Composer Biography: William Byrd (1543-1623)

This post also appears in a slightly less musician-centric form as a guest post on http://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.com/ on October 30, 2103.

You know how some people relate best to their parents’ generation? William Byrd was like that, being very much an Elizabethan figure (she reigned from 1558-1603), despite composing well into James I’s reign (1603-1625). His music and affinities belonged more to Edmund Spenser’s (c1552-1599) time than to that of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) or Francis Bacon (1561-1626), even though they were contemporaries. Byrd was firmly part of the group that defined Elizabethan culture, and it was his musical innovations that shaped what would become known as the English sound.

Byrd’s motets, the English version of the Italian madrigal, are the epitome of High Renaissance style. He also took the disheveled condition of English song in the1560s and pulled it together to produce a rich and extensive repertoire of songs for consorts, a form that Byrd took seriously and that had no true imitators. (For more on consorts, see my posts on the vielle, the recorder, and the cornetto.) He influenced lute songs with his consort pieces, and these evolved into what would become a distinctively English anthem form, Byrd’s most lasting legacy in English music.

His works for the virginal (a harpsichord-like keyboard instrument) transformed it from a parlor toy into an instrument of power and beauty. Byrd changed the direction of keyboard music, making it possible for later lights to shine, such as Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) and Frederic Chopin (1810-1949)—especially after the invention of the piano in 1770 or so.

Byrd’s direct impact on English composition can be compared to that of Shakespeare’s influence on the theater. Thomas Morley (c1557-1602) and Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656) were his pupils, and possibly Peter Philips (c1560-1628), Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623), and John Bull (c1562-1628). These, if you hadn’t guessed, are the royalty of English music during the Renaissance.

Byrd’s date of birth is approximated based on his 1622 will, when he wrote that he was in his 80^th year. He probably grew up in Lincoln because his first professional appointment was there, but there are no birth records to verify it. Byrd was a common surname in Lincoln around that time.

Several musicians named Byrd appear in mid-century London records, and Thomas Byrd (dates not available), a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in the 1540s and 1550s, may well have been his father (and if true, his mother‘s name was Margery). There are some compositions ascribed to Thomas and some just to “birdie;” Thomas wasn’t really known for his compositions, though, not the way William would be.

A Fettered Brilliance                                                             

He must have spent some of his formative years in London because he was Thomas Tallis’ pupil in 1575, or so said another Tallis student, courtier and amateur composer Sir Ferdinando Richardson (c1558-1618). Byrd grew up during Mary Tudor’s short reign, perhaps even in her Chapel Royal, and his early works were influenced by the big composers that had come before and whose music was still performed at court, including Robert Fayrfax (1461-1521) and John Taverner (1495-1545).

It’s probable that some of Byrd’s surviving compositions are from his teens. Three of the motets attributed to him are for the Sarum liturgy (an English interpretation of the Roman rite started in the 11^th century, reinterpreted for the Anglican church in the 16^th century, and ended during Mary Tudor’s reign), and indicate that he was composing before the death of Queen Mary, when he was 16 years old.

In 1558, Elizabeth became Queen of England, and the attitude toward Catholics changed. Although Elizabeth was fond of her two resident Catholic composers in the Chapel Royal, Byrd and Thomas Tallis, they weren’t allowed to openly practice their religion, and she wanted music composed that suited the new Church of England’s very British sensibilities.

In 1563, Byrd succeeded Robert Parsons (c1535-1572) as organist of Lincolnshire Cathedral (note that Parsons was not old enough to retire and he died by drowning rather than illness—there’s probably a good story there). Byrd was given a larger salary than usual as Master of the Choristers at Lincolnshire Cathedral and he lived for free at the rectory at Hainton, in Lincolnshire.

During his tenure at Lincoln, he experimented with a lot of different styles, forms, and genres. His idols were ThomasTallis (c1505-1585), Christopher Tye (c1505-c1572), John Redford (d1547), Robert White (c1538-1674), Robert Parsons (c1535-1572), William Hunnis (d1597), and later, the emigrant composers Philip van Wilder (Netherlander, 1500-1554) and Alfonso Ferrabosco the Elder (Italian, 1543-1588). All served as models, and some suggested ideas, techniques, textures, or ground plans (somewhat like today’s bass chord progressions), and some provided material that Byrd used as starting points. In 1583 and 1584, Byrd had a musical exchange of motets with Flemish composer Philippe de Monte (1521-1603), where one supplied lyrics or melody, and the other responded with the rest.

Byrd married Juliana Birley (d. c1586) in 1568 at St. Margaret’s-in-the-Close in Lincoln. They had seven children: Christopher (1569-1615), Elizabeth (c1572- ?), Rachel (c1573- ?), Mary and Catherine (with no known dates), and twins Thomas and Edward (c1576-after 1651). Thomas was named after his godfather Thomas Tallis (or possibly William’s father) and was the only one of Byrd’s children to become a musician. After Juliana’s death, Byrd remarried a woman named Ellen (no known dates or surname). It’s possible that Mary and Catherine were products of the second marriage, as their dates are not recorded.

While at Lincoln, Byrd wrote most of his English liturgical music, although relatively little polyphony was required there. It looks, in fact, like he was trying to master all the genres, perhaps to get a better job in London. It worked.

Byrd was sworn in as a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1570, but he didn’t move to London until 1572, when the accidental drowning death of Robert Parsons left an opening in the Chapel’s residencies. In 1573, after he’d left for London and his successor had been appointed (at a lower salary), the Lincolnshire chapter agreed, under pressure from certain councilors of the Queen, to continue paying Byrd on the condition that he continue sending musical compositions for their use. He received a quarter of his former salary (in addition to his Chapel Royal salary) until 1581.

In London, Byrd’s success was undeniable. For the next two decades, his name appears in relation to all kinds of important and powerful people. Elizabethan lords figure among the dedicatees for his various publications, and some were known to intercede on his behalf occasionally.

Around 1573 or 1574, he rented Battails Hall in Stapleford Abbots in Essex from the Earl of Oxford, the poet. This property—and others—would involve him in a series of vitriolic litigations.

As a member of the Royal Chapel in London, Byrd shared the post of organist with Thomas Tallis. In 1575, Queen Elizabeth I granted the two composers a monopoly to print and market part-music and lined music paper, a trade with a previously limited presence in England. The immediate fruit of this labor was Cantiones Sacres, a collection of more than 60 sacred works, published that same year.

The contents of Cantiones Sacres were performed at Elizabeth I’s Chapel Royal. But otherwise, the publication didn’t do well and the pair published nothing further for 13 years. In 1577, they complained to the queen that their patent wasn’t profitable and petitioned for further benefits. Byrd received the Manor of Longney in Gloucestershire as a result. It would later be the source of more litigation.

Between 1563 and 1578, Alfonso Ferrabosco the Elder (1543-1588), a prolific Italian composer, was in England in Elizabeth’s service, and was probably a spy. He was the son of Domenico Ferrabosco (1513-1574), an early madrigalist and former colleague of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palastrina (c1525-1594) at the Vatican. Alfonso, as a motet composer, had learned the style of Netherlander Orlando de Lassus (c1532-1594), and through him, Byrd came to understand the classical Netherlands imitative polyphony.

Times were tough for Catholics, and noblemen held secret Mass services in their private chapels. Few were prosecuted for this treasonous act, although it’s doubtful that Elizabeth I turned a blind eye. Byrd and Tallis were public figures and they had to put on a show of compliance.

But Byrd was known to be a Roman Catholic recusant and he risked prosecution by writing Masses for undercover use. For English Catholics, 1581 became a year of decision and renewed commitment. In Harlingon, Byrd’s wife was cited for recusancy along with a servant. Byrd himself wasn’t cited until 1585, when lists of suspected recusant gathering places named his own house. The Byrd family was repeatedly accused of being recusants and in 1605, they were accused of being long-time seducers for the Catholic cause.

It was a terrible period for English Catholics, with rumors flying, forced retirement, assassinations, and executions. Byrd’s home at Harlington was searched twice, perhaps because he was there when he should have been in London. Byrd and his family were fined hugely, but there were concessions, probably at the behest of Elizabeth I. After all, he was still composing official pieces for her.

In the middle of all this turmoil, Juliana died in 1586 or so, and Byrd married Ellen.

In 1587, Byrd renewed his efforts at publishing. Both Tallis and Thomas Vautrollier (d.1587), the printer of the Cantiones Sacrae, had recently died, leaving Byrd in sole possession of the patent and free to make more advantageous business arrangements. With the printer Thomas East (c1540-c1608) as his assignee, Byrd presided over the first truly great years of English music printing.

Byrd began collecting a retrospective of his own music between 1588 and 1591, and he turned his attention to publishing purely English collections.

His first real success was the Psalmes, Sonets, and Songs of 1588, the third known book of English songs ever to be published. The pieces were originally written for solo voice and instrumental consort, but had been adapted for five vocal parts. Someone later intabulated the collection for keyboard, although it probably wasn’t Byrd. The collection sold out that first year, and East printed two further editions before 1593. Byrd prepared another book for publication, converting a few pieces to vocal-only and writing a bunch of new pieces to be included, including two carols, and an anthem called Christ rising. This second book was for three, four, five, and six parts, as well as vocal soloist with consort accompaniment.

Italian madrigals were hitting it big in England, but Byrd wasn’t particularly excited by them. His 1589 publication barely touched on them. Ferrabosco, who’d left England in 1578, printed his own offerings to the English music scene in Nicholas Yonge’s (c1560-1619) translated madrigal anthology.

After 1590, Byrd’s attitude toward Latin sacred music underwent a change. Where his early motets had been penitential meditations, prayers, exhortations, and protests on behalf of the Catholic community, he started to work on a grandiose scheme to provide music specifically for Catholic services. The texts were drawn from the liturgy, and the music itself became less monumental, to serve the liturgical purpose of a shorter service. It was a new way to serve the recusant cause.

If the music was truly to serve, Byrd had to publish it. But even with his connections in high places, it was a dangerous undertaking. His most famous Masses were printed between 1593 and 1595, each in its own slim book, with no title pages or publication dates. (More on these later.)

Byrd’s fifth collection wasn’t published in his lifetime. It was called My Ladye Nevells Booke, and was dated 1591. One branch of the Nevell family lived at Uxbridge, near Harlington, but the lady in question hasn’t been identified. At any rate, Byrd preserved the best of his virginal music in this book, both old and new. Among these were the last fantasias that he composed.

In 1593, Byrd moved further from London to a large property in Stondon Massey, Essex, between Chipping Ongar and Ingatestone. Ingatestone and Thorndon were the two seats of his patrons, the Petre family, and he probably joined the local recusant Catholic community over which the Petres presided. He composed some pieces for the clandestine Masses, and he dedicated Book 2 of his Gradualia to Lord Petre. His most famous settings of the Ordinary of the Mass were probably first written for the Petres.

In 1593, Byrd moved his family to Essex, where he spent the rest of his life. When his publishing patent expired in 1598, it went to Thomas Morley (c1557-1602, biography coming soon), and a broader range of music in greater quantity began to be published, which implies that Byrd had censored which works he printed.

Byrd spent increasingly less time in London, and his name doesn’t appear in any of the lists of witnesses and petitioners recorded in the Cheque Book of the Chapel Royal between 1592 and 1623, except in the formal register of the members.

He continued to compose, although new music reigned in London and his style of music was as out of fashion as his religion. He spent most of his time dealing with litigation about the numerous leases he’d acquired by grant or purchase. There were at least six lawsuits, and all of them dragged on; the one regarding Stondon Massey lasted 17 years. Byrd was not always in the right, and when he was the one suing, he was unpleasantly tenacious. Even in his will, he mentions a quarrel with his daughter-in-law Catherine and the “undutiful obstinacy of one whom I am unwilling to name.”

Byrd’s three Latin Masses (more about these later) were published openly in the 1590s, and after publication of the Gradualia (in 1605 and 1607, for use with the Catholic liturgy), possession of either book became a criminal offence. With the Gradualia of 1605, Byrd’s half-hearted effort to conceal his identity was abandoned. The political climate was more favorable in 1605, but things changed with the Gunpowder Plot (a failed Catholic uprising against James I), and at least one person was arrested for merely being in possession of the Gradualia. Byrd’s response was to withdraw the books and store the pages.

Byrd’s Gradualia constitutes a sort of musical profession of faith and most of the texts in the collection refer to doctrines that had been attacked or watered down by the Reformers. The music offers many striking examples of contrapuntal virtuosity, word-painting, and a very original use of chromatic devices.

In the 1570s, Byrd began writing his series of pavans (slow processional dances) and galliards (a spirited dance in three-beat rhythms) for keyboard. These, according to the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (the seminal keyboard resource for the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras), were the first that Byrd wrote, and exist in a second version for five-part consort.

It would be nice to know how many Jacobean households celebrated Mass with Byrd’s Gradualia. Appleton Hall in Norfolk was certainly one. It was the home of Edward Paston, and was best known as the home of the Paston Letters (a collection of letters and papers from between 1422 and 1509). Byrd set some of Paston’s poetry to music in the consort-song style that he developed between 1596 and 1612.

Compositions

Byrd was both a traditionalist and an innovator, converting Continental ideas of counterpoint and imitation into a new native-English tradition, and his expressive range was unusually wide.

Although his works were colored by the times in which he lived, many of his motets, galliards, and pastorals are exuberant and joyous. As a precaution against religious persecution, he took his texts from the Bible and other unassailable sources and he wrote for both Catholic and Anglican churches with equal genius.

His lifetime output—at least what is credited to him—includes 180 motets, three Latin Masses, four Anglican Services, dozens of anthems, secular part-songs, fantasias and other works for viol consort, and variations, fantasias, dances, and other works for keyboards. His vocal music includes psalms, sonnets and songs, and around 50 consort songs that could be sung or played by a consort of instruments.

Byrd’s motets are full of musical audacities. One unique feature is called double imitation, where the “subject” melody is applied to two text fragments, and then both are broken down into sub-themes that are further developed and combined. It’s this double imitation that set Byrd apart from other contemporary composers, such as Thomas Tallis, and even his own earlier works.

During Byrd’s lifetime, there were few opportunities to perform his Latin motets publically because the requirement was that the new Anglican rite be sung in English only. His Latin motets capture the spirit of his religious loyalties and he probably wrote so many of them as a way of comforting the Catholic community that celebrated their faith in secret. He was fond of comparing the Catholic situation in England to that of the Jews in Biblical times; some of his motets lament for Jerusalem at the time of Babylonian captivity, some pray that the congregation might be liberated, and others are on the theme of the coming of God that was foretold in the Old Testament. But it was probably this very limitation that spurred Byrd’s creative juices into inventing the anthem.

The anthem fills the spot in the Anglican church service that had been left vacant by plucking out the Latin motet. Many of its features are similar, such as being intended for trained singers rather than the congregation, having verses and a repeated chorus section with different melodies, and having the option for the verses to be sung by soloists rather than the choir, which is called a verse anthem.

The verse anthem, quite popular by the late-16^th century, was first accompanied only by an organ, but then Byrd added a quartet of viols. Byrd doesn’t repeat the text from a solo in a choral section, but that was the usual way of things for other composers of the time.

The secular songs he wrote predate the true madrigal (an Italian form of polyphony that lasted from the late 16^th century until the mid 17^th), and used intricate, flowing counterpoint derived from an earlier English style like that of Tallis (c1505-1585) and Taverner (1495-1545). His motets show him well free of the “for every syllable a note” restriction set up by Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556) during the Reformation, and reveal his mastery of freely imitative polyphony.

Byrd’s early settings of English poems were strophic songs, where all verses and choruses use the same tune—nowadays, we think of this as “normal,” but it wasn’t always so. Instead he used a single voice and a consort of viols. For the viol consort without a solo voice, he wrote 14 fantasies, grounds, dances, and In Nomines (for more on In Nomines, read my blog post on John Taverner), plus 10 hymns and Miserere settings.

Like many other composers before and after him, Byrd used existing melodies, such as Greensleeves, in bits and pieces, throughout his consort pieces. It was a way of using tunes that would have been familiar to the congregation, and it offers today’s musicologists an insight into secular melodies, which were much less well documented than church music.

Byrd was only 10 years old in 1553 when Mary Tudor took the throne, so it’s unlikely that his Masses were much influenced by the five years of safety that her reign offered to Catholics. Despite the covert nature of his religious affinities, his Masses convey a certain freedom that it was never possible to display publically during his lifetime.

He used Continental-style patterns of imitation, but his occasional elaborate melismas (fancy bits where a single syllable is sung across a lot of notes) were more ornate than anything done by his predecessors. His Great Service uses imitative polyphony with frequent repetition of the text during the doxology (a short praise hymn that is often appended to the end of canticles, psalms, and hymns). This innovation would be widely imitated by later composers.

Many of Byrd’s Catholic contemporaries left England in order to practice their religion without persecution. Byrd didn’t, and the three Masses he’s most famous for (in three, four, and five voices, respectively) were published in the 1590s and soon retracted.

Life as a Catholic was difficult, and his works reflect that. All are fairly short, suitable for clandestine celebrations of Mass. Their contrapuntal style is remarkable for the variety of rhythms displayed during such short works. In this respect, Byrd’s music is more accessible to modern ears than other works from the predominantly Catholic Continent.

He wrote 140 pieces for keyboard, including 11 fantasies, 14 variations, grounds, descriptive pieces, and a bunch of dances including 20 pavans and galliards. Some were published in Parthenia (1612-13), and many appeared in My Lady’s Nevells Book (1585-1590), and the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (1562-1612).

Byrd’s teaching was preserved by Thomas Morley in his Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke from 1597, which contains many remarkable tributes to Byrd. Luckily for posterity, Byrd also anthologized his own works, and his legacy in England is deservedly as great as that of Josquin (c1440-1521) in Europe. He was constantly learning and improving on his own work, and through his anthologies, it’s possible to see how he carefully reworked problems he’d been unable to resolve in his earlier works.

His last printed works were four quiet sacred songs that he published in Sir William Leighton’s Teares or Lamentations of a Sorrowful Soule in 1614.

Byrd died a wealthy man at Stondon Massy on the 4^th of July in 1623. He was probably buried in the parish churchyard as specified by his will, but his grave hasn’t been located. The will also states that he had apartments in the London house of the Earl of Worcester, which suggests that he might have been a private musician there. He also had a chamber in the Petres’ house at West Thorndon.

The only known portrait of Byrd was painted 105 years after his death and is therefore unreliable.

Sources:

“The Encyclopedia of Music,” by Max Wade-Matthews and Wendt Thompson. Lorenz Books, Leicestershire, 2012.

“The Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music,” edited by Stanley Sadie. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1994.

“A History of Western Music,” by J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Palisca. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2010.

“The Concise Oxford History of Music,” by Gerald Abraham. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1985.

“Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music,” by Don Michael Randel. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1978.

“The Pelican History of Music, Book 2: Renaissance and Baroque,” edited by Alec Robertson and Denis Stevens. Penguin Books, Middlesex, 1973.

“Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music,” edited by Tess Knighton and David Fallows. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997.

“The New Grove High Renaissance Masters,” by Jeremy Noble, Gustave Reese, Lewis Lockwood, James Harr, Joseph Kerman, Robert Stevenson. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1984.

Composer Biography: Alfonso Ferrabosco the Elder (1543-1588)

Although much of his life was spent as an ordinary court musician, Alfonso Ferrabosco the Elder had moments of notoriety that quietly upset the proverbial British teakettle. He came from a family of musicians and fathered another great family of musicians, and saw the Vatican from the choir loft, France from the home of the Duke of Savoy, and England from Queen Elizabeth I’s court. He also hung out with England’s most famous musicians, including William Byrd, Thomas Morley, and John Dowland.

Ferrabosco was born in Bologna, the son of Domenico Ferabosco (note spelling difference). Domenico (1513-1574) may be the same person who was dismissed from being maestro of the Papal choir at St. Petronio for being married and who later became maestro at a Roman church. That older Ferabosco published a volume of madrigals in 1542 and contributed others to anthologies. HIs song Io mi son giovinetta was especially popular and Giovanni Pieluigi da Palestrina (c1525-1594), probably the most famous musician and composer of the era, based a Mass on it.

Other composers in the family include Domenico’s cousin’s kids, Constantino (fl c1550-1600) who worked in Nuremburg and published a book of canzonettas, and Matthia (1550-1616) who was Kapellameiser in Graz and composed canzonettas and villanellas.

Alfonso spent part of his early life in Rome with his notorious father, surrounded by music and musicians. As a young adult, he also spent some time in Lorraine (France) as a court musician for Charles of Guise (1524-1574).

Alfonso went to England for the first time in 1562, probably with his uncle, and found employment in Elizabeth I’s court. There he stayed for the next 16 years. But a dark cloud seemed to follow him everywhere. He made frequent trips to Italy, but neither the pope nor the Inquisition approved of his time in England, which was actively at war with Roman Catholic countries. While in England, Alfonso lost his Italian inheritance, and later, when he returned to Italy, he was charged with crimes in England (in absentia), including robbing and killing another foreigner. He returned to clear his name successfully, but left England in 1578 and never returned.

While in England, Alfonso the Elder had a family. There’s no record of a marriage, so it’s possible that his children were illegitimate. One of these kids, Alfonso the Younger, was born in 1578 and lived in England until his death in 1628. He was a lutenist, viol player, and singer, and was employed at court from 1592. He (the Younger) became teacher to Princes Henry and Charles (later Charles I), and was granted a pension and annuity by James I in 1605. Under Charles I, Alfonso the Younger also became Composer of Music to the King. From 1605 until 1611, he worked on the music for seven masques, along with playwright Ben Jonson (c1572-1637) and architect Inigo Jones (1573-1652).

Some of Alfonso the Younger’s works were published in a book of Ayres (1609) along with more conventional lute songs. His vocal music was similar to his father’s music in both somberness and style. His fantasias and In Nomines (for more on this genre of music, see my blog on John Taverner) are distinctive among his instrumental music, which also includes dances for viols and pieces for lute. Alfonso the Younger had three sons who were also musicians, another Alfonso (c1610-1660), a viol and wind player who took over his father’s appointments; Henry (c1615-1658), a singer, wind player, and composer, who was a musician until 1645 and then went off on a military expedition to Jamaica, where he was killed in 1658; and John (1626-1682), who was an organist and composer at Ely Cathedral from 1662 and whose works include several services, anthems, and harpsichord dances.

At any rate, after founding a musical dynasty, Alfonso the Elder left for Rome in 1580. Elizabeth I tried to get him to come back to England so fervently that some sources suggest he was her spy, and that she was so anxious for his return because she needed information (after all, she had William Byrd and Thomas Tallis to write music for her). There isn’t much more than circumstantial evidence of this, though, and he refused to return to England.

Alfonso the Elder wrote “madrigalian” motets and simple Latin hymn settings in a style similar to those of William Byrd. This was a style that had appeared in England in the 1580s when the English mania for all things Italian reached its height. Examples of this mania can also be found in the poetry of Edmund Spenser (c1552-1599) and Philip Sidney (1554-1586).

Italian manuscript collections had reached England with Alfonso the Elder in 1562, but it took a while for tastes to turn to the new style. And although he’s only given tiny little biographies in the music history texts, his music was included in anthologies by the British, Italians, and Frenchmen. Not many can say that. And madrigals soon became the most prevalent type of composition in England. He has to get credit for bringing the madrigal to England.

Alfonso the Elder’s style was more conservative than famed Italian madrigalists Luca Marenzio (c1553-1599) or Luzzasco Luzzaschi (c1545-1607), but it suited the more uptight English tastes. Most of his madrigals were for five or six voices, were light in style, and they ignored the Italian musical developments, such as chromaticism and word painting. They were described by Thomas Morley (c1557-1602) as technically skillful when he published several of Ferrabosco’s works in 1598 (10 years after Ferrabosco’s death).

Alfonso also wrote sacred music, including motets, lamentations, and several anthems, all a capella (without instrumental accompaniment). He also wrote instrumental music, including fantasias, pavans, galliards, In Nomines, and passamezzos for a variety of instrumental combinations, including lute and viols.

While in England, he worked hard to interest English musicians in Italian music, and although his style was conservative, he is the composer most generously represented in Musica Transalpina, a compilation of Italian madrigals translated into English and collected by Nicolas Yonge and published in 1588 by Michael East (c1580-1648).

In total, Ferrabosco wrote more than 60 sacred works, mostly motets and lamentations for five and six voices. Technically, he was most influenced by Orlando de Lassus (c1532-1594, biography to come). In turn, he inspired William Byrd (1543-1623, biography to come) and other English composers. Most of the texts he chose are sad and his melodic lines reflect his preoccupation with plaintive and meditative subjects and emotions. Perhaps he homesick for Italy.

In the larger sense of music history, his work wasn’t as important as that of other Italian madrigalists, although he influenced them with what he’d learned from the English. It certainly also worked the other way, as he was the only Italian madrigalist in England at the time, and without his efforts, Byrd would have had no teacher in the style.

He published two books of five-part secular madrigals in 1587 and wrote 70 more in five or six voices. His style is simple compared to others of his time—he was admired for skill rather than for innovation.

Ferrabosco wrote a few chansons, Latin songs, fantasias, and dances for the lute, and some fantasias and In Nomines for viols.

In the last years of his life, Alfonso was court musician to the Duke of Savoy in Turin. He died in Bologna at the young age of 45.

 

Sources:

“The Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music,” edited by Stanley Sadie. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1994.

“The Concise Oxford History of Music,” by Gerald Abraham. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979.

“A Dictionary of Early Music; from the Troubadours to Monteverdi,” by Jerome & Elizabeth Roche. Oxford University Press, New York, 1981.

“Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music,” by Don Michael Randel. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1978.

“The New Grove High Renaissance Masters,” by Gustave Reese, Jeremy Noble, Lewis Lockwood, Jessie Ann Owens, James Haar, Joseph Kerman, Robert Stevenson. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1984.

Composer Biography: Robert Fayrfax (1461-1521)

Robert Fayrfax was an English composer whose works bridge the divide between the Eton Choirbook composers (c1500) and John Taverner (1495-1545), and was considered the most prominent musician for both Henry VII and Henry VIII. His works document a gradual decline in florid writing, compared to those of the Eton composers, with less brilliance of vocal scoring and rhythmic complexity, headed toward the simplicity and syllabic nature of the post-Reformation sensibilities.

Fayrfax could display technical and notational intricacy, as in the Mass he submitted for his Cambridge Doctorate, but typically, his style shows discrimination and restraint. His Masses use cantus firmus technique (meaning one part played or sang the chant melody in a long sustained way while the other voices swirled around it in polyphony) in a variety of ways, that might be considered complex or playful, much like Mozart would later do with variations on a theme. For instance, he used plainsong as ostinato (a repeated melodic or rhythmic figure) that is sung backward, inverted, or both backward and inverted simultaneously.

Private Life

Fayrfax was born in Deeping Gate, Lincolnshire (England) in 1464. I didn’t find any information about his childhood, and the next time his name appears in the records, he was already at court. He found a patron in Henry VII’s mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443-1509) and was Gentleman of the Chapel Royal by 1497. As part of his earnings, he was granted chaplaincy of the Free Chapel at Snodhill Castle, although this was later given to Robert Cowper (dates unavailable), another Gentleman of the Chapel Royal.

Fayrfax was organist of St. Alban’s Abbey from 1498 to 1502 and he became a member of the Fraternity of St. Nicholas in 1502. At 37 years old, he received his Bachelor in Music. He earned a Doctorate in Music in 1504 at Cambridge for his Mass setting of O quam glorifica and was incorporated as the very first Doctor of Music at Oxford in 1511. From 1509 until his death, Fayrfax was the senior lay clerk at Oxford.

Henry VIII granted Fayrfax the annuity of a farm in Hampshire and later made him a Poor Knight of Windsor, with a lifetime award of 12 pennies a day, in 1514. He possessed two ecclesiastical livings (payment for services rendered to the church), which he later surrendered (I don’t know why). He also received payments for tutoring choirboys and reimbursements for clothes that he needed for state occasions. He received many payments from Henry VIII for collections of his compositions and music manuscripts between 1516 and 1520.

As a member of the Chapel Royal, Fayrfax went with Henry VIII to visit the Burgundian Chapel of Margaret of Austria in 1513 and also to the Field of the Cloth of Gold to meet the French Chapel of Francis I in 1520. In fact, he led the Chapel Royal in that state visit. (For more on this trip, see my On Henry VIII’s MP3 Player blog post.)

Compositions

Fayrax is Important for his development of the Mass, and he’s known to have written six. All except one are based on a cantus firmus in the tenor (the tenor voice sings an elongated and slow version of the chant while the other parts do more elaborate polyphony). His music is less elaborate than that of William Cornysh the Younger (1496-1523) and Taverner and uses more restrained melodic lines.

Most of the works in the Eton book are more extravagant than those by Fayrfax. And although he named his pieces for them, he seldom based his works on the chants by the same name, bucking the tide of style at the time. This means that he was setting the text to original music rather than twiddling with the chant. He also uses imitation, where one part does something and then another part imitates it, either exactly or in gesture, which was a Continental style that wasn’t really popular in England until William Byrd (1543-1623) (blog post to come). His work was considered to be the leading influence on composers of the day, including Taverner and Thomas Tallis.

The Fayrfax Book (collected c1500) reflected the repertoire of Henry VII (seven) and contained only English music, largely by the composers of the Eton Choirbook (collected 1500-1505). His work was also in the Eton book, along with Cornysh.

The list of surviving works by Fayrfax include six Masses, two Magnificats, ten votive antiphons (songs in praise of Mary or another saint), nine part songs (some secular), two instrumental pieces. His Mass O bone Jesu, commissioned by Lady Margaret Beaufort (Henry VII’s mother), is considered the first “parody” Mass, which means that secular music, in several voices, is converted to liturgical purposes by providing a sacred text.

Robert Fayrfax died in 1521. He was buried at St. Albans.

Sources:

“The Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music,” edited by Stanley Sadie. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1994.

“The Concise Oxford History of Music,” by Gerald Abraham. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1985.

“A Dictionary of Early Music from the Troubadours to Monteverdi,” by Jerome and Elizabeth Roche. Oxford University Press, New York, 1982.

“Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music,” by Don Michael Randel. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1978.

“Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music,” edited by Tess Knighton and David Fallows. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997.

On Henry VIII’s MP3 Player (1491-1547)

This blog post was written as a guest blog for http://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.com and was live on August 31, 2013. Check their site out for interesting posts on all facets of British history!

Okay, so you and I both know that Henry VIII didn’t have an MP3 player. But what if he had? What kind of music would he have collected? What interesting tunes would turn up on shuffle?

<insert watery wavering lines and harp glissandos as we travel back in time…>

Henry VIII was King of England from 1509-1547. His father, Henry VII, had a serious interest in music and was a strong supporter of musicians. Throughout Henry VIII’s childhood, music occupied a prominent place at his father’s court, and young Henry was trained in music from an early age.

When he was still a teenager, it was his turn to be king, and Henry VIII turned his court into a center of musical culture. He encouraged foreign musicians to work there, introducing the Franco-Flemish style of church music (see my posts on Josquin, Dufay, and Ockeghem for more about this style) to England, and building up an enormous collection of musical instruments.

During his lifetime and after, supporters created the Henry VIII Manuscript. The manuscript is mainly a secular document, and includes descriptions of life at court (perhaps somewhat embellished and romanticized by a finely honed sense of “courtly love”). It also includes song lyrics, naming composers such as Robert Fayrfax (1461-1521) and William Cornysh the Younger (1468-1523), and even the names of some of his buddies. Other manuscripts from Henry VIII’s reign contain a variety of songs and instrumental pieces in three and four parts, which was the style of the day.

From this environment, by mid-century, a distinctly English genre for solo voice accompanied by a consort of viols had emerged. The master of the consort song was William Byrd (1543-1623), who raised the technical level of the medium to new heights. Byrd’s collection was very successful in his own lifetime and after, and although English madrigal and lute songs are better known today, composers would continue to write songs for consorts well into the 17^th century. But Byrd was more a composer for Elizabeth I and James than for Henry. I mention him here so that you can see how English music was hugely colored by Henry VIII, as much by the man himself as by the political and religious change that his monarchy brought about.

Speaking of change, the leader of the Reformation movement and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), wrote to Henry stating what was to become the basic principle for settings of the new English musical texts: “The song should not be full of notes, but, as near as may be, a syllable for every note.” This put the emphasis on the text, where it had been before polyphony came along, about 500 years earlier. (For more on this, read my blog posting Chords versus Polyphony.)

Composers reacted variously to the new conditions. John Taverner (1495-1545), one of England’s shining stars, gave up composition altogether to become an agent of Thomas Cromwell (c1485-1540), who was First Earl of Essex and the chief minister who helped orchestrate the annulment of Henry’s first marriage. Christopher Tye (c1505-c1572) and Thomas Tallis (c1505-1585) wrote music for the Protestant services, which, while attractive, did not match the technical interest and artistry of their Latin music. Both continued to compose Latin motets, but obediently no longer wrote the lengthier (and more undeniably Catholic) Mass music.

The suppression of the monasteries between 1536 and 1547 not only involved the dispersal of monastic musicians, but often included the destruction of musical manuscripts in large quantities, so much of the pre-Reformation music of the British Isles is lost to us. We have the Fayrfax Book (collected c1500) and the Eton Choirbook (collected 1500-1505) from Henry’s father’s time, but that is nearly all that survived. (Don’t you wish there really had been MP3 players?)

The Chapel Royal

In the 13^th century, English monarchs established a body of priests and musicians to provide musical entertainment and who were part of the royal household. This group was called the Chapel Royal, and to be named a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal was a considerable honor. It meant income, status, and property. (There is still such a group in England today. Other countries had similar bodies, although most have long since disbanded.)

During Henry’s father’s time, big names like William Cornysh the Younger (1468-1523), Robert Fayrfax (1461-1521), and John Lloyd (d.1523) were part of this establishment, and after Henry’s time, William Byrd (1543-1623), Thomas Tallis (c1505-1585), and Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) received this honor.

During Henry’s reign, only Richard Edwardes (1525-1566) seems to have been added to the very auspicious ranks. Edwardes was probably Henry’s illegitimate son by Agnes Edwards, so it’s hard to know if he was there on merit or out of some obligation on Henry’s part.

But that doesn’t mean Henry VIII didn’t surround himself with musicians of the highest caliber. It meant that many of the greatest musicians of his time were already members from his father’s reign. But he didn’t stop with British musicians. He invited big names from all over the Continent to come, and come they did.

Henry collected all things musical, and musical instruments were no exception. It probably started with the tradition of having household minstrels. At the time, minstrels were common for royal households and those of other aristocrats. Ecclesiastics kept them, and so did towns and ships. Minstrels played either haut instruments or bas (for more on haut and bas, see my post on the shawm) as required by the occasion, and they sang and were expected to compose songs on demand. Kind of like today’s rap artists.

The minstrel would have had a large collection of instruments, such as the louder winds and the trompette de menestrals (which was a slide trumpet or sackbut, not a modern trumpet), stringed and keyboard instruments, along with gentler wind instruments like recorders and cornetti. Wind instruments were his favorite, and Henry VIII had 77 recorders in his stash when he died.

Henry was a skilled all-around performer, playing several keyboard instruments, the cornetto, the recorder, and the lira de flauti (I don’t know what that is, but I’m going to guess that it’s some sort of lyre or harp). There are stories that Sir Edward Stanley (c1460-1523), the fellow reputed to have killed James IV of Scotland, wrote and sang a ballade to the clavichord while at court, but it isn’t known if Henry accompanied him.

There were plenty of people in Henry VIII’s court who played or composed, including Robert Fayrfax (1461-1521), Richard Davy (c1465-1538), William Cornysh the Younger (1468-1523), Thomas Ashewell (c1478-c1513), John Redford (c1486–1547), Nicholas Ludford (c1490–1557), John Taverner (1495–1545), Christopher Tye (c1505–c1572), and most notably, Thomas Tallis (c1505–1585). And there were some Chapel members who didn’t compose but were fine musicians, such as Benedict de Opitiis (dates not available), Ambrose Lupo (d. 1591), Dionisio Memo (dates not available), and Richard Sampson (d. 1554). All of these fellows would have been on Henry’s MP3 player. There would also have been women at court who played or sang, including some of his wives, such as Anne Boleyn, who was Henry’s equal in musical skill.

Henry’s education was quite good. In addition to reading and writing in English, French, and Latin, he played the lute, organ, and virginals, along with that assortment of wind instruments. (And I thought I had a large collection of instruments!)

Music was terrifically important to him, and he brought musicians from the Continent to teach and share their compositions. It was Henry VIII that put an end to English musical isolationism, something that Elizabeth I would follow up on with enthusiasm.

In 1513, Henry took the members of the Chapel Royal to Lille, where they met the Burgundian Chapel of Margaret of Austria. It must have been a wonderful festival, full of music. While Henry was out and about, he recruited  Venetian organist Dionisio Memo (mentioned above), a whole bunch of French and Flemish musicians, and the Bruges organist Benet de Opiciis (no dates on this fellow, although he took payment for a regal organ—a post about these is coming soon—in 1518).

In 1520, they all trooped over to the Field of the Cloth of Gold in France, where they met the French Chapel of Francis I. The meeting was intended to improve relations between France and England and was considered a successful meeting, but one which not be repeated until Queen Victoria met King Louis Philippe I in 1843.

You all know the story of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, so I won’t tell it here. But the result of the fracas was a new church. In 1534, Henry convinced Parliament to separate from Rome and named himself as the new head of the Church of England. The new church remained essentially Catholic in Doctrine under Henry, but Henry wanted a few changes. He wanted less pomp and circumstance, as prescribed by the Mass format, but more importantly, he wanted the services to be in English rather than Latin, the language of Rome. English music would be changed forever.

The Music and Musicians

The leading composer of the early 16^th century was John Taverner (c1490-1545). His Masses and motets exemplify the English taste for long melismas (lots of notes on a single syllable), full textures, and cantus-firmus (the chant melody, usually performed slowly as a counterpoint to the polyphony swirling around it). This is the opposite of what Thomas Cranmer prescribed, if you’ll recall, and probably had a lot to do with Taverner’s quitting the music business.

Most of Taverner’s church music was probably written during the years 1526-30, while he was organist and choirmaster of Cardinal College (now Christ Church), at Oxford. It includes eight Masses, three Magnificats, and some shorter pieces. But Taverner was attracted to Lutheranism, and he became a zealous agent of Thomas Cromwell during the Dissolution and repented that he’d previously made “Popish ditties.” He abandoned composition altogether.

Thomas Cranmer (1489-1527) also wrote to Henry, stating the basic principles for settings of the new English texts. He also preferred syllabic music (one note per syllable) rather than melismatic (a single syllable spread over lots of notes). But not all composers agreed.

Christopher Tye (c1505-c1572) and Thomas Tallis (c1505-1585) wrote music for the Protestant services. They were nice, but not as interesting or technical as their Latin music. Both Tye and Tallis continued to compose Latin motets but not Masses, and it is perhaps this simplification of music that led to what would become the English anthem (you’ll read more about those in my post on William Byrd, coming soon).

The most important mid-century English composer—not just for the 16^th century, but probably until our own times—was Thomas Tallis (c1505-1565). Firmly Catholic despite the laws against practicing Catholicism, he would come to write English service music and other sacred works that reflected the religious and political upheavals in England during Henry’s rule and through Elizabeth’s. But he couldn’t hide his own pain at the dismal situation his own religion was in, and it’s reflected in his music, either in the melody or in the texts he chose.

Another noted composer of the times was John Merbecke (c1510-c1585). He wrote that music should follow natural speech rhythms. In 1522, Merbecke was among the pro-Calvinists who proclaimed that all music was vanity.

But what would Henry have listened to; what would he have asked his musicians to play? Part songs, which is music written for multiple voice parts (like soprano, alto, tenor, bass) were popular in Henry’s reign, and the fashion continued long after. Keyboard music was new and in vogue, such as that of John Redford (1485-1545) for virginals and organ. Most of these songs were based on chant, now called plainsong in England, with either imitative counterpoints or florid ornamental lines as accompaniment. There are plenty of dances, settings of psalm tunes and chant melodies by Redford’s contemporaries, and transcriptions of secular part songs and anthems in the Mulliner Book (compiled 1545-1570).

The FitzWilliam Virginals Book (collected 1562-1612) is from later years, but it contains organ works from earlier, such as dances, variations on themes, and fantasia forms (lots of improvisation) that are usually found only in the lute repertoire. The virginals or virginal (depending on what country you’re in) was a keyboard instrument similar to the harpsichord, and was very popular among those with smaller parlors.

Any Excuse

There would have been many reasons for making music. Church, obviously, would have been one of them. But it wasn’t all seriousness and prayer. There would have been dances, ceremonies for visiting dignitaries and the promotion of the aristocracy, and social entertainments. There would have been tournaments, festivals, and breaks from the work-a-day drudgery of ruling a nation. There would have been ambient music during meals, fanfares announcing the king’s arrival, and notifications of arriving ships or dignitaries. There would have been loads of music everywhere the king went. Except when he didn’t want it, of course. That’s what being king is all about.

Henry wrote plenty of music himself. There are 34 pieces identified as by Henry, and there are possibly more attributed to “anonymous” or lost. Of the 20 vocal items he wrote, many are not original but are arrangements of existing music, and his instrumental offerings might also have been arrangements.

Pieces for which Henry gets credit include Helas madam and Pastyme with good companye, which are two of his most famous works. They’re very much in the style of what was going on over on the Continent. They also found 13 instrumental pieces in three or four parts, and a three-part motet, Quem pulchra est.

White note mensuration was used to write all this music down. You’ll want to have a look at that over on the blog post I wrote about the History of Music Notation. There’s too much to go into that here.

After Henry VIII

When Henry died, his son Edward was too young to take the throne properly. He had advisors, and as you can imagine, it was a fractious time to be at court. The Edwardian Act of Uniformity devastated all remaining musical establishments by forbidding the celebration of Mass. Attending church became less formal, a poor substitute for what had previously been the chief feature of the daily musical life at cathedrals, churches, and colleges. Whole throngs of monastic and clerical musicians were essentially sent out to compete with lay musicians, seeking patrons and busking to earn their keep.

Under Mary, for five years, Mass music reappeared along with the official restoration of Catholicism. But as soon as Elizabeth took the throne, it was banned again. In the new type of service established during Elizabeth’s reign, Latin motets could be used as church music, along with the new form, the anthem. You’ll want to read my blog post on William Byrd (1543-1623) when I publish it for more on that subject. He’s quite a character!

If you want to build your own MP3 player full of the same music Henry would have heard, you’ll want to search for music by the fellows in this article. Here. I’ll make it easier:

• Thomas Ashewell (c1478-c1513)
• William Byrd (1543-1623)
• William Cornysh the Younger (1468-1523)
• Richard Davy (c1465-1538)
• Josquin des Prez (c1440-1541)
• Guillaume Dufay (c1400-1474)
• Richard Edwardes (1525-1566)
• Robert Fayrfax (1461-1521)
• Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625)
• Henry VIII (1491-1547)
• John Lloyd (d.1523)
• Nicholas Ludford (c1490–1557)
• John Merbecke (c1510-c1585)
• Johannes Ockeghem (c1420-1497)
• John Redford (c1486–1547)
• Thomas Tallis (c1505-1585)
• John Taverner (1495-1545)
• Christopher Tye (c1505-c1572)

Sources:

“The Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music,” edited by Stanley Sadie. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1994.

“A Dictionary of Early Music, from the Troubadours to Monteverdi,” by Jerome and Elizabeth Roche.  Oxford University Press, New York, 1981.

“A History of Western Music,” by J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Palisca. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2010.

“The Concise Oxford History of Music,” by Gerald Abraham. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979.

“The Pelican History of Music, Volume 2: Renaissance and Baroque,” edited by Alec Robertson and Denis Stevens. Penguin Books, Middlesex, 1973.

“Music Manuscripts,” by Arthur Searle. The British Library, London, 1987.

Composer Biography: Thomas Tallis (c1505-1585)

Thomas Tallis is considered one of the most important English composers—in truth, he’s probably one of the most important Renaissance composers from any country. And if you check MY personal playlist, he’s one of the best composers of all time. But don’t take my word for it. The proof is in the facts: During a time when Catholics were being executed if they didn’t convert to the new Church of England, Tallis, a practicing Catholic and former monk, was allowed to continue composing and (quietly) practicing his Catholic faith.

Thomas Tallis was the master of diversity. His works encompass Latin Masses and hymns, English-language (Protestant) service music, and other sacred works that reflect the religious and political upheavals in England. He also wrote one of the most complex choral pieces ever written, but more on that in a bit.

You have to remember that between 1534 and 1558, the height of Tallis’ compositional life, English church music suffered greatly due to Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, which had long been a musical stronghold. He was pensioned off at the dissolution of the Waltham Abbey in 1540, which means that he was given money to retire and go about town as a regular private citizen. He had already served 10 years in various monastic capacities, scrupulously avoiding all of the reformation activities going on all around him. But he was too young to properly retire, and so he sought work as a musician. Fortunately, he had quite a talent for it.

During Henry VIII’s reign, despite their religious disagreement, Tallis was appointed to the Chapel Royal, a body of musicians engaged to sing and compose for the monarch’s private services. There, Tallis learned about continental styles of music and puritan ideals. He would remain with Chapel Royal until his death.

Tallis composed the official English liturgy under Edward VI (1547-1553) after Henry VIII’s death, and he did the Latin rites during the reigns of Mary Tudor (1553-1558) and Elizabeth (1558-1603). Mary regarded him as her principal composer, commissioning him for every important occasion. When Elizabeth was queen, she asked for small amounts of both Latin and English church music, more for special occasions than for regular liturgical use. The Chapel Royal had the best musicians anywhere, and Tallis was at its center. He was by far the most eminent musician in England.

Until the Reformation in 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg cathedral door, musicians were usually monks, and organists were rare and seldom paid. Composers were anonymous, serving in the church and for the church, and not gaining personal notoriety. Tallis served in this capacity, and despite–or perhaps because of–his love of creating and making music, he managed to avoid political and religious controversy.

Tallis maintained his Catholic faith without being prosecuted during a time when being Catholic was an act of treason, and was conspicuous as the chief composer for the new Church of England despite his own religious feelings. Some of his pieces make a subtle but sad point about the fate of many Catholics, such as in the Lamentations of Jeremiah, with themes of desolation, penitence, and loss. These were probably not meant to be performed in the church. They’d have been sung in private performances or at the secret–and illegal–Masses held in private homes.

It’s not known exactly when or where Tallis was born and he seems to have been a quiet and studious man after he left the monastery. Not much is known about his education, although he was probably a choir boy somewhere. The first record of him is in 1532, when he was appointed organist at a Benedictine Priory in Dover. In 1537, he served at St Mary-le-Hill in Billingsgate in London, and then at Waltham Abbey in London, until its dissolution in 1540. He found work as a lay clerk in Canterbury Cathedral in 1541 and then entered the king’s service at Chapel Royal in 1543. There, he sang, played the organ, ran the choir, and composed. He remained organist for the royal household until his death in 1585.

Tallis married around 1552, around the same time he took William Byrd (c1540-1623) as a pupil. (Byrd would later exceed Tallis in fame. There will be a blog on him soon.) Tallis’ wife outlived him by about four years. They had no children, or at least, there is no record of children. He probably lived in Greenwich at the time of his death, possibly on Stockwell Street.

In 1575, Tallis and Byrd were granted a 21-year monopoly for printing music in England, which Byrd owned wholly after Tallis’ death. Only they were allowed to use the special paper used for printing music. Initially, the public was suspicious of them as they were both Roman Catholics, so the two musicians appealed to Elizabeth for patronage. Even with her support, the whole thing was a precarious arrangement. They were not allowed to sell any imported music (all the other countries were Catholic, remember). They were not given the rights to the fonts they needed for music type, they couldn’t print patents, and they didn’t own a printing press.

Tallis used his license to publish his own music, in particular, the Cantiones sacrae (Latin for sacred songs) and motets. He was one of the first composers to compose specifically for the Anglican liturgy.

Music of this period was not a melody with accompaniment. Chords had been invented, but were not a driving force in music. Each “voice,” whether instrumental or sung, had its own distinct melodic line. In vocal music, the words were of utmost importance, and melodic shapes were inextricably married to the natural inflections in speech.

Following the fashion of polychoral motets, in around 1570, Tallis wrote “Spem in Alium,” probably his most famous piece, and my absolutely most tippitty-top favorite piece of music ever. But he wasn’t the first to write such a masterpiece. In 1560, the Italian composer Alessandro Striggio (c1536-1592) wrote a Mass for 40 voices, also divided into eight choirs of five singers each. Striggio’s piece was performed in Florence during a visit by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II in 1567, and it and another motet for 40 voices, “Ecce beatam lucem,” were performed in England when Striggio took his show on the road. Tallis heard these pieces and was inspired to write Spem (we insiders call it that for short). Striggio is famous, but not nearly as famous as Tallis, and it’s the Tallis piece that gets performed whenever 40 solo-skilled voices can be found.

Spem was partially the result of a challenge from the (Catholic) Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, later executed as a result of charges of plotting with Mary Queen of Scots for the English throne. The song has elements of both polyphony and chords, and there’s even a moment when so many different notes are sounding that the music passes through what we now know as “white noise.” To me, it seems like an aural reflection of the tension and pressure between Catholics and Protestants. After the first performance of Spem, the Duke removed the heavy gold chain that he wore around his neck and placed it around Tallis’ as a sign of his utmost respect and gratitude.

Tallis might have been trying to prove that England could hold its own with continental composers, he might have been proving that he still had composing—and conducting—skills in his old age, or he might have been producing his own masterwork. We’ll never know, but all of those things proved true.

Tallis was capable of ingenious contrapuntal feats, such as the seven-part “Miserere nostri,” which is still fairly Medieval sounding although it was published around 1575. In this piece, the top two parts are in canon (like a round), and bottom four parts are also in canon—a separate canon from the top two. This was another musical marvel, like Spem, where everyone is very busy singing with everyone else in various ways, although Spem is more like variations on a theme with moments of canon.

Because of the political atmosphere during his lifetime, Tallis only wrote two Masses, a Christmas Mass and a Mass for Four Voices. Masses took a very specific form, and each of the movements were based on Gregorian chants. After Reformation, Lutheran Masses took the same form, but in England during Tallis’ lifetime, folks were very sensitive to anything at all Catholic sounding. The tide turned briefly during Mary Tudor’s Catholic reign, and Tallis promptly set a bunch of Latin psalms and Lamentations to music. (Lamentations are a very specific musical form that describe the sadness of the Jews returning to Jerusalem to find it destroyed and deserted.)

One of the things Tallis did was to reformat his own early Catholic works to suit Protestant sensibilities. For instance, he turned many of his own Mass movements into English anthems (which is a specific form of Anglican music) by just changing the words. (A common anthem is Tallis’ “If Ye Love Me.” Search for it, and you’ll find a lot of listening options.)

Any discussion of Tallis’ church music needs to stress the functional nature of what he wrote, rather than the religious significance, because so much was written for Protestant rulers. It’s probably how he reconciled himself to not writing liturgical music, to separate himself from his personal pain of not being able to publicly practice his own faith.

Within the body of his work, there is at least one example of every musical genre of the time (except processional items and verse music). Through them, it’s easy to read the musical changes taking place in England, including the advent of a humanist aesthetic and a more subjective interpretation of liturgical texts than had been previously heard.

Collections of music from this period often neglect the plainsong (chant) that would have been part of the polyphonic music, usually sung before the polyphonic piece. They probably weren’t collected because they were so commonly known (much like “Amazing Grace” today), so we don’t have a completely accurate record of how the music would have been performed. Most of the time, we can only guess which chant was added, but as many chants used the same text, and not all of the polyphony sounded like the chant in any way, there’s no way to know which chant was intended to be used.

Regarding Tallis’ own thoughts and feelings, it’s not clear whether Tallis was a subversive Catholic, following one faith in public and professionally and another in private, or whether he was just following his love of the musical liturgy he’d known since childhood.

Thomas Tallis was buried in the chancel of the parish of St. Alfege’s Church in Greenwich. The chancel was torn down in 1720 and none of the memorials remain, although there are stories of a brass plate engraved with a eulogy to Tallis. His former student William Byrd wrote the elegy “Ye Sacred Muses” about Tallis’ death.

One of my favorite albums ever, “Utopia Triumphans” from the Huelgas Ensemble and conducted by Paul Van Nevel, has both the Striggio pieces and Spem, along with many other truly wonderful multi-choir pieces. Rush out and get it!

Sources
“A History of Western Music,” by J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, Claude V. Palisca, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2010
“The Concise Oxford History of Music,” by Gerald Abraham, Oxford University Press, New York,1985
“The New Grove High Renaissance Masters,” Jeremy Noble, Gustave Reese, et al, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1984
“The Pelican History of Music: Volume 2, Renaissance and Baroque,” edited by Alec Robertson and Denis Stevens, Penguin Books, London, 1973
“Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music,” edited by Tess Knighton and David Fallows, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997
“Oxford Studies of Composers: Tallis,” by Paul Doe, Oxford University Press, London, 1976