Gramophone - October 2007

Editor's Choice

TAVERNER
Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas
Christ Church Cathedral Choir/Stephen Darlington

An important recording this, it is the first of the great Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas by an all-male liturgical choir. As the Christ Church Choir's conductor Stephen Darlington says in his interview, the work had rather fallen out of that tradition, partly because of the sheer difficulty of some of the writing. The results sound fresh and properly devotional, though they may be controversial.
James Inverne

Review

Christ Church are definitely the type of choir Taverner wanted.

The Choir of Christ Church could hardly have made a more ambitious return to recording after their valuable but variable series of Nimbus discs. Taverner's Mass is the chef d'oeuvre of the greatest composer of his time, yet it has never before been recorded by the kind of liturgical choir which he had in mind; this is a courageous and significant act of reclamation. Courageous, because Taverner's demands of phrase and melodic continuity are more subtle, but no less daunting in their own way, than those presented by Palestrina and Gombert. Performing at written pitch helps; The Sixteen are a semitone up, the Tallis Scholars follow David Wulstan's lead and sing a full third higher.

Those familiar with the Nimbus Taverner disc (10/93) will know that Stephen Darlington and his choir aren't afraid of a few dirty edges around the sound; this is a world away from the hygienic surfaces of the Gabrieli Consort on their new DG disc; also from the shapely halo of King's, Cambridge. The Christ Church trebles have a full-frontal attack to a phrase that is more commonly heard from middle-European choirs. That makes it more susceptible to the glare of the microphone, but the recording itself (produced by Jonathan Freeman-Attwood) dares to go in closer than Nimbus ever did. The risk largely pays off in tutti passages of startling immediacy, contrasted with more solo verse sections than is usual (to rest tired voices?). Some distended cadences leave you wondering whether they can possibly have the puff to sustain them. Sometimes they can't (at the end of the first paragraph of the Sanctus); often they can (the "Hosanna" at the end of the famous Benedictus). Both profession ensembles achieve seamless continuity by sleight of voice such as "Sanctu" and "Dominu" (sic), not to mention "Leni sun eli" (can you guess what it is yet?) from The Sixteen. Christ Church's punchy consonants are more risky but ultimately truer to the music. The motets are no less individual in concept and execution, including a cheeky but winning slide at 2'22" in Mater Christi; like the rest of the disc it will divide opinion, but it demands to be taken seriously.
Peter Quantrill

Interview

Stephen Darlington

'This is the first recording of the Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas with an all-male choir (though there are already some very fine recordings with mixed-voice choirs). I suppose one reason is that it's very technically demanding. Another is that it's not a work you can really do liturgically these days - these great pre-Reformation pieces don't fit easily alongside contemporary liturgical patterns. We did it in May, and in preparation for this recording I did a few of the movements as anthems as well. I wanted it to be such a part of the spirit of the choir that it would come from within.

There are different levels of challenge. One of them is simply the virtuosity of the vocal writing, some of the solo passages are incredibly difficult, like the penultimate section of the Agnus Dei, or the "et in unum Dominum' in the Credo where the rhythmic patterns are very complex. Another difficulty is to do with the choral virtuosity which is demanded by the sense of interaction between the different voices. You need a very strong sense of interplay from within the choir, like at the end of the Gloria, the "cum Sancto Spiritu", where there are so many answering phrases from within the choir. But probably most difficult of all is just getting the sense of the broad sweep of the music, and the relationship to the cantus firmus, and the awareness of it being there in the background all the time, the heartbeat of the piece.

We know the work was regarded very highly at the time by the way that the "In nomine Domini" of the Benedictus was taken up - there are well over 100 versions of it, and up to the time of Purcell it was used as the basis of many compositions, it was just so popular. I think it was the beauty of it, the elegance of it, the fact that in that section you get the whole of the cantus firmus in even notes permeating the whole section.

Interview by Martin Cullingford

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