TALLIS Complete Works & • Alistair Dixon, dir; Chapelle du Roi • BRILLIANT 93612 (10 CDs + CD-ROM: 657:34)

& BYRD Ye sacred muses

This magnificent collection of Thomas Tallis began to appear on Signum in 1995, the original impetus, indeed, for founding the label. The ensemble had been founded a year earlier, gave its first concert, and made the first three of these recordings (21:6). Others followed (23:5, 28:3), ending with Volume 9, the instrumental music, which consisted of one very full disc (like all the others) and an extra disc to hold the overflow, presumably sold two for one. When the final volume was issued, a boxed set appeared at a special price. Now Brilliant has packaged the 10 discs in sleeves and placed all the notes and texts on a CD-ROM. The individual sleeves have contents listed with track and timing information.

Given the fullness of the discs, all over an hour except for the extra one, it is remarkable that the periods of Tallis’s life are so neatly divided among the discs. The series starts with the Catholic music for Henry VIII, then music at the Reformation, then more Catholic music for Queen Mary. After this, all of the Latin works for the Divine Office fill the next two discs. Returning to the chronology, there is music for a reformed church, then music for Queen Elizabeth. A disc of lamentations and contrafacta follows, and finally the instrumental music and songs occupy the last full disc that overflows to a short one. A closer look at some of the categories reveals how they were formulated to make the neat programs for each disc, a valuable way to bring order into a confused period of church history.

The first disc represents Tallis’s music for Catholic liturgy at Dover priory and the church of St. Mary-at-Hill in London (near the Tower), including Missa Salve intemerata and the votive antiphons. The second disc includes the Mass for Four Voices, in a new concise style, and some English text settings that appeared before the adoption of the Book of Common Prayer. With the Catholic restoration under Queen Mary came the Missa Puer natus est (for Christmas 1554) and the great votive antiphon Gaude gloriosa. The Office music on the next two discs (not votive antiphons any longer, but hymns and responsories) probably belongs to the last years of Henry VIII as well as to the Restoration, concluding with all the liturgical organ music.

On the next disc, music for the Book of Common Prayer is presented as complete liturgical services (Matins for Easter, Communion, and Evensong for the Fourth Sunday in Advent), concluding with the English anthems and Archbishop Parker’s psalm tunes. The next disc includes the Latin settings for Elizabeth’s chapel royal, concluding with Spem in alium. These include some of Tallis’s half of the 1575 Cantiones Sacrae, six of which are placed on other discs. The next disc begins with the two Lamentations, left over from the preceding disc, and features English texts set to his earlier Latin works. It concludes with Sing and glorify, the only surviving source of Spem in alium. Finally, the secular music includes keyboard pieces found in the Mulliner Book, consort music (including one of the first “In nomine” arrangements from the phrase in Taverner’s Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas), and only four songs. Added is one more song, Byrd’s lament for his friend and colleague. The two principal pieces on the extra disc are the English Litany, left over from the Reformed Church disc, and a lute arrangement of Felix namque I by a later hand.

Immersed as they were for over nine years in editing and performing Tallis’s music, some of it not yet available in modern editions, Dixon and his ensemble achieved an enviable mastery of the music. Some of the music has not been available on records at all, while Spem in alium has had at least 23 versions. (That is by no means the most recorded of his works; some pieces have more versions than that just in current catalogs.) But at a bargain price, no one seriously interested in Tudor music should pass up this chance to hear the complete works of a seminal figure of his century.

FANFARE: J. F. Weber