Treasures of Tudor England

CORO The Sixteen Edition CORO The Sixteen Edition Other Sixteen Edition recordings on CORO The Eton Choirbook Collection Philip & Mary Slipcase of all 5 of The Sixteen's acclaimed A Marriage of England and Spain CDs of the Eton Music by Spanish and Choirbook English composers "Sit back and let including Tallis's great these glorious Mass Puer natus as it sounds fill your may have been ears and lift your performed by choirs spirits" from both countries on Christmas Day 1554. the gramophone cor16037 cor16040 Robert Carver The Flowering of Genius Treasures of Celebrating one of the great masters of the Guerrero, Tallis, Byrd, Victoria, Sheppard Scottish Renaissance. • O bone Jesu "The Sixteen’s sound Tudor England • Missa Dum sacrum mysterium is distilled, ethereal – hard to imagine a more " …a momentum and sublime performance." expressive conviction Parsons • White • Tye that isn’t matched by bbc music magazine any other recordings." The Sixteen cor16051 the independent cor16001 The Voices of HARRY CHRISTOPHERS To find out more about The Sixteen, concert tours, and to buy CDs, visit www.thesixteen.com cor16056 of both were cut short by misfortune - White died of the plague in Thy Muse lives on ... Westminster and Parsons drowned in the River Trent – they, thankfully, The wealth of music emanating from left us works of extraordinary beauty. Listen to the soaring phrases of Tudor England deserves to be preserved Parsons' much-loved Ave Maria and his highly unusual devotion on the and this recording brings you some name of Jesus, O bone Jesu. But it is White's Lamentations that, I guarantee, remarkable works that will amaze you in will astound you. They are intimate yet searingly powerful and should surely their complexity, spirituality and sheer become recognised as one of the finest works of the Renaissance. size. Each one of these pieces is a real gem just waiting to be discovered by a I have devoted it to three composers wider audience. None of it would have been possible without the devoted born in, or just before, the reign of King scholarship of Sally Dunkley whose editions of these works have been a Henry VIII. They not only survived the delight to perform from. And in turn, Sally and I would never have felt so Reformation and the turbulent years of passionately about this period of music had it not been for the guidance and King Edward VI and Queen Mary, but pioneering work of Bernard Rose and David Wulstan during our student also lived to enjoy the relative security days at Oxford. of a more established church under This music is part of our great heritage and I look forward to you joining Queen Elizabeth I. The oldest of the three composers, Christopher us on this discovery. Tye, is perhaps the best known. Although some of you may have heard his glorious Mass, Euge bone, few will have come across his deeply penitential and extended work Peccavimus cum patribus nostris, whose final section is ecstatically uplifting. His son-in-law Robert White and Robert Parsons deserve to be much better known. Although the lives 2 3 he turbulent period of religious Not only is there a perceptible move change in England that was towards expressive word setting, but initiated by Henry VIII and also one towards creating more succinct Tcontinued in very different ways by his imitative phrases and textures, features TREASURES heirs Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth I that were already established in much of of presented composers working in the the Continental music that was beginning church with the challenge of having to find its way over the sea from the busy TUDOR ENGLAND to adapt to rapidly changing musical printing presses of Antwerp, Venice and requirements. With the Act of Uniformity other European cities. passed early in the reign of Elizabeth I, and the subsequent publication of a new Between the expansive Latin festal Masses 1 Ave Maria Robert Parsons (c.1535-72) 4.28 Prayer Book, services were appointed that John Taverner wrote in the 1520s and to be said in English, yet much of the the miniature English-texted anthems 2 O bone Jesu Robert Parsons 13.18 greatest sacred music from the 1560s and of the Edwardian years (1547-53) lay a 70s is indisputably that inspired by Latin complete turnaround of compositional 3 Lamentations a5 Robert White (c.1538-74) 22.24 texts. This apparent contradiction may technique, reflecting fundamental well be attributable to the exception that questions about the purpose and function 4 Christe qui lux es et dies IV Robert White 5.38 was granted to the Chapel Royal and the of music in the liturgy: should its aim universities of Oxford and Cambridge, be to inspire devotional thoughts in 5 Agnus Dei from Mass: Euge bone Christopher Tye (c.1505-73) 6.26 presumably on the basis that these were its splendour, or should it be a vehicle places where Latin would have been to convey vernacular texts in a simple 6 Peccavimus cum patribus nostris Christopher Tye 10.45 understood. Although little is known style? Feelings ran high on both sides of about the personal religious affiliation of the religious debate, and unfortunately Total playing time 63.43 composers such as Parsons and White, much of the material that would inform their Latin music – whatever its intended and illuminate our study was destroyed use – surely represents by far the most along the way, with the extant music interesting and significant musical representing only a small portion of what thought of the generation senior to Byrd. must originally have existed: a grievous 4 5 loss indeed. In fact much of it owes its Robert Parsons, were both cut short by choirboy plays that were a feature of life devotions, though Parsons was the only survival solely to the activities of a few misfortune: White and his family died at the Elizabethan court; a quantity of English composer known to have set this anthologists in the 1580s who must have in a virulent outbreak of plague in the his instrumental consort music survives one (which continues with altogether recognised its intrinsic value despite its Westminster area in 1574, and Parsons too, its contrapuntal techniques clearly different words from the votive O bone very restricted suitability for use in the drowned in the River Trent at Newark informing some of his vocal writing. The Jesu of Fayrfax and Carver). Curiously, liturgy by that time. in January 1572, his place in the Chapel young William Byrd must have known for its sentiments seem universal enough, Royal being filled by the young William him and his music, since various points it was among the ‘superstitious’ devotions As the oldest of the three composers Byrd. (Was his journey connected with the of connection between them can be that attracted the specific disapproval represented here, Christopher Tye lived recruitment of choristers?) Both of them identified, notably their related settings of Thomas Cranmer, archbishop and through the reign of Edward VI, to whom composed music to English texts, yet are of the burial text Libera me, Domine. reformer in the reign of Edward VI. In he is thought to have acted as music tutor. best represented by their Latin works. his music Parsons highlighted each of It is likely that his own sympathies lay Parsons’s much-loved Ave Maria would It must be noted that Parsons and White, the acclamations in block chords, with the Protestant church, for which have been sung at a time of reflection, the born c.1535 and c.1538 respectively, framing the verses whose expansive he composed a number of works, but in end of the evening service of Compline, were too young to have written all imitative phrases are developed with different circumstances he also produced and conveys a sense of complete serenity their distinguished Latin-texted works characteristically oblique harmonic the wonderfully idiosyncratic Mass Euge as it gradually unfolds through a rising during the Catholic revival of Mary’s movement. The vocal scoring is enriched bone and several large-scale antiphons pedal point in the top voice to an Amen reign (1553-8), so their output provides by the division into two of the bass part and motets such as Peccavimus cum whose soaring lines seem to make the confirmation that Latin polyphony in the section ‘clamavi ad te, Domine’ ('I patribus nostris, whose musical roots perfect counterpart to the ecclesiastical continued to be cultivated in Elizabethan have cried to you, O Lord'), where the lie in an older form, the votive antiphon. architecture of the time. times. Both composers were active in voices assertively stride up through ten After a long tenure as master of the London in their maturity, White having The text of his motet O bone Jesu was notes of the scale. choristers at Ely Cathedral, 'Dr Tye' was left his job as master of the choristers at known as the Verses of St Bernard, a ordained towards the end of his life, Chester for one at Westminster Abbey in compilation of psalm verses each Verses drawn from the Old Testament though he then suffered the indignity 1569, and Parsons becoming a Gentleman prefaced by an acclamation (‘O bone Lamentations of Jeremiah are specified as of being described as 'not very skilful at of the Chapel Royal (the monarch’s own Jesu’, ‘O Adonai’, ‘O Messias’ etc.); such Lessons at Matins during Holy Week, and preaching'. musical establishment) in 1563. As well texts were frequently included in the as such, claimed the attention of many The lives of Tye's son-in-law Robert as writing sacred vocal music, Parsons Books of Hours or Primers used by Continental composers from the mid- White, and White's contemporary was involved in providing songs for the the wealthy and literate for their private 15th century onwards.

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