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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Sixteen's survey of the Eton Choirbook, volume 2: Angels still singing in England,
By
This review is from: The Crown of Thorns: Music from the Eton Choirbook, Vol. 2 (Audio CD)
In the upheavals wreaked by the English Reformation triggered by King Henry VIII's rejection of Roman Catholicism, most of the Latin liturgical and devotional music hitherto composed was violently destroyed, often with the institutions and buildings that harbored the manuscripts that contained it, and it is something of a miracle that any of it survived at all. What survived was passed on to us in a large part through the preservation of the Eton Choirbook, a richly illuminated manuscript collection kept at Eton College. Only 64 out of the original 93 compositions contained in the original manuscript remain, complete or in part. Harry Christophers and his vocal ensemble The Sixteen first tackled the Eton Choirbook in the early 1980s through a collection published by Meridian, still in print (see my review of Stabat Mater: Music from the Eton Choir Book). In the early to late 1990s, they returned to that source for Collins Classics, in a more thorough survey, which ultimately totaled 5 CDs. Collins is now gone, but fortunately those CDs and the rest of the recordings of The Sixteen have been reissued on the ensemble's label, Coro, which is how I have them. The present disc, volume 2 of the series, has been reissued as The Crown of Thorns: Eton Choirbook Volume II, but it's good to see that it still sells at bargain price in its original guise.This music is sublime. I discovered it, by chance, more than a decade ago, through the Tallis Scholar's recording of the choral music of William Cornysh (about that see my review of William Cornysh: Stabat Mater), but it is only now that I've come to explore more, through The Sixteen's Meridian CD and now this superb anthology. I'm no specialist of English Renaissance music and I tend to bundle everything in a common category that goes from Dunstable to Byrd, although a century and a half separate them. But, already through Cornysh and now with all these selections from the Eton Choirbook, this music gives me a kick that I don't recall having ever experienced with Byrd or Tallis. I pulled out my CDs those two composers, to see if my earlier impressions were confirmed, and if so, to try and understand why. In the Byrd masses I selected the Tallis Scholars, who had been such a revelation in Cornysh (Byrd: 3 Masses by The Tallis Scholars), and in Tallis' Lamentations I took my ECM CD of the Hilliard Ensemble (Tallis: Lamentations of Jeremiah). Impression confirmed, and here is my explanation as to why: sopranos. They fly and gambol in the stratosphere with heart-rending purity, and each of their leaps is an additional emotional stab in the heart. If angels have voices, I hope this is how they sound. The vocal virtuosity, the sinuous and sensuous vocal lines, the huge compass are not reserved to the sopranos, of course. In fact, this very virtuosity of writing it is a shared characteristic of all these composers, that apparently was abandoned by their post-Reformation successors. As beautiful as it is, the music of Byrd and Tallis is simpler, melodically and harmonically, more serene and "un-eventful", conveying less of a sense of exultation (the composer Wilfrid Mellers, who wrote the illuminating liner notes of the Tallis/ECM CDs, has a brilliant if perhaps a bit contrived explanation for that simplification of the music, relating it to Protestantism's centering on the individual and on the social solidarities of the individuals, a consequence being the importance for words to be understood and for the rhythms to follow the inflexions of the spoken word, making "the human import [...] therefore more readily manifest than it is in the labyrinths of Catholic counterpoint". Se non è vero è ben trovato). Conclusion: Henry VIII and the Reformation chased the Angels from England. Their loss. Highlights from this installment are Richard Davy's Stabat Mater, in which I hear a tenderness that I hadn't encountered in other compositions from this source, and Cornysh's own, florid Stabat Mater - sung here a semi tone lower than by The Tallis Scholars which, strangely, on A-B comparison, sounds like a huge leap. As in the Salve Regina contained on volume 1, I prefer the version by The Tallis Scholars, on account of its leaner sonic perspective (one voice a part if I hear well and souding that way; The Sixteen may also perform so but their more resonant acoustics change the perspective), more spotlighted and ecstatic sopranos and more exultant tempos - and semi-tone superiority, which takes it right into the stratosphere! Still, the more contemplative, more church-than-chapel sounding approach of The Sixteen is very defensible and quite beautiful in its own right. I also marginally prefer their reading of John Browne's Stabat Mater to their earlier Meridian recording, on account of its greater urgency and homogeneity of voices. Strangely, they take it here a full tone lower than in 1982, and half a tone lower than the Tallis Scholars on their Browne recital, John Browne: Music from the Eton Choirbook. Here, the Sixteen's more resonant church acoustics (and, again, greater urgency and more varied response to the texts varied moods) lend the piece a taking grandeur that the Tallis scholar's more intimate sonic perspective doesn't approach. In my first sentence I spoke of "Latin liturgical and devotional music" and the liner notes, by John Milsom, make a precise distinction between the two: liturgical music is the one performed at Mass and the Offices, which followed a precisely established liturgy, while the latter was used during other acts of daily worship and prayers, also held in the chapel, that for their structure and contents followed the statutes of individual institutions, not the liturgy. Not that this distinction has any bearing on the content of the music. Two English songs not from the Eton Choirbook are included, "to reconstruct another part of Eton College's musical diet in the late fifteenth century": John Browne's "Jesu mercy, how may this be" and the obscure Sheryngham's (even his first name isn't known) "Ah, gentle Jesu", both from the Fayrfax manuscript kept at the British Library; Eton college no longer has such a book of songs and seasonal carols but, based on the statutes of Winchester College, John Milsom surmises that such a book existed alongside the collection of Latin liturgical music. Sheryngham's song is a minor disappointment, as it seems to repeat way too often some trite melodic formulas, and it sounds much longer than its circa 11 minutes. If you are limited to one CD go rather to volume 1 - but it would be a great mistake to limit yourself to only one, especially given these prices. The other instalments in the series (in their original Collins releases) are: The Rose and the Ostrich Feather - Eton Choirbook Vol I The Pillars of Eternity - Eton Choirbook Vol III / The Sixteen The Flower of All Virginity - Music from the Eton Choirbook Vol 4 The Voices of Angels: Music from the Eton Choirbook Volume V (Collins) And this same volume 2/Collins has another entry, so you may want to check the price - but I ran out of authorized links: you will find it under ASIN B0000268IE.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Eton Choirbook V.2,
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Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Crown of Thorns: Music from the Eton Choirbook, Vol. 2 (Audio CD)
I had great service and received exactly the great music CD thatI had expected. What more could a person ask for???Thanks
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