This repertoire, in two or three contrapuntal lines, is mainly arrangements of small vocal works such as hymns and antiphons characterized by motivic integration, rhythmic displacements, and short passages of imitation. The timing for most of these works is between one to two minutes. The musical interest is in the subtle turn of melodic line and/or metric sophistication.
In addition to three anonymous works, the composers represented are John Redford, who was affiliated with St. Paul's Cathedral and later became Almoner and Master of the Choristers;
Thomas Tallis, who worked his way through a variety of church positions to become a member of the Chapel Royal in 1543, serving under Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth I; John Blitheman, who was also affiliated with the Chapel Royal; Thomas Preston, who is thought to have been organist at Magdalen College, Oxford, and later at Trinity College, Cambridge; and Thomas Tomkins, who became organist at the Chapel Royal in 1621.
Thomas Mulliner, who flourished in the 1560s in London, compiled what has come to be called the Mulliner Book in an effort to collect the best examples of this repertoire. Two instruments were used on this recording. One is in the Sudekum Chapel of the First Lutheran Church in Nashville, TN, and the other is in the Ackerman Auditorium of Southern Adventist University in Collegedale, TN. Both of these are appropriately scaled and registered instruments suitable to these small-scale works.
This music is more subtle than exciting and the tempos and mood tend to be the same from work to work. These performances more plod than sparkle and one often wonders why so much of this music would have been interesting to the likes of kings and queens. Perhaps it was designed to accompany and inspire meditation for their daily prayers.
Organist Carl Smith is a faculty member of the Blair School of Music of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. He has performed music from the Mulliner Book on many occasions and said he finds in these works some of the loveliest counterpoint in all of organ literature.