Thomas Tallis (1505-1585)
Thomas Tallis' compositional and spiritual career occupied roughly half the central 50 years of the 16th century, spanning all the religious upheavals of the period and coinciding with rapid and fundamental changes in the style and status of English church music.

After about 10 years of monastic employment culminating in the great Abbey at Waltham, he was pensioned off at the Dissolution in 1540 and, late in Henry VIII's reign, was appointed to the Chapel Royal where he remained until after Henry's death.

Henry was succeeded by Edward VI (1547-1553) and then Mary Tudor (1553-1558), before the lengthy reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603). Tallis went from setting Latin texts to English, to Latin again and, finally, English tempered with Latin.

By the 1560s, Tallis was the doyen among musicians and held a position of the greatest eminence in the country; a position which later would have been called Master of the King's/ Queen's Music. He became known to later generations as "the Father of English Church Music", owing to the accident of birth that placed him at the forefront of the Reformation.


Tallis' compositional style was as various as the times in which he lived and reflected with astonishing clarity the changes of language and liturgy, the cross-currents of musical style and technique. From the simplicity of the English anthems such as, "If you love me", the grandeur of the seven-part mass, to the dark passions of "Lamentations" and the complexity of the 40-part "Spem in alium", he covered practically every genre known at the time and achieved a technical mastery and personal expression unique among the 16th century masters.

His influence, by his example and teaching, was invaluable to the development and flowering of the golden age of Tudor music under Elizabeth I. He lived in Greenwich for the last 30 years of his life, died on 23 November 1585, and is buried beneath the chancel of St Alfege which has maintained a high standard of church music, including an excellent choir, for many years. His memorial window used to be in the gallery until 1941, and a floor-brass records this quaint epitaph to his memory.

Enterred here doth ly a worthy wight,
Who for long tyme in music bore the Bell;
His name to shew was Thomas Tallys hyght;
In honest virtuous lyff he did excell.
He served long tyme in Chapell with grate prayse,
I mean King Henry and Prynce Edward's dayes,
Quene Mary and Elizabeth our Quene.
He maryed was, though children he had none,
And lived in Love full three and thirty Yere,
With loyal Spowse, whose name yclipt was Jone,
Who here entomb'd now company him bears.
As he did lyve, so also did he dy,
In mild and quyet sort, O! happy man.
To God ful oft for mercy did he cry,
Wherefore he lyves, let Death do what he can.