Turn down the lights and get out your joss-sticks for this one: a selection of sixteenth-century Tenebrae music for Holy Week, among the most evocative parts of the liturgy. Since they had already made successful recordings of the Brumel, Tallis and White, it was a good idea for The Tallis Scholars to add new recordings of Tenebrae settings by Alfonso Ferrabosco the Elder and Palestrina. As Peter Phillips points out in his brief note, the only textual feature they have in common is their all ending with the passage “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum”. Otherwise the texts that the various composers selected from the Lamentations of Jeremiah are quite different; but all show an intensity and a devotional power that work cumulatively to produce a remarkably satisfying disc. And it is endlessly fascinating to hear the different approaches to these anguished texts.
The startling novelty is Ferrabosco – that slightly obscure Italian composer who, as Joseph Kerman was the first to stress, came to England and had an astonishing impact on our composers. Far too little of his music has been recorded; this piece is powerful evidence of his richly inventive style and makes me want to hear much more. It makes a fine opening work. And the beautifully paced six-voice work of Palestrina serves to cleanse the palate at the end after the more familiar settings of Tallis and White. Only Brumel, by a considerable margin the earliest composer here, comes across as a touch staid in the context: perhaps the music could have moved a little faster, with a more openly impassioned sound.
It remains only to report that the sound of these various recordings, made over a period of more than ten years, is nicely matched, partly because The Tallis Scholars have remained more consistent in colour and personnel than many such ensembles, partly because they are all recorded in the same Norfolk church.'