John Sheppard: Missa Cantate
The Tallis Scholars/Peter Philips
Gimell CDGIM053 76:22 mins
John Sheppard (c1515-58) was certainly an ingenious and interesting composer as this revelatory recording amply demonstrates. He lived across the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary when there were turbulent switches between the catholic and protestant religions, and here we get his Latin church music mostly written in the 1550s under Mary.
The Missa Cantate is a sophisticated work for six voices, including two contra-tenor parts (not ‘countertenor’ as the booklet has it – a countertenor is a type of voice, not a part name). It is performed here with clarity, poise and excellent tuning. The high voices are all female singers (not boys) but they blend perfectly and lend a very welcome brightness to the sound. In long polyphonic sacred works there is always the challenge of giving some directional shape to the performance as a whole. The Tallis Scholars do this with changes of pace and mood – as in the slower ‘Et incarnatus est’ section – though perhaps more could have been achieved in the jubilant ‘Et resurrexit’ passage too, and with slightly more pliancy in the dynamic shading throughout. Especially effective is their performance of Laudam dicite; its fluid chordal language suits them and they make the most of its astonishing harmonic false relations in the ‘Amen’ section. The joyful Gaude Maria is a little understated and in the Beata nobis they slightly chew their words, but their account of the Missa Cantate clearly surpasses the recordings by Harry Christophers and Paul McCreesh. Anthony Pryer