Thomas Tallis

The Complete Works - Volume 3

Chapelle du Roi

Label: Signum Classics
Format: CD
Barcode: 0635212000328

Catalog number: SIGCD 003
Releasedate: 01-03-04

This album is the third in a series of nine covering the complete works of Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585). Not for nothing is Tallis known as the "father of church music" – with his colleagues at the Chapel Royal he created most of the church music genres that we take for granted today.

In chronological terms Volume 3 follows on quickly from the Edwardine music of Volume 2 with repertoire written for the Marian reversion to Catholicism in 1553. Here we meet Tallis the composer of music for the old English liturgy in both a modern “continental” style and a self-consciously old fashioned English style.

The music includes the extraordinary seven part mass Puer natus est nobis of 1554 and the similarly-scored motet Suscipe Quaeso. A speculative reconstruction Beati immaculati opens the disc and it concludes with the monumental six part votive antiphon Gaude Gloriosa.