The Tallis Scholars

This program takes a slightly different look from usual at the Christmas story, viewing it from the point of view of the shepherds who came to worship at the crib. Unsurprisingly there is a wealth of great music in the Renaissance period devoted to this episode. The starting point this evening is the mass by Clemens non Papa, which is based on his own motet Pastores quidnam vidistis? (Who did you see, Shepherds?), which the Tallis Scholars recorded in 1986, helping to give Clemens a new profile. The five movements of this mass act as a sandwich to similar texts by other masters from the late Renaissance, from all over Europe.

Clemens himself was Flemish. The Spanish Victoria is well-known, the Portuguese Pedro de Christo less so. Our first half ends with a magnificent double choir motet by Giovanni Croce, written within the Venetian tradition of answering choirs. The meat of the sandwich in the second half is made up of two settings of the Salve regina. The Obrecht was one of the first motets in history to use as many as six voices—this remained unusual in the late 15th century. By the time Peter Philips (no relation) was writing a hundred years later, six voices was the least of it. Here he joins the Italian tradition of writing for double choir in the grandest fashion. The music then concludes with the mesmerising beauty of the Clemens’ Agnus.

—© Peter Phillips, 2023

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Why are the shepherds the first to be told about the birth of the Messiah? The vaunted Magi from the East have to make do with following a new star in the heavens, requiring advanced astrological calculations. But the lowly shepherds get an unequivocal message, delivered first by a terrifying angel and then by an awesome assembly of heavenly beings: “Unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.” It makes poetic sense that shepherds should be among the earliest witnesses: they know their own, and can recognize that the infant born in Bethlehem is one of them, the Good Shepherd.

This dramatic passage in Luke’s Gospel understandably lends itself to artistic interpretations; musical retellings proliferated, especially in the Renaissance. In Pastores quidnam vidistis, Clemens sets a dialogue to music, consisting of the imagined interrogation of the amazed shepherds, which also serves as the Responsory for Matins on Christmas morning: “Whom did you see?” Its smoothly imitative, elegant polyphony is typical of the composer, who, unlike several of his Flemish contemporaries, proved resistant to the allure of other continental styles such as those developing in Italy.

Clemens (whose flippant nickname “non Papa” was likely born more out of jest than the need to distinguish him from the Pope) spent most of his life working in and around modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands. As was common in the period, he would mine his motets for musical material to form the basis of a mass setting, as in the Missa Pastores quidnam vidistis. This is most audible in the opening of the Kyrie, Gloria, and Sanctus of the mass, which replicate the motet’s opening of a rising fifth. Like the motet, the mass is mostly for five voice-parts, rising to six in the Agnus Dei with the addition of a further bass (another shepherd, come to worship the Lamb of God?). This has the effect of thickening the sonority for the culmination of the cycle.

In general, the music expresses the text only in the most general, abstract fashion, adopting an expansive imitative polyphony in the less wordy movements, and a more direct style for the lengthier texts of the Gloria and Credo. Only on occasion does the composer permit himself to illustrate the meaning of the words in his music; listen, for example, to the descendit de caelis passage of the Credo, in which some parts descend by step while others trip downwards in sequence.

Victoria’s Quem vidistis pastores is a variation on the same text as Clemens’ motet. The Spanish composer takes the essence of the dialogue into the textural structure of his motet. He begins by dividing his six voices into the three upper and three lower, before allowing them to recombine in other permutations. Both halves of the motet share a refrain in which the shepherds, unable to contain their joy, break into joyous triple meter and an elaborate, melismatic alleluia.

The text of Quaeramus cum pastoribus also riffs on an imagined dialogue with the shepherds, opening with an invitation to seek, with them, the Word incarnate. It also includes “Noé” refrains, which were a popular feature of Christmas music during this period (the word is interchangeable with “noël”). Pedro de Cristo sets the first part only, for four voices. The Portuguese composer’s style is distinctive for the narrow range of its vocal compass; “bunched” combinations of voices, with the total range often, as here, not exceeding two octaves.

Meanwhile, Italy’s Giovanni Croce sets the full text for opulent double choir. The piece was probably designed for the very place that lent the polychoral style its popularity, St Mark’s in Venice, where Croce preceded Monteverdi as maestro di cappella. He sets the text in such open-hearted fashion that even the last line (“his songs are tears”) cannot dim the enthusiasm of a final round of “noé.”

In the second half, our focus shifts from the shepherds to the mother of Jesus. Salve regina is one of four antiphons appointed to be sung to the Blessed Virgin Mary in various seasons of the Church year. In the 15th century, it was also the central item in the Salve service, a para-liturgical devotion that flourished thanks to the medieval cult of Mary. If we sometimes find the sheer amount of Marian music from this period surprising, it is helpful to remember that Mary was considered to have the ear of Christ in heaven—that is, she could intercede with him to reduce one’s time spent in purgatory after death. Lavish musical praise was one way to move her to this act of pity.

Comparing the Flemish Jacob Obrecht’s setting with that of Englishman Peter Philips, written over a century later, allows us to observe the change of musical fashions during that time. When Obrecht wrote his version, the use of as many as six different musical parts was quite rare. His setting alternates unadorned plainchant with polyphonic sections that adapt the chant melody and use it as the basis for imitation between the parts.

By the time of Peter Philips, writing in many parts was much more common, especially when disposed after the fashionable Venetian manner of two opposing four-voice choirs, which could echo and rebound off each other. Philips, an Englishman, is perhaps better identified with continental styles of composition, since, as a Catholic exile from Elizabethan England, he spent much of his career abroad. In his Salve regina, he uses the chant only for the incipit, and eschews imitation in favour of punchy utterances from each choir. The rapid-fire “Ad te” statements are closer to the world of secular madrigals than sacred music. This declamatory style then contrasts with the rapturous languor of the opening of the third section: “O clemens, O pia.”

© James M. Potter, 2023.