MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

alternatively
CD: MDT AmazonUK AmazonUS

Robert PARSONS (c.1535-1572)
Domine, quis habitabit? [5:12]
Peccantem me quotidie [3:44]
Holy Lord God Almighty [3:48]
Deliver me from mine enemies [2:39]
Retribue servo tuo [8:04]
Solemnis urgebat dies’Iam Christus astra ascenderat’ [5:39]
Magnificat [13:15]
Libera me, Domine [7:31]
Credo quod redemptor [3:32]
O bone Jesu [11:42]
Ave Maria [4:56]
The Cardinall’s Musick/Andrew Carwood
rec. 15-17 November 2010, Fitzalan Chapel, Arundel Castle
Latin texts and English translations included
HYPERION CDA67874 [70:07]

Experience Classicsonline




Robert Parsons is a rather shadowy figure. Little is known of his life, save that he became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1563 and that he drowned, in the River Trent, I believe, at Newark in January 1572, whereupon William Byrd took the vacancy among the Gentleman of the Chapel Royal. Only a small amount of music has come down to us. What has survived includes some songs and instrumental pieces. There are also two Services in English. Otherwise his entire corpus of church music is included on this disc. In his extensive and very good booklet notes Andrew Carwood speculates that the fact that scarcely any liturgical music in English by Parsons is known may suggest that he was inactive as a composer during the strongly Protestant reign of Edward VI (1547-1553). Carwood also suspects that, like several of his English musical contemporaries, Parsons’ religious sympathies lay with Catholicism.

It appears that he died young and that he was well regarded by his peers for Andrew Carwood quotes a Latin couplet found in a partbook from the 1580s, the English translation of which is as follows:

Parsons, you who were so great in the springtime of life,
how great you would have been in the autumn, had death not come.

On the evidence of the music sung here by The Cardinall’s Musick, contemporary admiration for Robert Parsons was amply justified. All the music in this collection is interesting and of high quality. Retribue servo tuo, for example, is a setting of verses from Psalm 118 (119). In this piece Parsons deploys groups of soloists at times and the division of the music into sections for soloists and for full consort accentuates the dramatic tone. Andrew Carwood and his singers give an urgent, vigorous performance.

The alternatim setting of the Magnificat is well described by Andrew Carwood as “opulent”. I admire it greatly, especially in this excellent performance. It seems to me that Parsons displays supreme confidence in his vocal writing and the result is something of a virtuoso piece. Sample, for instance, the urgency and exhilaration at ‘et exultavit spiritus meus’. Mind you, that urgency and exhilaration stem as much from the performers; The Cardinall’s Musick give a colourful and exciting rendition of this piece – listen to the thrust of their singing at ‘dispersit superbos’.

Even more remarkable as a composition is O bone Jesu, which Andrew Carwood rates as the composer’s “highest dramatic achievement”. The music is divided into sections for groups of soloists, of varying combinations, and for full consort. It’s a substantial and ambitious piece and, unlike in the Magnificat, Parsons doesn’t have the compositional ‘respite’ afforded by sections of plainchant – in some ways I think this makes it an even more impressive composition than the Magnificat. It’s a very fine piece and it receives here a superbly committed performance. The music becomes increasingly fervent and exciting as the piece unfolds, especially the last few minutes from ‘O Rex noster.’

The disc concludes with the piece by which Robert Parsons is best known nowadays, his rapt Ave Maria. Most of us will be familiar with performances by choirs in which the top line is taken by sopranos or trebles. Here. however, the voices are ATTBarB and the lower voices and darker hues give the music, if anything, a greater sense of intimacy. The placing of this wonderful piece at the end of the programme is deeply satisfying. Not only is it a fitting finis to a recital of music by this Tudor master but also, on this occasion, it affords a tranquil, beneficent coda after the more extrovert O bone Jesu.

The singing of The Cardinall’s Musick is superb throughout the programme. Production values are up to Hyperion’s usual exemplary standards: the recorded sound, produced in the lovely, benign acoustic of the chapel at Arundel Castle, is all that one could wish for while the booklet is comprehensive.

My colleague Brian Wilson welcomed the download version of this album most warmly and I second his enthusiasm. This is a marvellous recital and those who know
Robert Parsons only through Ave Maria – surely one of the best-loved pieces of Tudor polyphony, and rightly so – will find this disc an ear-opener.

John Quinn

See also download review by Brian Wilson



 

 

 



 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.