Music Notes for Sunday, March 2, 2025

Music for Transfiguration Sunday

O nata lux de lumine – Thomas Tallis (c. 1505-1585)

‘Tallis is dead, and music dies.’ So runs the final line of Ye sacred muses, a consort song composed by William Byrd to mourn the passing of his friend and mentor Thomas Tallis. Probably a pupil of Tallis at one point, Byrd was not alone in considering him the greatest choral composer of his era. Talllis’ style encompassed the simple Reformation service music and the Continental polyphonic schools whose influence he was largely responsible for introducing into English music.

O nata lux de lumine, this Sunday’s communion motet in church, is a setting of two verses from the hymn at Lauds on the Feast of the Transfiguration. How fitting that this hymn (“O born light of light”) should be appointed to be sung at Lauds, the Office of Aurora or Dawn. Tallis’ setting makes no provision for the singing of the other verses and is obviously a motet in its own right rather than a hymn specifically for the Divine Office. Taking his earlier hymns as its starting point, it is homophonic throughout and perfect in its subtle harmonic and melodic touches and, much in the manner of Tallis’s English anthems, it repeats its final section.

O born light of light,
Jesus, redeemer of the world,
mercifully deem worthy and accept
the praises and prayers of your supplicants.
Thou who once deigned to be clothed in flesh
for the sake of the lost ones,
grant us to be made members
of your holy body.

Gerald Harder