Melanie Spiller and Coloratura Consulting
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Composer Biography: Thomas Tallis (c1505-1585)
Melanie Spiller and Coloratura Consulting
Thomas Tallis is considered one of the most important English composers—in truth, he’s probably one of
the most important Renaissance composers from any country. And if you check MY personal playlist, he’s
one of the best composers of all time. But don’t take my word for it. The proof is in the facts: During a time
when Catholics were being executed if they didn’t convert to the new Church of England, Tallis was allowed
to continue composing and (quietly) practicing his Catholic faith.
Thomas Tallis was the master of diversity. His works encompass Latin Masses and hymns, English-language
(Protestant) service music, and other sacred works that reflect the religious and political upheavals in
England. He also wrote one of the most complex choral pieces ever written, but more on that in a bit.
You have to remember that between 1534 and 1558, the height of Tallis’ compositional life, English church
music suffered greatly due to Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, which had long been a musical
stronghold. He was pensioned off at the dissolution of the Waltham Abbey in 1540, which means that he
was given money to retire and go about town as a regular private citizen. He had already served 10 years in
various monastic capacities, scrupulously avoiding all of the reformation activities going on all around him.
But he was too young to properly retire, and so he sought work as a musician. Fortunately, he had quite a
talent for it.
During Henry VIII’s reign, despite their religious disagreement, Tallis was appointed to the Chapel Royal, a
body of musicians engaged to sing and compose for the monarch’s private services. There, Tallis learned
about continental styles of music and puritan ideals. He would remain with Chapel Royal until his death.
Tallis composed the official English liturgy under Edward VI (1547-1553) after Henry VIII’s death, and he did
the Latin rites during the reigns of Mary Tudor (1553-1558) and Elizabeth (1558-1603). Mary regarded him
as her principal composer, commissioning him for every important occasion. When Elizabeth was queen,
she asked for small amounts of both Latin and English church music, more for special occasions than for
regular liturgical use. The Chapel Royal had the best musicians anywhere, and Tallis was at its center. He
was by far the most eminent musician in England.
You have to remember, though, that until the Reformation in 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his 95
Theses to the Wittenberg cathedral door, musicians were usually monks, and organists were rare and
seldom paid. Composers were anonymous, serving in the church and for the church, and not gaining
personal notoriety. Tallis served in this capacity, and despite—or perhaps because of—his love of creating
and making music, he managed to avoid political and religious controversy.
Tallis maintained his Catholic faith without being prosecuted during a time when being Catholic was an act
of treason, and he was conspicuous as the chief composer for the new Church of England despite his own
religious feelings. Some of his pieces make a subtle but sad point about the fate of many Catholics, such as
in the Lamentations of Jeremiah, with themes of desolation, penitence, and loss. These were probably not
meant to be performed in the church. They’d have been sung in private performances or at the secret—and
illegal—Masses held in private homes.
It’s not known exactly when or where Tallis was born and he seems to have been a quiet and studious man
after he left the monastery. Not much is known about his education, although he was probably a choir boy
somewhere. The first record of him is in 1532, when he was appointed organist at a Benedictine Priory in
Dover. In 1537, he served at St Mary-le-Hill in Billingsgate in London, and then at Waltham Abbey in London
until its dissolution in 1540. He found work as a lay clerk in Canterbury Cathedral in 1541 and then entered
the king’s service at Chapel Royal in 1543. There, he sang, played the organ, ran the choir, and composed.
He remained organist for the royal household until his death in 1585.
Tallis married around 1552, around the same time he took William Byrd (c1540-1623) as a pupil. (Byrd
would later exceed Tallis in fame. There will be a blog on him soon.) Tallis’ wife outlived him by about four
years. They had no children, or at least, there is no record of children. He probably lived in Greenwich at the
time of his death, possibly on Stockwell Street.
In 1575, Byrd and Tallis were granted a 21-year monopoly for printing music in England, which Byrd owned
wholly after Tallis’ death. Only they were allowed to use the special paper used for printing music. Initially,
the public was suspicious of them as they were both Roman Catholics, so the two musicians appealed to
Elizabeth for patronage. Even with her support, the whole thing was a precarious arrangement. They were
not allowed to sell any imported music (all the other countries were predominantly Catholic, remember).
They were not given the rights to the fonts they needed for music type, they couldn’t print patents, and
they didn’t own a printing press.
Tallis used his license to publish his own music, in particular, the Cantiones sacrae (Latin for sacred songs)
and motets. He was one of the first composers to compose specifically for the Anglican liturgy.
You have to remember that music of this period was not a melody with accompaniment. Chords had been
invented, but were not a driving force in music. Each “voice,” whether instrumental or sung, had its own
distinct melodic line. In vocal music, the words were of utmost importance, and melodic shapes were
inextricably married to the natural inflections in speech.
Following the fashion of polychoral motets, in around 1570, Tallis wrote “Spem in Alium,” probably his most
famous piece, and my absolutely most tippitty-top favorite piece of music ever. But he wasn’t the first to
write such a masterpiece. In 1560, the Italian composer Alessandro Striggio (c1536-1592) wrote a Mass for
40 voices, also divided into eight choirs of five singers each. Striggio’s piece was performed in Florence
during a visit by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II in 1567, and it and another motet for 40 voices,
“Ecce beatam lucem,” were performed in England when Striggio took his show on the road. Tallis heard
these pieces and was inspired to write Spem (we insiders call it that for short). Striggio is famous, but not
nearly as famous as Tallis, and it’s the Tallis piece that gets performed whenever 40 solo-skilled voices can
be found.
Spem was partially the result of a challenge from the (Catholic) Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, later
executed as a result of charges of plotting with Mary Queen of Scots for the English throne. The song has
elements of both polyphony and chords, and there’s even a moment when so many different notes are
sounding that the music passes through what we now know as “white noise.” To me, it seems like an aural
reflection of the tension and pressure between Catholics and Protestants. After the first performance, the
Duke removed the heavy gold chain that he wore around his neck and placed it around Tallis’ as a sign of his
utmost respect and gratitude.
Tallis might have been trying to prove that England could hold its own with continental composers, he
might have been proving that he still had composing—and conducting—skills in his old age, or he might
have been producing his own masterwork. We’ll never know, but all of those things proved true.
Tallis was capable of ingenious contrapuntal feats, such as the seven-part “Miserere nostri,” which is still
fairly Medieval sounding although it was published around 1575. In this piece, the top two parts are in
canon (like a round), and bottom four parts are also in canon—a separate canon from the top two. This was
another musical marvel, like Spem, where everyone is very busy singing with everyone else in various ways,
although Spem is more like variations on a theme with moments of canon.
Because of the political atmosphere during his lifetime, Tallis only wrote two Masses, a Christmas Mass and
a Mass for Four Voices. Masses took a very specific form, and each of the movements were based on
Gregorian chants. After Reformation, Lutheran Masses took the same form, but in England during Tallis’
lifetime, folks were very sensitive to anything at all Catholic sounding. The tide turned briefly during Mary
Tudor’s Catholic reign, and Tallis promptly set a bunch of Latin psalms and Lamentations to music.
(Lamentations are a very specific musical form that describe the sadness of the Jews returning to Jerusalem
to find it destroyed and deserted.)
One of the things Tallis did to preserve the ancient music that was so essential to him was to reformat his
own early Catholic works to suit Protestant sensibilities. For instance, he turned many of his own Mass
movements into English anthems (which is a specific form of Anglican music) by just changing the words. (A
common anthem is Tallis’ “If Ye Love Me.” Search for it, and you’ll find a lot of listening options.)
Any discussion of Tallis’ church music needs to stress the functional nature of what he wrote, rather than
the religious significance, because so much was written for Protestant rulers. It’s probably how he
reconciled himself to not writing liturgical music, to separate himself from his personal pain of not being
able to publicly practice his own faith.
Within the body of his work, there is at least one example of every musical genre of the time (except
processional items and verse music). Through them, it’s easy to read the musical changes taking place in
England, including the advent of a humanist aesthetic and a more subjective interpretation of liturgical
texts than had been previously heard.
Collections of music from this period often neglect the plainsong (chant) that would have been part of the
polyphonic music, usually sung before the polyphonic piece. They probably weren’t collected because they
were so commonly known (much like “Amazing Grace” today), so we don’t have a completely accurate
record of how the music would have been performed. Most of the time, we can only guess which chant was
added, but as many chants used the same text, and not all of the polyphony sounded like the chant in any
way, there’s no way to know which chant was intended to be used.
Regarding Tallis’ own thoughts and feelings, it’s not clear whether Tallis was a subversive Catholic, following
one faith in public and professionally, and another in private, or whether he was just following his love of
the musical liturgy he’d known since childhood.
Thomas Tallis was buried in the chancel of the parish of St. Alfege’s Church in Greenwich. The chancel was
torn down in 1720 and none of the memorials remain, although there are stories of a brass plate engraved
with a eulogy to Tallis. His former student William Byrd wrote the elegy “Ye Sacred Muses” about Tallis’
death.
One of my favorite albums ever, “Utopia Triumphans” from the Huelgas Ensemble and conducted by Paul
Van Nevel, has both the Striggio pieces and Spem, along with many other truly wonderful multi-choir
pieces. Rush out and get it!
Sources
“A History of Western Music,” by J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, Claude V. Palisca, W.W. Norton &
Company, New York, 2010
“The Concise Oxford History of Music,” by Gerald Abraham, Oxford University Press, New York,1985
The New Grove High Renaissance Masters,” Jeremy Noble, Gustave Reese, et al, W.W. Norton & Company,
New York, 1984
“The Pelican History of Music: Volume 2, Renaissance and Baroque,” edited by Alec Robertson and Denis
Stevens, Penguin Books, London, 1973
“Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music,” edited by Tess Knighton and David Fallows, University of
California Press, Berkeley, 1997
“Oxford Studies of Composers: Tallis,” by Paul Doe, Oxford University Press, London, 1976