All Change

Donald Macleod explores how life was for Tallis under the successive and entirely different reigns of King Edward and Queen Mary.

“So great a musician are you.....that if the Fates carried you off.....music would be mute.” So wrote a contemporary of Thomas Tallis, showing us just how highly this composer was regarded in his own time. Over the course of this week, Donald Macleod traces the career of Tallis, unquestionably one of England's greatest ever composers. We follow him from the early faint mentions of the composer in Dover Priory, to his 40-plus years serving four successive monarchs as part of the Chapel Royal, and through the upheaval of one of the most tumultuous periods in all of English history.

In 1547, the nine-year-old King Edward came to the throne. In Thursday’s episode, Donald finds Tallis navigating the array of changes this brought to England to rise through the ranks of the King’s Chapel Royal. Before long though, there would be further upheaval as Queen Mary succeeded Edward and set about undoing all of the religious reforms of the previous decades. In the midst of all of this turmoil, Tallis had a significant change of his own - he got married.

Te Deum for Meanes
The Sixteen
Harry Christophers, director

If Ye Love Me
Sonoro
Neil Ferris, director

A New Commandment
Robert Shaw Festival Singers
Robert Shaw, director

Gaude Gloriosa
Alamire
David Skinner, director

In nomine
Fretwork

Mass: Puer natus est nobis (excerpt)
Stile Antico

I call and cry out to the lord
Ensemble Pro Victoria
Toby Ward, director