Score Salon:
Hummie Mann on Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

March 11, 2002 at Bad Animals

Image reproduced through special permission from Dover Publications

Film Composer and SCA Vice-president Hummie Mann moderated a discussion on Vaughan William's popular string orchestra work Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910).

Vaughan Williams scholar Steve Schwartz calls Tallis the composer's "first indisputable masterpiece and one of the great works for string orchestra written by anybody. Long before Stravinsky's neoclassic essays, Vaughan Williams looks back across centuries and shakes hands with the great Tudor composer Thomas Tallis. Further, Vaughan Williams does not merely exercise himself with recreating a surface style. Instead, the effect seems to transcend time, as a modern composer builds a modern work out of older materials and procedures. The string writing is at once audacious and assured, written with the acoustics of Gloucester Cathedral in mind, which was where it was first performed. In fact, three independent ensembles make up the orchestra: a large group, a smaller 9-player ensemble, and a string quartet. This allows Vaughan Williams to play with both intimate and incredibly rich (and clear) textures. In fact, it's built somewhat like a great sermon : starting quietly and climbing to heaven by degrees, taking the listener along."

Capitol Music Center is the official sponsor of the SCA Monthly Score Salon.

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