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Editorial Reviews

Palestrina's place in the pantheon of musical greats is secure, and the listener who wants to purchase a recording of a famous piece like the "Missa Papae Marcelli" has plenty of choices. More than with other top-rank composers, however, his lesser-known works remain comparatively rarely heard. Britain's Tallis Scholars, who specialize in Palestrina's music as well as that of their namesake, here investigate two six-voice masses that represent stages in Palestrina's development of his exquisitely smooth, rich, perfectly rounded mature style. The results will be pleasing for Renaissance enthusiasts and general listeners alike; the Tallis Scholars display their usual flawlessly pure sound, but they also adjust their style slightly to point to the distinct sound worlds of these two works. Palestrina's "Missa Benedicta es" is a "parody mass" (a mass that develops the material of a preexisting polyphonic work) based on a motet by Josquin Desprez and shows the influence of Franco-Flemish polyphony on Palestrina's style. Palestrina retains the smoothly shaped lines and graceful evolution of Josquin's motet while blurring its formal sharpness. It took scholars a while to discover that Josquin's work was the model, buried as it was under layers of rich Palestrinian polyphony, but it's definitely there. The work is beautifully introduced on the disc by both the Josquin motet and the piece of plainchant on which it in turn was based.

Inexplicably, the Tallis Scholars do not provide the same service when it comes to the "Missa Nasce la gioja mia," based on a madrigal by Giovan Leonardo Primavera. There certainly would have been room on the disc, and this little-known madrigal is much tougher to find for the interested listener than is Josquin's motet. The performance of the mass, however, is attractive. This work dates from early in Palestrina's career, before he rejected madrigals as unacceptably trashy, and it offers a somewhat lighter version of his style than listeners will be used to. Palestrina's facility in handling the spacing of voices is in evidence, but there are lots of what would later be called chords, and an overall sense of quicker forward motion. The very helpful notes by Tallis Scholars director Peter Phillips call the mass "action-packed," which is certainly a relative term in the contemplative world of the a cappella Renaissance mass but which is nevertheless applicable. This fine disc from the preternaturally consistent Tallis Scholars will help any listener toward a better appreciation of Palestrina's music. James Manheim, All Music Guide

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