The Tudors in 100 Objects by John Matusiak

Author:John Matusiak
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780750969284
Publisher: The History Press

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Thomas Tallis keyboard

Although the components of this organ console at St Alfege’s Church in Greenwich belong predominantly to the eighteenth century, there is one feature at least that defies the general rule. For experts believe that the middle keyboard is almost certainly from Tudor times and would have been played not only by Thomas Tallis, whose influence was invaluable to the development and flowering of the golden age of Tudor music under Elizabeth I, but by the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth while they lived at Greenwich Palace and received musical tuition under the composer’s guidance. When the palace chapel’s roof collapsed in 1552 one of the keyboards was saved and eventually found its way to St Alfege’s, which was built by Sir Nicholas Hawksmoor between 1711 and 1714, and there it resides today, complete with its curious arrangement of reverse colour keys, some of which are split to achieve sharps, and a Middle D which is for some reason noticeably more worn than the usual Middle C. Nor was the roofing collapse of 1552 the keyboard’s only narrow escape, for in 1941 it survived a direct hit on its current home from a German bomb.

Like Thomas Tallis’s own music, then, the keyboard has proved a survivor against the odds. For while Tallis today occupies a primary place in anthologies of English church music, and is considered among the best of England’s early composers, it was only with the publication in 1928 of his collected works in the series Tudor Church Music that easy access to his compositions became possible at all. Probably born about 1505, nothing is known of his parents, place of origin, or early education, and the date of his birth can only be conjectured from the fact that one of his works was copied into a music manuscript (British Library, MS Harley 1709), apparently in the later 1520s. What we do know, however, is that Tallis was a direct beneficiary of the musical tradition established at the English court by Henry VIII and that he not only composed and performed for the king but taught all three of his children after his appointment as a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1543. In riding out the tumultuous religious changes of the reigns of Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth, moreover, the composer would prove infinitely adaptable in tailoring his musical repertoire to suit the prevailing climate at any one time, notwithstanding his own allegiance to Roman Catholicism.

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