The coronation of a Roman Catholic king in Westminster Abbey in 1685 involved recasting the service so as not to offend the new monarch. James was determined, for example, that he would not receive Holy Communion. The deficiencies of the revised liturgy were to some extent covered up by the lavish provision of choral music, little of which survived in public affection, partly because four of the texts were later set by Handel, that great stealer of hearts, beside whose work these earlier settings would immediately seem old fashioned. Our inquisitive age, however, loves to reveal unsuspected beauties from the outmoded past and we are constantly invited to step back in time and experience events as they were.
This excellent CD, by using the clean confines of St John's, Smith Square in London, instead of the coronation theatre of Westminster Abbey, does in fact invite us to a seat right among the singers and musicians. Authentic musicians they are, too, which means the instruments meet the singers on equal terms or less and can never overwhelm them. The straight-cut string playing flourishes in a gentle acoustic shine and despite the resistance of non-vibrato playing, Simon Preston draws out a quite heady nectar of passionate tone, without too many of those predictable carbuncular sweelings which can be such a dead bore. Against this super stringiness, the men of the choir vibrate with free joviality (the Abbey basses have always had a distinctly thermal effect) and the boys yield an impassive steeliness, replaced by translucent roundness for loud high notes. The music provides a fascinating insight into the subtleties of word-setting which the mid-seventeenth century enjoyed in England. Repeated playings will not only increase the joy but prove the wisdom of accepting such invitations as this to enter into the very spirit of another age, whose literature has an advantage over its music in being more familiar to us. Quite apart from the splendours of Blow and Purcell, the ebullient pomp of William Turner's The King shall rejoice is an exciting discovery, though not written for this coronation (what he did write was lost). Highly recommended.
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