Music
No ordinary men
Peter Phillips
I t is, then, 1985, and we are perforce to spend it in the company of several musical geniuses. The emphasis of those Who plan festivals and make series of recordings will fall on the baroque period; but it should be said that this unusually well-favoured year has other commemora- tions to witness, apart from those of the two giants. Here is a list of anniversarians — probably no more nor less complete than any other: J. S. Bach (b. 1685), G. F. Handel (b. 1685), Domenico Scarlatti (b. 1685), Heinrich Schutz (b. 1585), Thomas Tallis (d. 1585), Osbert Parsley (d. 1585), John Merbecke (d. 1585), Camille Saint- Saens (b. 1835), Alban Berg (b. 1885 and d. 1935), Sir Michael Tippett (80 this year), Luciano Berio (60 this year), Anthony Milner (60 this year), Pierre Boulez (60 this year).
There is something for everyone here, but there is no doubting the bias towards the 17th century — both the early baroque (Schutz) and the high baroque (Bach, Handel and Scarlatti) are represented. This should give the authentic performance movement a renewed impetus. 1985 has been dubbed European Music Year by the EEC and the Council of Europe, and one of the projects to be promised support is the founding of the European Baroque Orchestra. This will entail 22 players of baroque instruments from Italy, France, Germany, Holland and the UK living in Oxford and rehearsing daily from January to June in the Old Radcliffe Observatory. It seems that they are going to spend the Whole year playing Handel, since he hap- pened to go to Oxford in 1733 and a festival is being formed around the event. The creation of this orchestra is an impor- tant step forward, though I fear for the Players' emotional balance if they do not intend to attack a late Romantic work at least for relaxation. The European Music
Year arrangements also mean that some of the larger festivals will have more income to spend on themselves and there will be more commissioning of new music. The BBC have announced a list of 12 orchestral works — each of their four main orchestras being responsible for three each — which will receive their premieres this year. Eleven of these commissionees are male, the 12th has not yet been announced.
Such is the pressure of all this that some festivals, in a fit of inverted anniversarian- ism, have decided either to keep a low profile on the Bach/Handel front, or find a local hero to put up as an alternative. So desperate have they become in Belgium, where international baroquerie is unusual- ly rampant, that they have fixed on one of their greatest Flemish Renaissance masters — Adrian Willaert — as a feature of their music-making this year. No one is quite sure when Willaert was born. It could have been 1485, but nearer 1480 seems more likely.
At the risk of sounding inverted too, I would point out that the English compos- ers who died in 1585 were no ordinary men. Thomas Tallis may be ranked with Byrd, Purcell, Elgar and Britten, or with any of his foreign contemporaries like Palestrina and Lassus. He lived to be 80 and had the unprecedented task of having to write music for four different monarchs, each requiring different musical styles in their religion: Henry VIII's Catholicism, Edward VI's severe Protestantism, Queen Mary's Catholicism and Elizabeth l's mil- der Protestantism. All this he did with the same fluency of expression, yet the varia- tion of style over his whole output was, of necessity, very wide. Anyone who is not familiar with his setting of the Lamenta- tions, with his 40-part motet Spem in alium, with his masterpiece Gaude gloriosa (which, incidentally, runs for 17 and a half minutes), with 'If ye love me' (which runs for two and half) may have a chance to hear 'It's not really a snowman — he's a picket.' them this year. He died on 23 November, which happily falls on a Saturday, and has been designated European Music Night. I am laying my plans.
Osbert Parsley, wonderfully named, lived to be 74 and spent most of those years singing in the choir of Norwich Cathedral. A plaque there speaks of him 'who here a singing-man did spend his days/ Full fifty years in our Church Melody/ His Memory shines bright whom thus we praise.' He wrote some first-rate music, both Catholic and Protestant, and for instruments.
John Merbecke will be familiar to church- goers as the man who set the words of the first Anglican Prayer Book for congre- gational singing. This was the least of his achievements, since there he just adapted Latin chant to fit the English texts, though it is memorably done. He was, though, a thoroughly proficient composer in the pre- Reformation Catholic style, writing one of the largest mass-settings of his time, the Mis.ia per arma justitiae. This is surprising when before the Reformation he had shown himself to be a convinced Protestant — making a study of the works of Calvin, and compiling a survey of all the versions of the English Bible. In 1543 he was arrested, charged with heresy, and two of his partners were burnt. Somehow Mer- becke talked his way out of it and was eventually restored to his post at St George's Chapel, Windsor where he died in office.
With Tippett and Milner that gives us something to shout about, though I fear with our customary reticence we won't really. It would be good if 1985 were to be remembered for some real contribution to music, of the sort one might wish to celebrate in times to come, and not just for presenting again the works we listen to all the time anyway.
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