CD Review: "Reformation" Keyboard Works: Lamenting Walsingham

I chanced to see a post by Damian Thompson on social media about a new Hyperion CD of Elizabethan keyboard music by William Byrd, et al, so went to his Spectator "Holy Smoke" page to listen to his interview with the performer, Mishka Rushdie Momen (yes, she's related to Salman Rushdie; he's her uncle). Then, of course, I ordered the CD after perusing the Hyperion website for samples, etc.

The soloist wrote the liner notes for the CD and she laments the losses of culture and freedom in Recusant England, not just for Catholics at the time, but for the world (some of that regret comes through even more clearly in the "Holy Smoke" interview linked above). An excerpt:

Thinking about pilgrimages in England also involves confronting a great absence. English culture has been predominantly Protestant for half a millennium and the cult of St Thomas no longer exists. Thomas Becket’s shrine in Canterbury, described by Erasmus as ‘a shryne of gold … [where] all thynges dyd shyne, florishe’, was demolished in 1538 by the agents of Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to Henry VIII and architect of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The relics of Thomas Becket also vanished; in her novel The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel suggests they might have been thrown into Cromwell’s cellar. Subsequently, a royal proclamation ordered the destruction of any image or mention of Becket in the Church; in Missal books, Becket’s name is redacted more consistently than references to the Pope.

Our picture of the Renaissance is severely fractured and incomplete as a result of the sheer scale of the cultural vandalism caused by the English Reformation. Many paintings and works of art were destroyed in this Puritan [sic] environment. A rare example of a medieval wall painting which has survived is in Pickering, Yorkshire, where I gave a recital for the Ryedale Festival underneath an image depicting the chaplain Edward Grim pleading with the four knights of Henry II who murdered Thomas Becket. Over 700 Catholic religious institutions were destroyed between 1536 and 1540, and a great number of trained musicians and composers lost their positions. Some would have found work in the new Church of England and others in secular environments such as private homes, but I wonder if a wealth of musical treasures and talent may have been squandered. . . .

One might quibble with the "Puritan environment" description as anachronistic, but it does represent the views of someone like Latimer who wanted to purify English churches and shrines of their statues of the Mother of God and the saints. Here's a link to a page describing the wall paintings in Saints Peter and Paul church in Pickering, Yorkshire Momen refers to.

I received the CD Friday and have been listening to it with delight. She performs these pieces on the modern piano instead of the period instruments Byrd and Bull and Gibbons would have used, and I like the range and dynamics of the performances. While through the years I've listened to many recordings of William Byrd's liturgical music, including the three Masses, this is the first time I've listened to his keyboard works for such a stretch, and the soloist's notes about her methods of playing them on a concert piano, including fingering and use of the pedals, were enlightening to me. Her final comment from the notes:

Research has provided us with many details about people’s lives in this era and yet our imagination is compelled to fill in so many gaps. Musically speaking, exploring this repertoire on the piano gives me a sense of encountering a palace of riches, and at the same time a feeling of venturing into relatively uncharted territory. I would love it if works from this period were to become fully integrated into the modern pianist’s canon and for this inspiring repertoire to enter into a dialogue with masterpieces from throughout history.

Please note that this is Hyperion's "Record of the Month" and Momen was featured on BBC Radio's In Tune program Thursday, July 4, and there's a Gramophone interview. 

I think this would be a good CD for any collection. 

Image Source (Fair Use for a Review).

Phineas Fletcher and Orlando Gibbons

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Phineas Fletcher was baptized on April 8, 1582. He was an:

English poet best known for his religious and scientific poem The Purple Island.

He was the elder son of Giles Fletcher the Elder and brother of Giles Fletcher the Younger. He was educated at Eton and at King’s College, Cambridge. Fletcher became chaplain to Sir Henry Willoughby, who presented him in 1621 to the rectory of Hilgay, Norfolk, where he spent the rest of his life.

His greatest work, The Purple Island, was published in 1633. It included the Piscatorie Eclogs and other Poetical Miscellanies. The Purple Island: or the Isle of Man, is a poem in 12 cantos describing allegorically the human physiology and soul. The manner of Edmund Spenser is employed throughout, and the chief charm of the poem is considered by critics to be its descriptions of rural scenery. The Piscatorie Eclogs are pastorals, the characters of which are represented as fisherboys on the banks of the Cam, and are interesting for the light they cast on the biography of the poet himself (Thyrsil) and his father (Thelgon), and on Phineas’ friendship with Cambridge men. Fletcher’s poetry has not the sublimity sometimes reached by his brother Giles.

He also wrote Locustes or Apollyonists, an anti-Catholic, anti-Jesuit, anti-foreigner, anti-Real Presence satire, which seems to drip with hatred, animosity, and nationalism. 

On the other hand, his poem, "Drop, drop, slow tears", was set to music by Orlando Gibbons.

Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet,
which brought from heaven the news and Prince of Peace.

Cease not, wet eyes, his mercies to entreat;
to cry for vengeance sin doth never cease.

In your deep floods drown all my faults and fears;
nor let his eye see sin, but through my tears.

Orlando Gibbons, Archbishop Laud, and St. John's, Oxford

This is really an Advent text, but since today is the Baptism of the Lord by St. John the Baptist in the Jordan River (in the Ordinary Form) it kind of fits--here is Orlando Gibbons' setting of "This is the record of John":

This is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou? And he confessed, and denied not, and said plainly, I am not the Christ.

And they asked him, What art thou then? Art thou Elias? And he said, I am not. Art thou that Prophet? And he answered, No.

Then said they unto him, What art thou? that we may give an answer unto them that sent us. What say’st thou of thyself? And he said, I am the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord. (John 1: 19-23)

According to the webpage for St. John's College Chapel:

William Laud endowed the college richly during and after his presidency, and the fine pre-Reformation ecclesiastical vestments that he gave are displayed every term. Laud’s friendship with Orlando Gibbons led to the composition of ‘This is the record of John’ for the choir of St John’s, and this superb setting of a text from the first chapter of John’s gospel is sung regularly in chapel: after centuries of neglect, it is now recognised as one of the supreme English anthems.

The St. John's Chapel Choir has also recorded the anthem. Laud was President of St. John's from 1621 to 1633, after being a Fellow and receiving both his B.A. and M.A. degrees from St. John's.