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The three six-part masses by John Taverner are towering monuments of English pre-Reformation church music. Probably written in the mid-1520s shortly after Taverner had become choirmaster of Cardinal College, Thomas Wolsey’s new collegiate foundation at Oxford, they culminate the florid polyphonic style that had been developing in England since the mid-15th century, at the same time strengthening it with a new sense of sinew and logic derived from close motivic argument and purposeful gradation of musical tension. The introduction to this edition explores Hugh Keyte’s suggestion that O Michael and Corona spinea may have been written to adorn ceremonies celebrating treaties marking a rapprochement between Henry VIII and the French king François I in 1527, in which Wolsey reached the zenith of his political influence. The possibility that pressure to finish O Michael in time for the ceremony led to the inclusion of some rather slipshod writing atypical of Taverner is also discussed. For six voices: SATTBarB. viii + 64 pages. ISMN 979-0-57039-209-4.
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