Thomas TOMKINS |
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| Organiste à la cathédrale de Worcester, Gentleman-in-Ordinary à la Chapelle royale et à ce titre compositeur prolifique d'anthems et de services. Issu d'une famille de musiciens, Tomkins était l'élève de William Byrd. Il contribua par un madrigal à The Triumphes of Oriana (1601), par un Confortare à sept voix aux cérémonies de couronnement de Jacques 1er et par le verse anthem Know ye not au service des funérailles du Prince Henry (1612). Il deviint organiste de la Chapelle royale en 1621 et en 1625 succéda à Orlando Gibbons au poste de premier organiste. C'est probablement son fils Nathaniel ( 1599-1681), chanoine à la cathédrale de Worchester, qui publia en 1668 sous le titre de Musico Deo sacra la majeure partie de la musique d'église de son père. | |
| © Guide de la Musique Baroque, Fayard | |
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He was the son of Thomas Tomkins, who was a
vicar-choral of St Davids Cathedral at least as early as 12 July 1571, and
became organist and master of the choristers there in 1577. The younger
Thomas was the last of three children born to his first wife, Margaret Pore;
(2) John Tomkins, (3) Giles Tomkins and (4) Robert Tomkins were the product
of his second marriage to Anne Hargest. In 1594 the family moved to
Gloucester, where the elder Tomkins had become a minor canon; in 1610 he was
appointed precentor, a post he occupied until 1625, two years before his
death. 1. Life Little is known of Tomkins's early musical education. Presumably he gained his knowledge of the rudiments as a treble at St Davids. At some stage before he was appointed organist of Worcester Cathedral in 1596, he had evidently studied with Byrd, as witnessed by the dedication of his madrigal Too much I once lamented from the Songs of 3.4.5. & 6. Parts (1622) to ‘my ancient, & much reverenced Master, William Byrd’. The 1607 citation of his Oxford BMus degree notes that he had been ‘14 years student in music’; this would place the beginning of his formal instruction in 1593. Tomkins's investigation of music theory must have been significantly enhanced by the publication of Thomas Morley's A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597); he worked through Morley's treatise carefully, making a number of marginal annotations in his copy. Clearly he had made some impact in the capital by the turn of the century, since Morley included the madrigal The fauns and satyrs tripping in The Triumphes of Oriana (1601) alongside the work of more established court composers; he may well have become attached to the court in some capacity shortly thereafter, dividing his time, as did a number of his contemporaries, between a cathedral post (at Worcester) and the occasional demands of the Chapel Royal. Many of his anthems must have been written during the first decade or so of the 17th century, and it is possible that he was supplying material both for local consumption in Worcester and for the Chapel Royal. The anthem Know ye not was clearly intended for the funeral of Prince Henry in 1612. The Cheque Book of the Chapel Royal contains no entry relating to Tomkins's actual appointment as a Gentleman in Ordinary, though he had been elected by 29 June 1620, when his signature appears in connection with a vestry meeting. In 1621 he succeeded Edmund Hooper as an organist of the Chapel Royal, where his colleagues included Orlando Gibbons (senior organist) and Nathaniel Giles (master of the choristers). Both men were dedicatees of madrigals the following year in Tomkins's Songs, each of which bears a specific dedication, allowing us to form quite a detailed impression of the composer's social circle. This included, in addition to Gibbons and Giles, the composers John Coprario, John Danyel, William Heyther (soon to become the first professor of music at Oxford) and William Byrd, the poet Phineas Fletcher and the anthologist Thomas Myriell, in whose manuscript collection Tristitiae remedium (1616) Tomkins's best-known anthem, When David heard, is to be found. Following Gibbons's early death in 1625, Tomkins presumably became senior organist (though this is not specifically recorded) and was responsible, along with Giles, Heyther and John Stevens, for Charles I's coronation music. In 1628 he was the victim of an administrative error by the then Bishop of Bath and Wells, who had drawn up a document appointing Tomkins ‘Composer in Ordinary of the king's musick’ in succession to Alfonso Ferrabosco (ii) at a salary of £40 a year; this had to be hastily revoked when it was discovered that the position had previously been promised to Alfonso Ferrabosco (iii). From about 1630 Tomkins's appearances at the Chapel Royal probably became less frequent. In January 1642 his wife Alice Hassard, whom he had married in 1597, died, and thereafter he seems to have become increasingly involved in cathedral affairs at Worcester, perhaps as a source of solace. In 1646 Worcester surrendered to the parliamentary forces and cathedral services were effectively discontinued, though Tomkins continued to reside in the cathedral close until 1654, when he retired to live with his son Nathaniel in the nearby village of Martin Hussingtree. The church registers there state that ‘Mr Thomas Tomkins, organist of the King's Chapel and of the Cathedral Church of Worcester, was buried the 9th day of June, 1656’. This rather matter-of-fact epitaph perhaps reflects contemporary estimation of the composer: worthy, but not especially outstanding or original. It is perhaps significant that, while 17th-century portraits of Bull and Gibbons survive in the Oxford music faculty, there is none of Tomkins. 2. Works Of Tomkins's five complete services in Musica Deo sacra, the first and second are straightforward Short settings for full chorus, rather in the manner of Tallis's ‘Dorian’ Service. The third, contained also in the Batten Organbook (formerly in St Michael’s College, Tenbury), is by far the most extensive, rivalling in its complexity the Great Service of Byrd, and written probably for the Chapel Royal. It is a verse setting, incorporating sections for a wide variety of solo vocal combinations of three, four, five and six parts alternating with the full choir, which divides on occasion into as many as ten polyphonic parts. Especially noteworthy is the skilful handling of the intractable Te Deum text. Its broad paragraphs are marked out by strong cadences, and within these sections Tomkins keeps the musical interest alive by means of a variety of techniques and textures (essential if such a long text without obvious opportunities for textual or musical rhyme is not to become diffuse). The Magnificat and Nunc dimittis – still regularly heard in celebrations of choral Evensong – are on a more intimate scale. In the Magnificat, for instance, the six solo voices are rarely heard together, but interact in smaller groupings, subtly shifting between darker and lighter colour effects according to the demands of the text. Tomkins's fourth and fifth services (likewise verse settings) survive only in Musica Deo sacra; no manuscript copies are known, perhaps indicating that they were not widely circulated. Each one bears passing resemblance to Byrd's second service, especially at the openings of the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis. The two other sets of evening canticles survive in manuscript, but too incompletely for reliable restoration. Tomkins's anthem texts come mainly from the book of Psalms; other sources include the Old Testament, Revelation, collects, and the Communion and burial Services in the Book of Common Prayer. His word-setting is neither too bland nor too dramatic, proving generally appropriate both in sense and accentuation. (The underlay in Musica Deo sacra is frequently unreliable; had Tomkins lived to see his works through the press he would surely have taken care to correct anthems such as Thou healest the broken in heart, in which the underlay is very poor indeed.) A point for which Tomkins has been criticized is the degree of word-repetition in the anthems, particularly in final sections. He undoubtedly had a genuine aptitude for writing climactic perorations, which frequently attain a very high musical level, as in He that hath pity on the poor. Sometimes, though, the sheer virtuosity of the text-setting leads to structural miscalculations. In Lord, enter not into judgment, for example, the natural division of the text conflicts with Tomkins's musical treatment, for whereas the text itself (‘Lord, enter not into judgment with thy servant; for in thy sight shall no man living be justified’) clearly divides into two, the music is in three sections, the third of which is a climactic peroration on ‘be justified’, upsetting both the sense of the text and the overall proportions. Full anthems, such as Arise, O Lord, into thy resting place and Great and marvellous are thy works, display a sure feeling for tonal design. Some commentators have noted an overuse of sequential repetition; nevertheless, in such works as Great and marvellous are thy works the device is employed to purposeful effect. While Tomkins's anthems rely strongly on imitation between the voice parts, musical expression is never sacrificed to mere technical virtuosity. Even in Turn thou us, a canon 4 in 1, the thematic, rhythmic and textural variety together define a structure that unfolds quite independently of the contrapuntal device. Possibly the most famous of Tomkins's anthems is When David heard, a five-part piece found in the 1622 Songs, as well as in Musica Deo sacra and two 17th-century manuscript sources. Among the many fine passages in this passionate setting of King David's lament from 2 Samuel xviii.33 is the imitation beginning at ‘would God I had died for thee’, in the second part of which Tomkins progressively expands the opening interval through a minor 3rd to a perfect 4th, culminating in a minor 6th. The five-part Domine tu eruisti animam appears in Musica Deo sacra with Latin and English texts (‘Why art thou so full of heaviness’). The Latin fits the music more convincingly than the English, which may therefore have been a later contrafactum, making this piece Tomkins's only surviving Latin motet. The occasion for which it was written is not known. Contrafacta are not unknown elsewhere in Tomkins's sacred music. The five-part Holy, holy, holy in Musica Deo sacra is a contrafactum of See, see, the shepheards queene in the 1622 Songs, while the madrigalian idiom of his three-part O Lord, how glorious are thy works and The hills stand about Jerusalem suggests that these anthems may also be contrafacta of secular works now lost. Roughly half of the anthems are in verse form. All except Rejoice, rejoice begin in the usual way with a solo entry, continuing with full and solo sections in alternation. Within this simple framework Tomkins introduces considerable variety of scoring and structure. While Behold, I bring you contains just two sections, for ‘meane’ and ten-part chorus (ex.1), Turn thou us has no fewer than 14 solo and full sections. O Lord, let me know mine end is one of the verse anthems that evidently enjoyed wide circulation in their day, to judge from the ten surviving manuscript sources for it, in addition to that in Musica Deo sacra; others, such as O that the salvation were given, are known only from that posthumous publication. The madrigals in Tomkins's 1622 Songs reveal, for the most part, his conservative streak. Published at a time when the vogue for the English madrigal was in decline, these pieces lack the freshness of expression found earlier in the work of Morley, Wilby and Weelkes, and display no evidence of an awareness of contemporary Italian techniques. The three-part works are remarkably unadventurous in harmony and, stripped of their words, would serve well as contrapuntal exercises (as, indeed, would the three-part anthems). In the four-part Weepe no more, thou sorry boy Tomkins injects some appropriate contrasts of mood at the line ‘laughs and weeps’, engineered by the juxtaposition of chord progressions whose roots are separated by a 3rd (ex.2a); in its second part, Yet againe, as soon revived, the flux of emotions at ‘turn thy tears to weeping joy’ is suggested by harmonic sequence in the music (ex.2b). Seven of the ten five-part madrigals are effectively balletts, with fa-la refrains, including Too much I once lamented, dedicated to Tomkins's ‘ancient, & much reverenced Master’, Byrd. Tomkins's six-part madrigals are notable for their flexibility of vocal scoring. Their fluid textures display a remarkable sophistication in the handling of three- and four-part polyphony within the six-voice framework, as illustrated by It is my wel-beloveds voice, in which scarcely two consecutive bars employ identical vocal combinations. Woe is me, dedicated to his half-brother John, is remarkable for its dark sonorities and predominantly low register, aptly reflecting, in its telling use of the minor mode and grating semitonal dissonances, the sober words of Psalm cxx, ‘Woe is me! that I am constrained to dwell with Mesech; and to have my habitation among the tents of Kedar’. In Musicke devine, written for Dr William Heather, the association of words and notes is equally close, and Tomkins loses no opportunity for appropriate musical representation of such phrases as ‘Music divine, proceeding from above … in this her heavenly harmony, where tuneful concords sweetly do agree’. The first of these, for instance, is suggested not merely by the octave leap on ‘proceeding from above’, but also in the sequential ascents in the alto, second tenor and bass parts, climbing from G major through the sharper regions of E and A. Tomkins was in the habit of dating his compositions, and all but a handful of his 70-odd keyboard pieces are contained in an autograph (F-Pc) compiled during the last decade of his life. Others, such as the well-known Pavan (MB, v, no.56, surviving also in versions for consort) and Worcester brawls, are present in early 17th-century manuscripts such as the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. The keyboard works include fugal forms (offertory, verse, voluntary, fancy), plainsong settings (Clarifica me Pater, In Nomine, Miserere) variations, hexachord fantasias, grounds and the established dances (pavan, galliard). Tomkins excelled in all these types. In some respects he appears to have modelled his keyboard pieces on those of Byrd, particularly as regards the densely contrapuntal design of his pavan and galliard strains and their tendency towards thematic interrelationships between successive strains. Like Byrd, he composed settings of the Clarifica me Pater plainsong (one of only seven that survive in the entire corpus of English virginal music), the odd hexachord, Ut, mi, re and variations on Fortune my foe. In all such cases he avoids bland duplication of Byrd's formal procedures (which he must have recognized from first-hand knowledge of the pieces concerned), devising novel structures without departing from the ‘serious’ idiom of his teacher. In the plainsong setting Clarifica me Pater, for instance, Tomkins's imitative opening is modelled on that of Byrd's second setting (MB, xxviii, no.48), but with significant alterations to the temporal placement of successive thematic entries; likewise, in Tomkins's variations on the song Fortune my foe his overall approach is indebted to that of Byrd's own setting (MB, xxvii, no.6), but the handling of passage-work and texture produces a more definite articulation of the mid-point half-cadence than Byrd had sought in his variations, leading to quite a different kind of piece. The function of this corpus of keyboard pieces is unclear. None of the plainsong settings can have had any liturgical function by the 1640s and 50s, of course, and they were presumably composed as ‘demonstration’ pieces for his own satisfaction (or for didactic use). Perhaps the initial stimulus came from close study of similar works by Redford, Preston and others found in an important 16th-century manuscript (GB-Lbl Add.29996) once owned by Tomkins (see illustration). One detects an air of resignation in much of Tomkins's late keyboard work, especially, perhaps, in the Sad Pavan: for these distracted times, dated 14 February 1649, a memorial to the recently executed Charles I. The carefully crafted fugal pieces and the dances are the most successful, and thoroughly deserve the description ‘excellent for the matter’ that Tomkins himself accorded certain keyboard works by Byrd in the index to his autograph manuscript. Elsewhere the quality of keyboard passage-work is, at times, routine, too frequently resorting to unimaginative scalic patterns. While Tomkins clearly knew Bull's keyboard works (described in the same Tomkins autograph as ‘excellent for the hand’), he did not satisfactorily absorb the virtuoso keyboard idiom. One can readily agree with Stephen Tuttle's assessment of Tomkins's keyboard works: ‘With the death of Thomas Tomkins in 1656 the school of English virginalists comes to a close … Tomkins, the last of the school, returns at the end of his life to the style of his master [Byrd], the first, and perhaps the greatest, of the virginalists’ (MB, v, p.xiii). Tomkins's output of consort music – a total of 35 pieces – is small by comparison with that of his contemporaries Coprario, Ferrabosco (iii), Ward and Jenkins. It apparently circulated in only a handful of manuscripts principally associated with the region around Gloucester and Worcester. This suggests that this aspect of Tomkins's work was intended only for domestic entertainment among his immediate circle within the cathedral close at Worcester; his friends there included Humphrey and John Withy, both of whom are named in one manuscript source of the five-part pavans (GB-Ob). A curious feature of Tomkins's consort repertory is the paucity of four-part pieces; only three items survive, of which two (Ut, re, mi and a pavan) are arrangements of pieces originally for keyboard and five-part consort respectively. The pavan's earliest source is Thomas Simpson's Opusculum neuwer Pavanen, Galliarden (Frankfurt, 1610), but it also survives in several English and Continental versions for keyboard (one is in the Anders von Düben tablature, S-Uu). Perhaps its popularity was in part due to its final section, in which the falling chromatic motive, an emblem of lamenting common to early 17th-century English pieces in a variety of genres, is prominently announced throughout the polyphonic texture (ex.3). The three-part pieces comprise two In Nomines, one of which presents the cantus firmus in a trochaic pattern in the bass, and 15 fantasias for a variety of scorings. One of these (MB, lix, no.12) is a canon 3 in 1 which weaves its way somewhat drily around the complete chromatic compass. Two others (ibid., nos.5 and 9) incorporate triple-time sections perhaps suggested by the three-part fantasias of Gibbons, to which Tomkins's pieces show occasional thematic resemblances. The five-part music consists entirely of pavans (including some incomplete ones), while the six-part output, containing arguably Tomkins's best consort music, offers a pavan–galliard pair and four fantasias conceived on a majestic scale, comparing favourably with similar consorts by Byrd and Gibbons. |
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New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians 2nd edition © Oxford University Press 2003 |
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