A biography

Little is known about the life of Taverner. In 1524-25 he was a lay clerk at the collegiate church of Tatershall. In 1526 he accepted the post of instructor of the choristers at Cardinal College (now Christ Church), Oxford, and in about 1530 he became a lay clerk (and probably instructor of the choristers) at the parish church of St Botolph, Boston. By 1537 he had retired from full-time employment as a church musician. Most of his extant works, which include eight Masses, three Magnificats, numerous motets and votive antiphons and a few consort pieces and fragmentary secular part-songs, probably date from the 1520s. His Western Wynde Mass is based on a secular tune and is in a less expansive, more Lutheran style. His four-voice In nomine, the prototype of this English genre, is simply a transcription of the ‘In nomine Domine’ section of his Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas. It created something of a vogue among English composers of Taverner’s and later generations.