Besides the different styles (polyphany, word painting) and forms (Motet, Mass), Renaissance and early Baroque music featured a number of composers that transcended the period . If you go to the Thirteen website, you will run across two names famous in the period – Thomas Tallis and his pupil William Byrd that are still played today.
Tallis lived in the heart of Renaisssance music – 1505-1585 and is known not only as a Renaissance composer but also one of England’s best. Tallis lived during the turbulent 16th century and saw four monarchs – the pendulum swung from Catholic to Protestant to Catholic, and back to Protestant again. He had to be adaptable. Tallis is popular because he stressed both melody and a reflective quality, almost moody.
Tallis’ musical education as a youth is not known either, though he was probably a choirboy somewhere (it has been suggested he was probably one of the "children of the Chapel Royal," but there is nothing to confirm this), as that was how many composers in his day learned their music.
The first definite date marking the start of Tallis’ musical career is 1532, when he was appointed organist of Benedictine Priory in Dover. The year 1537 found him at his second job, organist at St Mary-le-Hill in Billingsgate, London, and then on to Waltham Abbey in London until its dissolution in 1540 under Henry VIII. The unemployed Tallis then set out to find work, which he did in 1541 at Canterbury Cathedral as a lay clerk. Finally, he settled into the King’s service, appointed as a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1543. He sang with the Chapel Royal, played the organ, helped in running the choir, and continued to compose. In 1575, with William Byrd, Tallis secured a monopoly on printing music and music paper in England. Tallis remained with the Chapel Royal until his death in 1585, while finding time to marry his wife Joan and taking on the young Byrd as a pupil (both probably around the same time, in 1552).
One in his major works sung by the Thirteen is "Gaude gloriosa Dei Mater"
The work stems from either late in Henry VIII’s time or early in Queen Mary. The music is in praise of the Virgin Mary. It proceeds in sections marked by contrasts of texture, from solos to full six-voiced climaxes in which imitative motives are passed upwards through musical space. It proceeds in two roughly equal sections, the first in a triple meter and the second in duple. To this conservative layout Tallis added a complicated series of proportions between the lengths of sub-sections: he embeds several Pythagorean proportions (3:2, 2:1, and even two instances of 9:8) within the very structure of his motet.
Often Tallis even manipulates the textures for word-painting effect, such as the wide spacing between two men’s voices and a high soprano at the mention of "angels," or the rich texture of divided upper voices for one verse.
Later composers revived Tallis in the 20th century. Ralph Vaughn Williams composed "Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis" in 1910 was inspired by Tallis tune "Third Mode Melody". (There is a extended playlist of Tallis on Youtube, here )
One of Tallis’ pupils was Willliam Byrd (1540-1763). (Don’t get Byrd confused with the Virginian William Byrd who lived in Westover in the early 1700’s!). There is no documentary evidence concerning Byrd’s early musical training. His two brothers were choristers at St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Byrd may have been a chorister there as well.
Byrd’s first known professional employment was his appointment in 1563 as organist and master of the choristers at Lincoln Cathedral and remained in post until 1572. His period at Lincoln was not entirely trouble-free, for on 19 November 1569 the Dean and Chapter cited him for ‘certain matters alleged against him’ as the result of which his salary was suspended. Since Puritanism was influential at Lincoln, it is possible that the allegations were connected with over-elaborate choral polyphony or organ playing. From the early 1570s onwards Byrd became increasingly involved with Catholicism, which became a major factor in his personal and creative life.
The Thirteen has performed Byrd "Mass for Four Voices" and is example of his religious switch. Remember the mass was part of the Catholic service and when this was published in 1590 during Elizabeth’s time it was dangerous to carry around Catholic music in the time of a Protestant monarch. Byrd chose not to publish the Masses as a set but individually in single bifolia which were easy to conceal.
The Thirteen performs the Agnus Dei section. It uses a network of short sections scored for various combinations of voices, with full sections appearing at climactic points in the text. All three movements begin with a two-part semichoir section, a standard feature of early Tudor Mass cycles. The three clauses of the Agnus Dei are set respectively in two, three and four parts.