Thomas Tallis

Thomas Tallis (; also Tallys or Talles; 23 November 1585) was an English composer of High Renaissance music. His compositions are primarily vocal, and he occupies a primary place in anthologies of English choral music. Tallis is considered one of England's greatest composers, and he is honored for his original voice in English musicianship.

Life Youth No records about the birth, family, or childhood of Thomas Tallis exist, so almost nothing is known about his early life and origins. Historians have calculated that he was born in the early part of the 16th Century, toward the end of the reign of Henry VII of England. Estimates of his birth year range from 1500 to 1520. His only known relative was a cousin named John Sayer. As the surnames Sayer and Tallis both have strong connections with Kent, Thomas Tallis is usually thought to have been born somewhere in the county.

There are some suggestions that Tallis sang as a child of the chapel in the Chapel Royal, the same singing establishment that he joined as an adult. He was probably a chorister at the Benedictine Priory of St. Mary the Virgin and St. Martin of the New Work in Dover, where he was later employed, but it is impossible to know whether he was educated there. He may have sung at Canterbury Cathedral.

Career Tallis served at court as a composer, teacher, and performer for Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. He was first designated as an organist at the chapel after 1570, although he would have been employed as an organist throughout his career.

He avoided the religious controversies that raged around him throughout his service to successive monarchs, although he remained, in the words of the historian Peter Ackroyd, an "unreformed Roman Catholic". Tallis was capable of switching the style of his compositions to suit each monarch's different demands. Tallis taught several composers, including William Byrd, who was later associated with Lincoln Cathedral; Elway Bevin, an organist of Bristol Cathedral and Gentleman of the Chapel Royal; and Sir Ferdinando Heybourne (aka Richardson), a favourite of Queen Elizabeth. He remained there for two years.

Employment at the Chapel Royal Tallis's employment in the Chapel Royal probably began in 1543. His name appears on a 1544 lay subsidy roll and is listed in a later document. It is possible that he was connected with the court when he was at St Mary-at-Hill; in 1577 Tallis claimed to have "served yor Ma[jes]tie and yor Royall ancestors these fortie yeres". He may have been responsible for teaching keyboard and composition to the boys of the choir. Tallis oversaw the will of Richard Bower, who was Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal.

Around 1552, Tallis married, probably for the first time, to Joan, the widow of a gentleman of the Chapel Royal. Like many other members of the royal household choir, Tallis and his wife lived in Greenwich, although it is not known if he ever owned his house there. He probably rented a house, by tradition in Stockwell Street. According to Tallis' epitaph and Joan Tallis' will, there were no children of the marriage. In the 1550s and 1560s, it is likely that William Byrd learned organ skills and some composition by Tallis ("bred up to Musick under Tho. Tallys"). Byrd kept a close relationship to Tallis, who was godfather to Byrd's second son Thomas.

Queen Mary I, who commissioned a Mass and several settings for Divine Office from Tallis, It did not sell well, and they were forced to appeal to Elizabeth for support. People were wary of the new publications, the sale of which was not helped by both men being Catholics. As Catholics, Byrd and Tallis were forbidden to sell imported music, and they were refused any rights to music fonts or printing patents not under their command. They lacked their own printing press. A second petition in 1577 resulted in the grant of a joint lease of crown lands to the two composers.

After the 1575 publication, Tallis is thought to have ceased active composition, as no works from these final years survive. The sombre Post-Exilic texts for Tallis' final surviving works of 1575, In Jejunio and Derelinquat Impius, indicate that Tallis was becoming increasingly involved with the recusant communities facing persecution, as was Byrd. One such community, the Paget Household, was known for its devout Catholicism until Thomas Paget's attainting in 1587, and it was a musical centre where "songes of Mr Byrdes and Mr Tallys’ were sung." Thomas Tallis was closely associated with the wealthy recusant Anthony Roper, who was the grandson of Sir Thomas More and the owner of the Theewes Claviorganum.

Final years Late in his life, Tallis lived in Greenwich, possibly close to the royal Palace of Placentia; tradition holds that he lived on Stockwell Street. He was recorded as a member of Elizabeth I's household in June 1585, and wrote his will in August that year. He died in his house in Greenwich on 20 or 23 November; the different dates are from a register and the Chapel Royal. In his will he left £3.6s.8d. to "my company the gentlemen of Her Majesty's Chapel towards their feast." Thomas Byrd received Tallis' share of the monopoly Ave Dei Patris filia; and Ave rosa sine spinis. Votive antiphons were sung in the evening after the last service of the day. Tallis' early output is composed entirely in the English Votive Style that was cultivated in England from the 1470s to the 1540s. Tallis used antiphons composed by John Taverner and Robert Fayrfax as models for composing his own antiphons. Taverner in particular is quoted in Salve intemerata, and Dum transisset sabbatum. Characteristics of the votive style, such as high, sustained treble lines and lengthy solo verses, were just beginning to be supplanted by the more succinct phrasing of continental traditions by the 1530s, making Missa Salve Intemerata (Tallis' first of three complete masses, and his only parody mass to be completed) more modern in technique than the antiphon from which it is derived.

Gaude gloriosa Dei mater was previously thought to have been one of many revivalist votive antiphons composed in honour of Queen Mary I, in a similar vein to William Mundy's Vox Patris caelestis. This is due to Gaude gloriosa being more advanced than the rest of Tallis' early output, indicating the work of an older, more mature composer. However, Gaude gloriosa ] and firmly established the Book of Common Prayer. Composers resumed writing English anthems, although the practice continued of setting Latin texts among composers employed by Elizabeth's Chapel Royal. Tallis' better-known works from the Elizabethan years that employ this method include his settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet for the Holy Week, the motet O nata lux, and Spem in alium.

Spem in alium is written for eight five-voice choirs, and is thought to have been commissioned by the Earl of Arundel upon hearing a secret performance of Alessandro Striggio's Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno or his 40-part motet, Ecce beatam lucem. Spem in alium takes its text from the apocryphal Book of Judith that concerns the slaying of Holofernes in order to save Israel. Milsom proposes the notion that the Arundel or the Duke of Norfolk, both of whom had Catholic leanings, with the latter implicated in the Ridolfi plot, might have commissioned the motet for a text that has covert political meaning, as an allegory for an eventual assassination of Elizabeth. Despite the allegorical association, and Spem in alium appearing in the Nonsuch palace catalogue for its presumed performance with Arundel and Norfolk in attendance, there is no evidence that Tallis was involved in the plot himself. Spem in alium has unique numerology: there are 40 voices for 40 days of Christ in the Desert, and the motet's length of 69 'longs' adds up to T-A-L-L-I-S in Latin letters.

Late Elizabethan Works Toward the end of his life, Tallis continued to innovate. Two large-scale keyboard works, Felix namque I and Felix namque II, can be found in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (FVB 109 & FVB 110) and are composed in a virtuosic manner unparalleled by any other European keyboard tradition of the period. Tallis' secular output increased towards the end of his compositional career, as he produced two In Nomines, a Fantasy, a Solfing Song (Ut-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol), one keyboard Lesson in Two Parts (also attrib. John Bull) and English songs such as When shall my sorrowful sighing slack? The latter was popular enough to appear in English and Scottish sources. O sacrum convivium and Salvator mundi may also have been written as secular fantasias for viols before being given liturgical texts for the 1575 Cantiones sacrae.

In the Baldwin Partbooks, two psalm settings survive from Tallis: Domine quis habitabit and Laudate Dominum omnes gentes. Domine quis habitabit is the longer of the two, and is written in the Flemish style. Laudate Dominum, while shorter, is written in a more sprung, lively Elizabethan style. Laudate Dominum made an impression on the young William Byrd, who used the motet as a model for his own Laudate pueri. Tallis was willing to draw upon his experience in adopting Flemish influences, while also retaining English character in his music through the use of English cadences. to reflect the sorrowful nature of the Lenten text. Derelinquat impius is simply bizarre in that it defies any initial tonal centre. Continuous peregrinations and eccentric seventh intervals at every "misericors est" convey the waywardness of the wicked in the text.

Legacy

Influence and Reputation Tallis is remembered as primarily a composer of sacred vocal music, in part because of the small output of instrumental and secular music that can be successfully attributed to him. Records are incomplete on his works from previous periods; 11 of his 18 Latin-texted pieces from Elizabeth's reign were published, "which ensured their survival in a way not available to the earlier material". Tallis was never referred to as a "father of English Church music" in his lifetime (unlike Byrd, who was called a "Father of Musicke" in 17th-century chapel rolls); the epithet for Tallis was a product of the Victorian revival. Tallis, nevertheless, was highly revered, with John Baldwin, compiler of the Baldwin Partbooks, naming him as one of the greatest composers of the period, although giving much more deference to Mundy as one of the "Queen's Pallis". Some of Tallis' works were copied by a scribe of Edward Paston, who himself gifted copies to another musician and recusant, Sir John Petre. Byrd modelled his Great Service and Laudate pueri on earlier settings by Tallis. Also in 2005, Tess Knighton, musicologist and historian, wrote that Tallis was, "undoubtably a genius".

In 1971, the Thomas Tallis School in Kidbrooke opened, a mixed comprehensive school named after the composer.

Revival Most of Tallis' music that remained in continuous use following his death was his music in the English language, mostly notably his Dorian Service, individual movement settings such as the Benedictus and Te Deum for means, two sets of responses, two double-chants and various other hymns, psalms and anthems for the Book of Common Prayer. It was only in the Victorian period, when interest in early music began to increase, that Spem in alium was rediscovered and began to be experimented with immediately.

The Gloria of Missa Puer natus est nobis was rearranged by Tangerine Dream and used in their soundtrack for The Keep. Spem in alium features prominently in films such as Touching the Void (2003) and Boychoir (2014), as well as television programmes such as Endeavour (2019) and Mystery Road (2020). Spem in alium reached the No. 1 spot on the Classical Singles Chart in 2012 after being featured in the classical album for Fifty Shades of Grey. Audivi vocem features in Inspector Gadget (1999) and The Perfect Game (2009). If ye love me features in Wreckers (2011) and Vox Lux (2018), while Tallis' Te Deum for means can be heard during Queen Elizabeth's coronation in Elizabeth (1998).