Choral Vespers - Chapel Royal of Hampton Court Palace Wed, 30th March 2016

[Nevilevelis]

Plainsong: One needs to sing a whole lot of it regularly for it to become natural and not stilted.

Many members of that choir do, but not as a group under that MD. Moreover, I felt the style was quite deliberately going for a particular interpretation; one that was not to my taste.

[ardcarp]

Crude it certainly is - and based it seems on a view I thought we'd shed, of constant progress towards perfection, everything on the way falling short somehow.

Oh dear, Jean, I don't think I said anything about Cornysh being 'better' than Fayrfax et al. I absolutely love earlier pre-Ref music, and the two Fayrfax Magnificats that I know (Regale and O bone Jesu) are magnificent! In fact, I sort of agree with you that the old-fashioned idea that Palestrina somehow represented an inevitable pinnacle of imitative polyphony is silly. Smoothing out all the lumps and bumps can be....boring?

[Vox Humana]

Crude it certainly is - and based it seems on a view I thought we'd shed, of constant progress towards perfection, everything on the way falling short somehow.

I think that's a bit unfair, if I may say so. I have been known to say, flippantly, that one mass by Fayrfax sounds very much like another by Ludford. That is also unfair, since Ludford, like Cornyshe, in fact looks forward, whereas Fayrfax is thoroughly medieval. I don't mean that at all perjoratively; it's an aesthetic evaluation. Both are superb composers. I used to find the mathematics in Dunstable's music impressive, but he's got nothing on Fayrfax. There was a article published 20 years ago about music and quadrivium in early Tudor England which laid bare the mathematics inside Fayrfax's mass O quam glorifica. The complexity is quite jaw-dropping (well, it is for this innumerate anyway).