Recently
I stood under the tower in the huge
parish church of St. Botolph in Boston
[details].
I had beside me the grave slab to ‘John
Taverner – Musician, died 1545’. Plugged
in to my portable, if somewhat outmoded,
CD player, I listened to the Gloria
from this mass, I felt about as close
to the composer as it’s possible to
be. This indeed was the church in which
he had spent a great deal of his life
in the town which he knew. However we
do not know when he was born or where
but it’s most probable that he was a
Lincolnshire man as he had served an
apprenticeship in the parish of Tattershall.
Lord Cromwell’s castle next to the large
collegiate church, which also had a
fine choir, is not that far from Boston.
Incidentally Tattersall Church often
plays Taverner’s music as you walk around.
As the sun glittered
through the clerestory windows of St.Botolph’s,
windows inserted in Taverner’s lifetime,
the clarity of his lines and the magnificent
brightness of the late medieval church
came together.
The late Colin Hand’s
book on the composer (Eulenberg; London
1978) is worth finding for the sharpness
of its analysis of all eight masses.
Of this one he comments, in comparing
it to the vast ‘Missa Corona Spinea’
(p. 46), that "it reveals even
greater mastery of construction and
balance and may justifiably be regarded
as Taverner’s finest work". To
create this balance Taverner is always
varying textures with long sometimes
quite melismatic sections for two or
three solo voices contrasted with full
choir, then lower voices only, then
higher ones. In addition the complex
‘In Nomine’ section of the Benedictus
was long admired by Elizabethan and
later composers as an example of ideal
counterpoint over the plainsong tenor.
It was used for didactic purposes no
doubt and also as a basis of many other
‘In Nomines’ including those by Purcell
and more recent composers; indeed I
have used it myself. Also, each movement
begins in more or less the same way
using a technique called a ‘head-motif’.
For me, this is, in
fact the third recording I possess of
this mass. They are all quite different.
The Taverner Choir under Andrew Parrot
put the mass into its liturgical context
as was common practice in the late 1980s
with therefore, yards and yards of plainsong
(on EMI nla). Then I have a wonderful
recording on Glossa (GCD 921401) called
‘The Marriage of England and Spain’
which puts the mass into a supposed
context of the royal marriage surrounded
by motets and instrumental pieces by
other English and Spanish composers
(The Orchestra of the Renaissance under
Richard Cheetham). Cheetham gets through
the music quite a bit faster than Darlington
as the instruments seem to want to move
the polyphony forward. I also own a
recording by The Sixteen on Hyperion,
a version which has been called ‘intimate’
and which was recorded in 1984 (CDA55052).
There is also a version by The Tallis
Scholars, which I don’t know, but both
of those groups use women on the soprano
lines and quite often in the alto lines
too. So why should I keep this new version?
Stephen Darlington
writes in the booklet ‘The Choir of
Christ Church Cathedral’s recording
is the first to use the original forces
of men and boys as envisaged by the
composer’. That is why this recording
is precious. The choir, or more especially
Stephen Darlington, is not new when
it comes to Taverner. In 1990 Darlington
recorded the rather simpler ‘Missa Mater
Christi’ for Nimbus (NI 5216) in its
liturgical context. In 1993 he recorded
a series of motets, including the ‘Dum
transisset sabbatum’, recorded also
on Nimbus (NI 5360) on a disc called
‘Ave Dei Patris Filia’. Darlington therefore
knows the difficulties that can occur
when boys tackle this repertoire.
It has not been common
to hear boys in early Tudor church music
and there are only a few examples. The
reasons are various. The tessitura is
mostly much higher than the norm nowadays,
putting considerable strain on the voices
as passages are rehearsed and re-recorded
so that a huge mass must be ‘canned’
over several sessions. Secondly the
music is difficult, rhythmically so,
and it takes boys with ‘nouce’ to pick
it up quickly. By the time a boy has
the musical intelligence and experience
to tackle the music, especially if you
are using him in the soloistic sections
(often the most complex) his voice is
on the verge of breaking. Even so, there
are times when that typically pushed
and slightly distorted vowel sound is
heard in a painfully long phrase and
when intonation is a little suspect,
Darlington also encourages a kind of
continental vibrato which may not always
appeal, but on the whole this is as
good a recording of a male voice choir
singing polyphony as you ever encounter.
So, an especial thank-you is required
to all concerned not least the recording
engineers to allow us a chance to listen
to this music, though without much plainchant,
as Taverner probably heard it.
The supporting motets
which Darlington has recorded before,
including a more interesting and faster
performance of the ‘Mater Christi’ motet
than in 1990, and plainchants are equally
beautifully performed and recorded.
The whole enterprise is nicely presented,
very similar in look to the Nimbus presentation
of the earlier Taverner discs mentioned
above. Full texts are offered along
with an excellent essay by Andrew Carwood
and photographs of the choir.
If you love this music
then you should not hesitate to get
this disc and if Taverner is new to
you, then this great masterwork of the
early 16th Century is as
good a place to start as any. This recording
gives the music every chance to be at
its best.
Gary Higginson
The Choir of Christ Church Cathedral,
Oxford/Stephen Darlington 
