Thomas Tallis - The Complete Works
Boxed set of 9 volumes

Chapelle du Roi
directed by Alistair Dixon

Programme

On the conclusion of the making of the Tallis Series, the director and co-founder of Signum Classics, Alistair Dixon, writes about the life and works of Thomas Tallis and describes how the project came about

Following the death of Thomas Tallis in 1585 William Byrd wrote in his consort song Ye sacred muses "Tallis is dead, and music dies". Tallis's claim to the 'crown' of English music is underpinned by the quantity of music he left, his lasting influence on English musical composition, his un-paralleled versatility in style of composition and the irresistible and emotional 'pulling' power of his music.

Tallis was appointed a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in about 1542 where he served for the next forty years under four monarchs and four political regimes: those of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth I. He was a supreme craftsman, and unlike some of his contemporaries, his politics were that of adaptation and service to the prevailing political regime. This contrasts with his elder contemporary John Taverner who ran into difficulties in Oxford because of his reformatory tendencies, and the younger William Byrd who was so fiercely counter-reformatory in the later years of the century.

Tallis stuck the course and continued writing; his corpus of music, viewed end to end, holds up a mirror to the political changes of Tallis's lifetime in the sixteenth century.

The Tallis Series

In 1994 the vocal ensemble Chapelle du Roi gave its first concert; the group's chosen name reflected the writer's interest in Franco-Flemish music. However, the power of Tallis' music, particularly as expressed through the two recordings by Andrew Parrot and the Taverner Consort, proved irresistible. In 1995 Chapelle du Roi gave a series of six concerts surveying Tallis's complete oeuvre and this then led to the plans for a nine-CD series of recordings.

Devising a series of nine discs from such a breadth of music and style proved to be a fascinating project. Usually when planning the repertoire for a CD the artist or producer has the freedom to choose a theme and select music to create a balanced programme designed to stimulate and keep the listeners' interest. Here the challenge was the discipline of dividing over ten hours of music into nine self-contained programmes. By following a broadly chronological theme the repertoire divided itself up very obligingly.

Thomas Tallis

As a young man, in the early 1530s, Thomas Tallis worked as organist at Dover Priory, a small Benedictine monastery of around a dozen monks. The small scale of this establishment and its modest annual income suggest that the opportunities for Tallis to work with professional singers would be have been scarce. However, in his next appointment (probably from 1535) at the musically rich establishment of St Mary-at-Hill the opposite was true.

Tallis' early works in Volume 1 contain music from these periods, and we are able to see how he was influenced by the English pre-Reformation style and in particular by the music of Robert Fayrfax whose antiphon Ave Dei Patris Filia was evidently a model for Tallis' own setting of the same text. Three votive antiphons survive from this period and one of these, Salve Intemerata served as a model for Tallis' earliest mass setting of the same name. On the continent the 'parody mass' was a well established form but Tallis' setting is a rare English example. Volume 1 also contains two unpublished and barely known miniatures; ‘Alleluia Ora pro nobis’ and Euge celi porta. The ‘Alleluia’ is from the Gyffard part books and its widely spaced four voice texture and 'sound world' suggest that Tallis was self-consciously experimenting in writing in the style of John Taverner (if indeed ‘Tallis’ is not a mis-ascription). Euge celi porta is the second verse only of a Sequence (a movement from the mass). If Tallis set each alternate, evenly numbered, verse to different music, then judging by the exquisite nature of Euge celi porta we have evidently lost a quantity of very fine subsequent verses.

In 1538 Tallis moved to Waltham Abbey where he spent the next two years working with the Lady Chapel choir which would have consisted of around a dozen singers. Presumably Tallis continued composing music for use at the mass and for the offices (the daily services). In 1540 the dissolution of the monastery led to Tallis taking up an appointment at the newly founded cathedral at Canterbury, and he stayed there until his appointment in 1542 to the Chapel Royal in London.

Tallis' vocal music for the offices (the daily services), was probably composed, in the main, in the 1540s, though the Marian reign in the 1550s is also a possibility. It consists of nine respond settings, seven hymns and a setting of the magnificat for men's voices. We include this repertoire on volumes 4 and 5 where the liturgical organ music is also to be found. Tallis was an organist and only a small number of his compositions survive. As with the vocal settings, the liturgical organ music always provides a substitute for sections of plainchant that would otherwise have been sung by the members of the community. We were fortunate to have been allowed to record this music on the organ at Knole where the earliest surviving English organ, dating from around 1625 still functions. We have made a point of setting each organ piece in its proper liturgical context with appropriate plainchant and faburden "wrap arounds"

The 1540s saw England's preparation for the introduction of the English prayer book. Henry's marital manoeuvrings had resulted in England's excommunication from the Catholic church in 1535. Henry VIII's and Archbishop Cranmer's wish to make the liturgy available to the people in the vernacular took its first step with the publication of 'The King's Primer' in 1545. This was a prelude to the first English prayer book and in volume 2 we explore music written just before and after the introduction of the 1549 prayer book on Whit Sunday, of that year.

In the case of the pre-1549 music - represented by the 'Mass for four voices' and the Jesus antiphon Sancte Deus - we see how Tallis' style of writing has become more concise than ten years earlier. The paired setting of the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis with Latin texts is curious. In their original Latin forms these two canticles occur in separate services - Vespers and Compline - and they are only coupled in the liturgy of the English prayer book where the new service of Evensong was created by combining these two services. The explanation for the existence of a paired setting in Latin can only be that it was intended for use with the Latin translation of the prayer book which Elizabeth authorised for use in the Chapel Royal and in certain schools and colleges.

As a senior musician at the Chapel Royal, along with his colleague, John Sheppard, Tallis was responsible for working out the musical implications of the new liturgy. Since nothing was specified in the rubrics they started with a clean sheet. In the remainder of volume 2 and in volume 6 we see how Tallis created, or paved the way, for five new musical forms; harmonised settings of the Preces and Responses, the composing of canticles in sets (for instance the so called 'Dorian Service'), the ‘Great Service’ format using two five voice choirs split by decani and cantoris (exemplified by the Te Deum 'for meanes'), the English Anthem, English Hymn settings and the precursor to what was to become Anglican Chant.

The accession of Queen Mary in 1553 saw England's return to Catholicism and consequently the music for the old Use. On volume 3 we find Tallis back to composing music in a self-consciously old fashioned English style, and in a more modern ‘continental’ style. This period was musically rich in terms of Tallis' output, the legacy including the extensive seven part mass Puer natus, the giant votive antiphon Gaude Gloriosa and the sublime motet Suscipe quaeso. The disc opens with a speculative reconstruction of a psalm motet Beati immaculati. This motet exists in an English texted form - Blessed are those that be undefiled - but its scoring for five voices in the pre-Reformation style could imply a Latin origin.

Whilst being a Protestant in political terms, Elizabeth I had never the less been brought up as a Catholic and must, at times, have hankered after the old liturgy. English composers were permitted to write music with Latin texts and, indeed, in 1575, Elizabeth licenced Tallis and his younger contemporary William Byrd to publish a collection of Latin motets under the title Cantiones Sacrae. This was England's first serious publishing venture and on volume 7 we hear these motets and three further Latin motets that were not included in Cantiones Sacrae. The disc concludes with Tallis' masterpiece the giant 40 part motet Spem in Alium.

Despite Elizabeth's encouragement of Latin music at court and in the Chapel Royal, further afield, in many English cathedrals, it would have been unthinkable to sing music set to 'popish ditties'. To augment the repertoire of original English anthems, the tradition grew up of creating contrafacta - Latin motets adapted to English texts. Volume 8 presents the contrafacta and continues the experiment begun in volume 7 where we perform the music using two different pitch standards. It is notable that, unlike in the pre-Reformation music, Tallis' vocal ranges in the motets are narrower - often closer to an octave and a third rather an octave and a half. This gives rise to the possibility that he intended the music to be sung at two different pitches; 'high' pitch if sung domestically where a soprano was available to take the top line in an SAATB configuration; and 'low' pitch if sung at court by men's voices in an ATTBarB configuration.

Although best known for his vocal music Tallis also wrote for keyboard (organ and virginals) and for viol consort. In the final disc in the series, volume 9, we present the instrumental music which includes the intriguing re-construction by John Milsom of the 'Fantasia' - a piece for viols which includes a large section of the motet O sacrum convivium and a fragment from Absterge Domine. Also intriguing is a 17th century version of the second Felix Namque setting for virginals, adapted for lute in a version which is as technically demanding as anything in the repertoire. We were delighted to be allowed to use two instruments at Fenton House to record the domestic keyboard music for virginals, and the volume concludes with the songs which were probably written for use by the Chapel Royal in their secular stage performances.