Thomas Tallis
Thomas Tallis 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 is honoured for his original voice in English musicianship.
Life
Youth
As no records about the birth, family or childhood of Thomas Tallis exist, almost nothing is known about his early life or origins. Historians have calculated that he was born in the early part of the 16th century, towards the end of the reign of Henry VII of England, and estimates for the year of his birth range from 1500 to 1520. His only known relative was a cousin called 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 which 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, though 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 the composers: William Byrd, as later associated with Lincoln Cathedral; Elway Bevin, an organist of Bristol Cathedral and Gentleman of the Chapel Royal; and Sir Ferdinando Heybourne, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth.
1530s and 1540s
No record of Tallis related to his career exists before 1531, when he is named in the accounts of the Kent Benedictine house Dover Priory. He was employed there as the organist, responsible for directing chants from the organ. A "Thomas Tales" is named as the "joculator organorum" at the priory and received an annual payment of £2. The account notes that he was also responsible for the direction of six singing-boys. The priory was dissolved in 1535, but there is no surviving record of Tallis's departure.Tallis's whereabouts are not known for the several months after this until mention is made of his being employed at St Mary-at-Hill in London's Billingsgate ward. Records show he was paid four half-yearly payments from 1536 to 1538, with the last payment being specified for services—as either a singer or an organist—for the year up to 25 March 1538.
Towards the end of 1538 Tallis moved to a large Augustinian monastery, Waltham Abbey in Essex, after he had come into contact with the abbot, whose London home was near to St Mary-at-Hill. At Waltham, Tallis became a senior member. When the abbey, too, was dissolved in March 1540, Tallis left without receiving a pension, and was instead given a one-off payment of 40 shillings. He took away a volume of musical treatises copied by John Wylde, once a preceptor at Waltham. Among its contents was a treatise by Leonel Power that prohibited consecutive unisons, fifths, and octaves; the last page is inscribed with his name.
By the summer of 1540 Tallis had moved to the formerly monastic but recently secularised Canterbury Cathedral, where his name heads the list of singers in the newly expanded choir of 10 boys and 12 men. Tallis brought with him several manuscripts of his early votive works for frequent Sarum use. 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 at St Mary-at-Hill, since in 1577 Tallis claimed to have "served yor Matie and yor Royall ancestors these fortie yeres". He may have been responsible for teaching the boys of the choir keyboard and composition. 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 was taught the organ and some composition by Tallis. Byrd kept a close relationship to Tallis, as Tallis went on to become the godfather of Byrd's second son, Thomas Byrd.
Queen Mary I, who commissioned a mass and several settings for Divine Office from Tallis, granted him a lease on a manor in Kent which provided a comfortable annual income. He was present at her funeral on 13 December 1558 and at the coronation of Elizabeth I the following month. A setting of the Requiem composed by Tallis for the funeral of Mary has been lost.
Tallis was an eminent figure in Elizabeth's household chapel, but as he aged he became gradually less prominent. In 1575, Elizabeth granted Tallis and Byrd a 21-year monopoly for polyphonic music and a patent to print and publish "set songe or songes in parts", one of the first arrangements of its kind in England. Tallis and Byrd were given exclusive rights to print any music in any language, including English, Latin, French, and Italian, and they had sole use of the paper used in printing music. The only publication made under the monopoly while Tallis was still alive was the 1575 Cantiones quae ab argumento sacrae vocantur, which was prefaced by Sir Ferdinando Heybourne, who wrote that Tallis and Byrd intended to take their place among the great composers of Europe: "Lassus, Gombert, and Ferrabosco". 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 Roman Catholics. As Catholics, Byrd and Tallis were forbidden to sell imported music, and 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; the Paget Household, known for its devout Catholicism until Thomas Paget's attainting in 1587, 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 although it was his father, William Byrd, who would utilise it.He was buried in the chancel of St Alfege Church, Greenwich. A brass memorial plate placed there after the death of his wife is now lost. His remains may have been discarded by labourers during the 1710s, when the church was rebuilt.
Tallis' epitaph on a brass plaque, lost in the subsequent rebuilding of the church, was recorded by the English clergyman John Strype in his 1720 edition of John Stow's Survey of London It was most likely written by Henry Stanford: a recusant tutor to the Paget Household.
Entered here doth ly a worthy wyght,
Who for long tyme in musick bore the bell:
His name to shew, was THOMAS TALLYS hyght,
In honest virtuous lyff he dyd excell.
He serv'd long tyme in chappel with grete prayse
Fower sovereygnes reygnes ;
I meane Kyng Henry and Prynce Edward's dayes,
Quene Mary, and Elizabeth oure Quene.
He mary'd was, though children he had none,
And lyv'd in love full thre and thirty yeres
Wyth loyal spowse, whose name yclypt was JONE,
Who here entomb'd him company now beares.
As he dyd lyve, so also did he dy,
In myld and quyet sort
To God ful oft for mercy did he cry,
Wherefore he lyves, let deth do what he can. On learning of Tallis' death, William Byrd wrote Ye Sacred Muses, his musical elegy to his colleague and mentor. Tallis' widow Joan, whose will is dated 12 June 1587, survived him by nearly four years and spent the rest of her life in the care of Richard Cranwell, a gentleman of the Chapel Royal. Anthony Roper received Tallis' gilt cup in Joan's will for the "good favours showed to late husband" and William Byrd received Tallis' gilt bowl.
Works
Early works and Gaude Gloriosa
The earliest surviving works by Tallis are Alleluia: Ora pro nobis, Euge Caeli Porta, Magnificat for four voices, and three devotional antiphons to the Virgin Mary: Salve intemerata, a precocious work of Tallis, with the oldest manuscript dating to the 1520s ; 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 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
At Canterbury Cathedral, Thomas Tallis was caught between Archbishop Thomas Cranmer's push for reform, and resistance from the more conservative members of the cathedral's chapter. Cranmer recommended a syllabic style of music where each syllable is sung to one pitch, as his instructions make clear for the setting of the 1544 English Litany. As a result, the writing of Tallis became more simple. Tallis' Mass for Four Voices, while in Latin, is written in syllabic homophony, with a diminished use of melisma.