Tallis, the Parker psalter, and some known unknowns

Abstract

This study opens with a bold claim: that one of Thomas Tallis’s best-known works, the ‘third tune’ from Matthew Parker’s metrical psalter of 1567, made famous through its use in Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis, may have been mistranscribed and misrepresented by all modern editors and performers, including Vaughan Williams. This claim then fuels a suspicion that might in any case have arisen from other factors—namely, that Tallis need not have had any direct involvement with the creation, printing and publication of Parker’s psalter. Usually it is assumed that Tallis composed his ‘tunes’ at Parker’s request, perhaps specifically for inclusion in the 1567 edition, but this is indeed an assumption based on no solid evidence, and other scenarios might now equally be proposed. Among them is the possibility that either Parker or an editor acting on his behalf took existing works by Tallis and adapted them to serve this new purpose, not necessarily with Tallis’s agreement or even his knowledge. If so, then we lose one of the very few seemingly secure datings for any of Tallis’s works, and instead we gain a new enigma. If Tallis did not compose his nine ‘tunes’ expressly for Parker’s psalter, then what function might these works originally have served, and what words did they set?