Elizabethan Catholics: Tallis and Byrd

A friend sent me this link to a BBC documentary on sacred music. Narrator Beale remarks early in the film that there is strangely little biographical information on Tallis. The great English composer was a secret Catholic under Henry, Edward, and Elizabeth Tudor. One can’t help but think of Shakespeare, almost certainly a Catholic, about whose private life there is a near black-out of information. Later, he comments that the musicians had chosen not to leave themselves to posterity—but their music, which is some of the most beautiful in England’s history. Like Shakespeare, their faith shines through and survives in their art.

Particularly exquisite is Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices, his response to the death of Edmund Campion. It’s worth watching just to hear Tallis’s early music, before Henry, when he was allowed to compose as he wished, then his later music, under Elizabeth, stripped of all ethereal beauty, rendered plain, and necessarily containing praises to the Queen.

http://en.gloria.tv/?media=157038

2011-05-19T18:08:20-05:00

About the Author: Dena Hunt

Dena Hunt's first novel, Treason (Sophia Institute Press), won the IPPY Gold Medal. Her second, The Lion’s Heart (Full Quiver Press), won the Catholic Arts and Letters Achievement award. Jazz & Other Stories, her third book, has just been published by Wiseblood Books. She is the book review editor of St. Austin Review.

2 Comments

Jeff Hendrix May 20, 2011 at 11:33 am - Reply

Dear Dr. Pearce,

Thank you for this post and accompanying documentary, looking at the ways these gifted composers brought glory and honor to God in the (so-called) English “reformation”.

It is a glorious thing to see how Mother Church – “the old Faith” – sustained us in the dark and dreadful days of the Tudors through truth, goodness, and beauty. Clearly the Holy Spirit worked in music and lyrics to bless and fan the flames of faith.
Dena Hunt May 22, 2011 at 9:18 am - Reply

Dear Jeff,

If you think about it without the pain, anger, and frustration that must accompany persecution, with only their simple desire to pursue their art with the integrity of their faith, how such men as Tallis and Byrd overcame the vanity of their own greatness is an inspiration for any Catholic artist of any age, including our own.

It comes down to: What’s really important here?

(I think Maximilian Kolbe might even have asked himself: What’s really important here?)

I believe that artists also can be capable of heroic virtue through their art, can be saints. (I admit that may be an Opus Dei point of view.)

Thanks for your comment.
Dena Hunt

Elizabethan Catholics: Tallis and Byrd