Things New and Old

Tallis and Vaughan Williams

In the twentieth century more than one musical revolution took place, each one overturning the absolute dominance of strictly regulated tonality. It was time to move on to new ways of composing music, both in terms of melody lines and of harmonic progressions. It was not that tonality should have been abandoned, and not that it ever was; but rather that the tyranny of its authority, enforced by the rules of Conservatories and of popular expectations, was rightly cast off like broken chains that had to be severed. But to take steps forward was not the only way. Music had advanced over several centuries before the reign of tonality, having grown from ancient Greek modes to the music of the Renascence, an era that ushered in the modern chord with its determining color created by the third, whether minor or major. In no venue did the development of music during that period reach greater heights than in the liturgical music of the Church of England. And no composer surpassed Thomas Tallis (1505 - 1585). The haunting beauty of his church music included all of the great development from the time of Gregorian Chant with choral monophony, into Medieval music employing intervals of the fourth and the fifth, bringing a semblance of harmony, eventually reaching choral polyphony that made use of the triads. That is chords as we know them today, and even counterpoint.

In a previous post I mentioned how the young Bach, when very directly influenced by Buxtehude, created one of his most famous works, but at the same time his most uncharacteristic and unusual piece, the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (BWV 565). In it we hear the final use of Renascence sounds as they give way to the sounds of the Baroque era, all within the same opus. It was in this piece that Bach briefly continued what he learned from Buxtehude, among the first of the Baroque pioneers. But after that piece Bach stuck to the fully developed tonality of which he was one of the greatest musical fathers. For the remainder of the Baroque era, into the Classical era dominated by the sounds we hear in the music of Hayden and Mozart, into the Romantic period beginning with Beethoven and dominating music into the early years of the twentieth century, strict tonality ruled the world of what today comes under the heading of Classical Music. Indeed, tonality marked a valuable cultural development, among its great contributions giving composers the freedom created by tempered tuning. It is the form and structure of some of the greatest music in all of history.

But early in the twentieth century composers felt the same need for further development in the art of music that had already inspired new ideas in other arts, such as Impressionism in painting. So the strict rules of tonality began to be cast aside, often with the resistance of critics. But to cast aside the strictness of tonality’s rules required something other than just simply new ideas. Before tonality there had been great music of composers like Thomas Tallis. One of his most famous choral works was the Third Mode Melody (Third Mode because it is in the mode, rather than the key, built on E: That is the Phrygian mode). In his time Tallis harmonized modal melodies with that “new-fangled” harmonic tool, the triad, the basic chord as know it today with its use of the root, the third, and the fifth. Tallis wrote many works that were far more complex than this, even using counterpoint. His greatest achievement was probably, at age sixty-five, his Spem in Alium (“Hope in Any Other”), a forty-piece motet sung by eight choirs of five voices each, entering in one after another in a manner that anticipated the invention of the fugue. But I choose to concentrate on his Third Mode Melody because of the later use of that choral work by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) in the twentieth Century.

If Tallis was the greatest composer for the Church of England in the days of Queen Elizabeth I (the late Renascence in the arts and the later years of the English Reformation in the Church), Vaughan Williams was the greatest composer for the Church of England in the twentieth century. In order to move on from the strict hold of rigid, almost authoritarian adherence to, tonality, Vaughan Williams reached backwards in order to move forward. Perhaps the sounds of Tallis were new to the ears of most of Vaughan Williams’ contemporaries. The Third Mode Melody (used for all twelve verses of the Second Psalm as they appeared in the Psalter of Archbishop Matthew Parker, “Why fumeth in sight: the Gentils spite, In fury raging stout?”) included harmonies that had been new, daring, and bold in the Renascence. In the twentieth century they were reintroduced as seemingly new, and no less daring and bold. Note for note, chord for chord, the Third Mode Melody was quoted exactly near the beginning of Vaughan Willimas’ Fantasy on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. The brief four stanza tune opens in E minor, but completes the first stanza with a resolution to E Major. It makes use of A minor and its relative C major, using just a dash of counterpoint in the tenor voice in the middle and in the conclusion of the fourth stanza in E Major.

What Tallis wrote was new in his day, and it was new again in 1910, in the Gloucester Cathedral. Only now the sounds of the string section of a modern symphony orchestra were fully employed, something grander than Tallis had ever heard in his entire life. The modern string orchestra played his exact melody and his exact harmony as he had written them in his day. The beginning notes of the tune are subtly suggested in a quiet introduction, plucked in the bass before being unleashed dramatically and emotionally with the sound of modern strings. From there Vaughan Williams takes off, composing a piece that never loses the flavor and feeling of the sixteenth century as only Tallis could write it, and also makes use of the most up to date modern sounds and compositional techniques available to a twentieth century composer.

So is the way of renewal. Ralph Vaughan Williams, like a disciple instructed in the Kingdom of Heaven, brought forth from his treasures things both new and old. The music is the church music of Tallis from the sixteenth century; and in the Fantasia it is also the music of Vaughan Williams from the twentieth century.

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Here you may listen to a few verses of the original.

Here is what Ralph Vaughan Williams did with it, performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by John Wilson.

For those who may want to see the original wording from the Archbishop Parker Psalter, the lyrics used by Tallis, here it is. It is an older English version than that of Coverdale.

1. Why fumeth in sight: the Gentils spite,
In fury raging stout?
Why taketh in hond: the people fond,
Uayne thinges to bring about?

2. The kinges arise: the lordes deuise,
in counsayles mett therto:
Agaynst the Lord: with false accord,
against his Christ they go.

3. Let vs they say: breake downe their ray,
of all their bondes and cordes:
We will renounce: that they pronounce,
their loores as stately lordes.

4. But God of might: in heauen so bright,
Shall laugh them all to scorne:
The Lord on hie: shall them defie,
they shall be once forlorne.

5. Then shall his ire: speake all in fire,
to them agayne therfore:
He shall with threate: their malice beate,
in his displeasure sore.

6. Yet am I set: a king so great,
on Sion hill full fast:
Though me they kill: yet will that hill,
my lawe and worde outcast.

7. Gods wordes decreed: I (Christ) wil sprede
for God thus sayd to me/e:
My sonne I say: thou art, this day,
I haue begotten the/e.

8. Aske thou of me/e: I will geue the/e,
to rule all Gentils londes:
Thou shalt possesse: in suernesse,
the world how wide it stondes.

9. With iron rod: as mighty God,
all rebels shalt thou bruse:
And breake them all: in pieces small,
as sherdes the potters vse.

10. Be wise therfore: ye kinges the more,
Receyue ye wisdomes lore:
Ye iudges strong: of right and wrong,
aduise you now before.

11. The Lorde in feare: your seruice beare,
with dread to him reioyce:
Let rages be: resist not ye,
him serue with ioyfull voyce.

12. The sonne kisse ye: lest wroth he be,
lose not the way of rest:
For when his ire: is set on fire,
who trust in hym be blest.