It’s hard to believe this weather.
Yesterday topped out around 70 degrees, which have been a new record for this date in the Great Lake State.
Today – even though it started with heavy rain during the wee hours that tapered off into a drizzle this morning – promises to reach 51 degrees by mid afternoon.
This is an amazing winter in Michigan. I love it.
My wife, however, does not. She prefers winter to be winter – which, to her, means piles of blinding white snow, blisteringly cold winds, and open fields in which to cross-country ski. (What can I say? She’s from Alaska.)
I’m back at Panera, enjoying another Asiago bagel, toasted, served with plain cream cheese and a cup of Light Roast coffee into which I added cinnamon and honey along with a generous splash of half and half. For some reason, cinnamon has become my new coffee craze. I hope cinnamon is a spice with some sort of medicinal properties. I’d like to think I’m deriving some health benefits from my coffee.
Anyway, I’m listening to a CD – Thomas Tallis Music at the Reformation, to be exact – that could be a carbon copy of yesterday’s. In fact, every track on this CD sounds pretty close to the same song multiplied 15 times.
Choral music, especially from the Renaissance, is very nice. And, at times, I feel my heart soar, especially when the female singers reach notes high above the others.
Once again the polyphonic voices blend seamlessly and offer a pleasant, if not terribly exciting, diversion from the harshness of reality that is 2024 in these United States.
When I listen to these songs by Thomas Tallis, I am transported back to the times I spent with the monks at Gethsemani.
Just the Facts
CD 2 consists of 15 tracks that total 70:32 minutes.
Apparently, they were recorded digitally and mastered digitally (“DDD” appears on the back of the sleeve).
Most of the lyrics are written in Latin, and all are known as sacred music.
The Brilliant Classics box sets includes a free CD ROM that contains liner notes, lyrics., etc. The liner notes are quite exceptional, really. Very thorough. The lyrics are essential.
For example, the last track – #15 “Te Deum” – is sung in English (as are many of the songs on this CD) and the lyrics reveal a profound reverence for God found only in the Bible, or in a monastery in the Middle Ages:
15 Te deum
We praise thee O God: We ’knowledge thee to be the Lord.
All the earth doth worship thee, the Father everlasting.
To thee all angels cry aloud, the heavens and all the powers therein. To thee cherubin and seraphin continually do cry,
Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of Sabaoth.
Heaven and earth are replenished with the majesty of thy glory. The glorious company of the apostles, praise thee.
The goodly fellowship of the prophets, praise thee.
The noble army of martyrs, praise thee.
The holy church throughout all the world doth ’knowledge thee; The Father of an infinite majesty.
Thy honourable, true, and only Son.
The Holy Ghost, also being the comforter.
Thou art the king of glory, O Christ.
Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.
When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, thou didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb.
So far, I’ve discovered Thomas Tallis was born 519 years ago, he wrote mostly choral music, no paintings exist of him from the time he was alive (so nobody knows what he looked like), his music is being performed on this CD by Chapelle du Roi, “an ensemble of eight singers, many of whom are in the first few years of their professional careers. The choir specialises in performing and recording sacred music of the late medieval, and Renaissance periods,” under the direction of Alistair Dixon, according to their web site.
Alistair Dixon, also according to the aforementioned web site, “was born in 1961 and brought up in Ware, Hertfordshire. He was educated as a music scholar at Millfield School in Somerset where he studied the violin and organ. He graduated from Liverpool University in 1982 having continued his organ studies with Noel Rawsthorne and Ian Tracey.”
I also discovered that these recordings of Thomas Tallis’ music, performed by Chapelle du Roi and conducted by Alistair Dixon, were recorded between 1996 and 2004, and licensed by Signum Records, which is owned by Alistair Dixon. They first appeared as a 9-CD set released by Signum in early 2005 before (I presume) Brilliant Classics licensed them for release on their own label in the box set to which I now listen.
From the Brilliant Classics liner notes, written by Nick Sandon, for CD 2:
Most—conceivably all—of the music by Thomas Tallis included on this recording dates from the 1540s. It illustrates many of the ways in which Tallis and his fellow-composers responded to the enormous changes in religious ideology and practice that took place during this decade.
The five-part Te Deum, a setting of the first canticle at Anglican Mattins, is thought to date from the late 1540s, although it survives only in a 17th century source. Tallis’s achievement in this work is remarkable. Consisting of a very long succession of brief and repetitive clauses, the text of the Te Deum is difficult to set to music without falling into short- windedness and incoherence. One might have thought that the plainness of the style current in England during the later 1540s would make such lapses inevitable. Yet here, with deceptively simple means, Tallis succeeds in creating a work on a grand scale with a strong sense of momentum and coherence, and in reconciling the rival demands of contrast and continuity.
Just the Feelings
Recording quality: 5
Overall musicianship/vocals: 5
CD liner notes: 5
How does this make me feel: 4
It’s weird and kind of an honor (and quite stirring, really) to be listening to music that was written nearly half a millennia ago. The liner notes help set the stage and bring these pieces of music alive. Bravo to Nick Sandon!
Despite all the feels, this isn’t music that I’d choose for active listening. It’s music that sounds like that which reverberates off walls in a monastery during one of the Liturgy of the Hours. (Without the female singers, of course. Monks caught with a women wandering the halls would be busted down to buck privates.)
For me, music for active listening is Anton Bruckner or Dave Brubeck or Yes or Kansas. Progressive Rock requires active listening. Monk-like chants do not.
But that’s okay. Not all music has to be complicated, guitar-driven, Jon Anderson-lyrical mind excursions.
Sometimes, it just has to be Thomas Tallis, as performed by Chapelle du Roi, conducted by Alistair Dixon.