From Tallis to Vaughan Williams - and back.

Part of the delights of being a partial tech–NO(phobe) is when I put things onto my cheap Chinese copy mp3 player, I really have no control over the play order.

In bed, doing my wake-up-in-a-minute thing, earphones in, out popped Tallis – wonderful in those moments of semi-consciousness. I have him on the portable as part of my preparation for the Complete Works … Spem in alium – in Latin in case you ain’t got the point of the title.

It was immediately followed by Vaughan Williams – a new piece to me, the start of his Pilgrim’s Progress – and then back to Tallis, in English this time.

Everything fitted …

And, more importantly for this post, linked as being essentially English.

I got one of those distasteful-when-awake National urges to ‘bulldog’.

Whether it is the quality which linked them (whether it was the semi-consciousness) or something essentially English I do not know. I suspect a bit of both (or all three).

There was some research done that linked the ‘national’ in music to the intervals of the voice when spoken, so maybe that had something to do with it; maybe Williams was conscious of Tallis as English and had set his route based on the earlier composer; maybe I was thinking English (yesterday I was searching Timisoara for St Georges).

But the Latin worked too … It sounded so English Cathedral.

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