Thomas Tallis - Biography
Thomas Tallis the great English Composer whose life spanned most of the era of Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth the First was born circa 1505 in Leicestershire England and died in Greenwich on November 23rd 1585. Details of Tallis’ youth and training are historically obscured. The first known reference to him is as a musician was as an organist at a Benedictine Priory in Dover for a few years which he had a post at the Abbey of Holy Cross at Waltham in Essex. After the Abbey was dissolved he went to Canterbury where there is evidence that he was a lay clerk at the Cathedral. Tallis probably left Canterbury in 1542; he became a court musician at the Chapel Royal where he was to remain until his retirement. We know that he was one of the musicians who performed at the funeral of Henry the Eighth and at the coronation of his successor the nine year old Edward the Sixth. Evidently Tallis was able to maneuver the political turmoil upon the early death of King Edward at fifteen and the quick succession of three Queens. He was particularly thought highly of by the Catholic Queen Mary but was able to serve her Anglican half sister Elizabeth to her satisfaction. Eventually the court granted him and his great younger colleague William Byrd exclusive rights to publish music and produce sheet music in Brittan. This grant should have been lucrative but caused a financial loss for both Byrd and Tallis who petitioned the Queen for aid because of his age which was in the range of seventy. Tallis in his retirement settled in Greenwich with his wife who very little is known except that were married in 1552, her Christian name was Joan and that they had no children. Byrd died on November 23rd 1585 in Greenwich and was buried in the parish church of St. Alphege.
Tallis had very few of his works published during his lifetime but they existed in manuscript. Among the great works of Tallis are the Lamentations of Jeremiah, the tremendous multiple part Motet Spem n Alium along with many masterful settings of the mass, motets, psalms and a handful of songs. Unfortunately in all probability we don’t know how many works are lost.
Tallis' life is difficult to flesh out; there are not many personal incidences that have been handed down to us. In fact most casual classical music fans would associate him with the famed Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis by Vaughan Williams based on a melody from a Tallis mode (there is a wicked anecdote attributed to the famed conductor Sir Thomas Beecham who put down Vaughan Williams to a colleague and when reminded of the beauty of the Tallis Fantasia replied ‘unfortunately Tallis didn’t write all of Vaughan Williams works!’).
Over the last fifty years there have been many superb recordings of Tallis’ music form the pioneering recordings of Alfred Deller and his Consort to the performances of the Tallis Scholars conducted by Peter Philips on the Gimell label. The music even without accounting for the structural mastery has a hypnotic effect on the listener by its sheer beauty.