COMPOSERS: Byrd
LABELS: Gimell
ALBUM TITLE: Byrd
WORKS: Mass for Four Voices; Tristitia et Anxietas; Ne Irascaris, Domine; Vigilate; Prevent us, O Lord; O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth; Magnificat, from the Great Service; Ave Verum Corpus
PERFORMER: The Talis Scholars/Pter Phillips
CATALOGUE NO: GIMSA 592
Why prefer the CD to the DVD
(reviewed June 2004) of this
television broadcast on Byrd’s life?
The CD actually contains less music
than the DVD, but less can be
more. While the DVD illuminates
many aspects of Byrd’s writing, the
CD plunges the listener into Byrd’s
compositional thinking. Watching edited footage on DVD inevitably
affects what the listener hears first,
be it words, a specific vocal line, or
homophony overtaking polyphony.
Released from images, subtitles
and voiceovers, the Tallis Scholars’
performance – which revisits material
from throughout their recording
career – opens itself to many readings.
The CD thereby explores how the
richness of Byrd’s music allows every
listener to hear something different
more profoundly than does the DVD.
Peter Phillips draws out textinspired
musical gestures which the
DVD’s busy cuts between images can
mask, such as the explosive rhythms
on ‘repente’ (in Vigilate) or the
anguished hesitation of the opening
to Tristitia et Anxietas. Momentary
effects dovetail perfectly with the
controlled elegance of Phillips’
dynamics and tempo changes. The
singers’ facility for shaping phrases
and foregrounding different lines
leaps to attention on the CD, but on
DVD is again often overshadowed by
visuals. The DVD does alert listeners
to Tewkesbury Abbey’s crystalline
acoustic: CD listeners might confuse
this with expert sound engineering,
while in fact the recording is merely
faithful to the Abbey’s unique
separation of partials and afterglow
of resonance. Such intellectual
realisations aside, however, it is the
CD that reminds us most forcefully
of Byrd’s genius, and of the Tallis
Scholars’ talents as the foremost
interpreters of England’s foremost
composer. Berta Joncus