As
John Milson writes in his excellent notes which accompany
this issue, you’d be hard put to recognize Morales as
a Spanish composer, so cosmopolitan is his language.
And what a rich and varied language he uses!
Morales
was thought to be the leading composer of his generation.
He was born in Seville and studied with some of the foremost
composers of the time. All that is known of his family
is that he had a sister and his father died before her
marriage in 1530. By 1535 Morales was a singer in the
Papal Choir, in Rome, remaining there for the following
decade in the employ of the Vatican. In his history of
the papal choir and portraits and memoirs of the singers,
Osservazioni per ben regolare il coro dei cantori della Cappella Pontificia (Rome,
1711), Andrea Adami da Bolsena (1663 – 1742) honoured
him as the papal chapel’s most important composer between
Josquin and Palestrina. Returning
to his homeland, he held a string of posts, which were
marked by financial or political problems. He was well
known as one of Europe’s greatest composers, but was
very unpopular as an employee and found it increasingly
difficult to find work. It seems that he was well aware
of his exceptional talent but was incapable of getting
along with those of lesser abilities. He made extreme
demands on his singers and was probably too arrogant
with his employers and thus alienated them. On 4 September
1553 he requested that he be considered for the position
of
maestro de capilla at Toledo – he had worked there previously. He died shortly after,
some time before 7 October, in Marchena in the province
of Sevilla. I am grateful to various sites on the internet
for helping me piece together the details of Morales’s
life.
His
output was prodigious – 22
Masses, over 100
motets,
18 settings of the
Magnificat, five of the
Lamentations
of Jeremiah – and he considered the expression and
understanding of the text to be the highest artistic
goal.
The
short motets which start this CD are comparatively simple
affairs. All but
Sancta Maria, Succurre miseris, which
uses four voices, are scored for five voices, and their
straightforward polyphony reminds one of Tallis in the
easy placing of the voices.
The
main work here is the parody mass
Missa Queramus cum
pastoribus based on Mouton’s motet, which precedes
it on this disk. A parody mass does not mean that the
music is in any way funny or satirical. It simply refers
to the fact that the mass has been based on earlier material,
sometimes by other composers. Palestrina wrote 55 parody
masses. The found material doesn’t need to be sacred,
but in a document dated 10 September 1562, the Council
of Trent banned the use of secular material, stating “...let
nothing profane be intermingled ... banish from church
all music which contains, whether in the singing or the
organ playing, things that are lascivious or impure." (Gustav
Reese,
Music
in the Renaissance (New York, W.W. Norton & Co,
1954). Probably written for the papal choir, the mass
is scored for five voices, with two bass parts which
enrich the texture and allow Morales to create music
of warmth and lavishness. It’s a complex work. Morales
uses the original tune as if he were writing a set of
variations, keeping the source material always in front
of us but creating new, and sometimes surprising, edifices
in sound.
The
performances here are magnificent. The Westminster Cathedral
Choir sound as if the music was created for them and
sing even the most taxing music, with an ease and fluency
which is quite breathtaking.
The
recording is beautifully smooth and clear, giving a very
good perspective of the choir within the Cathedral. This
is a very exciting disk, containing some thrilling music
by a composer whose star has waned somewhat in the past
200 years. Whether he knew it or not, he created a remarkable
emotional experience in his work. If you love the music
of Palestrina, Tallis and their contemporaries this is
especially for you.
Bob Briggs
Choir
of Westminster Cathedral/James O’Donnell 
