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THE TALLIS SCHOLARS AT 50 AWARDS 2021 10 GRAMOPHONE 10 GRAMOPHONE gramophone.co.uk
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THE TALLIS SCHOLARS AT 50 What We Really Do: The Tallis Scholars By Peter Phillips The Musical Times Publications, PB, 344pp, £27.25 ISBN 978–0–954-57772–8 The running gag here concerns Allegri’s Miserere, the only piece later than their normal time-slot that The Tallis Scholars regularly perform, the piece that audiences across the world always want, perhaps the piece that has made this and similar groups financially viable. But the absurdity of the situation helps to underline that the keyword in this book – part documentation, part reminiscences, part reprints of Spectator columns, part serious musical observation – is ‘polyphony’. For Peter Phillips, the word represents everything he has been doing for the past 40 years and plans to do until he drops, namely church music from 1450 to 1610. More than that, though, it stands for the glories of a world before the trivialisation of the Baroque: he has a special scorn for Vivaldi and similar composers, which is another running joke. For those who love the work of The Tallis Scholars, and probably those who hate it, the key passages here are those on interpretation and on recording. As concerns interpretation, Phillips is adamant that the main things are balance, precision, clarity and line. With those in place, more or less everything else will take care of itself. (His special hates include historical costumes, historical pronunciation, spoken introductions, candles, and any of the tricks people use to try to enliven what he views – so do I actually – as the self-sufficiency of great polyphony.) Now that there is a whole generation of younger singers who have grown up with recordings of The Tallis Scholars, it is far easier to find the sound he has always wanted. And a subtext here is that the sound of The Tallis Scholars has changed hardly at all during the four decades of their existence and the more than 300 singers who have taken part in this ensemble of gramophone.co.uk (usually) 10 voices. Another subtext is that he has taken this music out of the church in such a way that The Tallis Scholars are at their best in a hi-tech modern concert hall. As concerns recording, he stresses that the crucial work is done in the editing suite. Here he never changes the recorded sound, but his search for the very best moments from the session is unrelenting. He likens his work there to that of the Japanese film director Yasujirô Ozu, who ‘is said to have filmed 20 takes of someone placing a cup on a saucer, and then spent a week choosing the perfect version’. In this context it becomes easy to understand the famous pastingin of the same ‘Osanna’ section twice in a Mass recording. And he is particularly lucid on the ways in which a recording is entirely different from a live performance, namely that nothing must get in the way of the perfection of a CD. An earlier version of this book appeared to mark 30 years of The Tallis Scholars in 2003; the new version has a new chapter about touring and how Phillips views the future. In particular he finds himself wishing that the world of smallensemble singing had the same ideals as the world of top-class orchestras: that the first requirement is absolutely flawless blend and balance, and that technical shortcomings simply cannot exist. In addition there is a very illuminating selection of his columns for The Spectator (the inclusion of which results in a fair amount of duplication in the book) and a marvellously funny glossary of ‘Singers’ Argot’, some of which will be known to most musicians but some of which is special to The Tallis Scholars. Appendices include a list of everybody who has ever sung or performed with them (including Paul McCartney and Sting, but also, as an entirely unexplained teaser, Claudio Abbado, apparently on either harpsichord or organ) and a full list of their recordings, which is not quite detailed enough for my liking but can easily be filled out from the web. It is all richly illustrated with wellcaptioned pictures of the group and of Phillips himself. All the same, the heroes that emerge from the book are not Phillips, nor the singers, nor even his long-term record producer Steve Smith, not even Josquin and Palestrina, but two English composers: Thomas Tallis, with his 20-minute motet Gaude gloriosa, and John Taverner, with his Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas, which, Phillips says, ‘might be referred to as the Ninth of the early 16th century’. I like those priorities. David Fallows (Awards issue, 2013) GRAMOPHONEGRAMOPHONE 1111

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THE TALLIS SCHOLARS AT 50

What We Really Do: The Tallis Scholars By Peter Phillips The Musical Times Publications, PB, 344pp, £27.25 ISBN 978–0–954-57772–8

The running gag here concerns Allegri’s Miserere, the only piece later than their normal time-slot that The Tallis Scholars regularly perform, the piece that audiences across the world always want, perhaps the piece that has made this and similar groups financially viable. But the absurdity of the situation helps to underline that the keyword in this book – part documentation, part reminiscences, part reprints of Spectator columns, part serious musical observation – is ‘polyphony’. For Peter Phillips, the word represents everything he has been doing for the past 40 years and plans to do until he drops, namely church music from 1450 to 1610. More than that, though, it stands for the glories of a world before the trivialisation of the Baroque: he has a special scorn for Vivaldi and similar composers, which is another running joke.

For those who love the work of The Tallis Scholars, and probably those who hate it, the key passages here are those on interpretation and on recording. As concerns interpretation, Phillips is adamant that the main things are balance, precision, clarity and line. With those in place, more or less everything else will take care of itself. (His special hates include historical costumes, historical pronunciation, spoken introductions, candles, and any of the tricks people use to try to enliven what he views – so do I actually – as the self-sufficiency of great polyphony.) Now that there is a whole generation of younger singers who have grown up with recordings of The Tallis Scholars, it is far easier to find the sound he has always wanted. And a subtext here is that the sound of The Tallis Scholars has changed hardly at all during the four decades of their existence and the more than 300 singers who have taken part in this ensemble of gramophone.co.uk

(usually) 10 voices. Another subtext is that he has taken this music out of the church in such a way that The Tallis Scholars are at their best in a hi-tech modern concert hall. As concerns recording, he stresses that the crucial work is done in the editing suite. Here he never changes the recorded sound, but his search for the very best moments from the session is unrelenting. He likens his work there to that of the Japanese film director Yasujirô Ozu, who ‘is said to have filmed 20 takes of someone placing a cup on a saucer, and then spent a week choosing the perfect version’. In this context it becomes easy to understand the famous pastingin of the same ‘Osanna’ section twice in a Mass recording. And he is particularly lucid on the ways in which a recording is entirely different from a live performance, namely that nothing must get in the way of the perfection of a CD.

An earlier version of this book appeared to mark 30 years of The Tallis Scholars in 2003; the new version has a new chapter about touring and how Phillips views the future. In particular he finds himself wishing that the world of smallensemble singing had the same ideals as the world of top-class orchestras: that the first requirement is absolutely flawless blend and balance,

and that technical shortcomings simply cannot exist. In addition there is a very illuminating selection of his columns for The Spectator (the inclusion of which results in a fair amount of duplication in the book) and a marvellously funny glossary of ‘Singers’ Argot’, some of which will be known to most musicians but some of which is special to The Tallis Scholars. Appendices include a list of everybody who has ever sung or performed with them (including Paul McCartney and Sting, but also, as an entirely unexplained teaser, Claudio Abbado, apparently on either harpsichord or organ) and a full list of their recordings, which is not quite detailed enough for my liking but can easily be filled out from the web. It is all richly illustrated with wellcaptioned pictures of the group and of Phillips himself. All the same, the heroes that emerge from the book are not Phillips, nor the singers, nor even his long-term record producer Steve Smith, not even Josquin and Palestrina, but two English composers: Thomas Tallis, with his 20-minute motet Gaude gloriosa, and John Taverner, with his Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas, which, Phillips says, ‘might be referred to as the Ninth of the early 16th century’. I like those priorities. David Fallows (Awards issue, 2013)

GRAMOPHONEGRAMOPHONE 1111

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