Thomas Tomkins

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Thomas Tomkins (* 1572 in St Davids , Pembrokeshire , † 1656 in Martin Hussingtree, Worcestershire ) was a British composer , organist and harpsichordist . He is considered "the last of the English virginalists ".

Life

Thomas Tomkins is the most famous member of a well-known English family of musicians. His father Thomas was a chorister ( vicar coral ) and organist at St. David's Cathedral, and three of his younger half-brothers - John, Giles and Robert - were also musicians. Little Thomas probably became a choirboy at St. David's Cathedral in 1578. He later received his musical training from William Byrd , because his song Too much I once lamented (1622) is dedicated to his "old, highly esteemed teacher, William Byrd". Tomkins also studied at Magdalen College , Oxford , where he graduated in 1607. From 1596 he worked well into old age as an organist and choirmaster at Worcester Cathedral . The following year he married Alice, the widow of his predecessor Nathaniel Patrick, who was nine years his senior.

In 1621 Tomkins became a gentleman ordinary and organist at the Chapel Royal alongside Orlando Gibbons . After the sudden and premature death of Gibbons in 1625, Tomkins had to provide the music for the festivities for the funeral of James I and the coronation of Charles I in February 1626 alone. In 1628, after the death of Alfonso Ferrabosco d. Younger named "Composer of [the King's] Music in ordinary" with an annual salary of £ 40. This highest position for an English musician was withdrawn from him a short time later because it was promised to Ferrabosco's son. Tomkins performed his duties at court until 1639.

In 1642 his first wife Alice died and the English Civil War broke out. Difficult years began for the elderly composer. Worcester Cathedral was desecrated and the Puritans closed all musical sacred institutions. During the armed conflict even Tomkins' house was damaged by a cannonball and he had to watch the destruction of the precious cathedral organ, which was built in 1612 under his direction by Thomas Dallam.

Around this time he married his second wife Martha, who died in 1653. The single composer, aged over eighty, was taken on in 1654 by his son Nathaniel and his wife Isabella Folliott, who lived in Martin Hussingtree about 4 miles from Worcester. Thomas Tomkins died there in 1656.

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Vocal music

Thomas Tomkins left behind numerous madrigals and church music , as well as music for organ, harpsichord , virginal and consort . He lived and worked in the "Golden Age" of England , the cultural bloom of the Elizabethan and Jacobin epochs, and lived through the entire reign of Charles I up to his execution. It was the epoch of William Shakespeare and other poets.

In the field of church music, Tomkins composed full anthems and verse anthems , leaving behind more than most of his colleagues. His son Nathaniel published the collection posthumously: Musica Deo Sacra et Ecclesiae Anglicanae; or Music dedicated to the Honor and Service of God, and to the Use of Cathedral and other Churches of England (William Godbid, London: 1668). This contains five services , five psalm tunes , preceses, two proper psalms , and 94 anthems .

Tomkins is also one of the main masters of English madrigal, alongside William Byrd, Thomas Morley , John Dowland , Thomas Weelkes , Orlando Gibbons . As early as 1601 a madrigal by Tomkins appeared in Morley's collection The Triumphs of Oriana , in 1622 his Songs of 3, 4, 5 and 6 parts were published.

Keyboard and instrumental music

Thomas Tomkins has received 76 works for keyboard instruments (organ, virginal, harpsichord), 5 of them in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book . The main source for his keyboard music is an extensive handwritten manuscript which is now in the Bibliothèque du Conservatoire, Paris ( Paris, Rés. 1122 ), and which also contains music by Byrd and Bull, as well as numerous notes by Tomkins himself . In this manuscript some pieces are dated (between September 9, 1646 and September 7–8, 1654), but it is possible that sometimes it is just the date of entry.

Tomkins wrote works of all contemporary genres, such as liturgical music, cantusfirmus arrangements (In Nomine, Veni Redemptor, etc.), an extensive offertory , Fantasies, 2 Grounds, about 20 Pavans and Galliards, some song variations (including Barafostus' Dream, Worster Brawles, What if a day), small toys etc.

He owes Tomkin's reputation as the "last of the virginalists" to the strange fact that most of the others died in the 1620s (Byrd, Bull , Gibbons, Philips ), even his colleague Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625), who was eleven years younger, and Richard Farnaby (1594-1623), 22 years younger. Tomkins outlived them all by decades, even Giles Farnaby , who died in 1640. A stylistic classification must of course also take this into account: A harsh accusation of "anachronism", such as B. by Willi Apel , seems out of place or at least grossly exaggerated - especially if you consider a general English preference for old-fashioned polyphony in the viol music under Charles I.

In contrast to such allegations, Tomkin's secular keyboard music in particular has an often joyful, brilliant and light-footed character, and a certain natural elegance. As a key composer he cultivated a virtuoso, far-reaching style in the successor of John Bull, especially of his 30 Variations on Walsingham , which Tomkins himself copied at the beginning of his great manuscript ( Paris, Rés. 1122 , see above). Tomkins music, however, is somewhat looser and simpler from a contrapuntal point of view: Bull's predilection for complex small canon motifs and imitations does not disappear with Tomkins, but it dissolves more and more into a more baroque predilection for long sequence formations (e.g. The Hunting Galliard ). In addition, there is sometimes an appealing game with different rhythms of three or meters on top of each other, as in the two virtuoso grounds in G and D, which he probably copied from Byrd. The theme of the Ground in G, by the way, corresponds to the head motif of Giles Farnaby's "Up Tails All" ( Fitzwilliam Virginal Book , No. CCXLII).

Tomkins Offertory is actually a ground about a 7-note motif with a 15-bar pre-imitation and 55 variations (!) - certainly a bit too long for modern ears. The same applies to the Cantusfirmus organ works, whose style is still based on the somewhat dry Tudor organ music, which was already developed and enriched with virtuosity by John Bull. Tomkins Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La exists in different versions: the most detailed and interesting is the one in Paris, Rés. 1122 with at least 32 variations - 'at least' because Tomkins kept inventing new variations that can be inserted as desired; the simplest version of this Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La consists only of the contrapuntal parts and is for viols. All in all, one can say that Tomkins wrote an emotional, pleasing virtuoso music with proto-baroque tendencies, it's a shame that sometimes he couldn't stop because of the sheer joy of playing.

His late works include some very beautiful and profound memorial music: The Pavana: Earl Strafford with Galliard, in memory of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford (1647), and a Pavana for William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury (both were beheaded in 1641). A few days after the execution of Charles I in 1649, Tomkins composed one of his most moving and simple pieces (without ornate reprises): the Sad Pavan: for these distracted times .

literature

  • Willi Apel: "Tomkins", in: History of piano and organ music up to 1700 , Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1967/2004, pp. 309–314.
  • Anthony Boden: Thomas Tomkins. The Last Elizabethan . Ashgate Publishing, London 2005, ISBN 0-7546-5118-5 .
  • Article "Thomas Tomkins," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1-56159-174-2
  • Thomas Tomkins: Keyboard Music . ( Musica Britannica 5), ed. By Stephen D. Tuttle, London: Stainer & Bell, 1955 (rev. 2010).
  • John Irving: The Instrumental Music of Thomas Tomkins, 1572-1656 . Garland Publishing, New York 1989. ISBN 0-8240-2011-1
  • Thomas Tomkins - Pieces pour Virginal, 1646-1654. Introduction de François Lesure . Fac-similé you ms. autographe de la Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Rés. 1122. Minkoff, Geneva 1982.

Discography

  • Thomas Tomkins: Above the Starrs - Verse Anthems and Consort Music , with Emma Kirkby, Catherine King, Charles Daniels, Donald Craig, Richard Wistreich, Jonathan Arnold, Fretwork; published by: harmonia mundi , 2003.
  • A complete recording of the keyboard instrument works by Thomas Tomkins recorded by Bernhard Klapprott is available from MDG.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Thomas Tomkins: Keyboard Music . In: Stephen Tuttle (ed.): Musica Britannica . Vol. 5, 1955, pp. 155–160 (Description of the Paris manuscript, Rés. 1122.).
  2. ^ Willi Apel: History of piano and organ music up to 1700 . Ed .: S. Rampe. Bärenreiter, Kassel et al. 2004, p. 310 (Apel also mentions this possibility in footnote 32).
  3. ^ Willi Apel: History of piano and organ music up to 1700 . Ed .: S. Rampe. Bärenreiter, Kassel 2004, p. 309-310 .
  4. ^ Thomas Tomkins: Keyboard Music . In: Stephen Tuttle (ed.): Musica Britannica . Vol. 5, No. 35 . Stainer and Bell, London 1955, pp. 72–80 or up to 85 .
  5. ^ Thomas Tomkins: Keyboard Music . In: Stephen Tuttle (ed.): Musica Britannica . Vol. 5. Stainer and Bell, London 1955, pp. 179-180 .
  6. ↑ There may be practical reasons for this: an organist cannot always know in advance how long he has time in a church service; Pieces like Tomkins Offertory or the Grounds then had to or couldn't always be played to the end, they could simply be ended beforehand, or vice versa.
  7. ^ Thomas Tomkins: Keyboard Music . In: Stephen Tuttle (ed.): Musica Britannica . Vol. 5. Stainer and Bell, London 1955, pp. 179 (obtained in: Oxf. Mus. Sch. C. 64-69).
  8. ^ Thomas Tomkins: Keyboard Music . In: Stephen Tuttle (ed.): Musica Britannica . Vol. 5, 43 and 44. Stainer and Bell, London 1955, pp. 98-103 (Pavana: Earl Strafford & Galliard: Earl Strafford).
  9. ^ Thomas Tomkins: Keyboard Music . In: Stephen Tuttle (ed.): Musica Britannica . Vol. 5, No. 53 . Stainer and Bell, London 1955, pp. 114 .
personal data
SURNAME Tomkins, Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British composer
DATE OF BIRTH 1572
PLACE OF BIRTH St Davids ( Wales )
DATE OF DEATH 1656
Place of death Martin Hussingtree ( Worcestershire )