Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

Vaughan Williams conducted the first performance of his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis in Gloucester Cathedral, during the 1910 Three Choirs Festival. Although only 15 minutes long, the work has an inner magnitude and musical strength that quickly marked it out as a major achievement. The Fantasia is written for an orchestra of strings, deployed in a way that related to the great internal space and resonant acoustics of its original cathedral setting. In the foreground is a solo string quartet, with the main string ensemble in support; an additional smaller group is deployed in the more distant background. The darkly expressive, minor-mode theme itself is by the 16th-century English composer Thomas Tallis, who composed it for a metrical version of the biblical Psalm 2; Vaughan Williams had discovered it when compiling The English Hymnal (published in 1906). After a brief introduction, the theme is presented by the cellos, then taken up by the full string ensemble. Next comes a sequence of “fantasia” passages, each taking a fragment of the theme’s melody or harmony and allowing this to develop like an improvisation—a process that combines close structural control with a broader feeling of expressive freedom. Eventually the theme’s full reprise arrives, played by the quartet’s first violin with a solo viola in support, and leading toward the richly spacious music of the closing bars.