Trenton Tye

Christopher Tye flourished as a church musician in England during the mid-sixteenth century. A direct contemporary of Thomas Tallis, he held the prestigious post of Master of Choristers at Ely cathedral and successfully managed to compose music for both Protestant and Catholic services during a politically unstable time. Henry VIII was a fan, asserting: ‘England one god, one truth, one doctor hath for music’s art—and that is Dr Tye’ (Tye himself had Protestant leanings).

Several new versions of Tye’s Missa Euge bone have appeared since the Winchester Cathedral Choir first released this disc of Tye’s Cathedral music in 1991. However, and notwithstanding Jeremy Summerly’s splendid Naxos offering with the Oxford Camerata, in my view none matches the Winchester recording for sheer vitality and sonic brilliance.

Christopher Tye was a close contemporary of Tallis and other composers of the Tudor era. He spent most of his career in the prestigious post of Master of the Choristers and organist of Ely Cathedral. Only a proportion of his works have survived, but among them are motets and two Mass settings. Of all these, his masterpiece is surely the six-voice Missa Euge Bone – recorded on the present disc and by several other ensembles over the past few decades.

Several new versions of Tye’s Missa Euge bone have appeared since the Winchester Cathedral Choir first released this disc of Tye’s Cathedral music in 1991. However, and notwithstanding Jeremy Summerly’s splendid Naxos offering with the Oxford Camerata, in my view none matches the Winchester recording for sheer vitality and sonic brilliance.

This disc could top the early music charts in any of several categories: outstanding viol consort; best programming; superior engineering. And for sheer aesthetic beauty, it would be hard to find a recording that would score higher on the greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts scale. Jordi Savall and his Hespèrion XX ensemble pretty much own the viol repertoire, but usually we find them plumbing the works of continental composers from Spain, France, and Italy. Here we find them across the channel in Reformation England in what must have been the very satisfying task of bringing to light the seriously neglected instrumental music of Christopher Tye. Many observers would justifiably argue that although only 31 pieces exist, Tye's music for viol consort represents a summation of the genre–which in its complexities of texture and interdependence of the respective parts is the direct ancestor of the string quartet and other forms of chamber music. Savall and his five colleagues perform all 31 works, most of which are between two and three minutes long and primarily in a contrapuntal form known as In Nomine–a uniquely English creation, popular with many composers, in which a particular section from a John Taverner mass was used as a basis for the whole piece.