Inglis.’ Tye died in the following year, as the bishop's register records the institution, on 15 March 1572–3, of Hugo Bellet to the living of Doddington-cum-March, vacant ‘per mortem naturalem venerabilis viri Christoferi Tye musices doctoris ultimi incumbentis.’ His will has not yet been discovered.
We have no certain information of Tye's children, except Peter, who married in 1564 at Trinity Church, Ely, where seven of his children were baptised. But it is extremely probable that Mary Tye, who married Robert Rowley at Trinity Church in 1560, and her sister Ellen, who married the composer Robert White, were his daughters, with two others whose existence we learn from Ellen White's will, in which their mother, Katherine Tye, is also named. An Agnes Tye was married in 1575 at Wilbraham Parva.
It is highly probable that Samuel Rowley the dramatist was a near connection, perhaps a son, of Mary Rowley. In one scene of ‘When you see me, you know me,’ he introduces Dr. Tye to perform vocal and instrumental music before Prince Edward, who thanks him and adds:
I oft have heard my Father merrily speake
In your hye praise, and thus his Highnesse sayth
England one God, one truth, one Doctor hath
For Musicks Art, and that is Doctor Tye,
Admir'd for skill in Musickes harmonie.
Tye then presents his ‘Actes of the Apostles’ to the prince, who promises they shall be sung in the Chapel Royal. In Morley's ‘Introduction to Practicall Musicke,’ 1597, Tye is repeatedly quoted as a leading authority. Meres mentions him in ‘Palladis Tamia’ among England's ‘excellent Musitians;’ and there is an allusion to him in Nashe's ‘Have with you to Saffron Walden,’ 1596.
The only work (with one doubtful exception) which Tye published, was a doggerel versification of the first fourteen chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, with music to the first two stanzas of each chapter, ‘to synge and also to play upon the Lute, very necessary for studentes after theyr studye to fyle theyr wyttes, and also for all Christians that cannot synge, to reade the good and Godlye storyes of the lyves of Christ hys Apostles,’ 1553. There are copies at the British Museum and Lambeth Palace. The compositions are not syllabic tunes, all but one having at least a point of imitation. Considered as part-songs they are beyond praise. A psalter by Seagar was published in the same year with two tunes exactly similar in style; and the popular madrigal, ‘In going to my naked bed,’ usually ascribed to Richard Edwards, has a strong family likeness to them. Tye's third and eighth tunes were soon shortened and simplified into the usual four-lined ‘common metre’ psalm-tune, and attained universal popularity; they appear in Thomas East's ‘Whole Book of Psalmes,’ 1592, Allison's ‘Psalter,’ 1599, and Ravenscroft's ‘Psalter,’ 1621, under the names of ‘Windsor or Eaton,’ and ‘Winchester.’ The former, known in Scotland as ‘Dundee,’ is immortalised in Burns's ‘Cotter's Saturday Night.’ It was called ‘Dundee Tune’ in Andro Hart's ‘Psalter,’ 1615. ‘Winchester’ is now sung to the Christmas carol, ‘While shepherds watched their flocks by night.’ In both tunes the second line varies from Tye's music. In Cree and Wardell's ‘Church Psalm Tunes,’ 1851, an attempt was made to similarly arrange Tye's fifth tune, under the title of ‘St. Cuthbert's,’ and there is another in the ‘Yattendon Hymnal.’ The fourth was published in its original form, with slightly altered harmonies, as a Latin motet, ‘Laudate nomen Domini,’ in Webb's collection of madrigals and motets, 1808. This arrangement was reprinted in ‘Zeitschrift für Deutschlands Musikvereine und Dilettanten,’ Carlsruhe, 1842, and by Burns (with Tye's harmonies) in 1852; also by Novello, as ‘O come ye servants of the Lord,’ and by Curwen as ‘Come let us join our cheerful songs,’ and in a Welsh translation. No. 1 is in Burns's ‘Anthems and Services,’ as ‘Come, Holy Ghost;’ No. 2 in Turle and Taylor's ‘People's Singing Book’ and Warren's ‘Chorister's Handbook;’ No. 7, with Welsh words, in ‘Anthemydd y Tonic Sol-ffa,’ and in ‘Y Cerddor;’ No. 8, in its complete form, in the ‘Parish Choir,’ vol. iii.; No. 9, in the ‘Chorister's Handbook;’ No. 14, with the original words, in Hawkins's ‘History’ and Gwilt's collection of madrigals; and all the first nine in ‘Quarterly Musical Review’ for October 1827. Complete reprints, with new words, were issued by Oliphant in 1837, by Burns in ‘Sacred Music by Old Composers,’ and by E. D. Cree. The use of two numbers of Oliphant's arrangement in Hullah's ‘Part Music’ made them for a time widely popular. Burney's statement that Tye's settings consist of ‘fugues and canons of the most artificial and complicated kind’ shows that he had not seen them, and judged the work from the specimen printed by Hawkins, which happens to be the most scientific, being a masterly double canon.
In 1569 appeared ‘A Notable Historye of Nastagio and Traversari,’ a rhymed version of a story from Boccaccio, by C. T., which is generally supposed to indicate Christopher Tye. J. P. Collier attributed the work to
