Search - Robert Fayrfax, Harry Christophers, The Sixteen :: Robert Fayrfax: Missa Albanus & Aeternae laudis lilium

Henry VIII's Composer Friend

Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 06/09/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Robert Fayrfax (1464-1521) was first appointed to the Chapel Royal by Henry VII in 1497. He was involved musically in the Henry VII's funeral, Henry VIII's coronation, the burial of the young prince Henry in 1511, and among the dignitaries at the elaborate diplomatic potlatch between France and England known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. He was also the first person ever to receive a Doctorate in Music from Oxford University. A successful career he had to be sure, yet only twenty-nine pieces of his music have survived, and by far the best of them are included on this one CD.



The Missa Albanus was composed for the choir of St. Albans Abbey. Like many masses of the period, it's constructed on a "cantus firmus" - a series of nine long notes that center the harmonic polyphony around the tenor. In this case, the cantus firmus is taken from plainchant, from an antiphon in the Office of St. Alban, but Fayrfax makes highly original use of his nine notes, repeating them in ordinary form, in inversion, in retrograde and in inverted retrograde, a compositional feat that JS Bach would have admired. Then in the final "dona nobis pacem" of the Agnus Dei, the cantus firmus is repeated in each of the four voices in turn, revealing its true character dramatically. The voicing of this mass is also somewhat radical. The highest voice - the treble - is extremely high in pitch though narrow in range. The boy sopranos of St. Albans must have been quite well trained.

Early Tudor masses did not include the Kyrie. On this CD, the five-part votive antiphon Aeternae laudis lilium is sung first, and it's a wonderful, effusive, rhythmically dashing composition, my personal favorite among teh works of Fayrfax. It was commissioned by Elizabeth of York for a visitation to St. Albans on the liturgical Feast of the Visitation. Elizabeth paid the regal sum of twenty shillings, and got her money's worth in the distinctive musical phrase, sung in turn by all five voices, incanting the name Elizabeth.



English polyphony sounds markedly different from continental masses of the same era - looser in phrasing, freer in imitation, more consonant in harmony because of the English predilection for octaves and thirds. Of course the text is Latin, but somehow English choirs seem to sound more secure rhetorically when singing English music. The large ensemble led by Harry Christophers, which calls itself The Sixteen, is perfectly suited to sing Fayrfax, whose textures are open enough to be managed by three and four voices on a part. This, I think, is The Sixteen's best recorded performance of music before Bach, and Fayrfax is one of the forgotten glories of English music."