After listening to the Tallis Students ship what Creative Director and founder Peter Phillips celebrated as its 54th look for Boston Early Music Competition since BEMF’s inaugural live performance season in 1989, I noticed how final night time’s “Hymns to the Virgin” testified to the continued validity of the model. The Students’ Marian Devotions got here throughout to a rapt full home on the very Roman Catholic sanctuary of Saint Paul’s Church, Cambridge. Josquin des Prez’s Missa Ave maris stella took pleasure of place amongst Renaissance polyphonic motets by Orlando de Lassus, Heinrich Isaac, Francisco Guerrero, and the 87-year-old minimalist Arvo Pärt’s apparition-imagining SATB Virgencita.
One may fortunately have donned a prayer scarf because the one-or two-on-a-part singers—sopranos Amy Haworth, Victoria Meteyard, Katy Hill, and Lucinda Cox; altos Caroline Trevor and Elisabeth Paul; tenors Steven Harrold and Simon Wall; and basses Tim Scott Whiteley and Rob Macdonald—reveled within the historic Latin textual content and decorative figurations. Francisco Guerrero’s (1528-1599) Ave virgo sanctissima typified their work beneath the skilled and exacting polyphonically polygamous chief.
Hail, ever wonderful,
treasured pearl,
beautiful because the lily,
lovely and perfumed because the rose.
Valuable just like the Virgin, however by no means twee, the ensemble vocalized impeccably within the supportive sanctuary (why was the tabernacle open and the host eliminated for this very sacred live performance?) with an accuracy as to pitch characterizable as being fitted with fretted vocal cords. Over the comparatively slender emotional vary (with one exception) of the Mass texts, the ten singers blended with startling unanimity, particularly the pure-as-snow ladies, who soared as one in periodic excessive notes that performed with the room resonances most loftily. The lads possessed extra distinctive particular person vocal devices. One wish to have known as out people, however absent photos or mini bios, identification was unattainable.
The printed group bio didn’t allude to adjustments of personnel over time, however one can learn that the Students’ roster remained constant for its first couple of a long time, till some people, akin to Mark Padmore and John Mark Ainsley left to take up solo careers. Please inform us extra subsequent time.
For this listener, and seemingly for the demonstrative crowd, Arvo Pärt’s Virgencita constituted the emotional summit of the live performance. Pärt recounted: “When Agustín Gutiérrez Canet, the Mexican ambassador to Estonia, invited me to Mexico, my curiosity and notions of the nation have been strongly affected by the well-known legend of Juan Diego and his stories of the apparition of the Virgin Mary. The pleased anticipation of being in Mexico very quickly and the title Guadalupe left me no peace; they impressed me to jot down a choral work which I took alongside as a gift to the folks of Mexico.”
Seemingly radiating from silence, in line with essayist Andreas Peer Kähler, and extra chordal than the polyphonic scores that surrounded it final night time, the work’s astonishingly pungent dissonances and brightly harmonic stretches, set to the night’s strongest texts, saved unusually efficient firm with the early Mary worship. This 6-minute mini masterpiece celebrating the apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe, crescendoing to the one fff full cry of the night in Salva nos (save us), elicited the evenings strongest acclaim from the total home on the massive and resonant sanctuary.
Heinrich Isaac’s (ca. 1450-1517): Virgo prudentissima additionally left a robust impression, largely from the strangeness of its topical textual content saluting the composer’s employer, but in addition from its stunning musical complexity:
You we invoke, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael,
to pour upon her chaste ears
our prayers and entreaties
for the sacred empire and
for Maximilian the Emperor.
Could the omnipotent Virgin
grant that he conquer his depraved enemies,
and restore peace
to the nations and security to the land.
With devoted ability Georgius,
the Emperor’s Precentor and Kapellmeister,
rehearses this anthem for you.
Austria’s Protector,
diligent in every little thing,
earnestly commends himself,
Mom, to your tender joys.
The best place, nonetheless, belongs to Him
by whom you have been taken up,
by way of whom you shine, lovely because the moon,|
and are as glorious because the solar (et ut sol.)
James Morley Potter, Director of Music and Precentor at Magdalene School, Cambridge, and a busy freelance conductor and choral director defined in his handout essay:
In his day, Heinrich Isaac held a preeminence second solely to Josquin. By 1507, he was within the make use of of Maximilian, who was presently to be topped Holy Roman Emperor. The motet Virgo prudentissima was designed to display the soon-to-be Emperor’s piety and forged Mary as his heavenly supporter and advocate. The textual content, describing her because the “most-wise Virgin” mixed with language from the Track of Songs, is matched by music of appreciable “knowledge.” It employs a number of inside canons wherein three voices sing the identical music at totally different occasions, and contains numerous musical puns to please the realized listener. Isaac dials up the awe by interspersing difficult ornamental passages with monumental, slow-moving chant.
There may be even a self-referential second because the musicians point out their very own participation on this heavenly endorsement. Lastly, the phrases ut sol (because the solar) present a chance that Isaac couldn’t resist: a musical pun wherein he set syllables to their corresponding scale levels.
Alma redemptoris mater a8 by Orlando de Lassus (ca. 1532–1594), talking of Mary as “the ever-open gate of heaven,” had opened the reflective, and generally redemptive efficiency, without delay transporting us to an historic, incensed chancel. We felt like honored company in a deluxe time machine as the traditional however trendy sounds wafted in statements, imitations, and cadences with lovely ritards and diminuendos…again and again.
From the 572-year-old Josquin des Prez got here the most important work of the live performance: Missa Ave maris Stella. Potter helpfully defined:
The mantra which underpins this mass, Ave maris stella, was a well known hymn, nonetheless frequently utilized in devotions to the Blessed Virgin Mary…The tenor sings the hymn tune in full through the Osanna. Peter Phillips notes the concision of Josquin’s methodology within the mass, utilizing the 4 phrases of the hymn as items to be dispersed across the voice elements. He considers it ‘a mannequin train in cantus firmus therapy, suggesting that Josquin was summing up all he knew about it at this level in his profession, earlier than transferring on.’
The Kyrie started with the boy-soprano-timbred ladies unfurling a white ribbon of sound as if in a chivalrous event. A tenor intoned the Kyrie as a chanting priest, inspiring imitating choral responses. Quoniam tu solus Sanctus, pleading and pure, made sacred intercession as ornamental chant inside theatrical thrills, placing the work throughout extra with quiet that means than salesmanship. Within the Credo part the Students confirmed off their potential to attain legato with out fully stinting on onerous consonants…this isn’t a straightforward activity. They managed their sign passagework by way of glottal and diaphragmatic articulations with completely no slides between notes. Additionally they discovered a believer’s emotional engagement, although actually actually conveying it inside devotional confines. The ladies began the Sanctus with notably haunting reverence. Pleni sunt coeli sounded alternately intense and sing-song, although with nothing approximated. The textual content of the Hosanna requires a celebratory mien, however the well-oiled performing engine by no means loosed its tasteful governor for any balls-out exuberance. The misereres within the Agnus Dei offered the ladies one other likelihood to soar; and the Mass ended the place it started, in rapt silence.
The Students additionally requested for and acquired sacerdotal assist from the “different Marys” in Guerrero’s Maria Magdalene, although the composer may have performed far more with phrase portray. An excessive amount of placidity prevailed for depictions of worry and resurrection.
With the requisite standing ovation, the grateful votaries at Saint Paul’s Church earned an encore…after Phillips gave a high-toned gross sales pitch for his CDs. Ave Regina Caelorum by Lassus gave the ensemble one other alternative for ascending and descending gleaming marble staircases of notes in Escher-like convolutions, whereas periodically converging in cadential landings.
“Hail, ever wonderful, treasured pearl,” certainly. We give thanks for the accomplishments of this group not just for its many recordings and visits to Boston, but in addition for the way it has impressed related however singular ensembles akin to the Sixteen and Blue Heron…and naturally many listeners.
Lee Eiseman is the writer of the Intelligencer
