Descripción de Vaughan-Williams - Tallis Fantasia (1/2) One of the best performances ever!!:

Ralph Vaughan Williams OM (12 October 1872 - 26 August 1958) was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song; this also influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, which began in 1904, many folk song arrangements being set as hymn tunes, in addition to several original compositions. Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, also known as the Tallis Fantasia. The BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Davis Recorded in Gloucester Cathedral It was composed in 1910 for the Three Choirs Festival, and was one of the first major successes for Vaughan Williams. He revised the work twice, in 1913 and 1919. The work takes its name from the original composer of the melody, Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585). Vaughan Williams took much inspiration from music of the English Renaissance and many of his works are associated with or inspired by the music of this period. 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 quartet. Vaughan Williams makes this configuration resemble an organ in sound, with the quartet representing the swell division, orchestra II the choir division, and orchestra I the great division; it is difficult to listen to this piece without imagining the acoustics inside a church. In structure this piece resembles the Elizabethan-age "fantasy." The theme is heard in its entirety three times during the course of the work, but the music grows from the theme's constituent motives or fragments, with variations upon them. A secondary melody, based on the original, is first heard on the solo viola about a third of the way into the Fantasia, and this theme forms the climax of the work about five minutes before the end. Tallis' original tune is in the Phrygian mode and was one of nine he contributed to the Psalter of 1567 for the first Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker. When Vaughan Williams edited the English Hymnal of 1906, he also included this melody (number 92).