Too Many Notes!
Derek Thomas

There is a delicious line in the movie on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Amadeus, when Emperor Joseph II—who fancies himself as something of a connoisseur about music, certainly what constitutes the difference between good music and the best music, when he is commenting on one of Mozart’s early operas. The setting of the opera is something we’ll pass by, but Emperor Joseph is struggling to put his finger on it and he turns to the court composer Antonio Salieri, Mozart’s nemesis in the movie (but that’s debatable). “Too many notes?” Salieri suggests. The Emperor agreed. “Too many notes! There it is.” A betrayed Mozart complains to Salieri, who tries to appease him by saying, “My dear Mozart, there are only so many notes that the ear can hear at any one time!” Musicians everywhere will protest, and rightly so. But it does illustrate something I want to say about the relationship of music to public worship.
    This year, 2005, is the 500th anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest composers of the sixteenth century, Thomas Tallis. Some will be familiar with a set of variations written for string orchestra by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis. The “theme” was, in fact, a setting by Tallis of the second Psalm (“Why fum’th in fight”) included by Archbishop Parker in his Psalter.
    A glance at The Trinity Hymnal will reveal two hymns set to music by Tallis (No. 401 and No. 732). They are, in fact, set to the same tune—the Tallis Canon—used as a setting for the evening hymn, “All Praise the Thee, My God, This Night” as well as for a version of the Doxology.
Thomas Tallis was (probably) born in 1505 and lived until he was eighty years old. One of the most popular English renaissance composers of his day, Tallis served as the organist (as well as other professional capacities) for four English monarchs, including in the Royal Chapel. Along with William Byrd, he gained from Elizabeth I the monopoly right to publish vocal music. Tallis wrote for both the early Catholic tradition as well as the Protestant tradition that gained sway in England as a result of the sixteenth century Reformation. Tallis thus lived and worked through the reformation in English church liturgy brought about by Thomas Cranmer, who had suggested that a change was needed in the musical style employed in worship, away from the ornate and polyphonic (Latin) style of Catholic Mass to something much more simple and straightforward, adding:
    In my opinion, the song that shall be made thereunto would not be full of notes, but, as far as may be, for every syllable a note. (Diarmaid MacCullough Thomas Cranmer: A Life [New haven, London: Yale University Press, 1996], 330). Cranmer, unlike Martin Luther (who could still express his fondness for Josquin des Prez, Orlando di Lasso and Palestrina), had little time for the giddy style of Tallis’ early Tudor style of musical writing. Tallis’ career spanned the revival of a Catholic monarch, Mary Tudor (1553-58) during which Tallis, who had professionally, if not personally, adopted Protestant sympathies, “converted” back to the familiar Latin and more complex musical forms that the Catholic liturgy had required.
    Arguably, his most famous work is Spem in Alium, written for forty voices divided into eight five-part choirs (some of which are kept counting beats for several minutes to ensure they enter at the correct moment—a hair-raising exercise in itself). It was written in honor of the Duke of Norfolk, a staunch Catholic who had died in 1571.
    What do we learn? This: that not all music is appropriate for public worship or to express particular thoughts and ideas about God. Anyone who remotely raises the chestnut of Luther employing bar-songs is the victim of twentieth century historical revisionism/deconstruction. “It ain’t true, my friend!” Our heavenly Father deserves and demands the best we have to offer. As literature and art can be critiqued according to certain standards, so too can music. And when it comes to public worship—there is a style that is better than another, else we might as well abandon any hope of biblically critiquing western culture and throw in our lot with the Philistines!