The Tallis Scholars

The miracles which Jesus is said to have performed fall into roughly two categories: those in which he heals people or removes their demons; and those in which he exerts control over nature. For the Gospel writers, these acts prove Christ’s divinity by demonstrating his power over the whole of God’s creation. This program explores music that narrates, celebrates, and glories in these miraculous signs.

One of the “great” mysteries of the Christian faith is that of Christ’s birth, not in a palace as befitting his royal birthright, but in a stable, with animals mutely watching. Giovanni Gabrieli, master of the Venetian school of polychoral music, restores some royal splendor to his double-choir setting of O magnum mysterium. It begins with three repetitions of the opening apostrophe, in one choir, then another, then both, gradually revealing the grand sonority for which the composer was renowned.

The first half of the program features a throughline in the form of Victoria’s Missa O magnum mysterium. For this setting of the “Ordinary” texts of the Mass, the Spanish composer Victoria took elements of his own version of this motet as a jumping-off point. They share the same plangent minor mode, as well as motifs such as the descending fifth, which in the Sanctus becomes the beginning of a swirling arabesque. The Agnus Dei is particularly special, adding a second “cantus” part in strict canon with the first.

Giaches de Wert came from obscure Flemish origins to become one of the leading court musicians in northern Italy. He was particularly highly regarded as a madrigalist, and his experience finding dramatic musical responses to text is amply illustrated by these two miraculous motets. Indeed, the latter is so daring that one might suspect it was intended as a sacred madrigal” for domestic performance, rather than belonging to a dignified church service.

Egressus Jesus narrates one of the more enigmatic Gospel passages, in which Jesus refuses to cure the Canaanite woman’s daughter until she has asked him four times. The large canvas of seven different voice-parts allows for different groupings of voices to represent the different characters and emotions of the story. After an opening narration for lower voices, the cry of the Canaanite woman enters in the sopranos, and Jesus’ silence in response is depicted in meandering melisma. The disciples interrupt, in the manner of a passion chorus or turba. Finally, when the woman’s persistence has won her a miraculous cure for her daughter, the full texture is deployed as Jesus heralds her faith (“O mulier…”).

Ascendente Jesu sets out its stall from the very opening phrase, with an almost mannerist, exaggerated arpeggio on the first word—the off-kilter awkwardness of attempting to get into a small boat that sways beneath you. The arising of the tempest is a moment of alarming, destabilizing syncopations and disruptions to the rhythm, which then gives way to extraordinary melismas as the waves crash over the deck. We are surely in madrigal territory; there is humor here, as Jesus, sleeping soundly in long notes, is rudely interrupted by the disciples. The second part opens in (mock-) solemnity as the same disciples pray to Jesus with dramatic, descending intervals on “perimus” (“we perish”). Once again persuaded to intervene, Jesus rebukes the waves, whose rapid scales are becalmed as the harmonic momentum gradually slows and the surface of the waters becomes still once more.

The next motet belongs to the celebration of the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, also known as Candlemas. Videte miraculum is a setting of the responsory appointed for Vespers on the eve of that feast. The text is concerned with bearing witness to the mystery of the Virgin birth. Tallis casts his piece in a form common at the time, giving the ancient plainchant melody to one voice, slowing it down, and constructing a polyphonic edifice around it.

Gallus, also called Handl, was conversant in a wide variety of styles. His motet Mirabile mysterium engages in wildly chromatic harmony, suggestive of the famously outrageous harmonies that would later be written by Gesualdo. The arcane and other-worldly harmonic language is a perfect match for the cryptic text. At the point that God is made man—“Deus homo factus est”—the voice parts plunge by an octave and a half, a highly unusual and dramatic device.

Guerrero’s motet Maria Magdalene was published in 1570, with a text drawn from various sources, including the Biblical narrative of the titular Mary (and “the other Mary”) discovering the empty tomb on Easter Sunday and learning of Christ’s miraculous victory over death. It makes use of the composer’s favored sonority: two equal soprano parts atop a smoothly expressive polyphony. At the moment the angel begins to speak to the women, the music broadens out wonderfully, before a sequence of alleluias brings the piece to its joyous conclusion.

The contemporary style of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt owes much to the hieratic soundworld of Renaissance music. Tribute to Caesar was originally designed as a companion piece to another of Pärt’s works, The Woman with the Alabaster Box, and like that piece it takes a passage of scripture and decorates it like an illuminated manuscript, using Pärt’s characteristic tintinnabuli technique. The Pharisees are subtly characterized with a dark, dissonant minor tonality, which grows gradually more insistent. The composer contrasts their attempted trickery with Jesus’ more measured responses. Though not technically one of his miracles, Jesus’ clever evasion of the Pharisees’ trap leaves them “marveling” at his words.

Pärt wrote Virgencita as a ‘present’ to the people of Mexico, in advance of a visit there. “The happy anticipation of being in Mexico very soon and the name Guadalupe left me no peace,” he wrote. The text is specifically addressed to Our Lady of Guadalupe, the object of veneration at the shrine commemorating her miraculous appearances centuries before. Pärt treats his subject with the utmost reverence, establishing a chordal sonority of gentle dissonance, and building towards an impassioned climax before subsiding.

—James M. Potter, 2025