Taverner, John
Taverner, John
Taverner, John, important English composer; b. South Lincolnshire, c. 1490; d. Boston, Lincolnshire, Oct. 18, 1545. He was a lay clerk of the choir at the collegiate church of Tattershall (1524-25). In 1526 he was appointed master of the choristers at Cardinals’ Coll. in Oxford. In 1530 he became lay clerk of the choir of the parish church of St. Botolph, in Boston, Lincolnshire, where he served until 1537. In the latter year he was elected a member of the Guild of Corpus Christi there, serving as one of its 2 treasurers from 1541 to 1543. In 1545 he was appointed a town alderman, but died soon afterward. The widely circulated stories of his imprisonment for heresy and of his serving as an agent for Cromwell are totally unfounded. Taverner was a prolific composer of church music; among his works are 8 masses, 9 mass sections, 3 Magnificats, about 25 motets, 4 part-songs, and 2 instrumental pieces. His church music is found in Vols. I and III of Tudor Church Music (1923-24) and in H. Benham, ed., John Taverner: The Six-part Masses, Early English Church Music, XX (1978).
Bibliography
H. Benham, The Music of j. T.: A Study and Assessment (diss., Univ. of Southampton, 1970); C. Hand, j. T.: His Life and Music (London, 1978); D. Josephson, J. T., Tudor Composer (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1979).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire