The Heavenly Harmonies title of this disc might lead buyers to expect a general collection of sacred music, but in fact the program represents a unique juxtaposition of English Renaissance masters who are generally presented separately. One by one, the music alternates between Thomas Tallis' English-language Nine Psalm Tunes for Archbishop Parker's Psalter -- the very essence of severe Anglican homophony -- and the recusant Catholic William Byrd's richly expressive, inward motets and Mass Propers for Pentecost. The styles, ...
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The Heavenly Harmonies title of this disc might lead buyers to expect a general collection of sacred music, but in fact the program represents a unique juxtaposition of English Renaissance masters who are generally presented separately. One by one, the music alternates between Thomas Tallis' English-language Nine Psalm Tunes for Archbishop Parker's Psalter -- the very essence of severe Anglican homophony -- and the recusant Catholic William Byrd's richly expressive, inward motets and Mass Propers for Pentecost. The styles, as bass Matthew O'Donovan put it in the booklet, "may seem rather like chalk and cheese." Yet what the leaderless singers of the young British group Stile Antico are trying to show is that these composers inhabited a common universe even if ecclesiastical authorities did not. Tallis did not write plain chorale-like pieces but rather strove to create polyphony on a small, memorable scale. And Byrd, apparently deciding there was no reason the devil should have all the good tunes,...
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