Kerry McCarthy. Tallis
Book review by Suzanne Cole
Context 47 (2021): 71–74.
Published online: 31 Jan. 2022
Extract
In a 2005 article commemorating five hundred years since the estimated date of Thomas Tallis’s birth, Peter Phillips (conductor of the appropriately-named Tallis Scholars) lamented the lack of published scholarship on the composer. At that time, the only book dedicated solely to Tallis was Paul Doe’s extremely slim (seventy-one page) book, published in 1968. This gap has since been filled by not one but two books on Tallis: John Harley’s 2015 Thomas Tallis (Ashgate), and Kerry McCarthy’s 2020 addition to the Oxford University Press (OUP) Master Musicians series, Tallis…