English composer John Taverner, who had received…
1530 CE
English composer John Taverner, who had received his early musical upbringing at the collegiate church, Tattershall, in Lincolnshire, is recommended by the Bishop of Lincoln as a singer and choirmaster to Cardinal Wolsey, whose splendid establishment Cardinal College is founded by 1526, the year in which the post is accepted.
Nothing is known of Taverner's activities before 1524.
He appears to have come from the south, possibly being born in Tattershall, but there is no indication of his parentage.
According to one of his own letters, he is related to the Yerburghs, a well-to-do Lincolnshire family.
The earliest information is that in 1524 Taverner traveled from Tattershall to the Church of St. Botolph in nearby Boston as a guest singer.
Two years later, in 1526, Taverner became the first Organist and Master of the Choristers at Christ Church, Oxford, appointed by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey.
The college had been founded in 1525 by Wolsey, and was then known as Cardinal College.
Immediately before this, Taverner had been a clerk fellow at the Collegiate Church of Tattershall.
He had been reprimanded in 1528 or his (probably minor) involvement with Lutherans, but escaped punishment for being "but a musician".
Wolsey had fallen from royal favor in 1529, and in 1530 Taverner leaves the college.
As far as can be told, Taverner had no further musical appointments, nor can any of his known works be dated to after that time, so he may have ceased composition.
It is often said that after leaving Oxford, Taverner worked as an agent of Thomas Cromwell assisting in the Dissolution of the Monasteries, although the veracity of this is now thought to be highly questionable.
He is known to have settled eventually in Boston, Lincolnshire, where he was a small landowner and reasonably well-off.
He is buried with his wife under the belltower at Boston Parish Church. (In the few existing copies of his signature, the composer actually spelled his last name "Tavernor.")
The twentieth-century composer Sir John Tavener will claim to be his direct descendant.
Most of Taverner's music is vocal, and includes masses, magnificats and motets.
The bulk of his output is thought to date from the 1520s.
His best-known motet is Dum Transisset Sabbatum.
Groups
Regions
North Europe
View →Subregions
