Modesty forbids somehow that a disc like this plasters advertisements for itself all over its cover. Paintings from the relevant period, which are as far as I can see uncredited, are the only outward show. It is only when one is in possession of the thing and reading the booklet that one is advised to partake of its contents ‘in moderate doses’, and
it is best to listen to no more than one a
day. After all, no one would visit five cathedrals in the space of a single day.
If we are generally led to believe that Byrd and Tallis
represent the Golden Age of English music then we are being offred more and
more of this music, from the Eton Choirbook, that shows not only where it had
come from but that it built on a tradition that was well in place already even
if Wilkinson hasn’t been accorded quite such household name status.
This is the state of English music in the late C15th and
early C16th, and thus the home side that these islands could offer up against
the genius of Josquin Des Prez, the possibly Belgian superstar who had followed
in a tradition Ockeghem, Binchois and Dufay.
That Wilkinson was the best of them is primarily evidenced
by the ever astonishing Jesu Autem
Transiens, which isn’t here but it is noticed that it is his Salve Regina that is given the prime
spot of finishing this set. And it is also suggested in the booklet that after
his departure, for whatever reason, in 1515, that Eton
was never quite as good as it had been before.
It is regrettable that the size of CD’s and their accoutrements
are by necessity small and the eyesight of the likely target audience for a
disc like this are going to struggle to enjoy the replica page from the Eton
Choirbook, which measures 12 centimetres square. Its detail is compact and
would have been much more enjoyable in the age of the gatefold LP cover, but we
are also old enough to know that we can’t have everything and we have had most
of it.
It is William Horewud’s Magnificat
that impresses most at first, apparently making the most of the available
endless acoustic, but if there was ever a record to explain what ‘melisma’ is
then this must be it. The text is provided but progress goes so slowly through
it that it is almost impossible to say, with the naked eye, in which direction
the music is flowing. Very much like the River Arar in Caesar’s De Bello Gallico. And an appreciation of
that is surely something that we have lost in an age when the sophistry of
anyone who thinks they need to look business-like uses the phrase ‘going
forward’ at least once in every paragraph of their dismal blurb. The artists of
500 years ago had a much better idea of forever than we have now. In our world,
finding ourselves yet again at Friday afternoon seems like the same sort of
miracle.
Browne’s Stabat Mater
builds and builds as if threatening overload and you can appreciate how Tallis
didn’t just one day sit down and write Spem
in alium, but was standing on the shoulders of giants. But it was as much
an English tradition by then, and it is all in the book, rather than anything
owed to those cool low country masters.
Wilkinson wasn’t to know that Tallis was going to crown it
all any more than The Velvet Underground didn’t know that they set up several
future generations of pop musicians with a perfect template or that poets now
owe so much to Eliot and Ezra Pound, but a lot of them do whether they like it
or not.
The next time you are at a dinner party and the talk drifts
towards the best English composers, by all means nod and agree when Purcell and
Elgar are mentioned. And then Tallis and Byrd. Nobody is going to disagree with
that. But, just as you are leaving, you could say you had thought of Robert
Wilkinson, pronounce it Wylkynson if you want, but didn’t care to mention him.
You will be invited back, if you wanted to be.