Tallis Voices Soar Melodically in Centuries-Old Sacred Song

The Tallis Scholars phenomenon continues: 12 singers based in England, led by indefatigable Renaissance music specialist Peter Phillips, who tour the world performing nothing but a cappella music from the middle of the last millennium.

It’s not exactly hit parade material, but the sizable audience at Royce Hall on Sunday afternoon vociferously applauding every selection testifies to their quiet appeal, even at the strident dawn of the 21st century.

They presented a cogently unified program of English sacred music, mostly concentrating on music written by a trio of composers from the late 1500s to the early 1600s, with a leap forward to Henry Purcell in the late 1600s. Laced among three anthems apiece by Purcell and Thomas Tomkins, Orlando Gibbons’ high-powered “Hosanna” and William Byrd’s “Sing Joyfully” were excerpts from Byrd’s relatively massive “Great Service.”

To this nonspecialist, the differences between each composer’s style seemed minimal, despite the varying lineups of singers and distributions of polyphonic parts. Occasionally something startling would happen--the unusually striking harmonies of Tomkins’ “God, the Proud Are Risen Against Me,” in which the Tallises pointed out the words “assembly of violent men” with exceptional clarity and force--but not too often.

Yet the ear did not tire of a full program from this genre, for the Tallis Scholars sang so well--with faultless intonation, smooth, rich tone quality and perfectly gauged balances--that one could settle very comfortably into their zone. The razor-sharp acoustics of Royce are a far cry from the mellow reverberant church in which they record. But in this space, their voices picked up a crystalline quality that helped sort out the polyphony.

Breaking the English monopoly, the encore came from a German source, a Hieronymus Praetorius arrangement of a Christmas carol, “Joseph Lieber.”