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Across the road for a pint in The Dolphin with my esoteric music mate and then we were back in the cathedral for the main feature. A lively opening by Byrd was followed by two Hosannas (Gibbons and Weekes) with students from the Portsmouth Grammar School who didn't let the side down at all and can now say they did the choral equivalent of play with Real Madrid.
Tavener's Funeral Ikos features an impressive low note in the bass that it eventually ends on which was carried forward subliminally to the sustained bass note in Song for Athene, which is always welcome with its flights of angels and sense of disorientation, something to do with harmonics, that our generations will all our days remember as the sombrest moment of Diana's funeral. Arvo Part's sepulchral Nunc dimittis ended the first half but one had to suspect the second half would go up a gear and after Magnificats by Gibbons and Part, it was back to William Byrd for his Mass for Four Voices, here for ten voices, for the big picture. Notwithstanding that they regularly venture very successfully into contemporary music, this is the Tallis Scholars' real territory and what they are for. Amid the encircling gloom that made the previously unnecessary lights seem brighter, and perhaps they could try it with less lighting, there was more of a sense of stillness, of timelessness and, beyond that, all the dark reasons why Byrd wrote masses for such reduced forces in the first place. Thus it provided in good measure that which Evensong didn't really provide for me. Our light rapidly dimming...to a richer, desperate whisper, as it says somewhere.
The benefits or need for perfection, or not, have been pondered here before so I'm over that now. It doesn't get much better if you like that sort of thing and if you like that sort of thing, the Tallis professor, Peter Phillips, is halfway through explaining it in an enlightening series late on Sunday nights on Radio 3.
To those who don't know about cricket, all cricket must look the same, but it isn't - or wasn't until things like the Big Bash- and the same goes for Renaissance polyphony. And Peter's the man to tell us why.
Nearly thirty years ago, it must have been, I fretted about the Tallis Scholars being on in Southampton and I didn't think I could get to see them, and worried I might miss my only chance. I need not have worried. It's four times now so they have gone ahead of The Magnetic Fields, and in Just a Minute terms are one point behind Andrew Motion who in turn is a long way behind the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. I can hardly let them come to Portsmouth and not be there.
