Composers Datebook

On today's date in 1910, the haunting "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" by the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was performed for the first time. The composer himself conducted the London Symphony. Thomas Tallis was a 16th-century English organist and composer who managed to keep his job and his head while working under four very different Tudor monarchs: Henry VIII, Edward VI, Bloody Queen Mary, and Elizabeth I — and keeping your head was no easy trick for anyone writing church music in that age of bitter religious turmoil. Like Vaughan Williams, many composer of our time have attempted to evoke the past through the use of old musical themes, ancient texts, and even early instruments. When the contemporary English composer Gavin Bryars decided to set to music the oldest known English-language poem, Cadman's 7th century "Creation Hymn," he did so for two early music groups: the Hilliard vocal ensemble and the instrumental consort called Fretwork. Not surprisingly, Bryars' music — like Vaughan Williams' — has a decidedly archaic sound, although the event that occasioned it was decidedly contemporary: the Lockerbie air-crash of 1988. One of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing was a sound engineer named Bill Cadman. Bryars' "Cadman Requiem" commemorates his death in a 20th century work based on a 7th century text for performance by ensembles specializing in 16th century music.