Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Taverner, John
TAVERNER, JOHN (fl. 1530), musician, was presumably identical with ‘Taverner of Boston, the good musician,’ who (according to John Foxe, himself of Boston) was called by Wolsey to Oxford about 1525 to become master of the choristers at the newly founded Cardinal College, now Christ Church. Taverner, by Wolsey's statutes, received 10l. a year stipend, four yards of cloth at 3s. 4d. for livery, and 1s. 8d. a week for his commons, in all 15l. a year, a higher sum than was allotted to any officer of the college except the dean and subdean. Wood (Athenæ Oxon. i. 94) calls Taverner ‘organist of Cardinal College;’ the Gutch manuscript (quoted in Foster's Alumni Oxon.) calls him canon of the college as well as organist. Taverner, indeed, acted as organist, as appears from Anthony Dalaber's account in Foxe, but this was not his official position. Wolsey's statutes make no mention of an organist, for which no special appointment was then customary, even in the chapel royal. When, very early in the history of the college, Clerk, Frith, and others of the new society were persecuted for heresy, Taverner was implicated, ‘being accused and suspected of hiding Clerk's books under the boards in his school, yet the cardinal, for his music, excused him, saying that he was but a musician, and so he escaped.’ In a note Foxe adds: ‘This Taverner repented him very much that he had made songs to popish ditties in the time of his blindness.’ In the account-book for the college's fifth year a payment to Taverner of 5l. for the second ‘terminus’ is recorded. Nothing further of Taverner is definitely known, but John Ward (Lives of the Gresham Professors, p. 216) asserts that a manuscript, then (1740) in possession of Dr. Pepusch, stated that Taverner returned to Boston, where he died and was buried. Foxe's use of the past tense suggests that when he wrote (c. 1560) Taverner was already dead. There is nothing by Taverner in the services, anthems, and psalter published by John Day from 1560 to 1565. His name, however, was held in high repute all through the century, and his compositions continued in use. John Case mentions him among the musicians whom the English ‘magnis præmiis affecerunt;’ Meres counts him among England's ‘excellente musitians;’ and Thomas Morley (1597) places him with those ‘famous Englishmen who have been nothing inferior to the best composers on the continent.’ Fuller (Church Hist. vol. v. sect. 1) has inaccurately called him Richard Taverner, a mistake which has caused some confusion with Richard Taverner [q. v.]
To the song-book which Wynkyn de Worde published in 1530, Taverner contributed three pieces: ‘The bella’ (four-voiced), ‘My herte my minde,’ and ‘Love wyll I’ (for three voices). The only other pieces of Taverner's in print are the specimens given in the histories of Hawkins and Burney, reprinted in Michaelis's translation of Busby's history, Leipzig, 1822.
In almost all the manuscripts of vocal music written from Henry VIII's reign to the end of the sixteenth century, Taverner's works are well represented. No instrumental music by him is known. The earliest known appearance of Taverner's name, probably soon after 1520, is in the set of part-books one of which is preserved in the Cambridge University Library, and another at St. John's College; here there are only two motets, ‘Ave Dei Patris filia,’ and ‘Gaude plurimum.’ The latter is found in another part-book of about the same date at the British Museum (Addit. MS. 34191). The collection of masses formed by William Forrest [q. v.] in 1530 (bequeathed by Dr. Heyther to the music school, Oxford) begins with Taverner's mass on the plain-song ‘Gloria tibi Trinitas;’ and at a later period his masses on ‘Corona spinea’ and ‘O Michael’ were added. The part-books at Peterhouse, Cambridge, contain a magnificat of his, with nine motets and three masses, headed ‘Taverner,’ ‘Mater Christi,’ and ‘Small Devotion.’ Dr. Jebb (Ecclesiologist, August 1859, p. 166) states that two of these works are arrangements of others, and intended for the Anglican service. A specially interesting work of Taverner's is his mass on a secular song, ‘Western wynde, why dost thou blow?’ [see Shepherd, John, fl. 1550; Tye, Christopher] in Additional MSS. 17802–5, a most valuable set of part-books, written about the middle of Elizabeth's reign, also containing four alleluias and other works by Taverner. The mass on ‘Western wynde’ is also in Thomas Sadler's part-books (Bodleian Library, MS. Mus. e. 1–5), dated 1585, with three motets. There are seventeen motets by Taverner in the library of Christ Church, Oxford. In Additional MS. 4900 are an alleluia and In nomine arranged for solo voice with lute accompaniment; the In nomine is also found scored for four voices in Additional MS. 30513 [see Mulliner, Thomas], and is arranged for five voices in Additional MS. 31390. At the Royal College of Music (see Cat. of the Library of the Sacred Harmonic Society, No. 1737) are sixteen motets and part of a mass; many of these pieces, with movements from the mass ‘Gloria tibi Trinitas,’ are in Additional MS. 29246, arranged for the lute, in tablature. The latest manuscript containing Taverner's works is probably a choir-book written by John Baldwin of Windsor in and after 1606, and now in the library at Buckingham Palace; it contains the In nomine (here for four voices), movements from a mass, and motets, in all fourteen pieces, one of which is a song for two voices, ‘In women no season is rest or patience.’ Four of the motets are in two sections, one of which is by another composer—Wodde, Parsons, Tye, or Shepherd; and some others are exactly similar in style and construction, though ascribed to Taverner only. One of the latter, ‘O splendor gloriæ,’ was published by Hawkins from this manuscript; it also occurs in the part-books at Christ Church, where it is said to be partly by Tye. It was copied in score by Henry Needler (Addit. MS. 5059) from the Christ Church books. The motets ‘Gaude plurimum,’ and ‘Ave Dei Patris filia’ may be found in almost all these collections.
Burney printed Taverner's motet on a plain-song, ‘Dum transisset Sabbatum,’ from the Christ Church part-books (it is also in Addit. MS. 31390); and the ‘Qui tollis’ from the mass ‘O Michael,’ a masterly canon. Parts of the mass ‘Gloria tibi Trinitas’ are scored in Burney's ‘Extracts’ (Additional MS. 10587). The canonic ‘Qui tollis’ and the motet printed by Hawkins are favourably noticed in Ambros's ‘Geschichte der Musik’ (ed. Kade, iii. 457). Taverner must be counted as the last of the English pre-Reformation composers; he apparently had no share in the development of instrumental music, to which his contemporary Redford contributed largely; and his vocal music has not remained on the repertory of our choirs like that of his immediate successors Tye and Tallis. He has left, however, the earliest known specimen of an In nomine, a form so greatly in favour during the second half of the sixteenth century.
[Statutes and Account-book of Cardinal College, now Treasury of Receipt of Exchequer, Miscellaneous Books, 102, 104, in the Public Record Office; Foxe's Actes and Monuments of the Church, Rel. Tract Society's edit. vol. v. pp. 5, 423, 428; Case's Apologia Musices, Oxford, 1588, p. 43; Morley's Introduction to Practicall Musicke, 1597, p. 151; Meres's Palladis Tamia, 1598, f. 288; Hawkins's Hist. of Music, c. 75; Burney's History, ii. 555–60; Cat. of Manuscripts in the Cambridge University Library, v. 589; Weale's Descriptive Cat. of the Historical Music Loan Exhibition of 1885, pp. 152–7; manuscripts and other authorities quoted above.]