Thomas Tallis: The Complete Works
Volume 4 - Music for the Divine Office - 1

Chapelle du Roi
directed by Alistair Dixon

This disc is the fourth in a series of nine covering the complete works of Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585). Not for nothing is Tallis known as the "father of church music" - with his colleagues at the Chapel Royal he created most of the church music genres that we take for granted today.

Volumes 4 and 5 both focus on music written for the office hours – the daily services found mainly in the monasteries that eventually suffered at the hands of Henry VIII’s dissolution. Here we have a selection of hymns and Responds from the Henrician and Marian periods, each matched with their accompanying plainchant taken from contemporary sources.