THOMAS TALLIS
Music-lovers of today are most likely to associate the name of Thomas Tallis with a composition by Ralph Vaughan Williams. His “Fantasia on a theme by Tallis” is one of the great string works of the twentieth century. The only comparable work to have come close to it in the esteem of listeners and critics alike is Samuel Barber’s famous “Adagio for strings”. The two works are somewhat similar in tempo and, to a degree, in idiom. But while the Barber is expressive of a kind of deeply felt sorrow, the Vaughan Williams is more a statement of nobility and grandeur, albeit solemn in its approach.
That association apart, Tallis’s own work is mostly known only to high-church Anglicans who have access to a first-rate choir: his settings of the Matins and Evensong canticles have found a lasting place in those cathedrals and collegiate churches which still believe that God should be honoured, in music, only by what is best. This stands, of course, in deplorable contrast to the vapid fare emitted nowadays from many choir-stalls, which belongs more in the tinsel world of Pretty-Pop than in any realm of serious art or serious religion.
It should not be thought, however, that Tallis’s output consisted only of works written for the then newly independent Church of England: it had parted ways from Rome and inaugurated worship in the vernacular; this created an instant need for vernacular church-music, and Tallis filled that need, brilliantly. But before that situation arose, he composed extensively for Roman Catholics, in Latin; and some of this work is now becoming widely known through concerts and recordings of choirs like The Tallis Scholars. So it is finally possible for music-lovers, of either denomination or none, to appreciate the full range of his work.
An account of his career, thus, can now embrace the whole man, as servant of two Churches, Roman and Reformed. But in doing so, it also casts light on mutability in public life and adaptability in private character.
Tallis was born in 1505. His talent was early recognised and rewarded. His first known job was as organist in the Benedictine Priory at Dover, from 1532 to 1537. This was followed by a brief appointment as organist at St Mary-at-hill in London. From 1538 to 1540 he served as organist and choirmaster at Waltham Abbey; and then, after the Dissolution of the monasteries, he served for two years as a lay-clerk in Canterbury Cathedral. In 1543 he was appointed Gentleman of the Chapel Royal and served there until his death, under four monarchs.
In all these posts, Tallis served variously as organist and choirmaster. But he was also what we would nowadays call composer-in-residence. As such, he wrote music to fill the needs of the day, changeable in changing times, going back and forth between one style and another, Under Henry VII, to begin with, Rome held sway. Then, still under Henry VIII and under Edward VI, the Reformation took over. Under Mary I, the Counter-Reformation supplanted it. Under Elizabeth I, the Reformation returned. Under each of them, Tallis cut his coat according to the cloth, switching sides, so to speak, as opportunity and expediency suggested.
During the brief reign of Edward (1547–53), Thomas Cranmer produced the Book of Common Prayer, which laid the foundations of the vernacular liturgy, supported by the quite serviceable English Bibles of Tyndale and Coverdale, the worthy predecessors of the King James translators. Tallis thereupon, re-inventing himself as a composer, embarked on the task that was to occupy him for most, but not all, of his remaining years: the setting of the Canticles and of the Preces and Responses for Matins and Evensong, the composition of Anthems for both services, and the provision of harmonised tunes for the singing of Hymns and Metrical Psalms. All of this work is of very fine quality, and almost all of it has remained in sacred use. The one exception is his Metrical Psalm tunes, which fell into disuse when the tradition grew up of “pointing” the prose texts of the Psalms and singing them according to the system generally known as Anglican Chant. One of his Hymn tunes has survived in secular recognition as the basis of Vaughan Williams’s much performed “Fantasia”.
If Tallis was able to forge ahead under Edward VI and was encouraged to do so, he had to backtrack, rather hastily, when the next sovereign came to the throne: Mary, Edward’s sister, was determined to return England to the Papal fold, and carried out that policy with rigour. Protestants were persecuted, Roman priests were re-installed, and the Latin rite was re-imposed. Tallis had to resume his former religious obedience. It perhaps reflects a little on his integrity as a believer, this shuttling back and forth between two rancorously opposed loyalties. But it does not seem in any way to have affected his integrity as an artist: both halves of his work are stamped with uncompromising genius.
During the five years of Mary’s reign, Tallis composed ornate Latin polyphony for the Chapel Royal. But that unique institution was quite unlike the ordinary parish churches that served the faithful elsewhere. Worshippers in the Chapel Royal were all from the Court circle, well educated people, schooled in Latin. They had had less need of a vernacular liturgy than the populace at large; and indeed, even under Henry and Edward, there had been a continuation there of Latin Masses and Motets, despite the vernacular reforms imposed throughout the land. So Tallis, under Mary, quite comfortably settled into doing what he had always been good at anyway. Moreover, that activity did not have to end with the monarch’s death. When Bloody Mary, as she was deservedly nicknamed, died in 1558 and was succeeded by her sister Elizabeth, the Chapel Royal did not undergo the same complete shift as befell the parishes: the liturgy, to be sure, was again conducted in the vernacular, and no doubt Tallis’s vernacular church music was sung there; but Latin polyphony was still to some extent sung there, too, with the approval of the Queen and, no doubt, the enjoyment of her sophisticated congregation. So Tallis’s career cannot be neatly compartmentalized into separate periods of Latin and English work: he did both much of the time; the only exceptions were the early pre-reformation years, when vernacular composing was not called for, and the Marian years, when it was forbidden.
Elizabeth was a great lover of music, in both its complex and its simpler forms. As an accomplished instrumentalist herself, she is sure to have appreciated the challenging polyphonic masterpieces, in Latin, that Tallis turned out for the Chapel Royal. But as titular Head of the Church of England, fully committed to the cause of Reform, she oversaw the development of a simple, almost homophonic church-music with sensitivity and enthusiasm; this, nearly single-handed, Tallis also turned out, not so much for use in the Chapel Royal, though it probably was used there, as for widespread use in the parishes. And because the Queen was ever a pragmatist, who valued results above other considerations, she turned a blind eye to the possibility that Tallis’s religion commitment to Anglicanism was less than rock-solid: what counted was the beauty and usefulness of what he composed. The same regal elasticity prevailed with his great protégé, William Byrd: she appointed him also to the Chapel Royal, despite his tactfully unemphasized fidelity to Roman Catholicism; he continued to compose Latin Motets and Masses for use in clandestine Roman services, but for officially approved use he composed English Anthems and Canticle-settings of surpassing originality. For that, he could be forgiven much; and the Queen issued a licence to Tallis and Byrd, as partners, that gave them a virtual monopoly on the publishing of music. Between the two of them, they founded a culture. Tallis, by virtue of being the pioneer, became known as the Father of English Church Music. Byrd, equally adept in the same field, had a wider range, being a superb madrigalist, the ancestor of the string quartet, the inventor of the art-song, the first composer of virtuoso keyboard pieces, and an early experimenter in incidental music for the theatre: justly, he became known as the Father of English Music.
Research continues, some of it successfully, into the provenance of any work by Tallis and Byrd that is not yet fully accounted for. Byrd’s three Latin Masses, for example, have now been correctly dated with strong indications of where and how they were probably used. But one great mystery remains, and clues are wanting, as yet, to solve it. Tallis’s forty-part Motet, “Spem in alium”, has long fascinated choirs and musicologists, but nothing is known of when it was composed or for what special occasion. It has been suggested, with no supporting evidence, that Tallis may have been inspired to celebrate Elizabeth’s fortieth birthday with a forty-part extravaganza, but that is pure speculation. The Queen turned forty in 1573; but no records survive of her having any special festivity to celebrate that milestone. Nor, indeed, is there likely to have been any public remark on the Queen’s advancing age: her one weakness was vanity; and she expended much effort on creating the illusion of youthful beauty, being in this respect a precursor of later women obsessed with glamour, just as she was in other respects a forerunner of modern feminists. “Spem in alium”, therefore, is an improbable candidate for connection to Elizabeth’s birthday. It is, however, one of the outstanding achievements of Elizabethan music, and unique of its kind. Given the huge forces involved, there must have been an occasion of some major importance to call for its creation; for no normal occasion would furnish a composer with eight five-part choirs to be marshalled strategically like eight battalions in a regiment. What the occasion was has not been discovered. All we have is the score itself; and it is a stupendous piece of work.
One other possibility is worth considering. Throughout his career, Tallis had written music on demand. He served four monarchs and several religious institutions of one kind or another. He had composed, always, what was required by other people. In this, he was the consummate professional. But it may be that some time in his later years he decided to write just one piece to suit himself, to leave behind him one crowning achievement that was a summing up of his life in art — rather as J. S. Bach, at the end of his life, composed “The Art of Fugue” as a final statement of what he was all about. If that was so, then “Spem in alium” needed no commission and was perhaps never performed at the time: or if it was performed, it was in a performance of his own contriving; essentially the piece was its own justification, not a response to either of the established Churches, but a direct and, if you will, private communication to God. As such, it would transcend his whole previous body of work, work written entirely at the bidding of earthly powers; and it would stand alone as an unfettered offering to heaven, non-aligned and pure.
For most of the piece, Tallis plays the eight choirs off against each other, as though he is weaving a tapestry of eight-part counterpoint; in this case, though, the elements are not single lines, but are themselves complex strands of five individual threads. He continues this procedure throughout the opening pages, and the tension builds up as the eight choirs, strategically placed, address the listener from eight separate directions. This built-up tension is finally resolved in the middle of the work, when all eight choirs join together in a massive homophonic passage, in forty parts. It is one of the great climaxes in all choral music. That achieved, Tallis then goes on to the end of the piece with a return to the contrapuntal playing off of choir against choir.
In our day, it is seldom possible to muster the forces required for a performance of “Spem in alium”. Even when they are available, their performance can only be properly effective, if the building is apt to the composer’s intentions. Most concert-halls lack the cathedral-like resonance that is needed; and anyway their shape is not right for the positioning of eight separated choirs. Ideally, a good performance could be mounted in a large church with transepts, with the eight choirs situated at the front of the nave in a long, shallow semicircle extending at both ends into the transepts. That positioning would be effective for a live performance, and would work well if recorded stereophonically with a wide spectrum of sound. Even more effective, though, at least in recording, is a surround-sound approach: that is, in a suitably resonant space, the eight choirs would be positioned in a complete circle around a special surround-sound microphone like the Kunstkopf; and the listener, using stereo earphones, would hear the music coming at him from 360 degrees. This was achieved once, on radio, by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, using the Kunstkopf microphone to record a performance by the Elmer Iseler Singers. It is the only known way to present the home listener with “Spem in alium” in all its spatial glory. For it is impractical to think that such a listener can surround himself with eight loudspeakers severally hooked up to the output of an eight-track tape. Tallis’s grand concept has to be treated not only with respect, but also with an eye to feasibility.
Less respectful, but extremely interesting, was a much-presented recording of it devised by the experimental Canadian artist, Janet Cardiff. She hired forty singers, one to each part, each with an individual microphone, and recorded them on forty-track tape. For playback, she fed the forty tracks into forty small loudspeakers, arranged in a circular configuration in an art gallery. She then invited visitors to listen to the music in any way they chose: they could stand in the centre, if they wished, and be surrounded by the sound; or they could stroll around the room, picking up individual voices one by one as they passed by the speakers; or, as they moved around, they could pause by any one set of five speakers and hear that five-part choir as an entity. The experience was both varied and fascinating. But truth to tell, it was more about Janet Cardiff than about Thomas Tallis. Iseler’s approach was clearly closer to what the composer had in mind.
Tallis died in 1585. He was much mourned by Byrd and his fellow musicians; and he has been deservedly much honoured by posterity.
