Tune thy Musicke to thy Hart - Stile Antico (2012)

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Tune thy Musicke to thy Hart - Stile Antico (2012)

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Stile Antico (joined by Fretwork) explore long-neglected repertory: the wealth of Tudor and Jacobean sacred music written for domestic devotion, rather than for church worship. Culled from collections intended for use in private homes, these pieces by Tomkins, Campion, Byrd, Tallis, Dowland, Gibbons and others, offer a unique insight into the turbulent religious climate of the time and the thriving musical culture at its heart.

Stile Antico is now established as one of the most original and exciting voices in its field. Much in demand in concert, the group performs regularly throughout Europe and North America. Their recordings are the best-sellers on the harmonia mundi label, winning awards including the Diapason d’or de l’année and the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, and have twice attracted GRAMMY nominations. Their release Song of Songs won the 2009 Gramophone Award for Early Music and reached the top of the US Classical Chart.

Few ensembles can match the breadth of Fretwork’s repertoire, which ranges from the first printed collection published in 1501 in Venice to music commissioned by the group this year. In the 25 years since its debut, Fretwork’s pioneering work has taken its members all over the world. Their consistently high standards have brought music old and new to audiences hitherto unfamiliar with the inspiring sound-world of the viol.

Fretwork’s acclaimed recordings of the classic English viol repertory – Purcell, Gibbons, Lawes, Byrd – have become the benchmark by which other performances are measured. Its arrangements of the music of J. S. Bach have garnered particular praise. Released in 2009, the harmonia mundi recording of Purcell’s Complete Fantazias won the Gramophone Award for Baroque Chamber Music.

Composer: Thomas Tomkins, John Amner, John Taverner, Robert Ramsey, …
Orchestra/Ensemble: Fretwork, Stile Antico

Reviews: I don’t agree with Matthew O’Donovan’s premise that the places where 16th-century English music have been preserved—the cathedrals, the courts, wealthiest households, and colleges—tend to create a biased view where “the music-making of the ‘ordinary people’ has remained more obscure.” It seems to me that early-music listeners have plenty of options when it comes to buying albums of Tudor music aimed at the ordinary people of the day: solo lute and keyboard music, lute songs, consort songs, and viol consort pieces of the period, not to mention the occasional disc of music to accompany plays by the likes of Chapman, Jonson, and Shakespeare, or bawdy broadsides intended to be belted out as loudly as possible in a neighborhood tavern.


Where I do agree with O’Donovan is that Tudor music for domestic religious observance hasn’t received nearly as much attention as that intended for formal devotional use, whether in Roman Catholic or Anglican rites. Much of it shares a stylistic reaction of the times against the ostentatious, richly rewarding contrapuntal display of the earlier part of the century, as well as a preference for simple textures suitable for nonprofessional use and one-note-one-syllable settings. The result here is a varied and interesting program, tending more to severity and self-reflection than joy and praise (Tomkins’s O Praise the Lord and Croce’s From Profound Centre of My Heart to one side).


Make no mistake, there are musical delights to be gleaned from this release. I could wish that in building such a program Stile Antico had dug more into material that wasn’t previously recorded, but there’s much to be said for the content known generally from previous recordings and live concerts, such as Tallis’s beautiful Purge Me, O Lord , Ramsey’s How Are the Mighty Fall’n , and Tomkins’s rapt When David Heard . Among the less-often encountered are the Croce and Amner, and all of it makes for excellent listening.


Stile Antico is a young SATB ensemble of 12 musicians who were heard at a choral competition by an official from the Harmonia Mundi label. They were signed to a contract, and have produced six albums to date. I saw them two years ago at the Boston Early Music Festival, and was delighted with their range of colors that didn’t strive regularly for a uniform timbral blend, as much as for a subtle highlighting of parts when required. An example on this album can be heard in the repeat of the phrase “And suddenly” in Amner’s O Ye Little Flock , or the subtle exchange of leadership between the vocal divisions without interrupting the music’s flow in Dowland’s I Shame at My Unworthiness . On the other hand, was anything ever sung so sweetly even and properly balanced as this version of Campion’s Never Weather-Beaten Sail ? Yet the textures remain clear. No part is submerged, and the overall effect is as jewel-like and transparent as one could wish.


With Fretwork’s contribution we have an embarrassment of riches. Its dark sound and restrained phrasing is a solid fit for such pieces as Parsons’s pair of In nomines . It fits well in accompaniment to Stile Antico in such pieces as Gibbons’s See, See, the Word Is Incarnate , and for Benedict Hymas, who has the only solo on the CD (in effect, a consort song), Byrd’s Why Do I Use My Paper, Ink And Pen?


The engineering is well judged, with the singers’ space or the recording equipment moved to provide a different rate or reverberation depending on the music. When David Heard has more of a cathedral sound, for instance, than much of the rest, but all of it is closely miked and balanced to good effect.