The William Byrd Edition, Vol. 6: Music for Holy Week Easter
$18
The William Byrd Edition, Vol. 6: Music for Holy Week Easter
|||Editorial Reviews
Product description
Musique pour la Semaine Sainte et pour Pâques / The Cardinall's Musick, dir. Andrew Carwood
"h3"Review "p"One of the most exciting things about the comprehensive trawl that The Cardinall's Musick are taking through Byrd's sacred music is that it is turning up some very rare fish indeed ÃÂ not exactly coelacanths, perhaps, but works that even fervent admirers of Byrd's music are unlikely to have heard in performance. Among the better-known pieces on this disc (all of which were printed by him in his two books of Gradualia of 1605-07) are the magnificent set of propers for Easter Day; even these are presently available on only one other recording. The eloquent penitential motet 'Plorans plorabit' is also heard occasionally, as is the four-part 'Christus resurgens', which starts out as an old-fashioned fantasy on a plainchant cantus firmus, but frees itself of that constraint in its second half. (It looks to me very much as if Byrd reworked an early piece, perhaps intended for instruments, and 'completed' it by setting the remainder of the text at a later date.) Most of the other works on the disc are hardly ever performed, though for different reasons. The antiphon 'Alleluia ÃÂ quae lucescit' is here given its liturgical context in a convincing reconstruction of a Vesper service for Holy Saturday, as Byrd almost certainly envisaged it. The other modest but exquisitely crafted three-part settings of Easter texts ('Haec dies', 'Angelus Domini descendit' and 'Post dies octo'), which stand together in the Gradualia, are reordered and presented as a group suitable for Low Sunday. In this The Cardinall's Musick benefit from the very latest research by David Skinner and others. Byrd's setting of the voces turbarum of the St John Passion don't normally attract much attention from choirs, since that is exactly what they are: the brief and scattered interjections which the crowd contributes to the plainsong narrative. They are as vivid as one would expect from a master such as Byrd, but strictly constrained by the liturgical context. The one remaining piece, 'Adoramus te, Christe', is the only example of a consort song in the whole of the Gradualia ÃÂ in other words a piece for solo voice with instrumental accompaniment. Robin Tyson sings it elegantly, and Patrick Russill's well-judged organ accompaniment makes a plausible substitute for that of a viol consort. The gait of Byrd's mature counterpoint is characterized by dotted-rhythm details that propel it like little springs, and to tell the truth I would have preferred throughout the disc more emphasis on pinpoint clarity of texture, less on blend and smoothness. But nevertheless this is a marvellous addition to our knowledge of a very great composer.Jeremy Noble -- From International Record Review - subscribe now