In Praise of Mary

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The Tallis Scholars, 10 singers this year, brought their beautifully matched voices to Grace Cathedral for Sunday’s concert, titled “Poetry in Music for the Virgin Mary.” At first glance, the choice of a Mass based on a motet text from the Song of Solomon might seem to have little to do with the Virgin Mary. But the early Christian church managed to convince itself that the Song of Solomon was an allegory, thereby affording many composers the opportunity to set texts like Nigra sum (I am dark, but comely), which could be understood as praise of Mary.

Tallis Scholars

The motet in question, written by Jean Lhéritier, uses only a couple of fragments of the original Biblical text. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s Missa nigra sum is a parody Mass (that is, a work quoting and developing material from another work). His Mass, based on Lhéritier’s motet, made liberal use of its music, beginning several movements with the motet’s opening theme, but all set to the text of the Mass rather than the Old Testament text. Both works are written for five parts (SATTB), which accounted for the presence of 10 singers — two on a part, four of them tenors. In the concert’s second half, pieces ranged from four parts to eight, so the assignment of voices to parts had to be ingeniously arranged.

Palestrina’s contrapuntal writing is elegant. He also makes effective use of homophonic chordal writing to bring out certain phrases, like crucifixus … passus et sepultus est (crucified, dead, and buried). He occasionally varies the distribution of voices, for instance using only higher solo voices in the resurrexit, then bringing the full chorus back in — or beginning particular movements with particular voices. Two solo quartets were featured in the Sanctus (whether by Palestrina’s design or that of Director Peter Phillips), which provided a nice variety of texture. The Benedictus was especially well-performed by a tight SATT quartet.

In remarks made in a preconcert interview, Phillips complained that producers tend to choose churches as venues for his ensemble’s performances, though he prefers to think of them as concerts. He has a point, and there is no particular “authenticity” in hearing a Renaissance Mass sung in a church without also having interruptions for speaking, movement, incense, and parishioners mumbling their rosaries throughout. But in a concert performance, changes in tempo, dynamics, color, and phrasing are welcome. In a super-reverberant acoustic like Grace Cathedral’s, such variety is difficult to achieve and needs exaggeration. Consistent beauty of sound is not the only factor to consider. Tempo especially, in this concert, was an issue; hearing every piece sung to virtually the same beat became a trial.

Rejoicing, but Never Up-Tempo

The second half of the concert began with two settings of the Christmas manger story, Quaeramus cum pastoribus (Let us search with the shepherds), the first by Jean Mouton and the second by Thomas Crecquillon. Mouton told the story nicely in a four-part setting, attentive to call-and-response elements in the text, and bringing out the contrast between rejoicing at the birth of Jesus and reflecting on the prophecy of his death. Crecquillon’s six-part setting lay higher and made a lot of the Noels, though the performance would have benefited from a faster tempo and a brighter sound.

The remarkable Josquin des Prez was represented by a moving Pater noster (Our Father), which was set low, taking the basses way down. In his counterpoint, the musical phrases contained varieties of note values, so that at any given moment some voices would be going slower and others faster: a lovely effect, well-realized by the singers.

The final three pieces, by Jacobus Gallus, made up a welcome study in contrasts. His eight-part setting of the Pater noster (adding a Marian text) alternated between the higher and the lower voices, ending with a spirited Amen. The extraordinary Mirabile mysterium (A wonderful mystery) was a triumph of theological and harmonic complexity: “A wonderful mystery is revealed today: God has become man. That which he was, he remained, and that which he was not, he assumed, suffering neither mixture nor division.”

Confronted with such a text, Gallus wrote an intensely chromatic piece, leading to unexpected harmonic progressions and punning musically on words like mystery, innovation, and division. Division as a musical term means increasingly fancy variations, and the piece ended with a profusion of fast notes and rhythmic flourishes. The last piece, Omnes de Saba (All they from Sheba shall come), made a bright close to the concert, ending in a splendid Alleluia.

An encore was Michael Praetorius’ eight-part arrangement of the German carol Joseph lieber, Joseph mein (My dear Joseph — Mary singing by the cradle). Alas, this lilting carol was sung at the very same beat that had long since palled.

Anna Carol Dudley is a singer, teacher, member of the faculty of UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University lecturer emerita, and director emerita of the San Francisco Early Music Society’s Baroque Music Workshop.