Tallis Kerry McCarthy.

Abstract

The Tudor composer Thomas Tallis holds particular fascination for how closely his musical career and creativity were intertwined with the English Reformation. He began his career in monastic establishments that were closed in the first phase of the Reformation and then famously served in the Chapel Royal under four different monarchs. He responded to the introduction of the English Book of Common Prayer, the reimposition and subsequent reversal of Catholicism, the rise of metrical psalmody, and the early phases of English music publishing. Tallis is seen as central to the development of the new styles and genres required for these sweeping liturgical and devotional changes, and known for a stylistic range that spanned pared-back miniatures like If ye Love me to the monumental forty-part Spem in alium. Despite the attractions of Tallis’s reputation and his relationship with such a colourful period of English political, religious, and musical history, however, biographies of Tallis were slow to emerge. For nearly fifty years Paul Doe’s slim introduction to Tallis’s works was the only book dedicated to the composer (at least in his own period). McCarthy’s Tallis is now the second biography of the composer to be published within five years, but it is a very welcome addition. Not only is the book a highly engaging account of Tallis’s life and music founded on impressive scholarship, but McCarthy also takes a distinctive approach to the writing of this biography that offers a new perspective on this widely known composer.