INTERVIEW: New York Polyphony are Renaissance men
Photo: New York Polyphony, including Geoffrey Williams (second from the left), will perform an evening of Thomas Tallis music in New York City. Photo courtesy of Chris Owyoung / Provided by Aleba & Co. with permission.
New York Polyphony, one of the revered vocal chamber ensembles in the world, will bring life to Thomas Tallis’ Lamentations and other musical pieces at a special concert Saturday, Feb. 24 at Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Midtown Manhattan. Audience members can expect to hear some of the highlights from the Tallis catalog, including the Renaissance composer’s “If Ye Love Me,” “O Sacrum Convivium” and “Tunes for Archbishop Parker’s Psalter I-III.”
For New York Polyphony, the Tallis concert will serve as a celebration of one of their favorite composers and another chance to engage audiences with the vocal group’s mission to rediscover classics from the Renaissance period. The chamber ensemble consists of Geoffrey Williams (countertenor), Steven Caldicott Wilson (tenor), Christopher Dylan Herbert (baritone) and Craig Phillips (bass).
The group has performed at some of the most prestigious venues in the world, including The Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, London’s Wigmore Hall, Dartmouth College and Stanford University.
Recently, Hollywood Soapbox spoke with Williams about the special Tallis concert. Here’s what he had to say …
On what audience members can expect from Lamentations …
“Well, I’m as excited because it’s my very favorite composer from the Renaissance and probably his piece that he’s best known for outside of his 40-part motet. So the Lamentations is the piece that most people I think are introduced to Tallis, and there are sets of them actually. And they’re fairly late in his life, so it’s a composer who has really got his craft under his belt, which I think is one of the reasons it’s so loved. It’s so well written. That is to say, there aren’t too many pieces by Tallis that, in my opinion, aren’t really well written.”
On the goals of the concert …
“The goal of the concert was to really look at all of Tallis’ output and as much as we thought we could do in 90 minutes or so that looked all the way through his career. One of the things that is so notable about Tallis is that he worked for four different monarchs during the biggest religious upheaval in England, so he had to learn to write in very antiquated, quite elaborate style of Henry VIII. And then when they got rid of all of the elaborate liturgy of [Roman] Catholicism and had this new Protestant Church, he began writing extremely simple music and the first music for the Church in English. So we have pieces that people might know very well, like ‘If Ye Love Me,’ which is a beautiful little anthem in English. And then Edward dies, and Mary comes on the throne. And we have elaborate Catholic music again, and by this time, Tallis is a really good composer. So we have music that while it’s elaborate, it’s tightly knit and well crafted, and this is probably where the Lamentations come from, so right in the middle of the 16th century. And then when Elizabeth comes on the throne, she’s a Protestant but likes Latin liturgy, so we have music from her reign as well.”
On the excellence of Tallis’ music …
“I think what’s so great about Tallis — and we’re going to sing a few pieces by his student, William Byrd, who is the other great Renaissance composer — the great difference between the two is that Byrd, he’s still a very devout Catholic and very interested in setting the words. … There’s such wonderful musical phrases, and linear and long, and it’s a chance in such a great room like St. Mary’s of Times Square, which is a building we know well, it’s a great place to sing really long lines of music.”
On understanding the background of this early music …
“It certainly gives us a context than just assuming that these composers were all religious people and that’s why they wrote it. I think Tallis is a smart composer obviously, but having the ability to write so well for these four different religious heads shows that he was also a pragmatist. I think all of us who are working musicians these days knows what it’s like to work for a different conductor one day and a different singer the next, and how it really takes a bit of savvy to be a working musician. We sometimes think about these guys sitting at big manuscripts and just being brilliant, but I think they have to have a bit of smart street sense about them. And I think when you know that sort of history behind them, I think that’s when you’re able to put a little more of the human element behind your performance.”
On objectivity versus subjectivity in early music …
“You can sing the notes with absolutely no subjective nature, at least no subjective rhetoric, and it’s beautiful music. But I think for us, we do try to find … moments when he clearly wants a passage to be a little more emphasized than another, and sometimes it has to do with the text that’s there. And sometimes you find a moment where the voices when they’re composed and weaved together really just make cool sounds, and we’re not a group that likes to perform music with too much subjective impulse for the audience. We feel it’s their responsibility to take what we give them, and then they take what they like. We’re not here to try and preach to people or convert anybody. I’m probably the most church-based member of the group, but I think what really makes the music sing is if you do perform it from a very objective manner. Here’s the basic sounds. Here’s the words as best expressed as we can, and then you take what you like the meaning to be.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
New York Polyphony will perform Thomas Tallis’ Lamentations Saturday, Feb. 24 at Church of St. Mary the Virgin in New York City. The event is presented by the Miller Theatre at Columbia University School of the Arts. Click here for more information and tickets.
