Thomas Tallis

Thomas Tallis (1505-1585) was a pioneering composer of English church music. Within the politically treacherous church of sixteenth-century England, he was very successful, and though he resisted the trends toward compositional and thematic complexity of some of his younger peers, his influence is unquestionable. Among Tallis' major works are Gaude gloriosa Dei Mater, the Christmas Mass Puer natus est nobis, and nine psalm chants for four voices written in 1567 (one of which inspired the composition of Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1910).