Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
A 1910 work for string orchestra by Ralph Vaughan Williams, built around a hymn tune by Thomas Tallis and shaped by contrasting string groups.
Thomas Tallis: An English Renaissance composer whose sacred vocal music includes the hymn tune known as the Third Mode Melody. Vaughan Williams uses Tallis’s hymn tune as the fantasia’s musical foundation.
Ralph Vaughan Williams: An English composer whose works include symphonies, operas, chamber music, and arrangements of folk songs and hymns. He composed the fantasia in 1910 and later revised its score.
Three Choirs Festival 1910: The 1910 edition of the annual festival, held in Gloucester and including the premiere of Vaughan Williams’s fantasia. This event introduced the composition to its first audience.
Tudor music: Music composed in England during the Tudor period, from 1485 to 1603. Tallis’s sixteenth-century tune places the work in dialogue with Tudor musical practice.
Third Mode Melody: A hymn tune published by Thomas Tallis in the 1567 English Psalter, associated with the words “Why fum’th in fight.” Its modal contours supply the work’s recurring theme.
English Hymnal: A hymnbook edited by Percy Dearmer and Ralph Vaughan Williams, first published in 1906. Vaughan Williams encountered Tallis’s tune through this hymnbook.
Adrian Boult: An English conductor known for championing British composers, especially Vaughan Williams and Holst. Boult’s recordings helped establish the fantasia in the orchestral repertoire.
Gregorian chant: The Latin liturgical plainchant tradition of the Western Christian Church. Its modal sound offers a broader comparison for the fantasia’s inherited hymn melody.
String orchestra: An orchestra made up of bowed string instruments, usually violins, violas, cellos, and double basses. The fantasia uses string forces alone, divided into contrasting groups.
English Musical Renaissance: A late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century revival of English composition and musical institutions. The fantasia reflects renewed interest in England’s older musical heritage.