Music for Fourth Sunday of Easter

In 1594, a twenty-two-year-old organist from Pembrokeshire travelled to London to study composition with William Byrd, who immediately took him on as an apprentice. Thomas Tomkins showed promising skill as both a polyphonist and keyboardist, and two years later he was appointed Master of Choirs at Worcester Cathedral, all the while maintaining ties to the city of London and the Chapel Royal; of which he became a Gentleman and where he worked occasionally as an organist beginning in 1621. His church anthems would have been composed for his choir in Worcester and closely adhere to the genre of the verse anthem. Closely tied to the contemporary practices of chamber music and secular song, this form born of Reformation England features a consort of instruments such as viols or dulcians (or, an organ!) accompanying four-to-six part chorus which sang more or less the same words at the same time. A verse anthem’s concision and clarity of text was augmented by the nuanced texture of an instrumental accompaniment.

Tomkins’s son Nathaniel published a collection of his works, Musica Deo Sacra, in 1688, which contains five service settings and ninety-four anthems such as the one sung today during communion. This poetic rendering of Psalm 23 is presented in alternating sections, with soloists presenting the first few verses and the chorus responding with the “consequent” text.

Tomkins was also a skilled organist and took over Byrd’s playing roles in the royal court after his death in 1623. A handful of remaining works mirror his output for viol consort, several imitative fantasias and several dance-forms. The postlude for today’s service is a ground; which, like a chaconne or passacaglia, builds on the repetition of a four-bar melody introduced in the bass. In Tomkins’ rendering, this “ground” is placed in all four voices and elaborated with an exuberance that, in several instances, leads to the altogether abandonment of the theme mid-phrase!

Abraham Ross

Solemn Mass takes place at St. James’ Anglican Church, Vancouver at 10:30 am every Sunday.