The Song of Songs was a happy hunting ground for composers of the baroque, who found its erotic atmosphere so similar to that of pastoral Arcadia that they could use the same idiom for secular songs and motets. But it comes as a surprise to find these supposedly 'classical' composers of the earlier sixteenth century setting Nigra sum— ''I am black but comely''—with so much enthusiasm. Not that their settings reflect the eroticism. Of the three motets on this disc, only that of Victoria can be said to be highly charged, his gift for choral sonorities giving a distinctive emotionalism. Those of Lheritier and De Silva (do not worry, gentle reader, if you have heard of neither—they really are little known even to the experts) are more Netherlandish in their polyphony; as indeed is Palestrina, whose parody mass on Lheritier's motet is an expansive, almost 'learned' piece, different in many ways from the concise style of his later music.
The performances on this recording reveal the sheer beauty of all this music—and that of the minor composers is not less so than Palestrina's. The Tallis Scholars are a well balanced group, with women trebles whom it is very difficult to tell are not boys, in their purity of tone. At times, the beauty becomes slightly monotonous, mainly because Phillips rarely shades off the ends of phrases, thus giving a sense of intense sound all the time; and his occasional speeding-up would not be necessary if the phrases were better shaped. The recording sometimes is not so clear as polyphony demands, but this is a small price to pay for the gorgeous acoustic of Merton College Chapel, Oxford.'