Tallis - Videte miraculum

Most singers first encounter Thomas Tallis through one of his English anthems (often "If ye love me"), but it's his Latin polyphony that I enjoy the most - like this piece which I sang last weekend for Candlemas.

Blessed are those that be undefiled

THIS PIECE. Somehow I've never shared this as part of my Early Music Monday series, and it's time. This is the piece that started my love of polyphony. Eighteen-year-old me nearly drove off the road when the "Gloria" began and I had to pull over and finish listening.

Blessed are those that be undefiled in the way and walk with the Lord. Blessed are they that keep his testimonies and seek him with their whole heart, for they that do no wickedness walk in his ways. Thou has charged us, O Lord, that we should diligently keep thy commandments. O that our ways were made so direct that we might keep thy statutes. So shall we not be confounded while we have respect unto all thy commandments. - Psalm 119:1-6

Context of Spem

This fantastic video from a few years back does an excellent job putting historical and musical context around Tallis' magnificent "Spem in alium"! Definitely worth the watch to learn more and see the excellent visuals (though I don't think any recording, especially one made from home recordings during covid lockdown, can compete with the incredible experience of hearing or performing this live!

Ye sacred muses

A death in the family this week has me thinking about grief and how musicians in history handled it. Case in point: William Byrd’s magnificent ode to his friend and mentor Thomas Tallis.

Ye sacred muses (Elegy for Thomas Tallis - 1585)
by William Byrd
with Sonnambula: Shirley Hunt, Amy Domingues, Elizabeth Weinfield, and Colleen McGary-Smith
in conjunction with the Henry Purcell Society of Boston
recorded by Russ Anderson, T-Stop Productions
Live performance, October 2018

Spem in alium

How big was the scale of polychoral music? The biggest was a mass by Alessandro Striggio for 5 choirs of 12, totaling 60 independent polyphonic lines. Lassus, Malvezzi, Rossetto, and others wrote 30-50 part pieces. But the best known is Tallis’ Spem in alium for 40 voices (8 choirs of 5).

Spem in alium (Latin for "Hope in any other") is a 40-part Renaissance motet by Thomas Tallis, composed in c. 1570 for eight choirs of five voices each. It is considered by some critics to be the greatest piece of English early music. H. B. Collins described it in 1929 as Tallis's "crowning achievement", along with his Lamentations.[1]

The early history of the work is obscure, although there are some clues as to where it may have been first performed. It is listed in a catalogue of the library at Nonsuch Palace, a royal palace that was sold in the 1550s to the Earl of Arundel, before returning to the crown in the 1590s. The listing, dating from 1596, describes it as "a song of fortie partes, made by Mr. Tallys". The earliest surviving manuscripts are those prepared in 1610 for the investiture as Prince of Wales of Henry Frederick, the son of James I.

A 1611 commonplace book written by the law student Thomas Wateridge contains the following anecdote:

Spem in alium ( Latin for "Hope in any other") is a 40-part Renaissance motet by Thomas Tallis, composed in c. 1570 for eight choirs of five voices each. It is considered by some critics to be the greatest piece of English early music. H. B.

Henry VIII and Music Publishing

Of all the things we know about Henry VIII, did you know he developed the concept of copyright? And that Byrd and Tallis had a monopoly on printing/publishing polyphonic music? Check out this article for more!

Music publishing is the business of creating, producing and distributing printed musical scores, parts, and books in various types of music notation, while ensuring that the composer, songwriter and other creators receive credit and royalties or other payment (where applicable). This article outlines the early history of the industry.

Music publishing did not begin on a large scale until the mid-15th century, when mechanical techniques for printing music were first developed. The earliest example, a set of liturgical chants, dates from about 1465, shortly after the Gutenberg Bible. Prior to this time, music had to be copied out by hand. This was a very labor-intensive and time-consuming process, so it was first undertaken only by monks and priests seeking to preserve sacred music for the church. The few collections of secular music that are extant were commissioned and owned by wealthy noblemen. Examples include the Squarcialupi Codex of Italian Trecento music and the Chantilly Codex of French Ars subtilior music. Hand copying persisted long after the invention of printing and music was widely disseminated in manuscript form well into the 18th century, both in personal copying and scribal publication.

The father of modern music printing was Ottaviano Petrucci, a printer and publisher who was able to secure a twenty-year monopoly on printed music in Venice during the 16th century. His first collection was entitled Harmonice Musices Odhecaton and contained 96 polyphonic compositions, mostly by Josquin des Prez and Heinrich Isaac. He flourished by focusing on Flemish works, rather than Italian, as they were very popular throughout Europe during the Renaissance. His printing shop used the triple-impression method, in which a sheet of paper was pressed three times. The first impression was the staff lines, the second the words, and the third the notes. This method produced very clean results, though it was time-consuming and expensive.

Music publishing is the business of creating, producing and distributing printed musical scores, parts, and books in various types of music notation, while ensuring that the composer, songwriter and other creators receive credit and royalties or other payment (where applicable). This article outlines the early history of the industry.