Any attention given to the music of English composer Robert Parsons (c1535-1572) is a good thing, and The Cardinall’s Musick takes a good thing and makes it extraordinary, exploiting the richness of Parson’s harmonies with a bright, focused, well-balanced sound. The 18-voice ensemble (among the voices are several veterans of The Sixteen) is an ideal number not only to convey the full measure of those extended waves of harmonies, but to sustain the long-spun melodic lines that weave through the supporting chordal structure.
To know Parson’s music is to be immediately impressed with the composer’s mastery of the essential forms of imitative writing, and with his rare facility for dramatic effect, especially powerful in his Latin works. Of course, the wonderful Ave Maria is deservedly his best-known work, but there are others here to rival that one: the relatively short (less than four minutes) Peccantem me quotidie, for five voices (no soprano), and the similarly scored Libera me, Domine (those marvelously vibrant chords—and those cross-relations!), the Credo quod redemptor (a good example of how Parsons, as he does most prominently in the Ave Maria, likes to create little catchy melodic figures and then repeats them over and over, but in such a way that you look forward to each repetition), and the masterpiece O bone Jesu.
Andrew Carwood and his Cardinall colleagues offer only the second CD program in the catalog devoted exclusively to Parsons’ music (a fine Naxos recording with Voces Cantabiles is the other—read that review here)—and because there is precious little of Parsons’ output in existence, there is some overlap in the two programs, but not nearly enough to warrant owning one of these discs over the other. If you care about Parsons’ work, you will definitely want both. And the sound on this one, from the favored venue of Britain’s Fitzalan Chapel at Arundel Castle, is first rate. Don’t let the rather stern visage of Queen Mary I on the cover deter or mislead you: the music and these performances welcome and uplift, invite and invigorate. Highly recommended.
