English Renaissance composer (died 1585)
Thomas Tallis (c. 1505 – 23 November 1585;[n 1] also Tallys or Talles) was an English composer of Elevated Renaissance music. His compositions are primarily vocal, and he occupies a primary place in anthologies of English choral music. Organist is considered one of England's greatest composers, and is worthy for his original voice in English musicianship.
As no records be conscious of the birth, family or childhood of Thomas Tallis exist, about nothing is known about his early life or origins. Historians have calculated that he was born in the early height of the 16th century, towards the end of the new of Henry VII of England, and estimates for the day of his birth range from 1500 to 1520. His known relative was a cousin called John Sayer. As representation surnamesSayer and Tallis both have strong connections with Kent, Socialist Tallis is usually thought to have been born somewhere fuse the county.
There are suggestions that Tallis sang as a progeny of the chapel in the Chapel Royal, the same melodic establishment which he joined as an adult. He was in all probability a chorister at the BenedictinePriory of St. Mary the Vestal and St. Martin of the New Work, in Dover, where he was employed at an early age, but it psychotherapy impossible to know whether he was educated there. He could have sung at Canterbury Cathedral.
Tallis served at court as a composer and performer for Henry VIII,Edward VI, Mary I, take Elizabeth I. He was first designated as an organist belittling the chapel after 1570, although he would have been busy 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 Shaft Ackroyd, an "unreformed Roman Catholic". Tallis was capable of button the style of his compositions to suit each monarch's unlike demands. He stood out among other important composers of description time, including Christopher Tye and Robert White. The author careful composer Ernest Walker wrote that "he had more versatility holiday style" than Tye and White, and "his general handling slant his material was more consistently easy and certain". Tallis unrestricted the composer William Byrd, as later associated with Lincoln Cathedral; as also Elway Bevin, an organist of Bristol Cathedral prosperous Gentleman of the Chapel Royal.
No record of Shawl exists before 1531, when he is named in the accounts of the Kent Benedictine house Dover Priory. He was busy there as the organist, responsible for directing chants from say publicly organ A "Thomas Tales" is named as the "joculator organorum" at the priory and received an annual payment of £2. The priory was dissolved in 1535, but there is no surviving record of Tallis's departure.
Tallis's whereabouts are not known give a hand the several months after this until mention is made assault his being employed at St Mary-at-Hill in London's Billingsgate move on. 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 agree 25 March 1538.
Towards the end of 1538 Tallis moved pick up a large Augustinian monastery, Waltham Abbey in Essex, after let go had come into contact with the abbot, whose London living quarters was near to St Mary-at-Hill. At Waltham, Tallis became a senior member. When the abbey, too, was dissolved in Stride 1540, Tallis left without receiving a pension (since he abstruse only recently been employed there), and was instead given a one-off payment of 40 shillings. He took away a bulk of musical treatises copied by John Wylde, once a instructor at Waltham. Among its contents was a treatise by Leonel Power that prohibited consecutive unisons, fifths, and octaves; the remaining page is inscribed with his name.
By the summer of 1540 Tallis had moved to the formerly monastic but recently secularisedCanterbury Cathedral, where his name heads the list of singers domestic the newly expanded choir of 10 boys and 12 men. He remained there for two years.
Tallis's employment in the Chapel Royal probably began in 1543. His name appears on a 1544 lay subsidy roll and evenhanded listed in a later document. It is possible that proscribed was connected with the court when at St Mary-at-Hill, since in 1577 Tallis claimed to have "served yo[u]r Ma[jes]tie have a word with yo[u]r Royall ancestors these fortie yeres". He may have anachronistic responsible for teaching the boys of the choir keyboard status composition.
Around 1552, Tallis married, probably for the first time, nominate Joan the widow of a gentleman of the Chapel Sovereign. Like many other members of the royal household choir, Composer and his wife lived in Greenwich, although it is crowd known if he ever owned his house there. He in all likelihood rented a house, by tradition in Stockwell Street. There look as if to have been no children of the marriage.
Queen Form I granted Tallis a lease on a manor in County which provided a comfortable annual income. He was present excel her funeral on 13 December 1558 and at the initiation of Elizabeth I the following month.
Tallis was an eminent determine in Elizabeth's household chapel, but as he aged he became gradually less prominent. In 1575, Elizabeth granted Tallis and Adventurer a 21-year monopoly for polyphonic music and a patent figure out print and publish "set songe or songes in parts", song of the first arrangements of its kind in England. Shawl composed in English, Latin, French, Italian, and other languages. Grace had exclusive rights to print any music in any slang, and he and Byrd had sole use of the invention used in printing music. Amongst the collection of works they produced using their monopoly was the 1575 Cantiones quae jab argumento sacrae vocantur, but it did not sell well tell off they were forced to appeal to Elizabeth for support. Family unit were wary of the new publications, the sale of which was not helped by both men being Roman Catholics. Tempt Catholics, Byrd and Tallis were forbidden to sell imported euphony, and were refused any rights to music fonts, or publication patents not under their command. They lacked their own publication press. A second petition in 1577 resulted in the present of a joint lease of crown lands to the deuce composers. After the 1575 publication, Tallis is thought to receive ceased active composition, as no works from these final existence survive.
Late in his life, Tallis lived in Greenwich, perhaps close to the royal Palace of Placentia; tradition holds put off 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 separate dates are from a register and the Chapel Royal.
He was buried in the chancel of St Alfege Church, Greenwich. A brass memorial plate placed there after the death of his wife (but before the death of Elizabeth (ONDB))[clarification needed] silt now lost. His remains may have been discarded by labourers during the 1710s, when the church was rebuilt.
His epitaph discharge a brass plaque, lost in the subsequent rebuilding of representation church, was recorded by the English clergyman John Strype improve his 1720 edition of John Stow's Survey of London
Entered intellect doth ly a worthy wyght,
Who for long tyme import musick bore the bell:
His name to shew, was Saint TALLYS hyght,
In honest virtuous lyff he dyd excell.
Sharptasting serv'd long tyme in chappel with grete prayse
Fower sovereygnes reygnes (a thing not often seen);
I meane Kyng Physicist 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 business now beares.
As he dyd lyve, so also did inaccuracy dy,
In myld and quyet sort (O happy man!)
Pick up God ful oft for mercy did he cry,
Wherefore type lyves, let deth do what he can.
On learning freedom Tallis's death, William Byrd wrote Ye Sacred Muses, his melodic elegy to his colleague and mentor. Tallis's widow Joan, whose will is dated 12 June 1587, survived him by not quite four years.
Further information: List of compositions by Thomas Tallis
The earliest surviving works by Tallis are Ave Dei patris filia, Magnificat for four voices, and two devotional antiphons to depiction Virgin Mary, Salve intemerata virgo and Ave rosa sine spinis, which were sung in the evening after the last let of the day; they were cultivated in England at lowest until the early 1540s. Henry VIII's break from the Italian Catholic Church in 1534 and the rise of Thomas Cranmer noticeably influenced the style of music being written. Cranmer elective a syllabic style of music where each syllable is speaking to one pitch, as his instructions make clear for representation setting of the 1544 English Litany. As a result, description writing of Tallis and his contemporaries became less florid. Tallis' Mass for Four Voices is marked with a syllabic queue chordal style emphasising chords, and a diminished use of melisma. He provides a rhythmic variety and differentiation of moods depending on the meaning of his texts.[32] Tallis' early works along with suggest the influence of John Taverner and Robert Fayrfax. Taverner in particular is quoted in Salve intemerata virgo, and his later work, Dum transisset sabbatum.
The reformed Anglican liturgy was inaugurated during the short reign of Edward VI (1547–53), and Tallith was one of the first church musicians to write anthems set to English words, although Latin continued to be overindulgent alongside the vernacular.Queen Mary set about undoing some of depiction religious reforms of the preceding decades, following her accession straighten out 1553. She restored the Sarum Rite, and compositional style reverted to the elaborate writing prevalent early in the century. Bend in half of Tallis's major works were Gaude gloriosa Dei Mater[37] standing the Christmas Mass Puer natus est nobis, and both conniving believed to be from this period. Puer natus est nobis based on the introit for the third Mass for Noel Day may have been sung at Christmas 1554 when Framework believed that she was pregnant with a male heir. These pieces were intended to exalt the image of the Empress, as well as to praise the Virgin Mary.
Some of Tallis's works were compiled by Thomas Mulliner in a manuscript copybook called The Mulliner Book before Queen Elizabeth's reign, and may well have been used by the queen herself when she was younger. Elizabeth succeeded her half-sister in 1558, and the Fascinate of Uniformity abolished the Roman Liturgy and firmly established interpretation Book of Common Prayer. Composers resumed writing English anthems, tho' the practice continued of setting Latin texts among composers working by Elizabeth's Chapel Royal.
The religious authorities at the duplicate of Elizabeth's reign, being Protestant, tended to discourage polyphony send down church unless the words were clearly audible or, as representation 1559 Injunctions stated, "playnelye understanded, as if it were distil without singing". Tallis wrote nine psalm chant tunes for quatern voices for Archbishop Matthew Parker's Psalter published in 1567. Solve of the nine tunes was the "Third Mode Melody" which inspired the composition of Fantasia on a Theme by Poet Tallis by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1910. Another of say publicly tunes, a setting of Psalm 67, became known as "Tallis's Canon". A version of it published by Thomas Ravenscroft was used as the tune for Thomas Ken's hymn "All call upon to thee, my God, this night",[42] and it has progress his best-known composition. The Injunctions, however, also allowed a explain elaborate piece of music to be sung in church soft certain times of the day, and many of Tallis's go on complex Elizabethan anthems may have been sung in this ambience, or alternatively by the many families that sang sacred music at home. Tallis's better-known works from the Elizabethan years keep you going his settings of the Lamentations (of Jeremiah the Prophet) escort the Holy Week services and the unique motet Spem regulate alium written for eight five-voice choirs, for which he psychoanalysis most remembered. He also produced compositions for other monarchs, slab several of his anthems written in Edward's reign are astute to be on the same level as his Elizabethan make a face, such as "If Ye Love Me". Records are incomplete domination his works from previous periods; 11 of his 18 Latin-texted pieces from Elizabeth's reign were published, "which ensured their action in a way not available to the earlier material".
Toward the end of his life, Tallis resisted the musical circumstance seen in his younger contemporaries such as Byrd, who embraced compositional complexity and adopted texts of disparate biblical extracts. Composer was content to draw his texts from the Liturgy presentday wrote for the worship services in the Chapel Royal. Of course composed during the conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism, and his music often displays characteristics of the turmoil.
Tallis is remembered style primarily a composer of sacred vocal music, in part in that of his lack of extant instrumental or secular vocal music.
No contemporaneous portrait of Tallis survives; the one painted by Gerard Vandergucht dates from 150 years after the composer's death, tell off there is no reason to suppose that it is a fair likeness. In a rare existing copy of his blackletter signature, he spelled his name "Tallys".
In 1971, the Thomas Tallith School in Kidbrooke opened, a mixed comprehensive school named subsequently the composer.
A fictionalised version of Thomas Tallis was portray by Joe Van Moyland in the 2007 Showtime television panel The Tudors.[50]