Then the November 2003 issue of Early Music, published Andrew Johnstone's paper "'As it was in the beginning': organ and choir pitch in early Anglican church music" in which he pulls together all this information and more. His paper is well worth reading. To me it makes complete sense of a number of things in Wulstan's theory about which I never really felt totally comfortable - principally the unfeasibly high "chipmunk" trebles coupled with falsettists who had to spend unlikely amounts of time grovelling around the fifth below middle C. Thanks to the Stanford pipes and some other data, Johnstone locates Tudor choir pitch at one and a third semitones above A=440 (although I doubt anyone would claim that this was a universal, inflexible standard) and argues that the Tudor countertenor, tenor and bass voices were nothing other than our tenor, baritone and bass. The idea that early countertenors were not falsettists has recently received support in Simon Raven's book "The Supernatural Voice" and in Andrew Parrott's paper "Falsetto beliefs: the 'countertenor' cross-examined" in Early Music, February 2015. Personally I don't feel entirely easy with Johnstone's pitch since it pitches the countertenor parts cruelly high for tenors - unless the Tudors were blessed with a ready supply of "Crump Tenors" (if you will pardon the expression), so maybe Bowers is right after all - or maybe they all switched into falsetto for the top few notes (but the way mid-Tudor music is written suggests otherwise). Anyway, that's probably more than enough. I hope I haven't made things even more obscure.

[ardcarp]

The efforts to try to ascertain what pitch was used seem pointless. It would have varied from place to place anyway, but surely a pragmatic choice would be made to suit singers available. Whatever pitch it is sung at, the big gap in the texture of Corona Spinea leaves trebles weaving a Crown of Thorns (no, it's not too fanciful) on Christ's head. If David Wulstan, Peter Phillips (and for what it's worth, I) happen to like that high 'English discant' sound, who is to say that others in the dim past didn't like it too.

You will gather that academism and I parted company long ago.

[Vox Humana]

Perhaps if it hadn't you wouldn't have written what you wrote. :)

[ardcarp]

[DracoM]

I would very much like to know how / if TODAY'S boy trebles would cope with the sustained stratosphere of the Tallis Schs on that CD.
David Wulstan converted me to a very particular kind of sound with early Tudor music, but pragmatically, one wonders if today's boys would find what we heard on the Tallis Schs CD beyond them - certainly in any kind of liturgical / concert performance. Recording bits at a time might work, but.....

Q is - would the Tallis Scholars EVER attempt to sing such a Missa live?

[Vox Humana]

I would very much like to know how / if TODAY'S boy trebles would cope with the sustained stratosphere of the Tallis Schs on that CD.

Good question. That boys can sing at this pitch has been demonstrated. Magdalen, Oxford once sang an R3 Choral Evensong under Bernard Rose (c.1971?) in which they performed Sheppard's Reges Tharsis live at "Oxenford" pitch. When Francis Grier was DoM at Christ Church he not only recorded Taverner's Corona spinea at high pitch, his choir also performed it live at a Prom. I can't honestly recommend the recording, however. The boys cope with the pitch well enough, but have a horrible habit of "scooping" between the notes. Of course, crack choirs of today who have been able to pick and choose particularly talented boys may well be a rather different thing from medieval choirs who had to rely on local talent without the luxury of impressment.

[DracoM]

<< had to rely on local talent without the luxury of impressment >>

Woa.......so if composers had to rely on 'local talent', how / why did they ever expect that local pick-up gang to cope with some of the most complex and high-lying treble lines ever written? Why would you write music so regularly for ensembles you doubted might cope?

Yes, I know that puberty / 'the change' was far later then than it is today, but even so......!!

I heard Grier's CCC ensemble quite often, and on one never to be forgotten Feb evening, heard them sing a long piece of Mundy [ sorry, cannot now remember what it was ] for the anthem in Evensong that came as a complete and dizzying thrill.

[Roehre]

Well, those are just the ones we know about. I was fascinated by everything pre-Reformation as a student, and a group of us used to poke about in the Music Library, grab a dusty tome (often in weird clefs) and sing from it in the Gents toilets (best acoustics) including the sopranos. Very, very little had been recorded in those days, so I reckon our efforts were...pioneering if nothing else. I think it is only recently, for instance, that the whole content of the Eton Choir Book has been done. Music from that era from England is unique in its sound and its textures. Nothing quite like it found elsewhere in Europe.

And then there was some generations previously Dunstable (IMO arguably the most important English composer) whose influence stretched well across Western Europe (and is one of the points of departure of the Netherlandish/Franco-Flemish schools).

[Roehre]

...

There is of course the dreaded 'pitch' debate. Any help on the Tallis CD from experts?

Dufay can be sung well at Oxenford pitch...

[DracoM]

Indeed, but I ask again, did these composers expect trebles to be able to [a] read, [b] sing long stints this stratospherically?
Yes, I know it's unanswerable. But it does set the mind boggling, does it not?
And, OK, I presume they DID have such gangs of lads capable, otherwise why compose so regularly with such heights and swtchbacks to navigate?

[ardcarp]

I thought of Dunstable as I wrote that. As you say, there was 'a point of departure'.