Page 47 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

RENAISSANCE 1400–1600 45

See also: Messe de Notre Dame 36–37 ■ Missa l’homme armé 42 ■ Missa Pange lingua 43 ■ Canticum Canticorum 46–51 ■
Great Service 52–53 ■ St. Matthew Passion 98–105

and composed the complex five- statement of the Nunc dimittis
voice Mass O quam glorifica for chant running through the work
his doctorate in 1504. adds to its impact.

Masters of sacred music An extraordinary response
In the early 16th century, John The Duke hearing of the Thomas Tallis was a member of the
Taverner emerged as a significant song [Spem in alium] took his Chapel Royal when Striggio visited
composer of English sacred music chain of gold from of his neck and unfurled his multipart scores.
after his appointment in 1526 as and put it about Tallis his The Italian’s works were in the
Master of the Choristers at Thomas neck and gave it him. polychoral style, with voices
Wolsey’s newly founded Cardinal Thomas Wateridge grouped into self-contained choirs
College, Oxford (the future Christ Letter (1611) that came together in a grand
Church). There he composed three sound at crucial points in the score.
six-voice Masses, Corona spinea, Tallis’s response in his motet
Gloria tibi Trinitas, and O Michael. Spem in alium was quite different:
The tenor part from the “In nomine it dipped back into the soaring
Domini” section of the Benedictus sound of Taverner’s and Sheppard’s
of his Gloria tibi Trinitas became music to create an unmistakably
widely used by other composers as Protestant monarchs. He was the English piece. The 40 voices of
the basis of vocal and instrumental choirmaster at Magdalen College, Spem in alium seldom gather in the
arrangements. This was the origin Oxford, for three years, and then, same groupings, but each follow
of the English fantasia genre known from 1552, a Gentleman of the their own paths. One voice may
as In nomine, which was popular Chapel Royal under Edward VI maintain a steady pace on the beat
until the late 17th century. and Mary I. He died on the eve but will have a counterpart that
Taverner moved back home of Elizabeth’s succession in 1558. achieves something similar in
to Lincolnshire after Wolsey’s Much of Sheppard’s Latin-texted syncopation, adding a scintillation
downfall and produced little more church music survives. His to the steady voice. Like a gradual
music. John Sheppard was perhaps responsory Media vita for six murmuration of birds, the voices
more adept at tailoring his output voices is a Lenten work of gather, separate, and finally
to the tastes of Roman Catholic and monumental status: the slow assemble to exhilarating effect. ■

Thomas Tallis Little is known of Tallis’s early life, was also one of the first to
but by 1532 he was the organist set English words to psalms,
of Dover Priory, on England’s canticles, and anthems.
south coast. After the priory’s Centuries later, his setting of
dissolution three years later, he Psalm 2 was used by Vaughan
worked at the church of St. Mary- Williams for his Fantasia on a
at-Hill in London, Waltham Abbey, Theme of Thomas Tallis (1910).
and Canterbury Cathedral, before Tallis died peacefully at
becoming a member of the choir home in 1585. It is thought he
(“Gentleman”) of Henry VIII’s was around 80 years of age.
Chapel Royal, where he later
became the organist. Other key works
Queen Elizabeth granted Tallis
and William Byrd a patent to print 1560–1569 The Lamentations
music in 1572, and in 1575 they of Jeremiah
jointly published Cantiones sacrae, 1567 Nine psalm settings for
a collection of Latin motets. Tallis Archbishop Parker’s Psalter.

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