Taverner, John

(? 1490-1545)

Leading English composer of the early Tudor period. He possibly grew up in Lincolnshire, singing at the well-endowed collegiate church of Tattershall, then worked in London (1514-1520), but neither assertion has been proven.

Indisputably, he was singing in 1525 as a clerk-fellow at Tattershall and the following year was appointed choirmaster at the newly founded Cardinal College, Oxford (now Christ Church), where he was implicated in a Lutheran heresy incident, then pardoned by Cardinal Wolsey.

The College declined when Wolsey fell out of favour with Henry VIII, and Taverner left in 1530, later retiring to Boston, Lincolnshire, where he spent his last decade as a respected civic dignitary. Though acting on behalf of Thomas Cromwell in acts of Reformation destruction and dissolution in Boston, it is now thought likely he remained a Catholic.

Taverner's music is the epitome of the florid English style linking the Gothic to the high Renaissance. Influenced by the Eton Choirbook composers such as Cornyshe and Fayrfax, his works show a greater control of structure and tonality, and favour imitative techniques. His later works are simpler, pointing the way for Sheppard, Tye, and Tallis.

 His output includes eight masses, three of which are elaborate festal settings in six parts, for example, the Missa Gloria tibi trinitas, three Magnificats, votive antiphons, and responds including Dum transisset Sabbatum.