Vaughan Williams responds to a melody of one of England's greatest 16th century composers.
Thomas Tallis, Engraving by Niccolò Haym after a portrait by Gerard van der Gucht Photo: Public Domain
"You know VW", an anonymous friend is said to have quipped to Vaughan Williams, "all your best-sellers are not your own".
While it's a fairly counter-intuitive use of the negative, it touches on the many popular works the composer derived from old English source material: the English Folk-Song Suite, the Fantasia on Greensleeves, the Five Variants on Dives and Lazarus, and the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.
In the early 20th century, there had been a general revival of interest among the English musical fraternity in the music of composers from the 16th century, including Thomas Tallis.
Vaughan Williams first came across Tallis’s Third Mode Melody while working on the editing of the English Hymnal. He used the melody to set Joseph Addison's hymn "When Rising from the Bed of Death", and the theme remained an important musical idea throughout his life and appeared in several of his works.
In this Fantasia, he recalls the antiphonal style of the earlier composers with the strings divided into two uneven orchestras and a string quartet who work in call and reply.
Although unrecorded until 1936, it was a breakthrough work for the composer and remains a constant audience favourite.
The Fantasia was premiered in 1910 before an audience of two thousand at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester Cathedral with the composer himself conducting.
It was a festival tradition to not applaud after works in the Cathedral, so it would have been a nervous and silent descent from the podium for the 37-year old.
Responses ranged from bewilderment at this "queer, mad work by an odd fellow from Chelsea" to slightly more perceptive, with one critic commenting on the work's "Englishness", but also noting that: "Debussy too, is somewhere in the picture and it is hard to tell how much of the complete freedom of tonality comes from the new French School, and how much from the old English one".
Programme note by Kevin Keys
Recorded by RNZ Concert, Auckland Town Hall, 21 July 2016
Producer: Tim Dodd; Engineer: Adrian Hollay
