Tchaikovsky: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Major.

"Tallis is dead, and music dies," lamented his contemporary William Byrd. And so it did, in England at least, although the musicologists contemplating Tallis, Byrd, and Purcell, have never been able to explain the demise of English music. It may be that a proper post-mortem would find a clue in the severance of the English church from its Latin roots-a severance from the ties of music to the liturgy. In the case of Tallis, his genius bifurcated as he struggled to be loyal at once to the Latin ritual and to the hymnal Christianity that followed the Tudor bill of divorcement from Rome. But in the music of ritual, at least, he was able to hold firm, as we hear in a new two-volume collcction titled Latin Church Music (Vols. I & 11, AngelEM[ CDC 7 49555 2 & CDC 7 49563 2), recorded by the Taverner Consort and Choir, directed by Andrew Parrott. This music, deriving from the Gregorian, is almost other-worldly in quality. The Lamentations, motets from the Cantiones Sacrae, the Spem in alium, and the Complete Responds shimmer, a music vibrant with the filaments of faith, which both bind and liberate.