I’ve been wondering why, on our recently concluded US tour, the Tallis Scholars were such a pleasant and civilised bunch of people to be with. The answer came to me in flash – five of the ten singers are the children of Anglican clergy. That must be it. So I invited them to pose for me around the entrance to Cabell Hall at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where we sang on April 3rd. Convinced? They are (l to r of the lower picture) Patrick Craig, Simon Wall, Amy Haworth, George Pooley and Caroline Trevor.

Early in February I had the pleasure of working with Intrada – a group of students at the Moscow Conservatory of Music. Despite singing exceptionally well, most of them are actually studying choral conducting. Pictured above is the alto section, which includes Katya Antonenko at far right, the founder of the group. We sang Palestrina’s Missa Brevis and Josquin’s Praeter rerum seriem, amongst other things, in the Conservatory’s Rachmaninov Hall. It may not be generally known, or be evident from this photograph, but Russian women have as many low notes as Russian men. A low E flat from these five is really something.

Our new website went live today – 1st February 2012 – and can be found at www.thetallisscholars.co.uk. It has all manner of exciting features, trendy redesigns, captivating photos, and much more reliable concert details than heretofore. It also cost a lot of money. So please let us know what you think of it…

Кроме «The Tallis Scholars», Питер Филлипс работает и с другими коллективами. Так, он выступал c Collegium Vocale г. Гент (Бельгия) и с Нидерландским камерным хором,  а в настоящее время регулярно работает с Камерным хором г. Намюра (Бельгия), вокальным ансамблем «Интрада» г. Москвы (Россия), «Musica Reservata» г. Барселоны (Испания) и хором «Тюдор» г. Сиэттла (США).  Питер Филлипс многократно выступал на радио и телевидении, на BBC Радио 4 и «World Service», а также на немецком, французском, канадском и северо-американском радио, с удовольствием применяя свое владение иностранными языками. Питер Филлипс также часто работает с хором «BBC Singers», с которым в июле 2007 года совместно с «The Tallis Scholars» дал концерт «Променад» в Королевском Альберт Холле.

Каждый год г-н Филлипс проводит большое количество мастер-классов и хоровых семинаров по всему миру, посвящённых изучению наследия хоровой музыки эпохи Возрождения, а также является художественным руководителем Летних школ «The Tallis Scholars» в Великобритании, США и Австралии. Недавно Питер Филлипс был назначен музыкальным директором  и Членом Совета Колледжа Мертон, Оксфорд.

Питер Филлипс хорошо известен не только как дирижер, но и как исследователь. Уже 29 лет он ведёт музыкальную колонку журнала «The Spectator». В 1995 году он стал владельцем и издателем «The Musical Times», старейшего музыкального журнала в мире. В 1991 году была опубликована его книга «Английская духовная музыка в 1549–1649 гг.».

В 2005 году г-ну Филлипсу был присвоен титул Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Министром культуры Франции – награда, которой удостаиваются деятели, внесшие вклад в понимание французской культуры в мире.

A performance of any 40-part piece is likely to guarantee a big crowd. Like dinosaurs, they attract attention merely on account of their size, though unlike these forebears they need a quite exceptionally large brain to control their bulk. The problem for the composer is obvious: how to make something interesting of such a massive canvas. Most of us can hum a good tune; some more talented can even imagine the possibility of two or three tunes going on at the same time. But to create a forty-part texture which lasts, say, ten minutes, simply stretches the human mind to its very limits.

The vogue for these colossi started in the first half of the 16^th-century with Alessandro Striggio’s Ecce beatam lucem, followed in a few years by Thomas Tallis’s Spem in alium. Tallis’s piece remains the sine qua non of all subsequent 40-part endeavour and has helped to set a scene today which gives young composers a real chance to establish themselves. The challenge is there: if someone could write a piece to go alongside the Tallis – by which I mean scored for the same forty voices, last ten minutes, and be as daring and dazzling in performance as the Tallis – then that person’s reputation could be made. Yet I have watched as composer after composer has failed the test. Either they have not had the resourcefulness to write properly in 40 parts, or they have not written music which is crying out for a second performance.

The current field known to me consists of the following: Robin Walker’s I have thee by the hand, O Man; Gabriel Jackson’s Sanctum est verum lumen; Antony Pitts’s XL; Errollyn Wallen’s When the wet wind sings; Carl Rütti’s Veni creator spiritus; Marcus Tristan Heathcock’s Next to nothing; Giles Swayne’s The Silent Land; Michael Zev Gordon’s Allele; and David Lang’s i never. It was intended that John Tavener’s Let not the Prince be silent should go with the Tallis, but somehow the 40-part scoring got lost in the creative process.

The most successful candidates were always going to be the ones who followed Tallis’s unusual layout – eight five-part choirs, not the more obvious ten four-part ones. The ideal would be to use the same forty singers (or multiples thereof) for the new pieces as for the Tallis and then present the public with a set of variations on a particular sound-world. Almost all the composers listed above have been quick to say that they followed Tallis’s lead, though on closer inspection one finds that Wallen does not really write for forty voices; Gordon, Rütti and Swayne at least double the length of the Tallis – the Rütti must be far longer; and Heathcock writes for five eight-part choirs. Swayne adds a cello part, which changes the essential sound-world. Only Gordon does not mention Tallis in his elaborate on-line blurb, being carried away with genomes and how the participating singers on his recording are singing their own genes. I wonder, though, why he chose to write for forty voices in the first place. Clearly this is some kind of a magic number for musicians which fifty, for example, seems not to be.

Robin Walker’s I have thee by the hand, O Man and Gabriel Jackson’s Sanctum est verum lumen are so far the stand-out compositions for me. I have thee by the hand, O Man probably follows Tallis the closest. Walker told me it took him a year to write – six months to conceive and another six to score – with a copy of the Tallis always open before him. What he achieves is the same almost symphonic sweep as Spem in alium, a single span of rapturous sound which, like so much renaissance music, exists without needing to have sudden changes of speed or dynamic imposed on it. Jackson’s Sanctum est verum lumen is just as fine if quite different in effect. Instead of sweep there is a constant succession of fascinating ideas and effects, jostling each other for attention like a sonic kaleidoscope.

I challenge our more adventurous choral societies to tackle these 40-parters by Tallis, Walker and Jackson. They should make a rivetting experience for singers and audiences alike. And the conductor may be reassured to know that I reckon the Tallis remains the most difficult of the three to pull off.

This article was published in the Spectator of January 7th, on which day the Tallis Scholars sang the 40-part motets of Tallis, Jackson and Walker in the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester.

Left to right: Lucy, Ghislaine Morgan, Edmund, Caroline, PP, Jessica Baker

Followers of this blog will know that in December 2007 I bought a yacht: a 78-foot wooden-framed yacht, built in 1929 and launched the following year, called the Creole and based in Seattle. Although she is one of the most beautiful vessels I have ever seen – and the few times I’ve been out in her I have had the time of my life – I have not mentioned her for some time because trying to run a vessel from thousands of miles away is a uniquely worrying experience, and I didn’t want to be reminded of it. Boats, especially wooden ones, deteriorate very fast in rainy conditions. However on November 18th 2011 I met Jayson Owen who runs a lodge on Kodiak Island, Alaska (www.bearpawlodgekodiak.com), in search of a new angle on marketing his business. We intend to go into partnership together, using the Creole as the main attraction in what is so deliciously called the ‘high end’ of the market. So, if you want to see bears and whale and many other natural delights at very close quarters check out the Bear Paw Lodge website. The Creole, fully restored and fitted, should be appearing on Kodiak soon, as will I and my family.

They were premature in their heaving. For a few years the tradition indeed seemed to be down and out. Concerned parties continued to find, more noisily now, politically unacceptable references in Gilbert’s librettos to jingoistic behaviour, racial stereotyping and the degrading of women and gays. Of course if everything Gilbert wrote were taken seriously there would be no end to how incorrect he was, but by the mid-80s post-colonial angst was waning and the Savoy canon was offered some respite by people who argued that the bad things in Gilbert were of such a puerile kind that no-one could take them seriously. In John Pemble’s wonderful phrase ‘Gilbert, like his characters, was found to inhabit a pre-genital universe somewhere between fairyland and nightmare.’

Since then the English-speaking world has gone mad for G and S. Whether it has been serious artists letting their hair down or amateur dramatic societies having a good time, there has been no shortage of productions of almost all of their collaborations. From Jonathan Miller and Ken Russell in the theatre, to Mike Leigh’s Topsy-turvy on the big screen, the interest has held up beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. Gilbert and Sullivan
Societies are flourishing all over the world, headlined by the annual International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in the Buxton Opera House.

It is now clear that the duo’s particular genius for clever rhyming and memorable tunes has influenced many subsequent performers, not least Tom Lehrer who adapted the Modern Major-General’s patter song to encompass the entire periodic table (it ends with the characteristically outrageous rhyme ‘discovered’ and ‘Harvard’, which Gilbert would have greatly enjoyed). Like Lehrer and Danny Kaye in the US, Flanders and Swann also quickly grasped that if the marriage of words and music could be got right, they would produce songs which everyone would want to quote – remembering the tunes or the texts but rarely both – a genuinely popular, cross-discipline and cross-class art-form. Why Sullivan wanted to knuckle down to Gilbert’s fantastical librettos, which regularly infuriated him, when he was still the great hope for British composition, is not clear. Perhaps it was the money. However he took to heart Queen Victoria’s invitation to write a grand opera, which he did while also writing The Gondoliers. After initial success, Ivanhoe quickly disappeared from sight.

How many times have you launched into one of the great G and S choruses, hoping to carry the company with you? You could as well have tried out Lehrer’s Vatican Rag, or Flanders and Swann on the amorous habits of the hippopotamus: they all share the same irresistible qualities. Not long ago the annual G and S production was a staple of many schools, providing children with the only experience of disciplined singing some of them would ever have. Much is made of the choirschools and the opportunities they present now, but for the non-religious there is precious little differenc between singing in HMS Pinafore and singing in Stanford in C. The musical language, and the Victorian-ness of it all, is almost identical. Sullivan was clearly the equal of anybody at that time: it was just that he chose to set ‘A policeman’s lot is not a happy one’ instead of ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord’.

It is often said about G and S that one can only take them seriously when they are not being serious themselves. The moment they start preaching in direct terms they become unbearable, yet the kind of parody they purveyed of some of our most venerable institutions was and still is astonishingly acceptable. Is it a peculiarly British trait to mock in such an innocuous, fun-filled way that others might miss that we are mocking at all? Well, there a G and S Society in Basel, as well as Gettysburg, PA, and one need only look at the history of Aesop’s Fables to realise that everyone likes to lampoon the rich and the powerful, even the rich and the powerful themselves. The trick is not to be caught. But in the end the success of G and S comes down to nothing more than the sheer quality of the words and the music.

This article was published in The Spectator, dated 15th October 2011.

I’ve taken to singing bass on our new course in Barcelona (Ivan Moody was conducting when this picture was taken). I’ve been having a wonderful time, though I noticed that the really expert singer next to me – Tomàs Maxé – kept looking at me, as if we weren’t on the same part.

Snapped on Bologna station in August. Why was the functionary wearing a top which carried an English-language slogan (Cleaning Service)?