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
Thomas Tallis calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on 21 November. The earliest surviving works by Tallis, "Salve intemerata virgo", "Ave rosa sine spinis" and "Ave Dei patris filia" are devotional antiphons to the Virgin Mary, which were sung in the evening after the last service of the day and were cultivated in England until at least the early 1540s. Henry VIII's break repudiation of the authority of the Pope over the Catholic Church in 1534 (Henry did not repudiate the doctrines of the Church) and the rise of Thomas Cranmer noticeably influenced the style of music written. Cranmer recommended a syllabic