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The Ecclesiastical and the Ecstatic New York
Old St. Patrick’s Church Basilica
09/06/2024 -
Thomas Tallis: Loquebantur variis linguis – Suscipe Quæso, Domine – Audivi vocem de cœlo – A New Commandment/If ye love me – In manus tuas, Domine – Lamentations of Jeremiah I, II – Psalm 2, Psalm 42 from Parker’s Psalter – O sacrum convivium – Salvator mundi – Gaude Gloriosa, Dei Mater
ResFacta Vocal Ensemble: Madeline Healey, Aine Hakamatsuka, Marisa Curcio, Sea Han (Sopranos), Timothy Parsons, Kate Maroney, Kristen Dubenion-Smith (Altos), Andrew Fuchs, Steven Caldicott Wilson, John Russell, Sam Denler (Tenors), Jonathan Woody, Enrico Lagasca, Edmund Milly, Paul Max Tipton (Basses), Ryan James Brandau (Conductor, Artistic Director)
Res Facta Vocal Ensemble (© Res Facta)
“As he dyd lyve, so also did he dy,
“In myld and quyet sort (O happy man!)
“To God ful oft for mercy did he cry,
“Wherefore he lyves, let deth do what he can.”
From plaque (now lost) dedicated to Thomas Tallis
“I intend, before the endgame looms, to die sitting in a chair in my own garden with a glass of brandy in my hand and Thomas Tallis on the iPod, the latter because Thomas’s music could lift even an atheist a little bit closer to Heaven.”
Terry Pratchett
Those of us growing up believing that Thomas Tallis was the remote appendix of a Vaughan Williams lament had a lot to learn. But nowhere near as much as the ResFacta Vocal Ensemble last night showed us.
Not merely showing but in a dozen rare works which answered–in my mind–many questions, both historical and spiritual.
The historical conundrum was how–in an era where Catholics were murdered, hunted and left to rot in the Tower–did Queen Elizabeth put up with a composer who was fervently Catholic? Tallis’ long involved history (he lived to be 80 years old!) is too complex for this piece. His compromises with the Catholic Church and Established Church, his changes of venues...
So one may as well take the romantic way out–-which is partly true–that Queen Elizabeth I was as intrigued with the interplay of this music as the interplay of Shakespeare’s later characters that she “forgave” his transgressions!
Then we have the relation between last night’s concert and Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral with the Tudor history. It’s hardly known, but the Constitution tacitly was not applicable to women, African-Americans–and Catholics. Not until 1784 were priests allowed to preach. And 20 years later, this Basilica was legally constructed.
It is still a magnificent church–but that presented another problem. On recordings or YouTube, the sounds of the Tallis Scholars or Oxford Camerata are clear, eloquent, the Latin or English words are sharp, easily understood. In a basilica of this size, the reverberations of the 15 voices, frequently in five or six contrapuntal lines, are inevitably blurred.
Don’t misunderstand. ResFacta (Latin for a Renaissance term meaning “composed, not improvised”) is a professional choir of the most impactful and even thrilling vocal sounds. Yet in a cathedral-like atmosphere, one’s appreciation of “angelic” hordes is, to a nasty old music critic tones rolling over each other.
Before going into the “spiritual” question, one must consider just how damned inventive Thomas Tallis (sorry, Sir Thomas Tallis) was. Yes, equally adept Palestrina was a gorgeous contrapuntalist, but his inventions were, frankly. Boring. Worthy of respect. That was it.
We all know Tallis’ genius (the 40‑voice Spem in alium is the greatest ever written), but last night we were presented with anthems, psalms, Jeremiads, and astonishing prayers that were emotional, hearty, sometimes literally partnered with the words. Last night, the program showed more than compositional dexterity, it showed an intensity that was both mighty and personal.
The opening Loquebantur variis linguis (“The Apostles sung in many tongues”) could have been a seven‑voiced hymn, the voices swirling around the words. Suscipe quæso, Domine was actually seven different voices, the sounds of “one who confesses” rising and falling like Debussy’s waves. Unlike other church music of the time, this actually moved this listener.
Knowing the history of the times, the two English-language anthems, beautiful in themselves, were a compromise with the ban on Latin words.
Basilica of Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral/T.Tallis
(© Virgilio Rodriguez/Etching by Gerard Vandergucht, created 150 years after the composer’s death)
Both the Second Psalm and In manus tuas, Domine had shadows of 400 years in the future. The first had the theme used by Vaughan Williams. The second had words, and even some music which sounded familiar. Of course! I realized later that Caroline Shaw had created a secular motet with the same words, with some of the same themelets interlaced into her wonderful music.
As the short evening (about 75 minutes) went on, each piece had individual signatures, methods, antiphonies and echoes until the very last Gaude Gloriosa, Dei Mater. As lengthy as the preceding Lamentation, this work, for the first time, had sopranos soaring into the utmost heights of the sanctuary.
And that led me into the spiritual question.
Piety was natural for parishioners in the pre-scientific 16th Century, a hundred years before the first microscope, before Descartes and Newton and Spinoza. Bur how did our last century give birth to the most fervent Catholicism from our greatest minds. How did the Jewish convert Simone Weil, or Gerard Manley Hopkins or Flannery O’Connor or Thomas Merton switch from piercing logical minds to belief in the Church?
Blame it on Thomas Tallis and his ilk. His works were not four‑square Protestant anthems, they weren’t the symbolic, monotonous chants of Judaism, Buddhism, Islam. The music here almost literally brought those minds out of the mundane, the laborious, the cerebral into another universe altogether.
We non-believers believe the music of Tallis sung by ResFacta was the most glorious human expressions. They, the believers, felt that only a Divine Spirit could produce such heavenly sounds. Both are correct. The heavens of Tallis and the universe of ourselves have room for ideas liturgical and secular.
With infinite ideas between.
Harry Rolnick
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