Eric Whitacre's Sainte-Chapelle: review

Eric Whitacre's Sainte-Chapelle, recorded by The Tallis Scholars

If a piece by any contemporary composer is going to enter The Tallis Scholars’ music list, it needs to sit easily next to the bulk of their repertoire without duplicating it. Eric Whitacre’s Sainte-Chapelle is the group’s first recording of work by a living composer since their disc of Sir John Tavener in 1984 and where that disc felt unique, so does this.  

It was premiered in St Paul’s Cathedral in March as part of the group’s 40th anniversary celebrations, but is inspired by the intricate stained glass of Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. A young girl enters the chapel and hears the angels singing from the glass above her, represented by an intoxicating descent from plain and modest plainchant into increasingly complicated harmonies. They stretch with sinuous confidence into clusters of notes that are less concerned with harmonic focus than the graphic representation of sunlight, first refracted through the glass, then reaching down through the space to bounce off the chapel pavement. Here Whitacre has created something that maintains a moving beauty despite all the chromatic tension, and combined with The Tallis Scholars’ singularly contradictory combination of perfect tuning and strident-but-sweet tone it is hard not to wonder whether his increasingly subtle writing and imagery has found its true home in The Tallis Scholars’ unique sound.    

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