Tallis - Tallis: Mass for Four Voices; Motets /Oxford Camerata · Summerly [CD]

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Thomas Tallis (c.1505 - 1585) Mass for Four Voices Motets The breadth and diversity of Thomas Tallis's sacred music is one of its most appealing characteristics, and one of the reasons why his music has been a constant in choral anthologies from his day to ours. In adapting to the constraints of four different Tudor regimes Tallis produced works so different in function, vision, and musical language as to provoke the accusation of Vicar of Brayism. The criticism is understandable when one directly compares, for instance, the magnificent 'Gaude gloriosa', written during the Catholic revival of Mary's reign, with the unassuming 'If ye love me', from the protestant era of Edward VI, but one must bear in mind that obedience to a Tudor monarch was a religious dogma in itself, while fidelity and servility were not so closely associated as they are in democratic minds. Tallis's diverse styles are well represented on this recording. Most recognisably traditional are the responsories 'Videte miraculum' and 'Loquebanturvariis linguis' intended for the feasts of the Purification and Whitsun respectively. Through both runs the Sarum plainchant which acts both as a cohesive force and as a fount of melodic inspiration. ' Audivi vocem', a responsory for Advent, is smaller in scale and uses the plainsong only as a point of reference for a freely-composed polyphony, but in all three the debt to Taverner and Sheppard is unmistakeable. These responsories, 'Sancte Deus', and the Mass for Four Voices date either from late in Henry VIII's or Mary's reigns. 'Sancte Deus' is unusual for several reasons, not least because of its more fantasia-like structure: rhetorical homophony breaks into elaborate melismas while the whole retains throughout an austerity perhaps appropriate to a votive antiphon addressed to the three-fold holiness of Christ rather than to the paradigm of maternal love, the Virgin Mary. The syllabic style of word setting is shared by the Mass, and suggests a more functional, less decorative role in the liturgy. It has been suggested, though it must always remain speculative, that the Mass was written at a time late in Henry's reign, when Cranmer was known to prefer simple settings of the Latin rite. If so, the Mass only partly conforms since Tallis still allows himself the odd melismatic flourish. Apart from its own inherent interest, the Mass also provides a stylistic link with the works of Tallis contained in the Cantiones Sacrae, published by himself and Byrd in 1575, and written after the Elizabethan religious settlement of 1559. 'Salvator mundi' and 'O sacrum convivium', though rich in texture, are part of a genre much happier with pure polyphonic exercise. They are free-standing, relying on no external material, and their expositions of text are uncluttered. Many of Byrd and Tallis's anthems from this period have dual English and Latin texts, indicating how the two exploited the ambiguities of Elizabeth's religious policy. 'Te lucis ante terminum'

Loquebantur variis linguis

Salvator mundi

O sacrum convivium

Audivi vocem

Sancte Deus

Videte miraculum

Te lucis ante terminum

In manus tuas Domine

Mass for four voices: Gloria

Mass for four voices: Credo

Mass for four voices: Sanctus

Mass for four voices: Benedictus

Mass for four voices: Agnus Dei