John Taverner: His Life and Music

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Contents: Introduction
The life of John Taverner
The sources of Taverner's music
Some performance issues
Music and worship, with a catalogue of Taverner's work
Taverner's musical background
Taverner's style and technique: Gaude Plurimum
Ave Dei Patris Filia and O Splendor Gloriae
Mater Christi, O Christe Jesu Pastor Bone and the incomplete antiphons
The masses Gloria Tibi Trinitas, Corona Spinea, and O Michael
The masses for five and four voices
Music for the Office
The songs, and Quemadmodum
Conclusion
Appendices
Notes
Bibliography
Discography
Index.

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John Taverner was the leading composer of church music under Henry VIII. His contributions to the mass and votive antiphon are varied, distinguished and sometimes innovative; he has left more important settings for the office than any of his predecessors, and even a little secular music survives. Hugh Benham, editor of Taverner’s complete works for Early English Church Music, now provides the first full-length study of the composer for over twenty years. He places the music in context, with the help of biographical information, discussion of Taverner’s place in society, and explanation of how each piece was used in the pre-Reformation church services. He investigates the musical language of Taverner’s predecessors as background for a fresh examination and appraisal of the music in the course of which he traces similarities with the work of younger composers. Issues confronting the performer are considered, and the music is also approached from the listener’s point of view, initially through close analytical inspection of the celebrated votive antiphon Gaude plurimum.

Reviews

This outstanding volume is a welcome addition to the resurgent literature on pre-Reformation English music

Early Music Review

the author not only [has] an excellent understanding of his composer but a remarkable ability to describe what is happening in his music in a way that is as meaningful to the enthusiastic amateur singer as to the professional scholar...Benham can write about music in a way that draws the reader into the sort of detailed description of how the music works that from other hands would be unreadable

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