These 28 singers from King’s College London have successfully tackled an ambitious polyphonic programme: Taverner’s monumental six-part Missa corona spinea and a handful of motets by Byrd and Taverner, none of which is without its stern individual demands. The Mass was possibly intended for Wolsey’s Cardinal College in Oxford, to which Taverner was appointed Informator choristarum in 1526. This may explain the abundance of exuberant writing for the high voices, sopranos here though intended for trebles by Taverner. The youthful first entry of the London students steadies itself as the music proceeds, settling into determinedly purposeful strength and flow in the abundance of almost unending melismata of the early Tudor style.
The choir have done us a service in bringing this marvellously varied music to our ears, varied through its ever-changing use of differing timbres and combinations of voices, which move imperceptibly from texture to texture. I relished particularly the Sanctus, which ebbed and flowed from duo to trio and finally to full choir, and also the second Agnus Dei with its double gimel (two treble lines in counterpoint) floating on high. Taverner’s responsory Audivi from Matins for the Feast of All Saints uses the same high-voices divisi technique to represent, with the addition of a fifth voice – presumably the alternatim chant? – the five Wise Virgins called to the marriage feast. The 16 girls, heirs to Cardinal College’s 16 choristers, acquitted themselves well, and I only regretted the much weaker chant sections, sung as so often too fast for the ethereal majesty of Taverner’s music