The Great Service
is one of the pinnacles of Byrd’s ever-exquisite
craftsmanship. A Great Service was one
of the three styles of canticle setting
which developed in the reign of Elizabeth
I, thankfully a monarch who liked music
and was glad to see it reinstated in
church services. Great Services had
a number of soloists and were large-scale
and musically complex, as opposed to
the homophonic "short service"
and the "verse service" with
"verse" (solo) singers.
This disc reconstructs
the service with the inclusion of some
of Byrd’s better-known anthems and two
glorious and innovative organ interludes,
here expertly played by Robert Quinney,
from My Lady Nevell’s Book.
The Great Service
is a dramatic work in which Byrd makes
full use of any available contrasts,
setting high voice against low, soloists
against choir, and the two sides of
choir - the decani and cantoris - against
each other (as in Short Services), and
sometimes even getting them to represent
different characters. In the Te Deum,
for example, the decani play the Apostles
while the cantoris sing as the martyrs.
The Anthems are also wonderfully complex,
as Byrd never uses any fewer than five
voices. I particularly loved the word-painting
in the Anthems – the rising motif on
the word "rising" in Christ
rising again from the dead - a beautiful
anthem with its uplifting ending "restored
to life" - and the depiction of
the blasts of a trumpet on the words
"Blow the trumpet in the new moon"
in the final track on the disc, Sing
Joyfully.
The performance impresses
in that the choir sing with great clarity
and confidence, easily equal to the
complexity of the service. Yet at times
I found the choristers just a little
too nasal, and the singing a little
heavy and plodding. It is a beautiful
performance, but it does need more brightness
and liveliness. There are two other
versions of this work available - Kings
College Cambridge on EMI or the Tallis
Scholars on Gimell. I prefer the Kings
College Cambridge version, with Stephen
Cleobury conducting - the Tallis Scholars
disc misses the point, I feel, with
its omission of boys’ voices - but this
makes a close second.
Em Marshall
The Choir of Westminster Abbey/James O’Donnell
for
details
