Tallis Festival Tallis Festival The Tallis Festival, hosted by Exmoor Singers of London, forms the Tallis Festival Choir for just one weekend every 12 to 18 months. The Festival always includes Thomas Tallis' Spem in Alium for 40-part choir, but in addition has commissioned new 40-part works by modern composers, as companion pieces to Spem in Alium. In 2007 the Festival was recognised by the BBC for its contribution to new music and highlights from the Festival were broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 28 October 2007. The Festival originated from "Tallis Performance Weekends", held periodically over a number of years. The
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis Tallis (c. 1505 – 1585). Many of Vaughan Williams' works are associated with or inspired by the music of the English Renaissance. In 1906 Vaughan Williams included Tallis's "Third Mode Melody" in the English Hymnal, which he was then editing, as the melody for Joseph Addison's hymn "When Rising from the Bed of Death." The tune is in Double Common Meter (D.C.M. or C.M.D.). The work is scored for an expanded string orchestra divided into three parts: orchestra I, a full-sized string orchestra; orchestra II, a single desk from each section (ideally placed apart from Orchestra I); and a string