Tallis: Loquebantur variis linguis

More than half Tallis’ life was spent as a musician at the English Chapel Royal. During his time in royal service, four different monarchs sat on the throne, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Queen Mary I and Elizabeth I. The performers here have aimed for the intimate atmosphere of a chamber performance of the works generally with one voice to a part.

This recording is compiled from Armonico Consort's 'Naked Byrd' programme, featuring music by composers who wore their hearts on their sleeves and whose art saw their emotions laid bare, in an atmospheric concert where magical musical moments are intertwined with sublime passages of plainchant and violin improvisation.

The Armonico Consort is, at its heart, a highly talented vocal ensemble that stages a wide variety of concerts.The quality of the performances they stage is reflected in the praise they have recently received:

"Superb!" The Times

"A Beautiful Sound" BBC Radio 3

"Quite Stunning" Classic FM

"With the perfectly formed consort, it was an evening to savour" Emma Kirkby

16th-century England was a place of much religious change. It was a dangerous and confusing time and it is testament to their incredible skill and musical mastery that composers like Tallis and Byrd were able to produce such magnificent works in such troubled times. Their music left a lasting legacy, influencing some of our most celebrated 20th- and 21st-century composers and surviving over half a millennium to be performed as widely today as they have ever been.

This disc features some of the best-loved classics of Tudor and Jacobean church music together with madrigals by Tallis, Byrd and Gibbons. They are performed alongside pieces by Britten, Tippett and MacMillan including the Five Spirituals from A Child of Our Time and the Choral Dances from Gloriana. The Sixteen has performed this repertoire around the world over the last six years and is one of the ensemble’s most popular concert programmes.

The Grosvenor Chapel is a wonderful jewel of an early eighteenth-century building in Mayfair in central London. Its unique and original design influenced the architecture of many churches built in the US.

From its opening in 1731 the Grosvenor Chapel has enjoyed professional choral music of an enviable standard and this recording features a selection of choral music drawn from the wide range of repertoire sung by the renowned Grosvenor Chapel Choir in the Sunday morning service each week.

Over four hundred years of English music is represented, with works from Thomas Tallis to contemporary British composer, Jonathan Dove, together with an orchestral Mass by Mozart, and features the first recording of ‘Come, Thou Holy Paraclete’ by Francis Jackson, written for the Grosvenor Chapel Choir.

Booklet essay, sung texts & translations

Recording made in 1989

Thomas Tallis (c1505-85) lived through one of the most turbulent and dangerous periods in English history. Entering in to the service of Waltham Abbey in 1538 his employment looked secure, writing masses and music for the many religious festivals and services. Henry VIII’s simmering row with Rome over his divorce from Queen Katherine so he could marry Anne Boleyn finally boiled over, and in 1540 Waltham Abbey was ‘taken down’. The break with Rome, the dissolution of the monasteries meant that Tallis was out of work. He received severance pay, and with these funds purchased a quantity of musical manuscripts and a technical manual on polyphonic music. Armed with the knowledge from these materials, he obtained his next job as a member of Henry VIII’s Chapel Royal. Here Tallis weaved a dangerous path over the shifting sands of political intrigue and religious persecutions to serve not only Henry, but Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.

It is for the Anglican Church under Elizabeth that he made his greatest contribution to English music. If the Queen knew of his Catholic leanings, she was untroubled – in fact she was by all accounts far more tolerant of such things than either her Protestant brother Edward VI or her rabidly anti-Protestant Catholic sister ‘Bloody’ Mary. Tallis’s masterpiece, the 40 part motet Spem in alium was commissioned by Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. It was intended to surpass a work for 40 voices by Alessando Striggio, which is does with ease. By way of a footnote, Howard was executed in 1572 for his involvement in a catholic plot to assassinate Elizabeth.

‘This is King’s College Choir at its most typical: assured, technically precise, with a marvellously professional attention to detail, but quite unfussed; a precision which simply lets the music speak for itself, in the characteristic acoustic of the great perpendicular chapel. In the two Lamentations settings one has the rare chance of hearing the men alone – a fine rich sound. Their calm restraint is admirable, the balance of the voices impeccable and there is some remarkable phrasing’ Gramophone, December 1990