The sevenvoice choral work "Miserere nostri" is usually credited to Thomas Tallis (ca. 1505-1585), but more likely it is by Tallis and William Byrd (1543-1623), the two men working collaboratively: first four voices composed by Byrd, then three more added by Tallis. The strange beauty of this piece hints that something arcane lurks under its sonorous surface, and indeed it does – but it can only be grasped by viewing the piece from the singer’s perspective, since it too is concerned with sight as well as sound. Just three notated lines are needed to convey this work’s seven-voice polyphony, two of them bearing instructions (or ‘canons’) telling how they must be deciphered. The first melody, attributed to Byrd in the 1575 Cantiones sacrae, is to be read by four lowvoice singers, all starting on the same note at the same time. The first of them sings the line exactly as written. The second doubles all the durations of the notes (x2), and turns all the intervals upside down. The third singer quadruples the durations (x4) and restores the intervals. The fourth octuples the durations (x8) and re-inverts the intervals. Thus four different versions of the same melody sound simultaneously, in various states of
augmentation and inversion – a conceit that is utterly impossible to follow in sound. Byrd then handed this to Tallis, who deftly added a superstructure: two sopranos sing in straightforward canon at the unison (very easy for listeners to hear), and a free seventh voice plugs some polyphonic gaps. ‘Miserere nostri, Domine’ (‘Have mercy on us, Lord’) are all the words supplied for this lean and logical motet.

Source: booklet from the album The Deer's Cry, written by John Milsom

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