King's Choir/Cleobury - Vespers and Mass for King Henry VI, 4 February 2015

Hall One, Kings Place

Robert Parsons – Ave Maria

Plainsong Vespers

Dunstable – Ave maris stella

Magnificat secondi toni

Robert Hacomplaynt – Salve Regina

Tallis – Videte miraculum

Thomas Damett – Beata Dei genetrix

Plainsong Kyrie

Byttering – Nesciens mater

Roy Henry – Sanctus

Plainsong – Agnus Dei

Leonel Power – Ave Regina caelorum

Robert Fayrfax – Magnificat ‘Regale’

Choir of King’s College, Cambridge

Stephen Cleobury (conductor) 

 

One of the best stories – true, I think – about the late, greatly lamented impresario, Gérard Mortier, concerned his handling of a philistine donor to the Salzburg Festival. Unimpressed at Mortier’s opening up of the operatic repertoire, especially to the great musical dramas of the twentieth century, the person in question gave a large sum, on condition that it fund a production of an Italian opera. Mortier took the money and staged Busoni’s Doktor Faust. I similarly admire Stephen Cleobury’s chutzpah in his introduction to an otherwise bizarre programme note (whose perpetrator I shall charitably shroud in anonymity). ‘When I was asked to devise a programme on the “minimalist” theme,’ Cleobury writes, ‘the idea of a plainsong based sequence immediately suggested itself, since a single unadorned melodic line so obviously fits this theme.’ That, it would seem, is how music from the Eton Choir Book and the Old Hall Manuscript, together with other early English music, came to be performed in a concert series entitled ‘Minimalism Unwrapped’. Just as well, since a programme of ‘holy minimalism’, or whatever it calls itself nowadays, would have had me give Kings Place a very wide berth indeed. What we heard, in genuine celebration of the quincentenary of the completion of the fabric of King’s College Chapel, was an admirable performance of a complete Vespers and a composite Mass, sandwiched between later Marian motets and two Magnificat settings from the Eton Choirbook. If such music be the food of minimalism, play on; and what, one might ask, would not qualify?

 

The concert opened with the Ave Maria by Robert Parsons, a staple of Choral Evensong. Perhaps the choir took a little while to adjust to an acoustic about as far removed from that of King’s Chapel as I can imagine; or perhaps it was my ears. At any rate, the revelation of its voices, tenors first, eventually trebles, offered a decent curtain-raiser to the main body of the first half. The boys then left the stage until after the Marian Vespers sequence. An edition of Sarum chant made by Jesse Billett (a sometime choral scholar) was employed: particularly fitting, given that rite’s use in royal foundations. The first antiphon and psalm (113) did not always offer lines as precisely honed as this bright acoustic might have preferred, but ultimately, that was of little import: throughout, there was a fine sense of chant that was an everyday friend. This was, of course, a concert rather than a service, but more than a remnant of the latter lingered – in a very positive sense.

Within the chant lay two works by John Dunstable (or Dunstaple, as we are now supposed to call him): an Ave maris stella and Magnificat. What particularly impressed me about both was the way in which performance of the music clearly proceeded from plainsong. These were not performances intended to draw attention to themselves, but modest in the best sense of the word, typical of Cleobury’s best work. The Magnificat is the somewhat more ornate work, though such things are relative rather than absolute. Its contrast between solo voices (countertenor and tenor, the latter in particular growing in confidence as the performance progressed) and full choir offered variation for our ears in a recognisably modern sense, irrespective of intention and original context.

 

The boys returned for the Magnificat by Robert Hacomplaynt, Provost of King’s (1509-28), formerly of Eton, that other great foundation of Henry VI. Again, there was an increase in floridity, but again, there was a fine impression of the music arising from the plainsong we had heard, not least in a flexibility which, far from being inimical to metrical sense, actually contributed thereto. Marian sweetness and clemency were to be heard without a hint of sentimentalisation. Perhaps I am being fanciful, but I even gleaned an impression of intercession.

Tallis opened the second half, with his Videte miraculum, Marian according to more than one usage. Here we heard not a reversion but a forward-looking alternative to the Reformation, indeed a work of the Counter Reformation. How different things might have been? Or maybe not. Again, the motet was sung with all the advantages that daily – well, frequent – performances of such repertoire brings; again, the flow of a performance sounding horizontally conceived, impressed in its ‘natural’ manner. Trebles again left the stage, this time for the Mass sequence, ‘de Beata Maria Virgine’, incorporating music from the Old Hall Manuscript. From a casual glance of the programme, ‘Roy Henry’ might have seemed like a twenty-first-century interpolation: the Henry in question was, of course, ‘roy’ as in king, most likely Henry V. Leonel Power, a member of Henry’s Chapel, offered an Ave Regina caelorum, with other motets hailing, as it were, from Thomas Danett and (Thomas?) Byttering. All received honest, unexaggerated performances, which permitted that celebrated illusion of the music, or perhaps we should say the music and words, speaking for itself or themselves.

 

The closing performance was of Robert Fayrfax’s Magnificat, ‘Regale’. Mary sang her song joyfully and without affectation. Fayrfax’s long lines were relished, again in the best sense of an unassuming performance. The work – and I see no reason why we should not speak of this as a ‘musical work’ – sounded effortlessly, or seemingly effortlessly, as a whole. And if there was nothing on the level of a King’s Chapel echo to be heard, this wonderful polyphony continued to sound in my aural memory long after the concert had finished.

Chapelle du Roi/Dixon: Byrd, Fayrfax, Sheppard, Tallis, and Victoria, 17 December 2011

St John’s, Smith Square

Sarum chant: A solis ortus cardine
Byrd – Rorate cœli
Fayrfax – Magnificat, ‘Regale’
Sheppard: Verbum caro
Tallis – Beati Immaculati
Tallis – Suscipe quæso Domine
Tallis – If ye love me
Sheppard – I give you a new commandment
Byrd – Hodie Christus natus est
Tallis – Videte miraculum
Tallis – Te Deum
Victoria – Alma Redemptoris Mater

Chapelle du Roi
Alistair Dixon (director)

The ‘Christmas Festival’ at St John’s, Smith Square is now well under way, despite there being a week to go of Advent, a peculiarity of nomenclature rendered all the more peculiar given that sacred music provides the staple diet. But the name chosen for the present concert was also a little odd: ‘Meet the Tudors’. There was nothing especially regal about the works performed, no more or no less than one might expect from a programme of late-fifteenth-, sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century English sacred music. Byrd’s Gradualia, from which both the motets performed here are taken, was published two years after the death of Elizabeth I. Victoria’s presence, whilst welcome, also seemed odd, given the vague ‘concept’: a nod to Philip II perhaps? Chapelle du Roi, or rather its director, Alistair Dixon, would have been better advised either to let the music speak for itself, or to provide more of a guiding thematic link.

For the music is perfectly capable of speaking for itself, especially in capable performances such as these generally proved to be. The opening, processional Sarum hymn provided more ‘historical’ perspective than much of the rest of the programme, reminding us of the richness of English mediæval tradition, liturgical and musical, much of it wantonly destroyed by the Reformers’ zeal. Byrd’s introit, Rorate cœeli, flowed yet yielded, the eight voices of Chapelle du Roi, showing the advantages of a small choir even to those of us who might be inclined to hanker after the likes of King’s College, Cambridge, in such repertoire. Robert Fayrfax’s Magnificat was the sole representative of the Eton Choirbook. It unfolded as ‘naturally’ as one had any right to expect, a fine centrepiece to the first half. Not for the last time, however, there was a degree of dryness to the lower voices, the tenors especially, and there were a few intonational difficulties. More seriously, the ‘Esurientes’ section had to be restarted following a serious lapse of ensemble, though Dixon carried that difficult task off with a minimum of fuss.

John Sheppard’s Christmas Day Verbum caro suffered from occasional shortness of breath, leading phrases to fall away a little more than they should, though there were some properly plangent contributions to enjoy from the two counter-tenors. It was a pity, then, that they lapsed somewhat into hooting at the opening of Tallis’s Beati Immaculati. That, otherwise, was an interesting as well as musically satisfying performance, given that it was presented in a Latin version, on the supposition that the composer’s Blessed are those that be undefiled was itself a contrafactum version of a Latin original. Tallis’s Suscipe quæso Domine received a disarmingly heartfelt, expressive reading, its unusual qualities – not least the seven-part texture – observed and communicated, without undue exaggeration.

Tallis returned after the interval. If ye love me – most collegiate choirs love this anthem very much – was sung by four solo men’s voices, likewise Sheppard’s I give you a new commandment, albeit four different voices: now two tenors and two basses. (Neither piece was conducted.) Byrd’s Hodie Christus natus est was beset by a degree of fuzziness from the tenors, though it received a lively, if perhaps unduly hard-driven, performance. Videte miraculum, by Tallis, formed the counterpart to Fayrfax’s work in the first half. Written for the First Vespers of Candlemas, its Marian dissonances – it being impressed upon us how Mary is laden with a noble burden, ‘Stans onerata nobili onere Maria’ – were expressively handled and projected. ‘Knowing that she is not a wife, she rejoices to be a mother’ (‘Et matrem se lætam cognosci, quæ se nescit uxorem’), the two sopranos in particular emphasising the imploring nature of Tallis’s word-setting here.

We remained with Tallis for his English Te Deum. The initial cantorial intonation was not blessed with the strongest intonation in another sense. There was, moreover, something oddly chamber-like to the performance, the only occasion when I truly missed the forces of a larger choir. Somehow, the style seemed more appropriate to a recusant Byrd motet than to the grandeur of words and music. Nevertheless, antiphonal placing of the singers – essentially, one-to-a-part double choir – offered compensatory keenness of response, almost madrigalian in relatively-restrained English fashion. No ‘Gloria’ was given. Victoria’s Alma Redemptoris Mater sounded as if from another world, the warmth of its opening immediately felt: this was clearly music from Mediterranean, albeit Counter-Reformatory, climes.