Thomas Tallis: Mass “Puer Natus Est Nobis”, Responsories & Motets – Robert Quinney

Renaissance English composer Thomas Tallis is deeply embedded in the Choir of New College Oxford’s DNA, an ensemble founded in 1379, well before the birth of the composer. Tallis lived to a ripe old age, under four different monarchs, and was praised for his impeccable craftsmanship. As well as being beautifully finished, his music is also emotionally expressive: works such as Suscipe quaeso Domine demonstrate intense devotional feeling and dramatic text setting. His mastery of the cantus firmus technique is epitomised in the central piece of this album, the Mass ‘Puer natus est nobis’, a highly sophisticated seven-voice work that is sung here by children and adults. Other works on the programme showcase Tallis’s innovation and variety: O nata lux, Salvator mundi and the extraordinary In jejunio et fletu. Tallis inhabited a sound world of his own – one characterised by the voices and musicianship of boy choristers as well as adult singers – so much so that Byrd could say after his death: ‘Tallis is dead, and music dies’.