Ora Singers - Spem in Alium, Vidi Aquam

 Ora Singers, Suzi Digby, Spem in Alium, Vidi Aquam (Harmonia Mundi)

I'm not short of recordings of Spem in Alium, which is a piece for the desert island, and so buying another one is not necessarily to extend the Spem section. The reason for it is James MacMillan's 40-part motet comissioned by Ora to mark the 450th anniversary.

But we begin with the Tallis, my favourite recording of which is that by King's College, Cambridge, from 1965 with David Willcocks, with its surging ocean of sound and bursts of authority in the 'Respice' and 'Domine'. Checking the versions I have, they come in at large time differences, from 8.55 to 12.14, which suggests different edits more than such a difference of tempo. Ora complete the course in a sensible 9.21, tremendously balanced, as clear as you could want and not exactly restrained but restraining themselves to below over-exuberance. It is a great account of a monumental work, achieving a more intimate than large-scale feeling.

Before we arrive at MacMillan's work, we have a programme of further C16th, Tudor church music from England, though not necessarily by English composers. William Byrd might be a familiar name but Derrick Gerarde, Alfonso Ferrobosco and Philip van Wilder are less so. Byrd will never let you down and provides more from where his masses for 3-, 4- and 5 voices came from in Domine, salva nos. Van Wilder's Paster Noster is the old incantation one used to recite without much reflection or understanding at school made much more gorgeous for, as far as I can tell, three voices- soprano, alto and tenor in Julie Coper, Elisabeth Paul and Jeremy Budd, and is a highlight.

Ferrabosco's Decantabat popoulus Israel is more exuberant, certainly compared to the mercifully very short interludes of claustrophobic plainchant that are, effectively, downtime. Byrd returns with the delicately woven Fac cum servo tuo making one wonder if one really should have the complete works of Byrd to do him justice or if a handful of pieces are sufficient to appreciate what he does apparently so effortlessly.

I don't know if Sir James is still widely known as Jimmy but one arrives at his Vidi Aquam in a state of some anticipation. His music was the reason I gave for belatedly succumbing to CD when some of his records were released on CD only in the 1990's. His Seven Last Words from the Cross has been a long-standing contemporary favourite and it's not the only one, having seen him conduct Veni, Veni Immanuel in Portsmouth with Evelyn Glennie as percussion soloist, amongst some of the other immediate masterpieces that make him the obvious choice to take on the 40-part motet job, if anybody could.

It seems that Tallis wrote Spem in response to the Striggio piece published shortly before, and won in a good contest.

James starts on the same note, I think, and provides a 'reflection' of Spem without ever quoting it but using the same sound. He doesn't quite take on the challenge but reflects it respectfully and faithfully, going more his own way after rising to some intensity at halfway. It's a wise decision not take take Tallis on, toe to toe, as it were, because that would invite disaster. It's a game you couldn't win. But Vidi Aquam, using a text from Ezekiel rather than that from the apocryphal Book of Judith, is everything anybody could have hoped of it and a job well done. 

One has to wonder at the professed penitence, supplication and humility of these, as it happens, Catholic musicians being expresssed quite so elaborately, luxuriating in the glow of their showy invention. An alternative approach is to say one is not worthy and be a bit more humble than assume one's tribute is enough to bother the eternal divinity with. 

Ah, foolish man, that wouldst debase with them,

And mortal glory, Heaven's diadem!

as Andrew Marvell points out in The Coronet, and since both Tallis and MacMillan by now have experience of a plague, it might be fitting to ask the Lord what he's doing about it because Trump and Boris haven't got a clue so now would be a good time for all worthwhile divinities to come to the aid of the party.

That isn't the point, of course. Just because it is Catholic music doesn't mean it isn't tremendous music. With a DVD including performances of the Tallis and the MacMillan, plus a short 'making of' documentary and a succinct interview with James by Suzi, this is a complete package and not far short of essential.

One problem with it is whether to file it eventually with the MacMillan or the Tallis.

It will go alongside the other Tallis but not just yet.