National Gallery of Art: Renaissance Sacred Music by the Tallis Scholars
Free (RSVP required)
- Peter Phillips, conductor
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina — Sicut lilium inter spinas
Nico Muhly — Marrow
Orlando di Lasso (Orlande de Lassus) — Vinum bonum et suave
Orlando di Lasso (Orlande de Lassus) — Missa ad imitationem moduli Vinum bonum, LV 627
Nico Muhly — A Glorious Creature
Cipriano de Rore — Descendi in hortum meum
John Dunstable — Descendi in hortum meum
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina — Descendi in hortum meum
Sebastián de Vivanco — Magnificat Octavi toni a 8
The program "Glorious Creatures" is formed around how nature beautifies our lives, from the sun in the sky to the flowers that grow in our gardens. By extension we include the grapes that make the vinum bonum we enjoy. The title is taken from a substantial new setting of words by Thomas Traherne, commissioned by the Tallis Scholars from Nico Muhly.
Some of these pieces (like de Rore's Descendi in hortum meum) involve canon, which is the musical equivalent of the kind of artifice we may associate with horticulture. To draw both strands together we end with a grandly canonic setting of the Magnificat by the Spanish master Sebastián de Vivanco, whose setting of a text from the "Song of Songs" opens our performance.
About The Tallis Scholars
Over five decades of performance and a catalogue of award-winning recordings for Gimell, Peter Phillips and The Tallis Scholars have done more than any other group to establish sacred vocal music of the Renaissance as one of the great repertoires of Western classical music.
They have sought to bring Renaissance works to a wider audience in churches, cathedrals and venues on every continent on the planet except Antarctica! These include the Royal Albert Hall, the Sistine Chapel, the Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall New York, the Philharmonic Hall Berlin, Saint Mark's Venice, Seoul Arts Centre Korea, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre London, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Wigmore Hall, Beijing Concert Hall, Megaron Athens, and the Sydney Opera House.
The Tallis Scholars continue to develop their exclusive sound, praised by reviewers for its supple clarity and tone, and to bring fresh interpretations to music by contemporary as well as past composers, such as Pärt, Tavener, Whitacre, Muhly, and Jackson.