O GIVE THANKS UNTO THE LORD Choral Works BY THOMAS TOMKINS THE CHOIR OF HM CHAPEL ROYAL, HAMPTON COURT PALACE RUFUS FROWDE ORGAN CARL JACKSON CONDUCTOR O Give Thanks Unto The Lord 1. Death is swallowed up in victory [4:47] 14. Give ear to my words [5:37] Choral Music by Preces & Responses 15. The heavens declare the Thomas Tomkins (1572–1656) 2. Preces [1:26] glory of God [2:59] Magnificat & Nunc dimis 16. Remember me, O Lord [2:41] (The Fourth Service) The Choir of HM Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace 3. Magnificat [5:50] 17. O Lord, how manifold Rufus Frowde organ 4. Nunc dimis [3:45] are thy works [2:12] Carl Jackson conductor 5. Who can tell how o he offendeth [4:57] 18. O give thanks unto the Lord [2:05] 6. Gloria bi Trinitas [4:29] 19. Voluntary [2:00] 7. Give sentence with me, O God [7:44] Total playing me [74:25] Magnificat & Nunc dimis (The Seventh Service) 8. Magnificat [5:19] 9. Nunc dimis [2:50] Preces & Responses 10. Responses [5:09] 11. Jesus came when the About The Choir of HM Chapel Royal Hampton Court: doors were shut [3:46] ‘[...] fervent and full-blooded performances [...] The recording, in the 12. Turn unto the Lord our God [2:34] palace’s resonant chapel, is sumptuous and detailed’ BBC Music Magazine 13. A Fantasy [4:06] ‘Lusty singing [...] conveys a sense of ownership of the music’ Choir & Organ Thomas Tomkins: Choral Works sung by two boys, each of whose musical lines imitates the other with increasing Thomas Tomkins (1572–1656) may well fervour. The editor notes that this have received his inial introducon to opening recalls the scoring of the verse the Chapel Royal through his ‘ancient secons of Byrd’s ‘seminal’ anthem and much-reverenced Master, William Christ rising again. Byrd’, as Tomkins wrote in the dedicaon of his madrigal Too much I once lamented, Within the Church of England services of published in 1622. Perhaps the younger Mans and Evensong, as inially composer’s simple words carried more established in the 1549 Book of Common weight than they otherwise might, Prayer, appear two sets of versicles and since his former teacher Byrd was to responses. Each versicle – a short text die early in July the following year. In said or sung by the Minister, e.g. ‘O Lord 1621, the year before that dedicaon, open thou our lippes’ – is followed by a Tomkins had succeeded Edmund response from the congregaon and/or Hooper as one of the organists of the choir – in this case, ‘And our mouth shall Chapel Royal, into which body of shew forth thy prayse’. The first set of musicians and priests he had been versicles and responses at Mans and sworn as a Gentleman-in-Ordinary by Evensong became known as the preces at least 29 June 1620. (prayers), directly preceding the psalm, and the second the Responses, To open this programme, we are pleased directly following the Apostle’s Creed. to bring to the discography Death is The earliest musical seng of the swallowed up in victory, a verse anthem Preces and Responses appeared in for SSAABB verses, chorus and organ. John Merbecke’s The Booke of The music has been reconstructed by Common Praier Noted (1550), and by Peter James from the surviving the end of Tomkins’s life in 1656 more seventeenth-century sources – an than forty choral sengs of the preces had organ part, a tenor partbook, and a been wrien by the leading sixteenth- and separate source of the words – and seventeenth-century composers. the new printed edion was published Tomkins’s Preces and Responses form in 2000. This powerful and disncve surely one of the finest of these anthem opens with an intricate duet composions, surviving only in the Peterhouse Partbooks, which were with a sure sense of musical rhetoric. ‘presumptuous sins’, and, indeed, kept seems to have been influenced by produced in the second quarter of Anthony Boden has proposed a date innocent from the ‘great offence’. another member of the Chapel Royal, the seventeenth century. The Collect of composion around 1620 for this John Bull (1562/3–1628), whose own for the Day is sung here from an seng, placing it perhaps ten years The organ accompaniments on this such sengs Tomkins copied into his original 1589 Book of Common Prayer earlier than the more experimental recording are played on the Millennium manuscript Paris Rés 1122. printed by the depues of Christopher Fih Service. We might therefore see Organ built by Mander Organs, and Barker, ‘printer to the Queenes most Tomkins’s Fourth Service as the we are pleased to include three solo Give sentence with me, O God is a long excellent Maiese’. The original spelling culminaon of his earlier verse style, items in order to celebrate this and dramac seng of the enrety of is preserved in the transcripon below. before the nascent Baroquisms of chamber instrument’s fine sound. Psalm 43 for two bass voices and the Fih Service, which probably (and The first, a seng of the plainchant chorus. As in much of the composer’s Thomas Tomkins’s son Nathaniel tellingly) was wrien around the same anphon Gloria bi Trinitas is dated duet wring for equal voices, one voice (1599–1681) oversaw the print publicaon me as his Songs of 3.4.5. & 6. May 1648 by Tomkins in its source, generally makes a new melodic of his father’s posthumous Musica Deo Parts (1622). the authorial holograph Paris, statement before the second repeats sacra (1668), a set of five partbooks Bibliothèque Naonale, MS Rés 1122. the same phrase with some (usually drawing together the majority of his From the voice distribuons in the verse The piece belongs to the In nomine pitch) variaon. Later in each secon sacred output under the subtle anthems of Musica Deo sacra, it is clear tradion in instrumental music, the two solo voices combine, before ‘Musick dedicated to the Honor and that Tomkins was keen to write verses wherein composers of the the chorus joins in to repeat the final Service of God, and To the Use of for those who sang the contratenor sixteenth century and later composed words of each verse. The length of Cathedral and other Churches of part. Among these, Who can tell how polyphonic music that includes not this work allows Tomkins to build England, Especially of the Chapell-Royal o he offendeth, which sets the final only the chant cantus firmus but also some considerable energy towards the of King Charles the First’. The Fourth three verses of Psalm 19 is a parcularly some of the counterpoint added to end of the piece, and the final chorus Service is one of two verse sengs of fine example. The anthem is structurally it in the Benedictus of the Missa Gloria is parcularly thrilling. It is noteworthy the cancles for evensong to be simple; each verse of the psalm begins bi Trinitas by John Taverner that there are two independent bass included in Musica Deo sacra, and has with an organ introducon, before the (c.1490–1545). In addion to fragments parts in the final chorus while only not received representaon in the countertenor soloist delivers the verse, of the In nomine material, the chant one in all of the preceding choruses. discography since the Nunc dimis (only) at the end of which the chorus repeats melody is heard as a cantus firmus This expansion to six parts is a featured in the venerable Treasury of the final few words. This simplicity of in long notes predominantly in the relavely unusual move for Tomkins, English Church Music (1966). There is form foregrounds a highly engaged le hand while divisions in increasingly and is undoubtedly successful. great variety in Tomkins’s selecon response to the text, wherein the short note values and ever more of different combinaons of solo verse melody exploits the interval of virtuosic figuraons are wrien for the Reconstructed by Peter James from the voices in the verse secons, while a semitone as an expressive device to right hand. Tomkins’s parcipaon in surviving organ part in The Baen disncve head mofs and driven arculate the peoner’s desire to be the parcularly English tradion of Organ Book (Oxford, Bodleian Library, harmonic progressions are deployed cleansed from his ‘secret faults’, wring keyboard In nomine pieces MS Tenbury 791) and making its debut in the discography is Tomkins’s Seventh & 6. parts (1622). Itself in six parts, it verses for lower voices, and as such are are thy works are somewhat more Service. Despite the name by which it numbers among the four sacred pieces sung here by the Gentlemen of the choir. conservave, but in the laer some has come to be known, there is evidence in the collecon, and was dedicated The longest, Give ear to my words sets allusions to Byrd’s English anthems are that this verse seng of the Evensong ‘To my sonne Nathaniel Tomkins’. That it the opening three verses of Psalm 5. present, including the solo voice/full cancles Magnificat and Nunc dimis was included, like the Preces and Here, Tomkins demonstrates his assured texture displacement heard at the was the second to be composed by Responses, in the Peterhouse Partbooks and refined sense of textural control by opening of, to take but one example, Tomkins, perhaps in the first decade would suggest that it was used liturgically oming the Tenor part for the enrety the earlier composer’s O God give ear of the seventeenth century.