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Missa Corona Spinea

Director of the Tallis Scholars, Peter Phillips.

A High Point

John Taverner’s Missa Corona spinea represents a high point in Tudor English choral polyphony. And  that's a “high point” in more ways than one.  The Tallis Scholars 2015 release of the Missa  Corona Spinea take the ensemble’s trebles, Janet Coxwell and Amy Haworth, to the highest highs of their vocal ranges, often hovering nearly an octave above the next nearest part. The effect is a striking one, heard from the very opening notes of the disc.

Upward Transposition and a Double Gimell

Questions of performance pitch are hotly debated, and the pitch of Tudor church music is no different. In the 1970s, David Wulstan made the case for “upward transposition of a minor third” for most Latin English church music composed before 1600. Wulstan based his theories on the pitch of organs from that same time and place, on clefs, on his own research, and documentary evidence. The idea that Tudor music was sung higher than today’s pitch isn’t without its detractors, and indeed, there are performances of Taverner's and his contemporaries' music sung at the “original” written pitch. But right or wrong, the Tallis Scholars make their own case and achieve a performance at high pitch that is impressive in its own rite, full and balanced but also radiant and sparkling in a way that all but leaves ears buzzing even after it finishes. This is no more the case than in the second Agnus Dei at the qui tollis. Here, we encounter something called a “double gimell” in which both the treble and the mean line are each divided in two. The result is a timbre even more heady and exhilarating.

Cardinal Thomas Wosley

The high voices bring up another issue of performance practice. Male trebles would be the expectation for Taverner’s music, but the Tallis Scholars use female trebles in this recording. Given the virtuosity and endurance it requires, Taverner must have had a team of extraordinary trebles at his disposal. If there’s one place that could boast such fine singers in 16th century England, it would have be Cardinal Wosley’s chapel choir. And it’s for Cardinal Thomas Wosley that the Tallis Scholars' director, Peter Phillips, speculates the Missa Corona spinea was written, perhaps on the occasion of Henry VIII’s 1527 visit to Wosley’s newly founded Cardinal College in Oxford.

Dum transisset Sabbatum

Besides Missa Corona Spinea, the Tallis Scholars also sing two separate settings of Taverner’s smaller liturgical work Dum transisset Sabbatum for Easter Sunday. Since both Dum transisset Sabbatum I and Dum transisset Sabbatum II share the same underlying cantus firmus chant melody, it’s very nice to hear them back to back on the same recording. After the blood-pumping Missa Corona Spinea, these are a calmer way to end the CD.

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