All roads lead to London

Fairly early in his career, we find Thomas Tallis working in London. Donald Macleod explores the circumstances that led him to the city.

“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.

Fairly early in his career, we find Thomas Tallis already working in London. In Monday’s episode, Donald explores the circumstances which led him to England’s capital city, and examines what the composer’s first impressions of the city must have been like.

O Sacrum Convivium
Choir of New College, Oxford
Edward Higginbottom, director

Lamentations of Jeremiah I & II
Hilliard Ensemble
Paul Hillier, director

Euge celi porta
Chapelle du Roi
Alistair Dixon, director

Alleluia. Per te Dei genitrix
Chapelle du Roi
Alistair Dixon, director

Ave, rosa sine spinis
Cardinall’s Musik
Andrew Carwood, director

When shall my sorrowful sighing slack
Gabriel Crouch, baritone
Elizabeth Kenny, lute