Choir of King's College, Cambridge - I Heard a Voice - The Music of the Golden Age (2007)

Times change even in conservative quarters, and so it is even in that bastion of English tradition, the King's College chapel in Cambridge, England. The all-male (men and boys) Choir of King's College, Cambridge, has been singing these English-language Anglican anthems for nearly 400 years, and the current director, British veteran Stephen Cleobury, has maintained its high quality, creating a lush sound that seems to proceed from a knowledge of the sonic nooks and crannies of the space where it is created. The group, by college statute, consists of 16 members, but sounds larger as the voices soar into the chapel's upper reaches and rebound -- never sounding muddy in Cleobury's hands. The "golden age" of the album's title was the flowering of musical and literary creativity under King James I, an era that produced the plays of Shakespeare and the flowering of the English madrigal. The anthems included here, mostly famous works, are a bit like sacred madrigals in their sensitivity to text; the new listener can sample the ebullient O clap your hands of Orlando Gibbons, track 9, for an idea of what this disc, and the music of this entire era, is all about. What's new in this recording is that the vocal pieces are lightly accompanied by instruments doubling the vocal lines -- they have mostly been sung a cappella in the past, but the judicious addition of instruments, as heard here, can clarify the texture rather than load it down, and these forces make a persuasive case for a less "pure" sound. The English historical-instrument ensemble Fretwork accompanies the singers and is heard in a few all-instrumental pieces, two of them examples of the In nomine polyphonic form attempted by English composers for the rest of the seventeenth century. A fine, basic performance that will serve buyers well in a general collection of Renaissance favorites.