With the release of this album, The Tallis Scholars under the direction of Peter Phillips mark a significant shift in their repertoire choices. By trading their familiar territory of Palestrina and Josquin for the contemporary idiom of Nico Muhly, they deliver a performance that feels both spiritual and deeply human.
Muhly, whose compositional style is rooted in his own experience as a choir singer, employs a ten-voice structure that exploits the individual qualities of the eleven singers. Most of the compositions on this album were written specifically for this ensemble. A fascinating interplay emerges: while the Scholars typically strive for an almost anonymous unity, Muhly here allows individual voices to breathe. A subtle sway or an audible entrance becomes not an imperfection, but an expressive device that makes the abstract music more human and tangible. Additionally, Muhly plays with density: voices expand in "concentric circles" and then retreat into homophonic, chorale-like unity. In works such asA Glorious Creaturea mathematical approach to sound becomes visible, with a central unison note serving as the foundation for the harmonic resonance of the entire register.
In other works on the album, Muhly employs a compositional style of "musical storytelling" that ranges from cinematic, almost fairytale-like textures in Captain Scott's diary fragments ("Rough Notes") to the complex, layered rhythmics in the birthday gift "Prosperitie". In works like these, the Scholars' vocal technique is deliberately deployed to give voice to natural phenomena such as the aurora borealis through shifting, glowing harmonies.Rough Notesthe birthday gift Prosperity. InRough Notesthe vocal technique of the Scholars is deliberately deployed to give voice to natural phenomena such as the aurora borealis through shifting, glowing harmonies.
The intellectual and emotional heart of the album is, as the album's title already reveals: "No Resting Place". Here, Muhly integrates the traditional Lamentations of Jeremiah with the raw testimonies of the Windrush generation. This creates a compelling contrast by introducing a double layer: a Latin, harmonically abstract framework that creates distance as a backdrop, against which first-person drama in the foreground compels the listener to direct emotional engagement. It is in these passages, where Biblical abstraction collides with our recent history, that the Scholars reveal their deepest power.The collaboration between Muhly and Phillips results in an album that explores the boundaries of traditional choral execution without breaking with the past. The strength of this release lies in the way the architectural principles of Renaissance polyphony have been translated into a modern, linear idiom. It is a technically demanding catalogue that demonstrates that the vocal precision and flexibility of The Tallis Scholars hold up equally well outside their familiar framework. An essential listening experience for both lovers of polyphony and contemporary music.Nico Muhly (b. 1981)
Linn Records
