Thomas Tallis

by Jessica Swale

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 7 November 2015

The play, directed by Adele Thomas and designed by Hannah Clark with Harry Christophers providing musical expertise, features Brendan O'Hea as Thomas Tallis, with Simon Harrison and Katy Stephens taking various parts and Guy Amos as King Edward VI, and with six singers from The Sixteen.

In the gorgeous atmosphere of the candle-lit playhouse the music of the great Tudor composer Thomas Tallis could hardly fail to charm, and indeed as the play opens with Tallis himself speaking to us about the roughness of human speech being transformed into song we await the first sounds of polyphony with eager expectation. We are not disappointed, as the sounds emerge from behind the doors, and then the six singers appear - immaculately attired in modern evening dress. 

Throughout the play there are various surprises like this. The music is timeless - why not dress as for a modern recital? But the times were brutal - why not depict a scene in which Henry VIII summons a castrato singer to perform, but then gives him a poisoned chalice so that he expires in the middle of his rendition of a Tallis song? The whole uneasy rivalry between the King and Wolsey is adumbrated here even though the Queen is Katherine of Aragon and the 'Great Matter' has apparently not yet disturbed the scene. Tallis himself worked at Waltham Abbey - why not include the devastating effect of its dissolution, and the new orders concerning composition?

If there are resonances with, for example, Shostakovitch's plight in the 1930s, they are only subliminally made, especially with the abrasive sounds accompanying the Marian re-introduction of the Catholic rite, which sounds as if it is being broadcast through a tannoy system. But a plasterer moves easily enough with the times, while a fanatical Protestant woman rails viciously against revived popery.  A final scene in which a persecuted priest is given succour in Elizabeth's reign by a mysterious woman, and then is asked to forgive his executioner, is profoundly moving and strange. It delicately shows us the far more pressing dangers besetting men and women of conscience, in comparison with Tallis's frustration that his late polyphony can only be heard in the Chapel Royal and not in ordinary parish churches. Both martyrdom and acquiescence were possible - who is to say which path should be taken?

All in all, this works because the music speaks across time to us; the scenes sketch for us the turmoil in which it was written without presuming to imagine too much of a biography for Tallis himself (about whom very little is known), and the different styles of composition are clear enough to illustrate the paths his career had to take, while their sheer beauty as performed here outweighs any obstacle there might be in understanding the mostly Latin texts which are set.