Uploaded October 2015 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Neville Marriner
Academy of St Martin in the Fields
Date: 1972
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, also known as the Tallis Fantasia, is a work for string orchestra by English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. It was composed in 1910 and performed for the first time in September of that year at Gloucester Cathedral for the Three Choirs Festival. Vaughan Williams himself conducted, and the composition proved to be a major success. He revised the work twice, in 1913 and 1919
Tallis' original tune is in the Phrygian mode and was one of the nine he contributed to the Psalter of 1567 for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker. When Vaughan Williams edited the English Hymnal of 1906, he also included this melody (number 92). Parker's original words were:
Why fumeth in fight: the Gentils spite,
In fury raging stout?
Why taketh in hond: the people fond,
Vayne thinges to bring about?
The kinges arise: the lordes devise,
In counsayles mett thereto:
Agaynst the Lord: with false accord,
Against his Christ they go.
— Psalm 2:1–2, Archbishop Parker's Psalter (1567)
Neville Marriner
Academy of St Martin in the Fields
Date: 1972
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, also known as the Tallis Fantasia, is a work for string orchestra by English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. It was composed in 1910 and performed for the first time in September of that year at Gloucester Cathedral for the Three Choirs Festival. Vaughan Williams himself conducted, and the composition proved to be a major success. He revised the work twice, in 1913 and 1919
Tallis' original tune is in the Phrygian mode and was one of the nine he contributed to the Psalter of 1567 for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker. When Vaughan Williams edited the English Hymnal of 1906, he also included this melody (number 92). Parker's original words were:
Why fumeth in fight: the Gentils spite,
In fury raging stout?
Why taketh in hond: the people fond,
Vayne thinges to bring about?
The kinges arise: the lordes devise,
In counsayles mett thereto:
Agaynst the Lord: with false accord,
Against his Christ they go.
— Psalm 2:1–2, Archbishop Parker's Psalter (1567)
