What forces sang English Tudor-period polyphony is not definitively known, but clearly this spacious, ornate music was not intended for one voice per part. Like other Renaissance composers, John Taverner favored sections of reduced texture in his works, and it's uncertain specifically how these were to be sung. By soloists? By the full choir? Conductor Owen Rees, leading the small adult group Contrapunctus and the student Choir of Queen's College, Oxford, devises a unique solution (for which he provides justification in a ...
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What forces sang English Tudor-period polyphony is not definitively known, but clearly this spacious, ornate music was not intended for one voice per part. Like other Renaissance composers, John Taverner favored sections of reduced texture in his works, and it's uncertain specifically how these were to be sung. By soloists? By the full choir? Conductor Owen Rees, leading the small adult group Contrapunctus and the student Choir of Queen's College, Oxford, devises a unique solution (for which he provides justification in a booklet note): Contrapunctus is deployed in the reduced passages here, mostly with two voices per part. The effect of this is fascinating; sample one of the sizable movements of the Mass, such as the "Credo," for the full range of effects. The movements of Taverner's Mass are connected by the use of the titular cantus firmus Gloria tibi Trinitas, but at the local level they depend on shades of texture rather than on later, more structured devices like points of imitation. The...
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