Gentlemen of the Chappell
VOICES
Tutor: Alistair Dixon
Location: Didsbury Baptist Church, Manchester
Reviewer: Jill Mitchell
I had been looking forward to September 28th and seeing Alistair Dixon in action again in Didsbury; I had done an Andrew van der Beek weekend with him in Cologne in 2001 and a July (Tallis) course at Lacock later that same year. As a specialist in sixteenth-century English polyphony – particularly in the music of Thomas Tallis, the whole of whose surviving oeuvre he has recorded with his Chapelle du Roi in nine outstanding CDs – it was high time we invited him to NWEMF.
We began with a familiar and appealing setting by William Mundy (who was, like our tutor, a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal) of O Lord, the maker of all things. This is a piece of delicate and touching spirituality, the text unfolding with simplicity and feeling, crucial phrases being repeated, harmonically and semantically explored. After a somewhat edgy and unfocused start, we began to do it rather better justice and managed to realise some of its quality in performance.
Next came an exquisite Mundy Kyrie, where the chant of the Missa Orbis Facta (Mass XI in the Liber Usualis) alternates with the polyphony – although the final chant Kyrie was, to me, modally ambiguous and at dramatic variance with the version that has come down to us. The polyphony for Kyries 1 and 3 is for four voices but Kyrie 3 is in triple measure, faster and joyfully confident of a divine response. The first polyphonic Christe is for voices 1, 2 and 4 with no Alto 2 (all the men were on the bottom line throughout). The third Christe is for three upper voices, the Sopranos dividing, so that there was a considerable variety of texture between the various polyphonic statements. It was a joy to sing.
A third Mundy piece we tackled later was his 5-part setting of Beati Immaculati (interesting to compare, as I did, with Tallis’s version which Alistair has recorded). The voices enter separately at each new proposition, progressively reinforcing. In the middle section, Mundy casts off first one voice and then a second so that ATB alone sing the fervent Confitebor fixi. Then comes the massive, “full” final declamation with the separate intensifying entries on Justificationes (I will keep thy precepts) which builds portentously then liquefies into an extended and lyrical Amen.
This was followed by a tantalising taste of John Sheppard with the first sections (42 bars) of a Respond for the feast of a martyr or confessor, the 6-voice Filiae Hierusalem (Daughters of Jerusalem, come and see this martyr wearing the crown with which the Lord has adorned him). The bottom five voices have plenty of movement and scope to embroider the text with rhetorical repetitions. The treble part hovers above in slow melisma, taking the first 10 bars to articulate Hierusalem once, almost entirely in slow minims; this is surely a Cantus Firmus, but not a chant I can identify. It is very effective to have this high, yearning Sheppard sound floating angelically above the constant movement of the five parts below. Unfortunately there wasn’t time to experience the whole piece, which has two plainchant verses interspersed between the various repeated sections.
The rest of the day was devoted to Tallis. The Eucharistic motet Verily, verily I say unto you treats this crucial text with homorhythmic clarity so that its message is overt and powerful, but the seeming simplicity of presentation belies the wonderfully eloquent harmonics and pattern of key progressions. This is a lovely piece. In the 7-part setting of Miserere Nostri, Domine – a meditation on this one verse only – Tallis shows considerable ingenuity and technical brilliance. He plays with three separate canons. Soprano 2 precisely repeats Soprano 1, two minims later, but the Alto and Bassus canons are more mensurally cunning, Alto 2 echoing Alto 1 but at one quarter of the speed. Bass 1 echoes Bass 2 to the same degree so that Alto 2 and Bass 1 have reached only the first note of their canonic partners’ bar 6 at the final cadence in bars 23-25. We had great fun examining this, then trying to sing it from the facsimile copies also provided. The tenor part in line 5, attributed in the MS – quite implausibly according to Alistair – to William Byrd, is a free spirit which weaves its happily complementary way through the whole.
Finally we worked on four of Tallis’s eight Psalm tunes – said to reflect each of the modes – for Archbishop Parker’s psalter: we sang the first two and the final two, all of them for SATB. A didactic encapsulation of Christian philosophy and aspiration, these texts are well served by the assertive homophonic utterance. I have a vivid memory of singing all eight in uninterrupted sequence in a one-to-a-part consort directed by Anthony Rooley. Of the range of pieces in the final concert, these proved easily the most exacting in terms of tuning and focus! Challenging as they are, they have a grace and integrity that are very appealing.
In the last 20 minutes of the afternoon, we ran through all the pieces we’d worked on. It was clear we had all enjoyed the expertise and relaxed urbanity of our tutor; my instinct in anticipating this day with such pleasure had been sound!
Jill Mitchell
First published in December 2013 Newsletter
