It is unusual to commit the contents of a rare manuscript collection to CD. This is what Jordi Savall and Hesperion XX have done in this recording of Elizabethan consort music. The manuscript, from the 1570s and 1580s, containing dances, transcriptions of chansons and motets and fantasies, was intended for performance at court by the Queen’s musicians, we are reliably informed by Peter Holman; it now resides in the British Library.
In common with other recordings made by Hesperion XX of consort music, these performances are highly sonorous and imaginatively realized. Savall orchestrates the repeats of the dances and chansons, usually beginning with a drum, a solo treble viol or lute and then building up the layers of sound with each restatement. Here, more than in any of their previous recordings, the tambour and tambourines are used to great effect, not merely to mark the beat, but, as in the anonymous Allemande in track 7 or the Brandeberges, to presage the mood of the piece.
The manuscript contains a fascinating array of pieces: numerous In Nomines which climax in the astonishingly rich seven-part settings by Robert Parsons contrast with transcriptions of bawdy chansons, the evergreen Browning my dere, an ethereal fantasy by William Daman for six treble viols (surely a collectors’ item), William Mundy’s eponymous O mater mundi (intended as a pun?) and the sublimity of John Taverner’s Quemadmodum. And, as listeners will discover, there is more. This is music fit for a courtly Sunday Elizabethan banquet, with a bit of dancing thrown in, should you wish to entertain in that style.
For my taste, the slower pieces are performed rather too seamlessly and the balance between solo instrument – such as the lute in the first and second tracks or the treble viol in track 21 – and the rest of the ensemble does not always seem natural. The recording does offer a wonderful glimpse of the variety of music enjoyed at the court of Elizabeth I; it is a one-off and should be treasured as such.'