Elizabeth I

Donald Macleod explores the success and incredible music Tallis created under the reign of Elizabeth I.

“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.

Tallis had been a member of the Chapel Royal for some 16 years by the time Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1559. In Friday’s episode, Donald explores how despite another set of massive changes heralded by the Protestant Queen, and a host of personnel changes, Tallis kept his place in the Chapel Royal. He was further honoured by the monarch with a monopoly for polyphonic music and a patent to print and publish music together with William Byrd. Tallis would repay Elizabeth’s faith and go on to write some of his greatest music under her reign, including the 40-part motet Spem in Alium.

Psalm 2, the third of 9 tunes for Archbishop Parker’s psalter “Why Fum’th In Fight”
ORA
Suzi Digby, director

Suscipe quaeso domine
Rodolfus Choir
Ralph Allwood, director

My Soul Cleaveth to the Dust
The Cardinall's Musick
Andrew Carwood, director

O Nata Lux (arr. Christian Forshaw)
Voces8
Christian Forshaw, Saxophone

Spem in alium
ORA Singers
Suzi Digby, director

Cantiones Sacrae (excerpts)
Alamire
David Skinner, director

Miserere nostri
Stile Antico