CotW Thomas Tallis

[ardcarp]

OK this isn't the CotW thread, but the week's programmes may be of special interest to folks on The Choir.

First item today was O Sacrum Convivium sung beautifully by NCO/Higginbottom.

[Vox Humana]

It was really good to hear Tallis getting his due. I really enjoyed the performances. OK, two or three of them were not totally top-drawer, but the slight imperfections didn't trouble me: it's good to hear the variety of styles on disc from performers I might not otherwise seek out. I was particularly captivated by the superb performance of the the well-known Litany by Alamire. It didn't half go on, but that's what it does if you do the whole thing. How any singer manages to stop the pitch from slipping I don't know.

But the commentary: oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! I can't speak for the picture painted of Tudor life (which I found helpful and interesting), but the commentaries on the pieces were so riddled with errors that I lost count. O sacrum convivium isn't Elizabethan: it had already achieved its motet form by 1555, having been composed by cannibalising an earlier instrumental fantasia. The Lamentations are not the 'first two movements' of anything, they're the only ones. (IMO they are surely two different motets, although possibly composed together.) Euge caeli porta is not a 'hymn': it is a fragment from an otherwise lost setting of the sequence Ave praeclara. All that was just from Monday's episode. The tremendous Gaude gloriosa (not the longest Tudor votive antiphon) is now thought to be Henrician, since there's a five-part contrafactum of it to words by Katherine Parr that almost certainly dates from the reign of Edward VI. Then, for some unexplained reason (I suspect inattentiveness), we heard the Agnus Dei from the Puer natus est nobis mass twice: once on Tuesday and again on Thursday, when it was billed just as an excerpt from the mass Why? Surely we could have been given the Gloria or Sanctus instead? On the Tuesday it was described as 'the Agnus Dei from Caeleste organum'—a result of a failure to understand the track listing on the back of the CD—so I wonder whether Macleod actually listened to the tracks before compiling his list. Most of this could have been avoided simply by reading the liner notes of the CDs carefully.

I was pleased to hear a plug for Kerry McCarthy's excellent and eminently readable 'Master Musicians' book on Tallis. Highly recommended. (Her companion book on Byrd is even more readable.)

I despair of ever hearing a broadcast of Tallis's well-known 3rd psalm tune with the correct accidentals because Vaughan Williams's interpretation has become so ingrained that it will probably be impossible to shift. (RVW transcribed what he saw, but what he saw was the result of John Day's sloppy printing with an inadequate font set). This performance gets it right: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKDWsO-SvVc

[ardcarp]

O sacrum convivium isn't Elizabethan: it had already achieved its motet form by 1555, having been composed by cannibalising an earlier instrumental fantasia. The Lamentations are not the 'first two movements' of anything

Yes I shuddered in despair about those egregious statements! Thank you also,Vox, for pointing out the other inaccuraacies.

[DracoM]

<< the commentaries on the pieces were so riddled with errors that I lost count. O sacrum convivium isn't Elizabethan: it had already achieved its motet form by 1555, having been composed by cannibalising an earlier instrumental fantasia. The Lamentations are not the 'first two movements' of anything >>

Yes, oh YES!!