Music

Quite often I find myself driving home in the late evening, listening to Sue Marchant on radio Suffolk. One of her set piece questions is to ask her main guest where in time and space they would choose to travel if they could make a single trip in a TARDIS. It is a question that is simultaneously rather narrow (even geeky), and huge (sometimes inspirational) in scope.

I know what my answer would be. To the Chapel Royal of 1568, and lunch with Thomas Tallis. Like many enthusiasts of Tallis and his incredible composition Spem in Alium, I have questions I’d like to put to him. Not least of which is the piece’s relationship with Allesandro Striggio’s Ecce Beatam Lucem (embedded above).

Historial records indicate that Ecce was composed for a first performance in 1561, possibly a royal wedding. So far as we know, Spem was first performed seven or eight years later at Arundel house. As relatively little is known about the history of Spem a plausible if not definitive theory has gained currency – namely that the Duke of Norfolk, on becoming aware of Striggio’s work, commissioned Tallis to compose a work of equal or greater scale and complexity as a birthday gift to Elizabeth I.

While Tallis’s work makes a more finely developed use of counterpoint and spine-tingling antiphone, has seen greater enduring success, and could be argued to be technically superior, I prefer (on no rational basis whatsoever) to see the pieces as siblings. For example, both use the same technique of building steadily to great tutti moments – Striggio on the “O” of O mel et dulce nectar (oh honey of sweet nectar), and Tallis on the “respice” of respice humilitatem nostram (look upon our humiliation / lowliness).

But the killer commonality is the modesty. For me you will find it in the score of Ecce, and in the story of Spem. At the time he chose the words to use as a basis of  Spem in Alium, a plea to the almighty to watch over us in our lowliness, Tallis was at the zenith of his career – a musical giant who had survived numerous seismic shifts in the religious and political fabric of England. He could have been forgiven an inclination towards triumphalism, particularly given his royal audience.

When I listen to Ecce Beatam Lucem it is the last minute which blows me away. The whole piece is a joy on the ears, but as the piece approaches what could be a rousing finale with the words “This delight, this peace, this goal, this mark. Draw us from here straight to Paradise” the dynamics take the deliciously unexpected turn of slipping away from us – ever diminishing until the final word paradisum -paradise – is almost a whisper. There are no such dynamics written in to the scores I have. I would love to know if this is interpretation, or the will of the composer. In either case it’s little short of genius.