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, even in such unlikely places as the settings of the Hebrew letters (Ghimel, Daleth, etc....). The trebles join the men for the four great responsories—for Candlemas, Easter, Pentecost and Trinity—all of them dating probably from the reign of Mary. All four are sung complete with plainchant verse, Gloria and full repeats. In Dum transisset Sabbatum—a serenely subdued performance, taken down a fifth—the boys come into their own, singing their chant line confidently, with a clear, sustained legato.
To take part in a performance of the 40-part motet, Spem in alium, is a unique experience and must be a high point in the life of many generations of English singers. Boris Ord with the Cambridge University Music Society, in the late 1930s, started the ball rolling. David Willcocks followed in the 1960s. More recently, in 1986, Peter Phillips and The Tallis Scholars made their breathtaking Gimell recording with its bell-like clarity in Merton College, Oxford, and now there is a whole spate of recordings, dating from the summer of 1989: Andrew Parrott with the Taverner Consort and Choir in St John-at-Hackney in East London (EMI); David Hill in Winchester Cathedral with the Cathedral Choir and the College Quiristers (Hyperion); and finally, this King's recording, also on home ground. Parrott raises the pitch a semitone, and Phillips a whole tone (to A), possibly to make it easier for the ear to follow the movement of the lower parts. Cleobury and Hill keep to the written pitch, in spite of the problems of resonance in both their buildings. The Taverner performance has the distinction and advantage of using a single voice to a part, which clarifies the counterpoint but at the same time lays bare a certain imbalance between the choirs and reveals a hint of strain in some of the men's voices. It seems, however, quite unnecessary to double the bass line with instruments, and it is unlikely that Tallis ever intended this.
Of the four, Hill adopts the slowest tempo, a speed judged essential for the vast cathedral. The impression of remoteness and depth is almost overwhelming and this Winchester performance gains, from such distancing, a quite remarkable spiritual quality. Cleobury opts for a slightly faster tempo than the other three, at the price of a certain loss of definition in the fuller sections. But this is an impassioned and moving account with an immediacy that brings the text of Judith's prayer well to the fore. It is performed with a sure grasp of every detail of Tallis's monumental motet, with an inner understanding, too, perhaps, of the composer's motivation, as suggested in JM's excellent insert note.
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