Tallis: Spem In Alium / Missa Salve Intemerata

Description

Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585)Spem in alium Salve intemerata (Mass and motet)Considering that Thomas Tallis was the finest Englishcomposer of his generation, it is surprising how little weknow about his life. The first time we hear of Tallis is in1530 when he was organist at Dover Priory in Kent: bythen he was clearly a respected professional musician.We also know that Tallis was described as being 'veryaged' in 1577 and that he died in November 1585.Taking these three pieces of information together, theconsensus is that Tallis was born around 1505 (thusplacing him in his mid-twenties while working at Dover,in his early-seventies when he was described as 'veryaged', and in his eightieth year when he died). Hardlyconclusive, but there is not much else to go on.The motet Salve intemerata is a setting of a longprose prayer to the Virgin Mary and is written for fivevoices in an expansively Catholic style. We knownothing of Tallis's whereabouts when he wrote thislarge-scale motet, but we do know that the oldestmanuscript in which the motet survives was copied inthe late 1520s and that the words are recorded in a Bookof Hours which appeared in 1527. Yet in spite of itsearly date, Salve intemerata shows Tallis writing musicof considerable fluency and invention, quite anachievement for a composer in his early twenties. Witha composition portfolio that contained a work assubstantial and proficient as this one, it is not difficult tosee why Tallis was appointed to Dover Priory as ayoung man.In 1535 Dover Priory was dissolved, and Tallis'sjob with it. By 1537 he was working at the church of StMary-at-Hill in London. St Mary-at-Hill was animportant musical foundation, and from there Tallisseems to have begun his association with the Englishroyal court (in 1577 Tallis was described as 'servingyour royal ancestors for forty years'). It is at this timethat the Missa Salve intemerata may have been written.The Mass borrows heavily from the motet, particularlyin the Gloria and Credo, yet it shows that Tallis's stylehad matured in the intervening years. More concise,direct, and vocally more pragmatic than the lengthymotet, the Mass is his finest pre-Reformationachievement. The reason that the Missa Salveintemerata is not better known today is that one of thevoice parts requires reconstruction (the Tenor part-bookhas been lost). Fortunately the missing part is the onedirectly above the lowest voice, the easiest one toreconstruct within this texture.By 1538 Tallis was a senior member of the musicstaff at Waltham Abbey in Essex, but yet again Tallis'sjob dissolved along with the Abbey in 1540.Undeterred, he moved to the newly-founded secularestablishment at Canterbury Cathedral, where he sang aspart of the choir of twenty-two men and boys. TheReformation had a profound effect on English churchmusic, most tangibly during the reign of Edward VIwhen late-medieval Latin polyphony, as exemplified bythe Salve intemerata and its Mass, became outlawed.Tallis maintained his craf